
Ask HN: How to read faster - aliencat
I&#x27;ve always been bothered by reading. I love reading, but I&#x27;m never proud of how much book I&#x27;ve read.<p>One problem is with reading speed. If average reading speed is 250wpm, then a average book of 200,000 words would take more than 10 hours, and you have to take into account the opportunity cost and the time for breaks between concentrations, and if the book is less interesting but is mandatory for you OR it requires more careful reading(i.e. College textbook), it would take more time.<p>Another problem is with how much you can remember after a while. I have a pretty bad memory, I often forget almost all of the stuff I read from a book as time goes. Which means that it&#x27;s a waste of time to even read it. This year I&#x27;m trying to take notes and write summary after I read a book. But that doesn&#x27;t help you to read faster.<p>How to read more? Can I increase my reading speed somehow? Or is there better ways to grasp the idea of the book faster? Is there a way to train your reading speed?
======
SonOfLilit
To retain more, read slower.

Stop after every paragraph. Consider - do you agree with the author? Do you
have past experiences that support or challenge his claims? What can this be
used for? What else is interesting about it?

When reading a novel, try to identify clever things the author did here. If
relevant, try to guess what the solution will be to the mystery.

When reading a math, physics or programming textbook (or paper), stop every
time the author is about to present a new tool or solution. Spend a few
minutes trying to solve it yourself before reading his solution.

Do all the exercises.

You'll consume less books per month, but will come out knowing much more (in
total) than if you just ran through them.

A few years ago, I did an experiment where every time I read something online
I had to post some thoughts about it. I read much less, and gained much more
from every bit I did read. I especially like how the comic strips came out - I
gained a lot of new appreciation for the relation between art and story:

[http://iconcurandfurthermore.tumblr.com/](http://iconcurandfurthermore.tumblr.com/)

~~~
aliencat
Slow reading and writing on it does sounds like a great way to retain
knowledge, but it's hard to find a book that actually worth slow reading.
What's your way of deciding if a book is worth reading?

~~~
SonOfLilit
I read fiction based on recommendations or liking other works by the author,
but more importantly, based on hearing people saying interesting things about
the work. A good recent example is this gwern article, that finally convinced
me that I must watch Neon Genesis Evangelion:

[http://www.gwern.net/Wikipedia%20and%20Dark%20Side%20Editing](http://www.gwern.net/Wikipedia%20and%20Dark%20Side%20Editing)

I read nonfiction in a project-learning approach - if I need Partial
Differential Equations for a game I'm writing, I'll read an article or book
about PDEs. I sometimes read a nonfiction book simply because I love the
author or topic (Feynman's Lectures, Hamming's The Art Of Doing Science And
Engineering), but it usually doesn't work as well (project-based is awesome
because you always have "how can I use this in practice?" in the back of your
head, leading you to process the material in interesting ways.

Skimming also helps.

The most fun I've had studying a book was Steven Smith's DSP book, at
[http://www.dspguide.com/](http://www.dspguide.com/) (I recommend that you
learn how to make music with synthesizers before you start reading.)

My online reading diet is more of the fast-food-and-candy type, which is
something I really should solve.

------
niix
Maybe this doesn't answer your question, but I've always believed reading a
book is not a race. In my experience, taking my time to understand, or re-
reading, something has always helped me retaining knowledge.

I think trying to find ways to retain what you've read versus how fast you've
read something will be more beneficial in the long run. In addition, by become
better a reader and retaining what you've read, I believe your speed will
increase naturally.

My issue was staying focused on what I've read without wandering off somewhere
else in my brain. With patience and a little devotion, I was able to overcome
that and find the true joy in reading.

~~~
aliencat
I agree that retaining information is most important. I often suffer from
forgetting everything I read. Do you have any tips on how to remember what you
read?

~~~
niix
As weird as it may seem, I just Googled something like "how to get better at
reading". And I found some tips, one of this biggest take-aways for me was to
re-read something if you find yourself wandering, and make sure you really
understand what you're reading. There have been times I've read several pages,
or hell even a chapter, and looked back and realized I was zoned out. The
important thing is to recognize this and go back, eventually the focus will
come naturally.

I use a Kindle to read and one of my favorite features is the ability to look
up a word I don't know. I make sure to do this every time I come across a word
I don't know or don't understand given the context. If you don't have this
ability, use a dictionary or something of the like.

Also a good tip was reading out loud, or mouthing the words while you read.
Hope this helps!

