Learn to Speed Read in Just a Few Hours
Learning January 1st, 2009I’m not one for making big New Year’s Resolutions as I am a continual goal setter and look at life plans and goals on a weekly or at least monthly basis, so I don’t need one day a year to pretend I’m actually going to change the year, I just always do that. However, there is one that I can’t encourage others enough to look more seriously at and that is about reading. I hope I can inspire a few people to put this on their own goal sheets for the year. Thank you everyone for a wonderful 2008, may your 2009 be even better!
Background
One of the most important things in my life was discovering speed reading. I had read about blazing speed readers and how people were reading books in just a few minutes and I never took it seriously, not even for a second for many years. After all, I took me a few minutes to read a page so those types of claims were just ridiculous to me. However, eventually listening to various speakers, browsing articles and having the internet at my fingertips led me to be one step more curious than I ever had been. So, I decided to do just a little research into speed reading. That was just 3 years ago now.
Well, that little bit of research paid off dearly for me as it’s made a HUGE impact in my life and is now one of my favorite past times, to sit down, read and learn from a great book. I didn’t learn to devour a book in minutes but I did learn that you can easily increase your reading speed with little practice and that often it’s a person’s reading speed that keeps them from having interest in books in the first place. That was certainly my story. So, I’m not claiming to be an expert and I’m not even that fast of a reader but I have tripled my reading speed, I’ve not lost any reading comprehension and I actually enjoy reading books now and I’ve learned a great deal from them that I was missing out on for many years of my life.
What is Speed Reading
The whole premise of speed reading is to learn to interpret words visually as groups or sets of words instead of individual words or even sounds like we are all taught to traditionally read. The school systems teaches children to read out loud, sound out words and process words audibly by teaching this method. What it fails to do is then teach children once they know the words to start to visualize the words and absorb content at a much higher rate.
The brain can depict any visual image in a fraction of a second into many, many colors, objects, sites and moods in that since glance. Speed reading takes advantage of the minds ability to do this by learning to see blocks of words instead of individual words sequentially. The eye and brain can easily see more than just on word at a time and so this is the key to speed reading. It’s NOT about simply moving the eyes faster and scanning by the words in the same sequence but faster.
Speed Reading Myths Broken
- Speed reading is NOT about simply training to move your eyes faster
- Reading is not entirely linear
- You don’t have to lose comprehension in order to read faster
- Speed reading doesn’t take long to learn
- The benefits of speed reading last, they don’t simply fade away
- Anyone can learn to read faster
- Making notes while reading increasing comprehension
- Speed reading can increase your enjoyment of reading
7 Steps for Learning to Speed Read
1. Get Comfortable and Crack the Book
Keep your area you read in free of distractions and setup so that you are comfortable with good light available and no distractions. It’s a good idea to have your book laid out flat in front of you so that the pages are easy to flip and so you are looking straight on at the text. You don’t want each page to have a different perspective of text as this will slow down your brain’s ability to process what it sees. Crack the cover open throughout the book so that it lays flat and you can face it straight on and flip the pages quickly. Page flipping if you get very fast can be the biggest area to improve on. I am nowhere near there yet so won’t add tips for improving that skill.
2. Trace the Lines at a Consistent and Fast Speed
The eyes move naturally by what are called saccades, which are rapid movement of focus from one point to the next. To read quicker, you must learn to reduce these saccades to a more fluid smooth movement so the brain can absorb more text faster. Moving your finger or a pen as a guide will dramatically prevent regression, which is when the eye glances backwards momentarily. This guide in place when moved smoothly and quickly can eliminate those unwelcome saccades and allows you to read faster.
