Read Slowly to Benefit Your Brain and Cut Stress

http://online.wsj.com/articles/read-slowly-to-benefit-your-brain-and-cut-stress-1410823086?

by anishkothari • 12 years ago

142 42 12 years ago

online.wsj.com

Despite many occurrences of the word "slow", this article seems to have nothing at all to do with the speed at which you read.

rando289• 12 years ago

This. Yet again, I learn to check the comments first or get trolled. I wonder if journalism schools have a class called "Professional trolling."

aytekin2• 12 years ago

There is a short paragraph that's actually quite good:

"Slow readers list numerous benefits to a regular reading habit, saying it improves their ability to concentrate, reduces stress levels and deepens their ability to think, listen and empathize. The movement echoes a resurgence in other old-fashioned, time-consuming pursuits that offset the ever-faster pace of life, such as cooking the "slow-food" way or knitting by hand."

robert_tweed• 12 years ago

They appear to be using the term "slow reading" to distinguish it from online reading:

"One 2006 study of the eye movements of 232 people looking at Web pages found they read in an "F" pattern... None of this is good for our ability to comprehend deeply, scientists say."

I personally have 3 styles of reading:

- Fiction, I read incredibly slowly, and always have done.

- Technical books, I absorb very quickly, often scanning through parts covering topics I already know well, and spending longer on anything that is new. In any case, there is no "narrative" to follow, but the structure still tends to be linear (one topic builds on the last).

- Online, I read in a "spiral" pattern, skipping between headlines, then reading the first and last parts to narrow in on what I think is most relevant.

Reading every word from start to finish is an inefficient way to extract information online. If I am interested in a particular topic, I don't have to read just one article on that subject. 90% of online content is badly written or factually incorrect in some way, so over-committing to one source typically results in a lot of wasted effort. The better strategy is to speed read 5 or 6 different sources and then return to whichever one gets its point across concisely. This also tends to reinforce a bias towards content that is presented in small chunks with diagrams.

Over the last 18 months I've been spending a lot more time than usual reading technical books and I have noticed that the amount of time I spend reading online has affected my ability to speed read technical books the way I normally do. I have to concentrate harder to avoid scanning in an F or spiral shaped pattern.

That strategy works online because the aim is to discard bad content as quickly as possible. It does not work when your aim is to follow the narrative of a book that is almost always linear and is often more information-dense than online content.

This linearity is amplified further in fiction because it is an intrinsic property of the narrative structure (except perhaps, in "choose your own adventure" books).

It therefore makes sense that reading fiction helps people avoid the habit of scanning content, skipping over the middle parts. Online, the middle parts often don't matter because the signal to noise ratio is low. In other formats, that is often not the case.

onsalenow• 12 years ago

What about non-fiction books that could be considered technical in anothers field?

Eiriksmal• 12 years ago

One wonders what's wrong with using the phrase "offline reading" or "electronically-disconnected reading" to denote this style of reading we used to simply call... "reading." Alas, I suppose it's simply not catchy enough for the neo-digital age.

aytekin2• 12 years ago

For me, reading is about thinking, enjoying what I read and learning. That's why it has never made sense why some people are so obsessed with speed reading.

1123581321• 12 years ago

The reason is that not all texts deliver an equal amount of information or enjoyment per word.

veidr3• 12 years ago

It's not really 'slow' reading the article is talking about, but uninterrupted reading.

From personal experience, I agree that reading long-form textual works, particularly fiction, is fundamentally different than perusing typical hypertext information. I love the web, certainly, but it's just a different thing, even though using the web does involve the act of reading words.

I also intuitively agree that uninterrupted reading is beneficial to human development, and it is interesting to see studies that support that. (This article, somewhat ironically, would have been better had it linked to the studies that it mentioned.)

Broken_Hippo2• 12 years ago

I intuitively disagree that uninterrupted reading is beneficial to human development. I don't see this behavior from the few people I secretly wonder if they wouldn't be considered genius, if they would only take the test. What they do, however, is read a wide variety of topics often. One very rarely leaves the house without a book, has files on his phone as a backup, and downloads enough non-fiction that I wonder when he can read it. Does he read in long chunks? Sure, if the internet is down or he has to wait. Does he do this often? Not if he can help it.

The point is that he reads. Often. Likely more than most people get in their half hours intervals - but if that is the only way for people to read, I fully support it. I do not doubt many of the benefits of reading, but I think uninterrupted reading is more of an exercise in extended concentration and Im sure there are multiple ways to learn this.

veidr3• 12 years ago

I don't think it's about concentration, but more about the exercise of putting yourself mentally in other people's shoes.

And I don't think the benefits of uninterrupted reading are necessarily becoming 'smarter'. They are more like being better able to understand people different from you, more easily able to change your mind based on new information, etc.

Here's a somewhat better article on the topic:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-athletes-way/201401/...

madiator• 12 years ago

I realized that it was very tough for me to read the whole article from start to beginning, sentence by sentence, without getting distracted or skipping sentences.

anigbrowl• 12 years ago

Well it's not exactly prose for the ages. A fluffy article like this is appropriate for speed reading. If it were an article about your professional specialty or something important like a firm in which you were invested, then you'd naturally be more interested and would read it more closely and carefully.