------
readspeeder
You're on the right track because you realize that comprehending and retention
are most important. It's not really SPEED READING, that you're after but SPEED
COMPREHENSION.

To comprehend faster, concentrate on imagining and visualizing the ideas you
are reading. This will keep your mind more focused on the ideas rather than
simply the sound of words.

And let the speed increase on it's own. You can't push your speed, but it will
automatically increase when you are reading more efficiently.

See "Reading with the Right Brain" on Amazon for a fuller explanation of how
to read faster and more effectively.

------
JDDunn9
I forget which speed reading book it was, but it helped me read a lot faster.
Here's some of the key points I remember:

\- Broaden your focus. You don't read each letter individually, you recognize
the word as a whole. Likewise, you can, with practice, train yourself to focus
on more words at a time. Try looking at one word and reading the words on
either side, then practice reading half a line of a book at a time, then 1
line at a time. Think of your eyes as sponges soaking up a group of words at a
time.

\- Don't vocalize the words. If you have trouble with this, read so slowly
that your brain gives up reading words "aloud" in your head.

\- Focus on the chapter titles, first / last paragraphs, and any key info
(e.g. bold sentences). Read those parts several times and really focus on
them. This is where most of the important information lies. You will likely
forget the rest of the chapter no matter how fast/slow you read it.

\- Don't worry if you miss some parts from reading too quickly. Don't go back
to re-read anything. Getting the general theme is more important that every
single sentence.

\- Retention is actually higher if you read faster, because your brain can put
the big picture together faster. If you don't believe that, try reading a book
1 sentence a day.

As for memorizing things for school, look into Memory Palaces, Person-Action-
Object, and Mnemonics. Visualizing things helps. Associate things you want to
memorize with the absurd and unusual to make it stick out. It also helps to
have a dirty mind when making associations. Our brains are wired to prioritize
sex, so sexual scenarios are more memorable.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
> \- Don't vocalize the words. If you have trouble with this, read so slowly
> that your brain gives up reading words "aloud" in your head.

This is the part of every speed reading tutorial, book, whatever, that I
simply don't get.

~~~
i336_
I'm not sure what you mean when you say " _this_ ", but here's my
interpretation of what you mean. Feel free to clarify/reply; I check thread
replies on HN every couple days, hopefully others chime in too.

The most popular methods to teach language put an incredibly strong emphasis
on the link between visual glyphs and the sounds they're associated with. This
technique seems highly practical on the surface because it aligns reading and
talking, so effort in one area leads to reward in the other.

This system isn't perfect (or IMO acceptable/sane), though, because by design,
it doesn't teach/provide an "off-switch" for when you want to do one without
the other; rather, it conveys the opposite idea that one always implies the
other. So either you intuitively figure out the nuances of where and how to
differentiate visual and audial yourself, or you end up learning there are
kids in the classroom who who can't read silently because they "don't get"
(read: weren't taught) how to do that.

And then we crash into the whole maximum reading thing speed a few years
later, which is so subtle and innate that most people don't even realize they
have the issue at all. Just like with silently reading, a lucky few retain
enough intuition to keep the visual and audial side of things completely
separate in spite of how they were (mis)taught: one of my friends has the
ability to look at (ie, read) his entire laptop screen as a single whole. (Of
course I've signed up for lessons :P but it remains to be seen whether I can
learn... _that_.)

But that's what speedreading is: reading _purely visually_ , not with the
clunky, time-based words->sounds->comprehension thing.

Quite possibly, as you read this, you're hearing it in your speaking voice or
a mental voice. Not only is that capability innately time-based, rendering
accent, tone and pause use mental resources.

With effort, you can consistently turn this off. It's just _really really_
hard to learn to, 1) because we've been doing it all our lives and 2) because
it was ingrained so early.

I understand that comprehension speed can go through the roof once this is
done, because using the visual parts of the brain to process reading directly
- ie, skipping glyphs->sounds->comprehension and going straight to
glyphs->comprehension - is basically _the_ way to do it. Sadly, only very few
people to this.

The read-slow technique is a new one to me, but it seems to work, sort of. A
better method I've also read about is to bog-down the sound processing parts
of the brain with an activity that completely occupies all sound processing:
repeating a sequence of letters over and over, like "A B C A B C A B C A B C
..." while you read. The visual and audial parts of the brain both ultimately
do reach the comprehension parts, but the audial parts have the most
connections. Bogging down audial processing with a task like the one above
means you fall back on the visual->comprehension connections... which is what
you want.

Rebalancing everything so comprehension is predominantly visual... yeah, that
would definitely the subject of some efficiency research, because without some
kind of secret-sauce learning method I'd imagine it would take years.

------
spocked
This is from personal experience - works for me, may not work for you.

I have found that people who enunciate every word they read in their heads
read a lot slower than those who can pattern match (without reading out the
word in their head). I belong to the earlier category and have friends who
belong to the latter. No matter how fast I tried to read, I could never finish
a novel in a night (like the others did).

It's really easy to see which one are you - try and read a line of text making
sure you do not read out the words out in your head. If the line makes
absolutely no sense to you, you are like me. The text pattern needs to be
converted into audio, which then links to meaning. Maybe its just the way our
brains are arranged.

What has worked very well for me is listening to books on audible. I can
easily listen to most books at 2X (and sometimes 2.5X) the speed of narration.
A typical large book (like the recent one on Elon Musk) is about 14 hrs
narration. I could successfully finish the book in less than 7 hours -
something I could never do if I was just reading it. I also feel like I retain
more, although I cannot be sure of this without more data.

