How to Read Faster: 10 Days to Faster Reading

Gen Y is great at handling information overload.  One of the ways we handle this is by scanning material to read it faster.

If you are not quite there on quickly scanning info on the web and print, this interview will help you.

I recently interviewed Abby Marks Beale of The Corporate Educator about how to read faster.

Here are the highlights from her book, 10 Days to Faster Reading.

I thought I’d share the tips with you so you don’t have to read the whole book.

Here is my audio interview with her if you’d like to listen to it, but otherwise check out my presentation below.

My List of Productivity Tools

I co-led a session with Bill Lester of EngenderHealth and NPOKI at my organization’s annual member’s meeting. I thought I’d share my list of tools at large. It comes from months of finding tools that help me implement GTD. For our session, I went over the list below and the GTD quick reference. (Here’s my secret: my fav tools are still a legal pad and pen). What are the tools you use?

Personal Tools

Outlook
To process, automate, and file

Tips:
Create subfolders
Filter messages
Set reminders in your calendar or tasks
Set up general accounts like info@ for a team to manage


To-Do Lists
To remember
Remember the Milk
Evernote
Google Tasks


Meeting Scheduler
To schedule meetings easily
Doodle
TimetoMeet
Diarised


Online Backup Systems

In case your computer crashes
Mozy
Carbonite


Collaboration & Communication

Project Management
To track and communicate

Excel
Google spreadsheets – templates
Zoho
Basecamp


Wikis
To collaborate quickly

PBworks
Google sites


File Sharing / Syncing
To store your files easily online and share

Dropbox


Screencasting/Screen Shots

To show people what you mean
Jing
Aviary
There’s always PrintScreen on PC’s
and Command+Shift+3 or 4 on Macs


Surveys
To gather info quickly, free

Google Forms
Survey Monkey


Other


Texter

To reduce repetitive typing – info in Life Hacker book and blog


News and Info Aggregation
To let the news come to you

Google Reader
For blog reading/RSS feeds

Netvibes
For social media RSS feeds – listening

Atomkeep
Automate your social media profilles

Further Reference

www.lifehacker.com
www.zenhabits.net
Getting Things Done by David Allen
Upgrade Your Life by Gina Trapani