KC19: How To Consume Information Faster To Accelerate Progress & Get Ahead Episode
In this simple short episode, I’ll share with you some practical ways on how you can consume information faster so you can accelerate your progress and get ahead.
After all, in this day and age, the pace of change is quicker than ever.
Information is churned out faster than before and if one doesn’t learn to absorb more efficiently, they will inevitably find themselves behind the masses. And I’m sure we don’t want to be one of them.
The #1 Way I Would Recommend
With that said…
The #1 way I would recommend to consume information faster is to learn to speed read. This is a lifelong skill that’s well worth mastering.
It is an area I’m still learning on like retraining myself to not vocalise the words I’m reading which isn’t easy by the way. Also training myself to not go back and re-read something I didn’t get fully the 1st time round.
On this note, there are also speed-reading apps for smartphones that enable us to select the desired target speed and you can test them out though I didn’t personally like it too much.
Aside from speed reading, one smart way of saving time is to search for executive summaries especially of highly popular personal development or business books.
With executive summaries, it contains the key learning points from each book without the lengthy backdrop stories and sometimes long-winded contextualization which often takes up a lot of time.
Personal Tips
When it comes to listening to audio-books on apps like Audible, you can speed it up by up to 3X.
In other words, a 3 hour audio would only take 1 hour leaving you with 2 extra hours for something else that’s a priority for you.
If you’re watching YouTube videos, you can save time by speeding it up by 2X. Previously this wasn’t possible on the native smartphone app but is now made possible.
I also highly recommend the VLC player which is available on multiple platforms. It plays both videos & audios and allows you to increase playback speed by up to 4X.
Personally, with most video or audio content, I can comfortably go at 1.5X and sometimes 2X.
Go test & experiment at how much faster you can go.
Do bear in mind it’s perfectly normal right at the beginning that you may not be used to the new speed so give yourself sufficient time to adapt.
The Big Picture
Now here’s 1 BIG indirect tip…
Make sure the information you’re consuming is highly relevant to the season or situation you’re in otherwise subconsciously you’re not going to be all that interested and would lose half the battle right there.
Put another way… be highly selective of the information you consume.
In closing, just a reminder that information and knowledge needs to be applied otherwise it’s just mostly a waste of time. The real progress comes from application, from doing, from taking action and experiential learning is the way to go!
This applies to business, salesmanship, cooking, dancing, mastering a language… etc. You name it…
It’s not just about the rate of information consumption but also about retention.
The learning pyramid developed in the 1960s have shown that we retain some 90% of what we learn when we teach what we learnt or use it immediately.
I hope you enjoyed today’s short episode and apply it to save yourself precious time.
If you need to reach out to me, you can hop onto KelvinChan.org.
Thank you!
