Long working hours itself are not always necessarily frustrating. If you are working on a job assignment, which is interesting for you to perform or if it is a critical task, which will give you an award after being completed, then it may be that you work long hours intensively and you even do not notice how the time flies. If you will succeed in completing your task then you will feel relief and satisfaction despite the long working hours. Unfortunately, not all long work days will end happy and successful. It may happen that spending long hours in your office will not lead to completion of your projects on right time. It often happens that the more you work, the more tired you will get. You productivity will decrease and errors are starting to come in.
On many occasions the need to stay long hours on the job is the result of slow and inefficient work on that day. You may have wasted lots of time on unnecessary tasks. It may be the result of poor time management, for example you do not have clear work plans or schedule, or you have procrastinated a lot because you did not have a clear picture, how you should perform you job tasks.
Besides poor time management, working slowly can be caused by the fact that lack of skills or knowledge is slowing you down. You may be slow as you do not know how to use the new software version, you do not orientate in the legislation or your command of Spanish language is poor. And you may be working at slow pace because your reading speed is slow.
An average office worker spends about 25% of his/her working time on reading tasks. So reading speed will really matter. If you are reading at slow pace then your work pace will be also slow. You will have problems with keeping up with the deadlines and it is likely to generate stress. You will have to work longer hours to get you assignments completed. It means that you have less spare time; you are more exhausted when you reach home and your stress level will be higher. You will be less happy. If you had read faster, then you could have been more productive on your job. You would be more satisfied and happy then.
In addition, reading faster itself can make your working more pleasure. Fast reading results in fast thinking. Emily Pronin and Daniel M. Wegner have conducted a study, which results indicate that thinking speed affect person’s mood and happiness. They made experiments with people, who had to read given statements at different speed. The results showed that when the survey participants read texts at faster speed then the participants were more likely to experience positive mood.
Reading and thinking at faster speed will give you more confidence. Being fast gives you a feeling that you have control over your work and you are less stressed by the fear that you cannot finish on time.
So, it means that being able to speed read will first give you an opportunity to save your working time and prevent you from working late hours. Second, it will give you more happiness from the work process itself.
Kristjan-Olari Leping is a speed reading trainer and associate professor of economics at the University of Tartu, Estonia. I will share my experiences with you and will teach you how to read faster. Visit my website and learn speed reading techniques free.
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