On Saturday, in the Helsinki Sanomat newspaper, I read Riitta Koivuranta‘s column “What’s important in reading: not speed, but comprehension.” This was a defense of slow reading, and dealt primarily with fiction. My own work relates to reading and writing everyday texts in the workplace. I can assure you that speed reading makes sense with such documents. I attended a course twenty years ago, taught by Dr. Jörgen Poulsen, who specialized in training speed-reading instructors. The course was useful, and after that I gave some speed-reading courses myself and also applied the principles to other contexts. The core message is that different techniques apply to different materials. You don’t savor each word slowly when reading agendas and reports; you want to grab the main point and go. With leisure reading, each person ambles along whatever path seems appealing, without a cost-benefit analysis. However, when reading with a clear purpose, like business needs or government guidelines, you want to march efficiently toward your goal. Effective speed reading will guide you to adequate understanding in minimal time. According to Poulsen, speed reading is like taking the superhighway: when the destination is more important than the journey, that’s the route to take.