2X YOUR READING SPEED. LEARN FASTER. DO MORE.

In this article, you’ll learn what is speed reading, its techniques, its myths, and when to use it in order to optimize your productivity.

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The purpose of speed reading is to navigate through material as fast as possible while keeping a significant level of comprehension in order to acquire and memorize knowledge while increasing productivity. I’ve read multiple books and resources on speed reading and tried to apply the techniques.

Let’s be transparent immediately. You won’t be able to read super fast AND memorize well. That is a myth, and any event promoting it is also a myth. For instance, the speed reading world championships are scams. If you’ve done intense studies or work, you know it. Reading content is often not enough, you need to read it several times, analyze it, take notes, cross-analyze several sources, summarize it, etc.

However, let’s not discard speed reading entirely. Some techniques are really useful to improve your productivity, the idea being that when you research information, you may need to understand quickly (vs. deeply) its content. Several speed reading techniques have a place in your productivity arsenal.

According to Abby Marks Beale, your reading level is defined as such:

“wpm” means words per minute and is the reading speed unit.

A “speed reading” technique that should be executed as pre-reading is to chose carefully the books to be read and to discard any material that is not useful or interesting for the reader at the given speed reading time. Spending time searching for the adequate and relevant reading materials through the immensity of information available is critical to ensure a laser focused study. Then, speed reading that selected top-notch material will increase further the knowledge acquisition frequency.

Researching material means reading books front and back covers, content tables, abstracts, online summaries, related blog posts, Amazon’s descriptions and reader’s comments, etc.

I know what you think. Not reading a book is super fast. This is a “speed NOT reading” technique. 😇

Before reading a selected material, it is recommended to define and even write down the reasons for which that material should be read.

Then, it is recommended to define the questions for which answers would be researched for in that material. As a result, the reading should be dynamic, which means always asking questions and trying to find answers.

Visually search the sentences for clues to the main idea. Read the beginning and the end of a chapter for information gathering, then optionally read the first and last sentence of each paragraph to understand if there is more information that needs to be read in that paragraph.

Skimming seems to be useful to search for information and to get a general idea about the material content but results in lower comprehension rates related to the details of the materials, by essence, as these are skipped.

Findings suggest that speed reading courses which teach techniques that largely constitute skimming of written text result in a lower comprehension rate (below 50% comprehension on standardized comprehension tests) (Carver 1992). (Wikipedia)

Duggan & Payne (2009) compared skimming with reading normally, given only enough time to read normally through half of a text. They found that the main points of the full text were better understood after skimming (which could view the full text) than after normal reading (which only read half the text). There was no difference between the groups in their understanding of less important information from the text. (Wikipedia)

Similarly to skimming, scanning is a visual search for keywords. It involves moving your eyes quickly down the page – often down the center – and identifying specific words and phrases as you go. These can be key sentences (often the first sentence of each paragraph), names, numbers, or trigger words and ideas. (Mindtools)

Learning to expand your peripheral vision can help. This being said, there’s only so much peripheral vision you can develop.

Visual guiding of the eye using a “guide” or “pacer”, such as a finger, a pointer, a cover card or a pen in order for the eye to move faster along the length of the passage of a text.

An advantage of the Pointer and Tracker-and-Pacer methods is that they should reduce your need to skip back and re-read sentences – a hindrance to speed reading that is known as “regression”. (Mindtools).

Note that we all learnt to read this way.

Stop talking to yourself. Almost every reader “subvocalizes,” or moves their throat as they imagine speaking the words. This helps the reader remember concepts, but it’s also a major barrier to speed.

Now, you have a choice between:

Train the eyes to make fewer movements. Each visual capture should contain more words.

According to the University of Massachusetts (via WikiHow):

Read a line using a triple chunk, i.e. in three groups of words instead of word-by-word. Capturing several words in one sight is possible, but the question is how many words? An entire line at the same time? No way.

Ability to read using a “Z” or “S” pattern across several lines of a text.

IMO, that’s bullshit. You miss too much of the text, including your possibility to see keywords.

Techniques to process information more quickly. Software can help develop these by presenting a unique word to read at a time. Words are succeeding to each other at a given pace that should be slightly above your capabilities to force you to speed up.

However, I’m not sure how this translates from reading word-by-word. on an app versus reading a proper book.

Read only the top half of the letters instead of reading entirely the letter. According to Weschler, scientific research shows that the retina processes information up to 60 percent faster when a scan of only the upper halves of words is made. You may read the interline if it helps only acquiring the top half of the letters.

But if we read the entire line, it means we’ve decided that this line is worth reading and not skimming. Skimming will always be faster than reading the interline so the choice should be between skimming or reading. Let’s read that line properly.

Examine graphics and visuals as they often contain a high density of information without much reading required.

Think of and/or write down a summary after each relevant sequence of information, such as information dense pages or chapters.

The reading speed decreases when new or unfamiliar words are encountered, which include specialized words (legal, accounting, medical terms, etc.) As a result, learning new words will help in achieving fast reading.

Markers are tools to improve the retention of information, more specifically to memorize a set of words by associating them to a picture or mental image of the situation. Markers can be associated with keywords from a given reading material to improve the retention rate as well as the comprehension rate.

Self-assess the comprehension of the text read, the amount of material remembered, the percentage of comprehension.

Highlight or underline text in a material, take notes when necessary. Then, review notes on a regular basis to keep the knowledge in your memory if you do not use regularly the content. Flash card software might be used.

To conclude this article, don’t forget that speed without comprehension is a waste of time. Speed should not be a goal in itself. Finding the right information while eliminating waste is a better goal and will help you save time. In order to do so, try the previous techniques and keep within your toolbox the ones that help you to adapt your reading speed to your objective and to the material you are reading.