A Better Way to Read

It’s rare to think about it, but moving your eyes back and forth over lines of text is one of the most commonly performed bodily motions.

When reading, your eyes go from word to word, left to right, one after another. When you hit the end of the line, your eyes make what’s called a return sweep. They go back to the left, to the beginning of the next line. During that sweep, we get a little time to process information. (Are you thinking about it now?)

That sweep is also where many of us mess up. We lose time. Most people don’t go all the way back to the first word, for example. We tend to land on the second or third word in a line, and then make another backwards movement to get to that first word. That’s inefficient.