3. Overcoming Sub-vocalization
The biggest problem I had increasing my reading speed was to overcome sub-vocalization. Here are some of the methods I used and learned about to overcome that:
- Practice at a rate much higher than you can possible sub-vocalize (>500wpm)
- Move your hand or fingers over the words at a consistent just faster than you can sound things out and don’t EVER stop your hand to “hear†the words
- Read every line backwards so that the words don’t make sense back to back (vocalizing is easier to break using this since the language is broken)
- Count OUT LOUD from 1-100 over and over while reading (this will be very difficult at first but soon easy to do and it kills sub-vocalization quickly)
As soon as I was able to eliminate by sub-vocalization, my speed increased significantly. At this same point, I found myself able to be more “in†the book and my mind stopped wandering as often and I never had to go back and reread content. It seems that I was reading much slower than my mind was able to process and so my subconscious would put my imagination to work, I’d start thinking or dreaming of other things and suddenly I would realize I had read several pages without consciously knowing what I had read. This all stopped as soon as I was reading fast enough to keep my mind active and working quick enough to stay busy with processing the text I saw. Now, the faster I read the easier and easier it is to stay attentive to the text and the more enjoyable it is, as I never have to reread anything or go back and remind myself of what I just read. It’s actually increased my comprehension in this regard.
4. Use More of Your Peripheral Vision
This is one of the steps that makes the biggest difference for speed reading. You must learn to use your peripheral vision when reason and so the best technique to do that is to force yourself to start reading the lines part way in and continuing with the next line before you quite get to the end. Start by jumping lines while skipping just a word or two at the start and end of each line and practice reading this way for 15-20 minutes. You will notice at first it is difficult to understand the whole text but you will quickly discover you are still getting the whole message and you can slowly burn away the desire to read each word directly. As you progress with this and get more comfortable, move your start and end points further and further in so you are only reading the middle area directly and your peripheral vision is picking up the rest. Practice with this is essential but it does not take long. A few days practice and you will quickly see your ability to skip reading each and every word.
If you have troubles reading without looking at these words, you can also train your mind to help interpret them but covering them with your hand or a piece of paper. Overlay it over the margins to hide a few words at each side of the text and read through it. This will develop your interpretive skills in the mind so that reading in the peripheral vision will “feel†more natural.
Next, reverse this technique by glancing only at the first and last word of each line while reading for 15-20 minutes of practice. If you have wide columns, you may need to use 3 points of focus but ideally you can train your mind and eyes to see everything per line with just a few focus points. Continue to practice this for several days to train your peripheral vision.
5. Before Reading Anything, Always Speed First
Anytime you site down to read, read at a rate much higher than you can comprehend anything (50% or 100% faster than you are comfortable at) for about 5 pages, or just a couple minutes. This will trigger your mind to focus on the reading and peripheral view again and actually heighten your reading centers in the mind. Then, you can continue to read at a rate just slightly faster than you are comfortable at so you still get the comprehension. If you are reading a book or novel and don’t want to miss any content, always go back and re-read a few pages at this high rate first.
By pushing the mind at this higher rate, you will actually make it MUCH easier to slow back down to a rate still above your normal reading speed yet it will feel easier and you will develop more speed at a much quicker rate than if you start slower.
6. Skip the Boring Parts
Don’t waste time reading content that you don’t find interesting. Get out of the habit of needing to read everything just in case there is one important detail you might miss otherwise. Making the most of your reading time is also about reading things you actually enjoy and have interest in. If you are reading a section that you could care less about, then skip past it. Don’t spend another second on it. Scan to the next area, title or chapter that draws your attention and move on. Every book has a huge amount of content you are going to forgot anyway and often it’s of little value so allow yourself to read the areas of most value to you and be willing and wanting to skip things of little value. If you are reading content that you don’t find interesting at all and it doesn’t seem to have any areas of interest, then stop wasting your time and don’t keep on reading any further.
7. Control Your Time
Finally, you need to be careful with how you practice. Don’t read for many hours without breaks. Stop every 1/2 hour or so and change your eye’s focus by looking around the room and changing your depth focus. Stretch keep a drink of water on hand or snack as a break.
The other point about controlling your time is to plan the timing of your progress for reading faster with some constraints and goals. Set a goal to read a specific number of pages when you sit down and to read at a particular rate. Measure your progress by knowing how many average words per page you have and how quickly you are reading it. Track your progress and use time constraints and timing to be the expectations for your reading goals. This time measure makes it even quicker to improve your skills.