~~~
ju-st
I'm one of the guys who can pattern match. But for me this works only for
novels and other "light" literature where remembering details of the story is
not very important.

If I really want to learn/understand something it's much better to read the
text in my head, so I have the opportunity to think more about what I just
read. Or I pause after each paragraph.

Audiobooks didn't work for me at all - my mind always wanders away. Maybe I
should try 2x speed.

~~~
aliencat
A lot of people(including me) who tried to learn speed reading spend much
effort on trying to eliminate "reading out loud" in their head, instead of
actually spend the time to read some book.

It's great to hear the experience from someone who actually knows speed
reading techniques. I guess "reading out loud" isn't so bad after all. thanks
for you input :)

------
noobie
Practice!

[http://squirt.io/](http://squirt.io/)

Edit: There's an active-ish subreddit about Speed Reading[0], maybe you'll
find it useful.

0.[https://www.reddit.com/r/speedreading](https://www.reddit.com/r/speedreading)

------
rahimnathwani
A few ideas:

\- Get a book about speed reading. It should cover both techniques for reading
the words faster, and for using the structure of the book to retain more
during each pass. Do the exercises in the book.

\- Pick stuff that has a high signal/noise ratio. That way, the limiting
factor will be your brain's ability to process the content, rather than your
raw reading speed.

\- Only read high-quality books. Spend time reading reviews on Amazon for each
book before you start, to ensure that it's a book that you will find
useful/entertaining at this particular time in your life.

\- Prioritise what you want to learn.

\- In fiction books, go faster through parts which cover familiar ground.
Sure, there might be some unique perspective that you miss occasionally, but
you'll more than make up for the loss with the time you get to spend on new
stuff.

~~~
aliencat
speed reading never seemed to work for me(faster = lower comprehension). If
there's a way to speed read, I think it would be how to identify key points
faster. After all, most of the stuff is boilerplate and examples.

~~~
blumkvist
You should train your retention in addition to speed when learning and
practicing those techniques.

------
cconcepts
I've been transitioning to audio books as much as possible lately simply
because I can multitask with it and I find I have a much faster through put.

They cost a lot more but its a small price to pay to get through the material
in a way that I actually absord.

~~~
blumkvist
Some people believe multitasking is a myth. I'm one of those people. I also
believe when listening audio books, you shouldn't do anything else. Probably
not even driving. Laying in bed or sitting in the sofa are my best ways.

Lots of people get very interested in audibooks and quickly stop listening,
citing concentration issues. I always recommend to those people to stop doing
whatever else they are doing and simply listen to the book, and people often
come back to me and tell me they gave it a second shot and love it.

~~~
jasonlotito
> Some people believe multitasking is a myth. I'm one of those people.

I'm able to wash dishes and listen to an audio book quite fine. Going for a
walk, or doing other things I normally wouldn't be able to do while reading.
Can I multitask with any task? No. But I can effectively do two things at
once.

~~~
blumkvist
I guess it would depend on the activities. Walking down the street and chewing
a gum - fine. Driving and listening to Dumas? Not so much, in my opinion.

------
snake117
You could try picking up a reading & comprehension test-prep book, like you
would find for SAT/ACT, GRE, MCAT, etc and practice reading the passages fast
and doing some questions for comprehension. This way, you have concise
material (500 - 800 word passages), that are complex in wording and ideas, and
you can test yourself to see how much of the passage you understood.

