Ask HN: Has anyone tried speed reading? Would you recommend practicing? - Gormisdomai
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muzani
I've been speed reading for about 5 years. Yes, I highly recommend it. Like
touch typing, it's something you wonder how you lived without.

The bottleneck is comprehension though. Most speed reading techniques don't
cover it. Learn to visualize and grasp concepts quickly.

Speed reading also helps a lot in comprehension in that if you can skim the
entire book you've already understood the gist of what the book is about.

Just don't expect to read books much faster. The best books should be read
slowly. If you're reading one book a day, you should question whether that
book was worth reading.

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jason_slack
Can you share any resources for getting started? I'd like to at least try and
see if it is something I would benefit from or not.

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muzani
I use this course: [https://www.udemy.com/become-a-superlearner-2-speed-
reading-...](https://www.udemy.com/become-a-superlearner-2-speed-reading-
memory-accelerated-learning/)

If you want something free, google Tim Ferriss's speed reading tips. They're
easy to understand and get started with.

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jason_slack
Thank you so much!

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twobyfour
I tried a speed reading course a long time ago. I didn't spend much time
practicing, partly out of laziness and partly because the technique interfered
with comprehension in such a way that I would end up spending double the time
because I had to read the same page over and over again to get any information
out of it whatsoever. Unsurprisingly, my day to day reading speed failed to
improve at all.

However, it seems to have made me very good at skimming and picking topics off
a page. I can identify the one or two Google results I want to follow at half
a glance, while people whom I know to be capable of reading at twice my speed
are still reading through each headline separately.

And I can run my eyes down a wall of tutorial text to pick out a couple key
terms that identify the section I want to read in depth.

In short: it didn't deliver the benefits promised, but that doesn't mean it
was without any benefits.

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tugberkk
If you are not 'slow', I don't think it is necessary. Of course, if you are
working in a job which requires you to scan many things, of course go for it.

I do it unintentionally. Probably because of how I learned to read. I also
have very fast recognition of stuff so probably that is the reason. I am of
course faster when I am reading novels and stuff, but I must say that
'visualization part' which you have while reading fiction is gone with me. I
just scan and understand, and try to learn what happens next instead of
creating a scene of that page etc.

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0xf8
That "visualization part" is unfortunately, for the majority of people, how
the human brain creates meaningful neural pathways and absorbs information.
Not necessarily in a "visual" as in involving images way, but some form of
connection to something you already know whether explicitly visual or abstract
is how the brain creates memories. In my experience speed reading, it
dramatically increased the rate of information intake, especially if using
software to sequentially display text (like Spritz), and eventually with
practice it was possible to retain comprehension as well, but never was I able
to create lasting stores of that information. I could get through a non
technical book in a few hours reading consistently around 700 wpm (taking
breaks to rest the eyes) and could understand what I was reading in the
moment, but can't say I remember much of anything from those books. They
literally feel like a "blur" in my mind.

Perhaps if the goal of reading is to identify specific information anywhere
within a text quickly and move on to something else or switch to reading more
mindfully at that point, then it may make sense. Personally, I read
exclusively to obtain information and retain it. If I don't care to retain the
information, I won't read it in the first place. So not being able to retain
anything meaningful save for the few instances I slowed down ended up
defeating the purpose for me. Lastly IIRC, I once read about the neuroscience
of reading with regards to speed reading and the gist of the article ended up
saying that it takes discrete periods literally measurable in observable time
in order to form memories, and speed reading feeds in information continuously
at a rate that does not allow for this crystallization to occur--because the
actual reading is like a blocking operation neurologically to memory
formation. When we read normally, we pause and reflect in various abstract
ways on the information which creates connections and hence memories.

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tomdre
A long time ago I read "Speed Reading" by Tony Buzan. It provides plenty of
techniques, tricks, and exercises.