Thinking Faster to Read Faster
Learning to read faster also requires that you learn to think faster about that information you’re taking in. It’s possible that you can greatly increase your reading speed without any noticeable effort or mental strain. This depends on how quickly you process what you are reading and it entirely depends how quickly you can think and process the data you read.
When I first started learning to read faster, I was able to go from about 175 wpm to about 300 wpm without any mental strain whatsoever. However, increasing my reading speed beyond that took much longer and I would feel quite mentally tired after an hour of higher speed reading. That is why it is recommended to practice in short sessions, perhaps about 15-20 minutes each day to condition your mind. The more often you do it, the better instead of trying to read for long sessions not as often. Once I did this more and more, I was able to increase my speed up to 400 and now over 500 and I no longer feel the mental strain to read at these paces. Push that any higher however, and I again can easily tire by the extra thinking required to read at that higher speed. I continue to increase my speed however and it gets more and more natural every time. As you progress here, your comprehension skills will follow so that you can read at higher and higher rates without losing your comprehension skills. They will always be slightly behind as you increase your speed, but overall, they will increase quickly at the same time and continue to follow any progress you make in speed.
Scanning and Keywords
Keywords are the words that carry the meaning in the text. If all you read are the keywords and skip everything else, you can still get the meaning of the text. These keywords can be recognized with practice at very high speed so that as you read each line and reduce your focus points, you will always learn to make those focus points your keywords. This will drastically speed up your reading. Keywords can eventually be used to read not only lines faster, but multiple lines at a time so you still get the full context and meaning of the text, without necessarily reading each line one at a time sequentially.
Scanning is the process of scanning ONLY for keywords at a much higher rate. You can scan a full page of text in just a few seconds to get some context and meaning from seeing various keywords. This allows you to fame the content for easier comprehension and lets you make a decision how much of the text you really want to read. You can use scanning to browse over areas of little interest.
Making Notes
And finally, notes are the best way to make the most of a speed reading session by improving your comprehension in the long term. After all, why would you read something if you don’t want to get some lasting value from it. Whether its a training manual, fiction or non-fiction, you can gain a lot by spending just a few minutes per each 1/2 hour of reading to review, mark and write a few simple notes about the content you consumed.
Perhaps you want to mark specific pages or pieces of text, you might want to make a mind map, a list of important points, or just some of your favorite quotes from the book. I put a simple line in the margin beside any text that I might want to reread. I might have 20-30 of these in a typical book so can flip through the book again and remind myself of all the stuff I liked from it in about 2-5 minutes. That is how I create the content for writing book reviews then afterward for this site. Whatever it is you want to use, take just a moment to write those down, they will immensely help you to improve your comprehension and enjoy your reading even more. These notes also make it easy to come back another day and pick up where you left off. Combining a quick review of some previous notes and by reading a few pages again at high speed, you can easily pick up right where you left off, at an even FASTER pace.
Keep Practicing
Speed reading is something that requires practice, for most people its easy to double or even triple your speed in a matter of hours by using these techniques and it’s possible to increase those speeds well over 1000 wpm. Some speed readers are literally capable of reading in pages per minute speeds, not words per minute. Continue to practice, measure where you are at and you too, will find yourself quickly reading faster and enjoying it more!