Reading fast is one thing and comprehension/retention of the material is
another. Ideally, you would want to improve all three simultaneously. That's
why I'm suggesting start off with smaller, more manageable passages and
analyze your understanding as you progress. You may get every question wrong
in the beginning, but don't let that bum you out. Keep doing a few passages
every day and you should definitely see improvement.

Once you build up a strong base, you can move onto articles, like you would
find in The New Yorker for example, that can span several pages and are
littered with more complex ideas and examples. You really won't be able to
test yourself with questions at the end, but you can ask yourself general
questions, like:

"What was the main idea?"

"What side did the author take?" (if the piece was argumentative in nature)

"What were two examples that the author used to support their claim?" (again,
if a claim was being made)

Be honest with yourself, if you find it difficult to answer questions like
these, read through the article again and go through it with a highlighter
(sparingly, mind you). Also, you can write little notes in the margin to help
you gather the content and your thoughts as you go along.

I hope this helps and best of luck :)

------
uiberto
Interesting how the speed readers tended to give short replies with links to
tools while the slow readers tended to give longer replies, questioning the
premise that learning to speed read is effective for learning. If OP, a speed
reader, speed reads poorly, whose advise will s/he follow?

------
crististm
All the answers here confirm my experience: read slower, concentrate more. The
ability to concentrate on the subject is not to be underestimated.

Twenty years ago my grandparent finished a 400+ book in two and a half days
while I was playing around. He did something else in between. I've never
finished the book to this day - or maybe I did, but I don't remember. I was in
a virtual contest to match those 2.5 days to retain anything of value.

Edit: As you concentrate more you tend to read faster. You get into the flow
state and stuff. Also, I find several speed reading techniques to have some
value (peripheral vision, non-vocalisation etc.)

------
DanBC
1) some people have reading disabilities. The most well known is dyslexia but
there are others.

2) when you read a fiction book have a pen and pad of post-its. Everytime a
new character is introduced write their name on the post-it and stick it to
the page. Maybe asterisk the margin to help you locate it quicker. You can add
more info to the post-it as it comes up.

3) get someone else to quiz you. Have them do this onnce a week.

4) after every session close the book and try to paraphrase what you read.

------
sandworm101
What field are you in?

When I speak to law or business students they often complain they cannot keep
up with the reading. The problem is that they are actually reading every word.
Learning to efficiently skim through a long document is different than reading
every word.

On the other end of the spectrum are medical students who are often expected
to soak in every detail. That means reading each and every word. They don't
read slower than law students, just differently.

------
odebos
Nice chrome extension called UseClark:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/useclark/acjcihhai...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/useclark/acjcihhaibjgbejcdfmfkcgmldiindfa)
([http://useclark.com](http://useclark.com))

------
misframer
Tim Ferriss created a video on "How to Triple Your Reading Speed"[0]. Eye
movement is a significant factor of your reading speed. Simply using a tracer
has immediately improved my reading speed.

[0] [https://youtu.be/jeOHqI9SqOI](https://youtu.be/jeOHqI9SqOI)

------
abathur
As someone with a bad memory as well, I don't think you'll find a silver
bullet here.

Think about it this way: I think almost everyone's done some form of exercise
in school or online that shows how bad most people are about absorbing details
unless they know they're significant when they see them. Imagine spending 10
hours walking around an unfamiliar mall, even if you took concentration
breaks, and being able to answer specific questions about your experience. How
many times did you go around? How many people did you see? How many stores are
there? Can you list them? You probably couldn't answer any of those, but you
probably would remember a few of the most significant moments. Someone who
bumped into you, a crying child, a shoplifter, a beautiful stranger, a shirt
you wanted.

If you tried, and knew ahead of time, you could probably actually answer one
or two of the above questions by actively spending most of your limited
attention--but I would bet you'll remember even less about the rest of your
experience. You might not even notice the beautiful stranger.

You can, of course, train yourself to become more aware of your surroundings
as they pass by, and if you saw something you wanted to remember you could
practice some techniques to make it more likely you'd hold on to the details.
Now, imagine being able to remember your answer to any of those questions
about the mall trip two years later. Unless you regularly reference the mall
trip and your answer, you'll probably forget.

