Self-Help

How to Speed Read

Cutting through the bullshit.

I speed read. I read hundreds of books a year. I didn’t take an expensive course.

What expensive speed reading courses don’t want you to know

1. You can learn speed reading for free.

   There are many expensive speed reading courses and books, but most of them lie to you and make impossible promises. Everything you need to know about speed reading is right here, for free.

2. Reading is best at 300-400 words per minute.

   Learning to read faster than this usually doesn't work. Faster readers are actually skimming. See Gordon Legge's work.

3. PhotoReading doesn't work.

   Scheele's PhotoReading technique claims we can mentally photograph a book in just minutes and then subconsciously process its data. Photoreading is is demonstrably useless and biologically unlikely.

4. You will not boost your speeds right away.

   Speed reading takes practice.

5. Skimming works.

   You can get what you want from books much faster by skimming. Fast readers have developed the skill of glancing over each page and slowing down for the important or complicated bits of a book.

How to speed read

You want to read fast, but you also want to remember what you read. Let me tell you how.

First, there are many types of text you don’t want to speed-read:

• Poetry. Poetry is meant to be savored, read out loud, and read rhythmically.
• Dense material.. Technical, scientific, or other dense writing is not conducive to speed reading. You’’ll want to slow down and re-read much of it to make sure you understand it.
• Humor. You’ll miss out on the fun of jokes and humor if you speed read.
• Dialogue. It's often best to “hear” good dialogue in your mind, or read it aloud with personal flavor.

But you might as well speed read everything else.

Use your pointer finger to track your position on the page. Keep moving your finger faster and faster, and let your eyes keep up. At some point, you’ll have to stop sounding out the words in your head (“subvocalizing”). This may hurt comprehension. Try it and see what works for you. At some point, you won’t need your finger anymore, and you can cut it off.

Try spreeder. Start out at 250 words per minute, then use a different text and increase the speed by 25 each time until you can’t keep up.

This might get you up to about 400 words per minute. After that, your progress won’t be due to reading faster, but smarter.

Most books are 90% fluff and 10% content. And often, you are personally interested in only 20% of that 10%. So first, decide why you are reading and read only what you want. Here's an example of how I might read a book:

Say I grab a book on frugality. I’m looking for money-saving tips. One glance at the first page tells me it’s praising the values of frugal living. I’m already sold on the idea. Skip.

A glance at the second page tells me it’s explaining how the author’s life changed for the better by living frugally. Duh. Skip.

The third page has a bulleted list on it, and without reading the context I can guess that it’s a summary of the book’s major sections: food, home, entertainment, travel, and energy.

A glance through the headlines of the first chapter reveal many tips I already know: Pack a lunch, Eat at home, Use coupons, etc. I skip those pages.

I see a headline I don’t understand: Home brewed. The first sentence tells me the section is about making your own coffee instead of buying from Starbucks. Know that already. Skip.

Another headline I don’t understand right away: Get free pizza. The first sentence is about getting free pizza from college campus events. Neat tip. Skip the fluff in the rest of the section.

And so on. Early on, it will be tough to figure out whether a page or section is valuable to you without reading it first. After some practice, your mind will naturally be able to see the significant phrases and sentences on the page. They are usually at the beginning and end of paragraphs, contain capitalized words, contain numbers, are arranged in a list, or end with a question mark.

Just practice and you’ll be able to do it without thinking. I can.

My mind just knows how to glance at a page for one second and know whether or not there is anything useful on it. If there is, I’ll zoom in on those few sentences and read them at 400 words per minute, then do the same for the few useful sentences three paragraphs down, and then move to the next page.

Use headlines. You can often guess the basic contents of a whole section from the headline. If a quick skim through the section reveals no surprising information, move on. In many how-to books, the headlines are the only parts worth reading.

For example, in a book about speed reading, I read the following headline: Break your book in. There was a whole page of text until the next headline, but I already knew everything it said. It was telling me to flex the spine so the pages wouldn’t keep closing on me as I was trying to read. I knew that instantly, in the same amount of time it took you to read those four words: Break the book in. I didn't need to read any of that section. Skip.

Multi-layered reading. It can help to read a book in many stages. First, you’ll grasp the purpose and flow of the book. Glance through the table of contents. Speed-read the preface and conclusion. Then skim the headlines throughout the book. This whole process should take you 10 minutes or less. You can now read the important parts of the book, page by page, and fit them into the big picture.

Take notes. I take notes on almost every book I read. After every section or chapter, I pause to write its main ideas and most important details in my own words. Paraphrasing improves your understanding and recall. I may also include my own commentary on the author's ideas. I read in front of my laptop because I’m a much faster typer than scribbler.

Using these techniques, I can go through a book at 2,000 to 5,000 “words” per minute. That doesn’t mean I've actually read all those words, but it does mean I’ve read everything that I wanted from the book, and can remember it. And that’s all that matters.

That’s all there is to speed reading. You don’t need a speed reading book. You don’t need an expensive course. All you need are these simple tips and some practice. Hop to it!

Elsewhere:
Speed-Reading Techniques
Double Your Reading Rate