Speed Reading Resources
Here are a few online resources I’ve found, used or been pointed out by readers. Here are a couple for testing your current speed:
And here are some more great reference sites for learning more about reading faster.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_reading
- http://www.spreeder.com/
- http://pianoer.wordpress.com/2006/02/05/speed-reading-techniques/
- http://www.selfgrowth.com/reading_articles.html
- http://www.rocketreader.com/resources/speed-reading.php
- http://speed-reading-tutorial.qarchive.org/
- http://www.ababasoft.com/speedreading/articles.html
Prev: Some Holiday Season 3D Images
Next: Leadership: Introduction
January 1st, 2009 at 7:05 AM
Mike,
I like the comprehensive treatment of any topic you choose to post. I have some strong agreements, a few reservations and may be some uncertainties. But let me write down my uncertainties first:
1. Depending on the material read, there remains a lingering thought if I really missed some substance; your tips are great but I have to convince myself
2. Whether speed reading is to be applied to all types of material by all types of readers
3. Related to 2 above but slightly different is the concern that the essence of some reading may actually be for the pleasure of savoring the words-you know the literary stuff
Agreements:
1. No distractions, Skipping the boring, less vital parts vastly helps and thinking faster all help speed reading
2. Making notes is beyond doubt the best way to digest the key content
Reservations:
Mostly derived from points listed in uncertainties but partly also from those in agreement: The key requirement is the amount of concentration, free from distraction that one invests to make the most of any reading. It may smack of oversimplification but since I am a victim of the syndrome of slow reading and incomplete comprehension, I have diagnosed the malaise as one of lack of total concentration. So, it is easier for me to self-suggest to improve concentration and decrease distraction and believe speed reading as well as retention follow naturally than to treat it as another ‘course in speed reading’! It may partly be due to my attitude of not being subjected to any rigor of disciplined ‘how to…in xxx simple steps!’.
Nevertheless, a stimulating article. Go on. I am curious to look at other views.
January 1st, 2009 at 9:16 AM
Pushhyarag, you outline some excellent questions and also some very common concerns on this topic. Many say that speed reading can leave you missing the literary joy of reading. I guess that always depends on your speed and what you are reading. I can’t say I’ve ever experienced that because I read so slow my mind would wander and only now that I read faster can I actually enjoy the reading and keep my mind on the content.
As for the steps to the process, the most important ones here for actually improving your speed are 2 and 3. The rest all help but ultimately it’s about having a few tools to use and then practicing them often.
I really appreciate your comments and definitely enjoy how you outline the different aspects of an article. I hope that you will at least measure your speed, try a few of these techniques and give it a go. It literally only take a couple hours to try it and see if it makes a difference for you. It is well worth that to either speed your reading or like I experienced, find a whole new past time to enjoy!
January 1st, 2009 at 7:31 PM
This is a great post. I had an opportunity to take a course like this in high school, and it made quite a difference in my study and business habits. One of the best tips you gave is to scan the table of contents for the book and the chapter, formulate questions the topics raise, and then scan to get the big idea, reading in chunks rather than trying to understand every single word.
January 1st, 2009 at 7:45 PM
I’m not much of a speed reader, but I can read much faster than the average person when I apply myself.
My biggest problem is in learning to read quickly as a habit. To often I sit down with a book a start out slow. It’s too difficult to pick up the pace once I’ve started.
So I especially like you tip on starting out at an extremely quick pace to get your mind in the speed reading mode. I’ll have to work on it. Interestingly enough, this was one of those skills I’ve been thinking more about lately so your post comes in the nick of time.
Thanks, Mike.
– Marshall Jones, Jr.
January 1st, 2009 at 9:11 PM
Thanks Steve and Marshall. Steve, I’m glad to hear this topic has made quite an impact for you as well, I know it boosted me into a whole new learning level I hadn’t ever experienced so can only I can help to inspire that in at least one other person as well.
Marshall, starting fast is the best way for practice if that is what you struggle doing. I am the same but when I read fast even for just a page or two, I find myself reading the rest of that session then at 200 wpm faster than if I hadn’t started quickly. It’s amazing what an impact that can have in reading, so definitely give it a try.
January 1st, 2009 at 9:38 PM
I like the sixth point : skip the boring parts because all this time I always try reading a book page by page, without anything words missed and of course it will slow up my reading speed.
Very helpful post, Mike. Thanks for sharing.
January 1st, 2009 at 10:22 PM
Hello Mike,
Great post and very helpful.
I’m sending your link to a friend of mine as well.
Happy New Year and Thank you for sharing this great post.
Anah
January 2nd, 2009 at 4:15 AM
Hi Mike
I’m going to look into this.
