Some people find it very useful to spend a few hours at the beginning of each year with a calendar and a list of yearly tasks that need to be done, scheduling all of the appointments for the year at one time. That’s an easy way to make sure you don’t miss anything on your list, and it makes it easy to avoid scheduling more than one appointment on the same day. Some of these annual checklist items include things like rotating the tires on your car, taking the pets to the vet for their shots, scheduling yearly dental examinations for your children, and renewing memberships and licenses. Another thing that should be on the list is eye examinations, especially if you do a lot of reading. Eye health is key to good reading skills – nothing will slow your reading speed faster than the inability to focus on the words, or blurred vision that leads to eyestrain.

An eye examination, or ophthalmic examination, tests both your eye health and the state of your vision. The doctor will check to see if you can read the letters on an eye chart (called a Snellen chart) which tests each eye individually. They’ll check for stereopsis, or your ability to see in three dimensions. They’ll check peripheral vision, and make sure that the muscles of your eye work properly to move your eyes to either side and up and down, and that your pupils dilate and constrict correctly. An ophthalmoscope is used to examine the blood vessels, optic nerve, retina, and other structures of each of your eyes. Finally, you’ll be tested for glaucoma, a disease that leads to increased pressure in the eye that can damage the optic nerve.

Because children’s undiagnosed eye problems often lead to the incorrect conclusion that they actually have learning problems, children need to be tested for vision as soon as they start to learn their alphabet. If your child isn’t learning to read at the expected rate, it might be simply because they can’t see the letters very well. As children continue to grow and develop quickly, eye tests should be given every 2 years, or more often if they need to wear glasses.

Young adults to age 40 should have their eyes tested every 5 to 10 years, unless they wear glasses or contacts (in which case yearly visits are often recommended) or have problems with their eyes. From age 40 – 54, visits are recommended every 2-4 years; from age 55 – 64 every 1-3 years; and for people 65 and older, an eye visit is recommended every 1-2 years. It’s especially important for older people to have eye examinations because it’s the primary way to identify the start of potentially serious problems like cataracts, macular degeneration, retinal detachment, and diabetic retinopathy (eye damage related to diabetes).

Schedule your yearly exam now, and you can cross that off your to-do list for the year!

We’ve all got our routines, and they’re usually pretty comfortable. We read the newspaper or our favorite online blogs over morning coffee, we flip through our usual magazines during lunch and coffee breaks at work, and at night we relax with a book in our preferred genre, whether that’s mystery, romance, or nonfiction. But one thing about routines is that they can end up slowing down your reading speed, and it’s something you might not even notice. One reason that this happens is because routine often dulls the mind, and habit means we stop paying close attention. Since part of speed reading is good comprehension, if you’re not focused on your reading material, you’re missing out on the content.

Getting out of any reading rut you’re in is simple: mix up your materials. That doesn’t mean you need to change the order of the pages in a book, but rather that you need to change the book itself. When you’re always reading the same things from the same sources, your mind might start to go on “autopilot” and you won’t be concentrating on the text. Concentration is key to faster reading speed with good comprehension, and when you’re not familiar with the material you’re reading, you’re more likely to concentrate.

There are several other reasons why a mix of reading materials is good for you, and for your reading speed. You’ll find that there are many interesting topics that you didn’t know about before, and that will keep your mind alert and eager for more knowledge. You’ll be faster to pick out new sources of information, and that will provide you with even more variety in your texts. The new material will generally contain a lot of new vocabulary words, and that will build your language skills. Better vocabulary means better speed reading skills, because you won’t have to stop to look up new words all the time.

Take steps in the new year to get a new perspective on your reading material, and you’ll find that 2013 will bring you the reading speed you need to stay moving into the future.