What to look for when choosing a how-to book

When you start your search for how to do something you will find there are many resources out there. You have a choice of online courses, seminars and even one-on-one training but sometimes the best way to learn is the old-fashioned way. This way is reading a book.

The marketplace abounds with how-to books on subjects from making money to planting roses and many people new to a subject find them the best way to learn. Books allow people to re-read passages that have a lot of information like math or science as many times as they need to fully grasp the concepts. You can see why a book has an advantage if you imagine asking the speaker at a large seminar to repeat themselves.

The question is, which how-to book should you read? Most any field you choose has its share of pretenders and fakes, so be wary of any book that makes outrageous claims in its title. If you see statements on the cover like ‘Be a pro in an hour!’ or ‘Make millions while you sleep!’ be cautious. If a how-to book promises something that’s too good to be true, it probably is. Be realistic and if the book downplays or neglects inherent risk, you should skip it.

What you want in a how-to book instead is calm, reasonable, practical advice. Flashy language suggests the writer is trying to pull a fast one. If at anytime you wonder ‘If it’s SO EASY to make millions of dollars doing something, why is this guy writing books about it instead of doing it?’ think is this a good source for information. Restrained, logical language suggests the writer knows what their talking about and is simply explaining what they have learned.

Take note also of the book’s presentation. You want a book that’s likely to be reliable and up-front about the pros and cons. Don’t be afraid to question a book riddled with grammar and spelling errors. It is better to trust a book that appears to have been written and edited by professionals, and presented in a straightforward manner.

As a final point, whenever considering any how-to book, it’s worth a few minutes to Google the author’s name and find out the results. Look for reviews beyond those found on the author’s website. See if the author has been mentioned in any news stories. Pay attention to his or her background to see if he or she has any real-world experience, or do they just write books. Remember, you can find a book about almost any subject just choose substance over hype.

Speed Reading Basics

by: Jonathan Mayheart

Speed reading is vital in today’s business and academic world, with the vast information that the internet offers, and the huge amounts of reading tasks an average manager or student faces, there is really no choice but to try and increase the intake of information.

In the last forty years there has a been an explosion of information, we are living the information revolution and that requires a lot of young professionals a great deal of effort in digesting this information and making good use of it.

Most of the people who attend speed reading courses and classes have some kind of problem, or believe they have some kind of problem, with their reading, here are a few of these potential problems.

Lack of concentration or partial/impaired concentration is an obvious problem for speed reading, the effects of the environment on ones reading rhythm and the general tendency of some people to be able of acceptable reading rate only in ideal situations. This problem is one of the basic speed reading problems and is usually dealt with in most courses.

Poor eye movement may cause some readers to shift their eyes to other directions and than go back to the book or paper to relocated the last point read. This problem also correlates with poor mechanical skills, which can be a real problem in speed reading.

Short attention span is a clear problem, almost everyone knows this problem, you start strong and begin to slow down as you read on. This kind of problem typically creates a situation of going back to re-read some lines over and over again, or a need to read the same sentence a couple of times for lack of understanding or loosing the line of thought altogether.

Reading by heart, when a person reads to himself (muttering the words or even reading out load) is an obvious problem since speed reading is much faster than talking, the reading out load inhibited the ability to read fast and also regulates a slow input of information into the cognitive.

Delayed reaction to information and material – This delay often comes from inattention, reading ahead or distraction. Desire to remember every word – This is loosely related to the tendency to re-read or slow down.

So what can you do to increase your reading skills? Do you really need to try speed reading you should you consider just eliminating some of these problems. The answer is most likely dependent of what you need, no matter what you problem is, you need to address the problem.

To try and read faster, here are a few tips that would get you going. Think of reading as a ‘pick and choose’ activity, where you can choose to read the words and phrases that are critical to comprehension, and skip over the connective tissue.

One major key in speed reading is filtering out all the words that has nothing to do with the subject and naturally, there a lot of them. All the connecting words, basically words that are there to connect one word with the other to make a sentence (TO make A sentence) the “and” “it’s” and “and’s” have got to go, just make yourself blind to them, go over these words and do not dwell on reading or noticing them.

Practicing time reading is also good, set up a timer and see how much you read in one minute, and in five minutes. Try and honestly estimate how much did you get from the text (make sure this is something you read for the first time), and try to beat yourself at this over and over again, until you start to feel that you have moved up one level. Experiment with different texts, and try to find books with text that has some questions about what you just read so you can apprise your understanding. Evaluate your situation every time you do this, reading faster sometimes mean that you will make more mistakes on understanding the subject, you should start making “mental notes” while reading so you will not fail answering the questions.

Train yourself to read more quickly by forced timing. If you are a runner, training for a race, you go out and run every day and you try to improve your time or your distance.

Set a timer and run a reading race every day for two to four weeks. You do not have to spend more than five minutes on this exercise. You may become frustrated, at first, by the fact that you cannot read as fast or remember as much as you would like.

Practice makes perfect, and this is the most basic thing you can do to increase your reading speed, in two weeks you should see some improvement, and you should work on the weaker aspects of your reading skills. This is the start of speed reading, and once you master the basics you will be on your way to becoming a speed reader.

About The Author Jonathan Mayheart has been writing speed reading tips and advice for internet sites in the last few years. Jonathan currently writes Speed Reading http://speedreading.zupatips.com articles for the tips and advice website ZupaTips.com.

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