How to Speed Read
Hi team,
I was someone who went through a period in my late teens of getting mediocre academic results and never pushing myself with the learning aspect of school. When I went on to university, it was the first time since I was a much younger child that I pushed myself to read. I came across more and more entrepreneurs and leaders who advocated reading a book a week to expand their horizons. With this I began to read more and more, noticing that my academic results were also improving alongside these changes. I believe this change to my reading habits have a large part to play in how I managed to make the alterations to leave university with a top class undergraduate and postgraduate degree.
However, in the early days of this change, I found that I was reading slowly and could not enjoy as many books as I wanted to. As my pile of recommended books grew, I found the work of Jim Kwik around speed reading and began my journey to reading more, whilst maintaining a high level of comprehension. Below are five tips that helped me to learn the art of speed reading:
Create a Reading Self-Assessment
Learning to speed read is like learning any new skill, in that there is a requirement to track our progress. With this in mind, the first tip that I would give is to create a self-assessment for your reading. The best way to do this is to set an alarm for three minutes and read at your current normal rate. Once you have done this, count the number of words over three average lines and divide by three, giving you the average number of words per line. Then multiply this average by the number of lines you managed to read in the three-minute window. This should give you your base level to work from and by using the following tips, you should be able to significantly improve this over time.
Count in your Head as you Read
Do you currently read the words in your head when you are going through a book? Given that more than 80% of people have an inner reading voice, this is something which is extremely common. The problem with this is that if we have an inner reading voice, our pace of reading will always be limited by the speed at which we can speak the words. The solution to this is to begin training your brain to count instead of subvocalizing, meaning that as you go across the line you will count up until the point that the line is finished and when the new line begins, start the count over. The best way is to pick the top number you will count up to based upon the line length and font size; so, for example setting the count to go no higher than five per line. If you are worried that you may not be able to recall what you read, then you have to trust in the process as our brains can retain this information. The more you use this counting technique, the better your comprehension will become.
Use a Reading Pacer
A reading pacer can be an object like a pen or bookmark, or even your finger. The idea being that you use a pacer to follow the words as you read. The benefit of this is that it prevents our eyes from wandering to different words or sections, which take our focus away from the moment we are on. As we just touched on with counting in your head as you read, the pacer can also set the tone alongside these numbers for the point you should be getting to. I like to think of the reading pacer like a pace setter in a race, keeping me on schedule for where I want and need to be. This is another element of speed reading that may feel like extra effort, however if you stick with this technique, it is an incredible tool to get you motoring through books.
Get Comfortable
If we want to speed read and go for reasonable periods of time, then it is crucial that we feel comfortable. The key here is to hold the book or e-reader upright as you read, aiding peripheral vision improvement, avoiding any unnecessary strain on your eyes and preventing slouching. In terms of the time for speed reading, I use Pomodoros for this, so reading for twenty-five minutes and then taking a five-minute break, getting up and stretching my legs. We all know our own bodies and it is important to listen to how we are feeling, as if we are not feeling comfortable then the chances are we may stop reading and look for other distractions.
Practice
If you really want to conquer speed reading then the more you can practice, the better you will become. A really useful practice session I do is to set myself a target finish line to hit within a period of time. So, here we can use our reading self-assessment and set a goal for where in the book we want to hit. Set yourself a time, such as five minutes and then get the timer started. It is good to try and set targets that are achievable but may just be pushing you to the extent of your current reading speed, so that we are aiming for consistent improvements. With all of this in mind, approaching speed reading as something you need to practice regularly is how I have seen a huge uplift in the number of books I read.
I hope that these tips will benefit your own speed-reading journey, as they have done for me. As I am sure you will have picked up, I am a massive advocate of reading and will continue to provide more useful information in the weeks ahead on ways to elevate our reading skills.
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