This doesn't mean reading books you don't remember is useless. Our experiences
still rub off on us, affecting who we are and how we move in the world. You
don't say what kind of books you're reading, nor what you hope to remember
about them later. I think those are where the best answers to your question
lie. Some books have little more than one or two ideas worth remembering; read
them as fast as you can (both speed-reading and skimming techniques can be of
use, here). Others can change your life, if you unpack them as you go; you
would be a fool to hurry through them.

Learning to understand the words passing under your eyes at a high rate of
speed is a great tool, but be aware that you're reducing the life-surface-area
of what you read when you do so. You'll make fewer connections as you go, so
it gets increasingly important to use other strategies for making them. Engage
with significant ideas as you find them. A summative note is a good start, but
it's better to connect it with other ideas, apply it to a problem, expand on
it, or talk with someone about it.

------
thejj
This is a free python gtk3 speed reading tool:

[https://github.com/SFTtech/splash](https://github.com/SFTtech/splash)

It needs a lot of polishing but may be a good start for you.

------
ninadk1092
I have consciously tried to increase my reading speed on many occasions. This
is what has helped me get better:

\- One of the most common technique is to not read every word as such,
instead, read a chunk of words together, and don't 'voice' them. It takes some
practice to be able to do this, but to check if you are reading correctly, see
if you can hear every word in your head while you read it. If thats the case
you are doing it wrong. And when you start doing it right, you will notice the
change in speed.

\- I read non-fiction mostly, and find it very annoying when the author beats
around the bush before conveying his point. Its a very natural phenomenon
among authors to write an entire paragraph, when the point could have been
conveyed in a single line. (Infact, I fear I may be doing the same in this
comment ... :P). Agreed that most books are proof read multiple times by many
people, but some loops still come in the final print.

\- In most cases, we are expecting something from a book. Either guidance on
something specific like finance, or motivation, or something else. There are
places in a book where you know for sure that this is not what you are
seeking. Skim through that part, and move ahead. Believe me, this will save a
lot of your time, and you will come out with the same value in a lot less
time.

\- Writing something yourself also helps to identify presence of the above 2
factors. You will re-read your blog for sure, and most blogging time is spent
on deleting redundant parts, than writing. In every iteration, you will find
more things to delete. Be ruthless in this process, respect the reader and
don't waste his time. Once you do this yourself, you will know whether the
author of the article/book that you are reading has done it.

\- As for your point about retaining what you have read, I wouldn't worry much
about that. We feel that most of the information has faded away quickly, when
in fact, it just gets filtered, and when a topic relevant to what you have
read comes up, you will be able to access what you read, not exactly maybe,
but the gist of it. Its a very pleasant surprise when this happens. (Daniel
Kahneman has some interesting things to say about this kind of information
retrieval)

\- Lastly, read Paul Graham and Sam Altman's essays. they are precise, no
wasted words at all. Also, Ben Horowitz's answers, and his book Hard thing
about hard things.

\- Measure against these benchmarks, and you will realise that you will have
to really 'read' much less overall. For the remaining part, employ the advice
of @SonOfLilit in the comment below.

------
perlpimp
there is an expression, no one forgets how you make them feel. so when you
read try to feel the words - as you accelerate. Imagine feel hear them - as
you pick up your speed. This way retention will keep up with your rising
reading speed. It takes a whole lot more effort to read this way but at least
for me retention far greater(i'd say order of magnitude higher, but I haven't
measured it :) )

Without this for me speedreading is scanning, I omit most of the content.

------
byaruhaf
Try the speed reading courses from
[http://www.irisreading.com/](http://www.irisreading.com/)

------
spyder
[http://www.spreeder.com/](http://www.spreeder.com/)

------
kelukelugames
Do you sound out each word silently? That is a common bottle neck.

------
michaelmachine
Check out How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler.

~~~
aliencat
great book, although the book could have been much more concise though.

------
jules
Read more information dense texts.

------
viensof
wake up early and meditate. helps you to focus on one task.

------
douche
You can read much faster if you can break yourself of the habit of sub-
vocalizing words as you read them. I think most of us were probably initially
taught to read aloud, and spent far too much time doing that during our
schooling. If you can instead read the entire word as a logical unit, rather
than having to break it down in your mind into syllables or individual
letters, you can read much more quickly.

This does seem to require a pretty strong visual memory to be able to store
and recall the "look" of a word, and you also need to have a relatively
extensive vocabulary, or else you will be bumping into unfamiliar words that
you have to look up or infer from context.

That's what works for me, anyway. YMMV