If you were reading for pleasure you could have a similar dichotomy. I read a contemporary espionage thriller a few weeks ago and flew through it; it was enjoyable but quite predictably plotted and the characters unburdened by doubt, so reading the book was a simple matter of finding out how the hero arrived at the showdown and what he did when he got there (you'll no doubt be relieved to know that the free world was saved, once again).

Then I read a literary novel with another novel embedded within in, and a lead character engaged in teaching literary criticism - quite a challenging book due to the near-constant tension between narrative and narrative purpose, with the latter becoming a key element of the former, via an imagined obscenity trial for the book-within-a-book. This was further complicated by the fact that I found most of the characters deeply unsympathetic...at first. As you can imagine, this one required a considerable degree of thought and reflection, and my reading speed varied considerably with the subject matter - and I anticipate it will influence my perception of other books going forward, so in that sense I'm still reading it despite having got to the end.

Currently I'm reading a science-fiction book examining the psychological construction of identity, Stanislaw Lem's Solaris. And although I've read it twice already (having been into his work for some 30 years now), and although it's quite a short book, it's going to take weeks because of Lem's narrative density - he tells simple stories but with a deliberately unfiltered attention to detail which demands total mental attention.

All are enjoyable, but all provide very different reading experiences and demand different things from the reader.

jqm• 12 years ago

I've always been a skimmer. With most writing, a good portion of the words can be skipped without missing much content. The web hasn't changed this for me. I did it before with print books including fiction for entertainment.

Sometime when the subject matter is deep or densely packed I have to make myself slow down. Usually this isn't the case though.

veidr3• 12 years ago

I read a lot of fiction... (checks kindle) looks like about 100 books a year. I definitely start skimming when the story isn't engaging enough.

Roughly speaking, I think the better a book is, the less I tend to skim. A truly great novel I will read at probably 10% of the speed of a bad one. (If it's really bad, of course, I stop reading and throw it away.. that's probably the case with 20% of the novels I start).

With most nonfiction, technical books, etc., it is different -- I skim as much as I can while still extracting the info/knowledge I am trying to get out of it.

emodendroket2• 12 years ago

Depends on the book but I've definitely found some dense technical books (mostly textbooks) have to be read much slower than my normal speed for real comprehension.

Broken_Hippo2• 12 years ago

I think pushes to get people to read more have been continuously going on since I was a child in the 80's. Some people enjoy it more than others and I think more people find reading books more difficult than quick reads - I'm not sure if this is time, access, or ability.

I also question their stress relief. It seems it might be tied to people enjoying themselves for a little bit of time many times a week. I don't know if the research exists, but I will guess if everyone engaged in something selfish or something they actually thoroughly enjoy for 30 minutes many days a week, the person's stress levels would go down.

collyw• 12 years ago

I think its increasingly difficult for people to concentrate for longer than ten minutes these days (I certainly notice this in myself). We are not encouraged to concentrate for long periods either, instead 'multitasking' is considered a good thing. Pop up notifications every time an email comes in. A vibration in my pocket for a message / whatsapp / whatever.

The popularity of Buzzfeed seems to fit with this.

I agree that people should do something they enjoy (doesn't need to be selfish). I find that outdoor physical exercise works for me. My girlfriend says the same, when I take the off-road detour home from work on my bike, she says I am less grumpy.

Dewie• 12 years ago

I agree that people should do something they enjoy (doesn't need to be selfish).

To some people, doing something you enjoy is selfish by definition. In what way it affects others (if at all) is a totally different matter.

dschiptsov• 12 years ago

Slowly here should mean not the speed of reading, a-la words oper second, but the checking/matching of every meaningful piece of information against your internal (trained) 'map of the universe'.

BTW, one could speed-read only texts on a familiar subjects, the way most of us read 90% of narcissistic nonsense here. On the contrary, those wery rare pieces of meaningful thought from self-made professionals (nothing in common with so-called and usually self-proclaimed 'experts') requires this slow reading of 'the deep structure' - reconstruction of author's model of the universe.

nrao123• 12 years ago

This slow reading idea also jives with Alan Kay's observation of "Slow Deep Thinking" which allowed us to have massive & non-incremental leaps into the future.

http://www.clarkaldrichdesigns.com/2009/05/alan-kay-and-huma...

Video by Kay which goes into more depth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTAghAJcO1o

netcan• 12 years ago

Seems like a fairly good case for speed reading.

gglitch• 12 years ago

I have both of those problems too. I find it an effective remedy to use a pencil to asterisk thought-provoking passages in the margin. It helps me focus on each sentence as potentially noteworthy, but when I note one, it also helps me let it go and move on from there.

--EDIT: Accidentally replied to the wrong comment. Apparently I should be reading more slowly.

eik3_de• 12 years ago

That's why I wouldn't use Spritz for reading books. For me, good reading isn't the maximization of throughput from the words into my brain. Most insight comes from stopping now and then, looking out of the window and thinking about what you've just read - relating it with own experiences or current challenges.

nitin_flanker2• 12 years ago

yes you are right eik_de. We have to grasp whatever we are reading. There is a famous adage that says - its easy to read but hard to understand.