I once tried a book on tripling your reading speed. I went through the whole thing thoroughly and when I did the “final test”, my reading speed hadn’t changed!
You can imagine how I felt after that…
Thanks for adding on all of the resources – appreciate the effort.
Juliet
January 2nd, 2009 at 9:00 AM
Arswino, I’m always surprised when someone tells me that they just finished a book but thought it was boring or didn’t really enjoy it? I don’t get why they would keep reading it then? There is a ton of stuff in writing that isn’t always worth reading so learning to skip those areas and just devour the content you will actually enjoy makes reading a lot faster and a whole lot more enjoyable. People do that with websites and blogging all the time yet don’t seem to apply it to books. Its odd.
Anah, thanks for stopping by and I hope your friend enjoys it as well and explores more of the site!
Juliet, it’s too bad you have had that experience of speed reading not working for you before. Did it include the techniques here and did you find the exercises useful at all during the process. You should be able to see an improvement literally from day to day to some extent. I know I did! You should give it another try, it definitely doesn’t take long!
January 2nd, 2009 at 7:28 PM
Mike, thanks for the great summary. Like others mentioned I struggle with keeping my speed up and often find myself dropping to a slower rate, or just tiring more quickly when reading fast. I’ll have to try your tip to start extra fast and see how that helps.
You hinted at it, but one thing I’ve been amazed at is how much content one can pull, depending on the book, by simply reading the intro and conclusion to each chapter. I often do this and then just drop back to hit the points I don’t understand or might disagree with.
BTW. Do you find that speed reading works online as well? I find my reading speed much slower on a monitor.
January 2nd, 2009 at 8:33 PM
Hiya Brad!!! Ya, you can get a lot of the content from a quick scan.
I don’t think all the same things apply with reading online as paging and resolutions, and page load times etc drastically slow things down. I really have reading online even if from a pdf or something you can flip through easily as it’s still more difficult to scan through. I think you can scan headings, start and end of paragraphs though and breeze through content quickly. I must say I do that reading most of my blogs and other articles on a daily basis, but when it comes to a book, I’d still prefer to print it out and read it or find an audio version and listen while doing other things.
January 3rd, 2009 at 2:36 AM
I used to scan the stuff in the textbooks being a student,and so did the others.Then we didn’t know it was called scanning.WE just read the keywords on the pages at a high rate to get a bit of comprehension.I must mention there were great masters of scanning among my groupmates,they came to the college and asked the others the only question-What exam are we taking just now?
January 3rd, 2009 at 8:11 AM
I like your post I will add it to my new years resolution
Happy Healthy New Year to you and your family!!!
January 3rd, 2009 at 9:15 AM
Very detailed post. I speed read by scanning a book and any time I feel that I want to soak the information a little deeper I’ll reread a certain section.
I never thought about the importance of turning the pages quickly. Now that I think about it when I turn the page I’m usually letting my mind drift. If I stay focused I can comprehend more and speed up the process.
January 3rd, 2009 at 12:07 PM
Hi Mike,
I read your article when you first published her.
It took me sometime to think of my thoughts on speed reading.
I read fast naturally.Often re-reading to make sure I didn’t miss anything.
It is the same with typing.My mind is faster then my fingers at times.
Your article is very interesting. I think I should seriously exercise some of your suggestions.
January 3rd, 2009 at 12:27 PM
I devour books. Friens tell me I must be having 36 hours a day. However, that comes because I read whenever I can and not because of speed reading. Your post is very interesting. Will follow it u with some research of mine before implementing. Don’t want to lose the pleasure of reading while attempting speed reading.
Cheers!
January 3rd, 2009 at 2:54 PM
You left out one important way to become a great speed reader… Speed reading by definition is a verb. So, that means you need to read to learn to speed read.
Many people read up on “how to do” [insert anything here] but rarely take action to start doing it. So, if all else fails, make sure you do something to learn the new skill and you will learn how to do anything successfully.
