Today I was introduced to a nifty little tool. Have you ever seen tests or demonstrations where people are shown to be able to read faster if their eyes don’t have to move?
In fact people can typically read at between 120-200 words per minute, which isn’t bad, but this methodology of reading without moving your eyes can easily double your reading capability.
With so many of us doing a lot of content digestion online, there’s a new tool to bring this capability to this realm of your life.
It’s called Squirt. It’s not big and it’s not fancy. In fact, it’s a tiny JavaScript bookmarklet that you add to your browser’s bookmarks bar.
Whenever you see an article that you want to read, just hit the bookmark and a small overlay appears at the top of the screen. At first, it moves slowly and quickly ramps up pace once your eyes and brain have a few seconds to adjust to the process.
With a sliding scale, you can slow down or speed up the reading to your liking, with the default 320 words per minute being quite comfortable, but much faster speeds still being very achievable if you concentrate.
You can also see what it’s like to read at 3,500 words per minute if you like (clue: it’s a blur).
I love it. It’s already on my bookmarks bar and I’m going to try using it to see if I like how it speeds up my online reading.