Keep it up :)

nitin_flanker2• 12 years ago

yeah slow reading is important but slowly slowly as the time goes on our reading speed gets enhanced by itself. I have felt this. Earlier when I used to read patents I used to take so much time. Slowly slowly the time started reducing and now I can read the text with a speed that is 3X than before and I understand the text also.

Second point that I loved is - books are best rather than PDFs. Guess what - whenever I use to travel in trains I use to read leadership novels of Robin Sharma. Ebooks are good but they are not as effective as physical books are.

-nitin

adrianhoward• 12 years ago

Admittedly there are only two of us — but we have reading on our company calendar. Thirty minutes every day 3:30-4pm. Because learning new stuff and getting alternate perspectives is bloody important.

mattm• 12 years ago

At my first job, there were periods where I didn't have much to do. So I thought, instead of mindlessly surfing the Internet, I'll read to improve my knowledge. It was a large company and they had hundreds of computer books. So I got one from the library and started reading it during a down time.

My manager comes over and says "There's no reading during work." (I was reading The Mythical Man-Month so it wasn't like I was reading a novel or anything).

I'm not there anymore but I still do take 30 minutes to read daily. I just do it more discreetly by using Safari Books Online and don't ask for permission.

It's good to hear there are forward looking companies out there. Everyone should make a little time to do things that won't benefit you today, but will benefit you in 6 months.

zimpenfish• 12 years ago

I can't remember if it's the MyMaMo which has the "why aren't you working, what are you doing?" "thinking" "can't you do that at home?" anecdote but that's brilliant managerial madness in a nutshell.

keithpeter2• 12 years ago

"I'm not there anymore"

I'm hardly [epithet] surprised!

Why did they buy books if they did not want them to be read and turned into action!

Evgeny• 12 years ago

I'm wondering how listening to audio books compares to reading printed texts. I have in the last couple of years switched to listening in almost all cases where the audio version of the book I'm interested in exists.

skc• 12 years ago

I've always thought I had a problem with reading. Whenever I read fiction, I read the text as though it is being spoken. So I've never joined a book club because I've always been afraid I'd never be able to finish a book in the same time it takes "normal people" who will typically finish the same book about 2 days earlier than me on average.

WalterSear• 12 years ago

Everyone sub-vocalizes to a certain extent. Try using an RSVP reader for a while and you may find you have more control over the process and find it less disruptive.

freehunter• 12 years ago

I don't see that as a problem. I read books and narrate them to myself in my head. Sometimes I even develop voices for the characters. If they're talking fast, I read it faster. If the action is slow, I read it slower. When the author describes something, I take the time to visualize it in my head.

The downside to this (other than sometimes slow reading) is that by the end of the book I am so deeply entrenched in this world that I don't want to leave it. It really feels like I'm leaving something behind forever when I finish the last page. I had withdrawls from Wool and its associated trilogy by Hugh Howey. Such an engrossing series and such relatable characters that with my reading style, I was devastated. And then I moved on to the next book.

rbosinger• 12 years ago

Although I totally agree with the gist of it I have to admit that I skimmed the article.

emodendroket2• 12 years ago

I took the little test and read at my normal speed which is apparently faster than the speed reading average (FWIW I got the comprehension questions). That doesn't quite sound right to me.

jonifico• 12 years ago

I usually read so fast that by the time I get to the end of the text, I skip the last few words for the sake of finishing quickly. This turns out to be a waste of time and not very relieving. However, when I focus on reading slowly I'm thinking too much about it and can't concentrate on what I'm reading. I think more than reading slower or faster, it's about finding a pace where you feel comfortable and let your brain go a bit.

mad44• 12 years ago

Here is a case for even slower reading: research paper reading!

http://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2013/07/how-i-read-research...

kyllo• 12 years ago

Reading slowly makes me drowsy. I think that's a sign I need to get more sleep!

Lambdanaut• 12 years ago

When I'm having trouble paying attention to a book, particularly a non-fiction that I have to drudge through, I'll slow down and start reading the book in the voice of a famous comedian. Suddenly everything is 10x more interesting. Try Robin Williams. Graph Theory taught by Robin Williams is really charming. He laughs jovially at every theorem.

keithpeter2• 12 years ago

That one has legs. Nice idea.

John Cleese teaching Unix/Linux Administration (funny walks).

Alexi Sayle teaching database reduction to normal form (those Mersey vowels).

One of the centres I teach in runs a book club to encourage literacy and reading. Seems popular. Mix of participants. It is a traditional book club where they all read the same text.

neoterics• 12 years ago

I wonder if this applies to listening to audiobooks.

I know people generally hate long commutes but honestly if it wasn't for my commute, I would never spend 2 hours a day listening to audiobooks or reading. Now I easily finish 2 to 3 books a month due to it and I wouldn't have it any other way!

Read Slowly to Benefit Your Brain and Cut Stress

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