January 3rd, 2009 at 4:02 PM
Thanks for the added comments everyone. Bunny and Amitabh, you are both very lucky to be fast readers. I still don’t consider myself a very fast reader but I certainly can enjoy reading not at 550wpm instead of my original 175wpm. It is far more enjoyable to read and now, I actually do read quite a lot. As Derek said as well, yes you have to practice and actually read. It just doesn’t take nearly as long as you might think to improve your speed if you are not a fast reader already. I don’t have any experience increasing speed from an already fast reading speed, but I’ve read you can get similar quick results.
ish and Dicki, I’m glad you both liked this post as well and please do spend some time practising these techniques. Especially as a new years resolution it is one you could complete quickly (pun intended)!!!
January 4th, 2009 at 7:50 AM
Hi Mike
I don’t think it covered the keywords and scanning. So, I’ll make sure to incorporate that (well, everything you mention), this time round.
😉
Juliet
January 4th, 2009 at 7:34 PM
This is terrific. Thank for the article.
Tried “Count OUT LOUD from 1-100 over and over while reading” and was amazed. Now to practise some of the other techniques also.
Cheers, Thea
January 4th, 2009 at 8:14 PM
Thea, I’m glad that that tip has helped! That counting one made the biggest difference by far to kill my subvocalizing when reading and I still find myself needing it from time to time to get my speed up.
Thanks for stopping by and commenting! You have quite a unique style on your website, with all the color, side buttons and fonts that blend perfectly together. Nicely done!
January 5th, 2009 at 12:01 AM
This is really interesting. I dont know if I can be a speed reader given its not uncommon for me to create a shopping list in my head as I read a passage in a book. When I read slower, I am able to take in what I am reading and not have my mind wander.
January 6th, 2009 at 7:11 AM
I have never looked into speed reading before, but you’ve definitely peaked my interest. Thank you very much for providing other great resources.
-HIB
January 20th, 2009 at 12:12 AM
Hi Mike
Great tips! I am going to work on this. What stand out to me the most was “Skip the Boring Parts” What a concept?
I normally read every words.
Thank you so much for this post. I found it very useful.
Giovanna Garcia
Imperfect Action is better than No Action
January 26th, 2009 at 1:53 AM
I assume this is the speed reading technique for the mortals and the normal people. Have you heard of legendary speed readers who can read really fast? Do you think they can do it because of other factors like photographic memory?
July 26th, 2009 at 4:40 PM
Some of the most famous and effective presidents have been notorious speed readers. It just goes to show that this si an incredible skill to cultivate.
October 24th, 2009 at 1:14 PM
Hi Mike,
I like this Blog, I think I’m going to visit here often.
Do you teach also Photo Reading?
Thanks
Yesh
October 25th, 2009 at 7:19 AM
Thank Yesh, I’m glad there is content you like and can learn from. I don’t teach photo reading as I have never taken speed reading to that extent. I’ve read much mixed thoughts on photo reading as to its usefulness from the perspective of much you can actually absorb and learn. Its not high enough for comprehension from what I’ve read about it.
November 2nd, 2009 at 3:15 PM
Great post!
I agree that counting while “practice reading” can significantly help a reader increase bother their reading speed and comprehension. In fact, I have series of YouTube videos that were written about on Lifehacker and Boing!Boing! that go over those methods.
Also, if anyone’s interested, my 366-page course book is available for free download. You can find it through google or on my website. I hope it helps everyone in their speed reading endeavors.
-Kris Madden
March 26th, 2010 at 11:08 AM
Try eyeQ. This speed reading program had the best results for me, and I tried several.
March 26th, 2010 at 1:22 PM
@Chris, thanks Chris for highlighting eyeQ, that is the one I got the most from myself as well of the ones I’ve used.
February 19th, 2013 at 11:45 PM
[…] Learn to Speed Read in Just a Few Hours (LearnThis.ca) […]
February 9th, 2014 at 6:02 PM
I wonder how this would hold up with Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk.
February 10th, 2014 at 7:30 PM
I’ll leave that to you to test and explore, as I won’t be found reading that content.