Hey all, I’m back with the answer to a question I get fairly regularly for this week’s Video Game Tuesday. It’s all about How I Do What I Do.
What do you mean?: I’ve been asked by a few family members as to how I can cover such a broad base of content for GiN, particularly when I was originally starting to write and had blog posts released every day along with weekly audiobook reviews and any game reviews that I received. I don’t post that frequently anymore for multiple reasons, but even with my reduced speed of a post every four days, that is a lot of content to cover. Particularly given I write my posts well in advance rather than the day before, and again that’s for multiple reasons.
So How Do I Do What I Do?: Reading. It all boils down to reading in the end. I’m an amazing reader. It’s my one special skill. The thing that makes me better than anyone I’ve ever heard about, and it’s easily the thing I’m most proud of. My reading speed is ridiculous, and that lets me get through content faster than most consumers, especially if I don’t bother to listen to voices when reading dialogue in cutscenes and the like. I try not to do that for most games, but I will if I’m unimpressed by one in general or have something pressing I need to get to outside of gaming.
Reading speed? Are you a speed reader?: No, I don’t speed read in the manner most conventionally thought of when I read. I am a savant when it comes to reading, so I still read every word individually, but I do so at a speed that far surpasses almost everyone else and that speed can reach ridiculous levels even for me if I get into the “zone” as it were. My current reading speed record that I can remember off the top of my head is 120,000 words in an hour and 15 minutes. That’s a feat that is rare even for me because I have to get really invested into the story to the point I ignore all other distractions to get into the “zone.”
So, for example, for that particular chapter (and yes, it was just a single chapter of a work), I read a word every 0.0375 seconds or 37.5 milliseconds. I was helped in that I only had to scroll down to continue reading that monster of a chapter, but still it was quite a feat and I’m very proud of it. But generally, I top out at 65k words an hour when I’m reading but not in the zone. That’s still faster than 95% of people from best I can tell, but that’s just my general reading pace for when I can’t get into the zone and if distractions are minimal, which is usually how I get ready for bed every night. I go to bed by reading for at least a couple hours.
That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday.
