
I Was Wrong About Speed Reading (2015) - prostoalex
https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2015/01/19/speed-reading-redo/
======
rmason
I took a speed reading course one summer when I was in college. My mother
thought that it would give me an edge. First they test you and my reading
speed was already on the high end of normal.

In the course I did theoretically more than double my reading speed. But my
comprehension was based on the test they gave me. Plus I noticed that I tired
quickly doing speed reading. I was a kid who loved to read and had no problem
doing it for hours on end without tiring.

After the course I quickly discovered as I suspected that my real world
comprehension suffered greatly by speed reading.

So what value did I receive from the course? After college there have been
times I needed to quickly get the gist of a document and was under extreme
time pressure. I found speed reading worked fine though in my business career
I doubt that I used it more than once a year.

Bottom line my personal ROI would have been much higher if my Mother have
hired a tutor to help me over the summer learn to paint or play blues
harmonica instead.

~~~
emodendroket
I think the skill many of us need to cultivate is the opposite one -- slowing
down and carefully reading a challenging text. It took me a while to get out
of "the final is tomorrow so I've got to blow through the rest of this book
today" mode.

~~~
pmoriarty
Beyond slowing down, a real challenge for many of us in this age of
distraction is to keep one's attention focused on a single text for extended
periods of time.

I know I struggle with this myself despite being a life-long reader from the
pre-Internet days who used to have no trouble staying focused through a full
book.

~~~
amatecha
To support your point: I read the first sentence of your comment, then
scrolled further down to start reading other comments! hahah ;)

~~~
toxik
I think this is just your brain autocompleting the rest of the sentence. You
probably aren't even reading this second sentence, because you already know
how I'm going to justify the claim of "brain autocompletion."

Though new paragraphs, or otherwise unexpected characteristics like long
groupings of numbers such as 747-838-919-884, stick out and pique our
interest.

I think a lot of good writing lies in playing with your internal "branch
predictor" as it were.

------
FooHentai
I'm what I've come to call a 'slow thinker'. My perception speed is normal,
but the gray matter ticks over at a very slow rate of knots and my
comprehension of what I'm seeing/hearing/feeling unpacks over the course of
several seconds. I've noticed I often have an initial reaction to things, then
a 'slow reaction' that is sometimes quite different and factors in more things
I know.

It's like it takes some time to 'dial in' on what my response to a particular
stimuli is going to be, but often the situation demands a response faster than
I can provide one that I feel is properly considered. This leads to
interesting social stuff sometimes, and sometimes a kind of short-duration
l'esprit de l'escalier social anxiety.

As I've got older, I've learned that in a lot of cases the initial reaction is
fine, and I can suppress the desire to issue a follow-up correction once the
brain has caught up. Younger me was less able to do that and would often blurt
out a second response to nobody's particular benefit, or hold off on a
response to the point the moment is lost.

So perhaps for this reason, speed reading has never really clicked for me to
the point that I've always been 'suspicious' of it. It's as the author says,
comprehension is often the bottleneck. Even with fiction, I find I'm relating
the current occurrences I'm reading with whatever world the author has built
up, and considering ramifications.

My SO reads very quickly, and I often wonder how much of it is being deeply
considered as she makes her way through something. It makes me hesitant to
recommend any text I've enjoyed for the richness of it, as I fear a
superficial read somehow does it less justice than just not reading it at all.

~~~
twic
I'm a bit like this, I think. My raw reading speed is decent. But when I'm
reading, I'm constantly stopping to flip back and check something, or to stop
and think through the implications of what I've just read, or, when the
internet is to hand, to look up some related information. As a result, my net
reading speed is diabolical.

But to me, this isn't about thinking slowly, it's about thinking thoroughly. I
think I pick things up from texts that faster readers skate right over.

Of course, I haven't actually measured any of this, so it's probably just
comforting nonsense.

------
Reedx
Reading speed strikes me similarly to typing speed when it comes to
programming. It's fun to read/type fast, but it's not really the bottleneck.

~~~
Buttons840
I've worked with some programmers who were so slow at typing I would find
myself reluctant to help them with their "hands on" work, like directing them
to try something in the REPL for example, or even just asking them to run a
shell command. It was a struggle for me not to excuse myself as soon as
possible once they started typing. They seemingly couldn't get a single word
out without a typo, and would frequently hunt down other places in the code so
they could copy paste that 6 character variable name, etc.

Being able to type 30~40 WPM is good enough though, no need to be super
speedy.

~~~
hanoz
> _couldn 't get a single word out without a typo, and would frequently hunt
> down other places in the code so they could copy paste that 6 character
> variable name_

The latter seems a good strategy for coping with the former, does it not?

~~~
leetcrew
it's more like a pathological workaround.

it's similar to people who spend years doing "hunt and peck" typing. if you
practice enough, you can get up to a decent speed, but you would have been
much better off taking a couple weeks to become a mediocre touch typist.

~~~
Intermernet
I was a mediocre touch typist, and then spent many years doing hands on, IT
support. I usually had to type on other people's keyboards while I was offset
to one side, or even on the other side of the desk. I'm now a terrible touch
typist, but a pretty good upside down, one handed typist!

------
Terretta
On “subvocalization” ...

> _It’s simply not possible to comprehend what you’re reading and avoid using
> that inner voice. So reading faster means being able to use this inner voice
> faster, not eliminating it. To further that, expert speed readers who were
> studied also subvocalized, they just did it faster._

I’ve seen this argued elsewhere, and am not convinced they’ve found readers
who do not subvocalize to study. Most readers subvocalize. Even if you don’t,
if you ask about it, then you do (like asking someone to not think about their
breathing).

If you do not normally subvocalize, you become painfully aware of it when you
drop into it, feels like slamming on the brakes, and very difficult to let go
of again.

I suspect the studies referenced[1] have simply not studied those who don’t
subvocalize, akin to studies missing the phenomenon of aphantasia until 2015.
Or, they’ve established experimental conditions where the reader cannot help
but think about it, causing it to occur.

1\. [https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4229](https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4229)

~~~
zelly
It's impossible to get into the flow state of reading (when you are not aware
you are reading) without subvocalizing. I've tried forever. It's impossible
and anyone who claims to is lying or is just constantly skimming ("speed
reading").

~~~
NateEag
I do not subvocalize when reading.

Trying to do it feels really weird to me.

~~~
zelly
You probably do even if you do not realize it.

Can you spot incorrect use of "a" vs. "an" in text? You're subvocalizing.

Are you unable to read while talking? You're subvocalizing.

The idea of not-subvocalizing is to see text as images. You should be able to
recognize chunks of words like you recognize different types of emojis or
types of dogs. It is completely different from the way everyone learned to
read.

I can not-subvocalize after much practice but only temporarily.

I don't recommend it. It's useless on the same level as learning Dvorak.

~~~
NateEag
Your presumption that I'm wrong about my own experience is, well, presumptive.

Your tests for subvocalizing are not all correct (spotting "a" vs. "an" does
not require subvocalizing).

I do experience text as visual stimulus without sound, and I do process it in
clumps. As I mentioned elsewhere in the thread, I once experienced reading
multiple lines simultaneously, perceiving not just sentences but paragraphs
all at once.

It was quite a rush.

It's not something I can control, or something I can do on command, but I
think it is decent evidence that I don't subvocalize.

------
b0rsuk
Testing the notion that subvocalization slows you down should be reasonably
easy. Just test people deaf since birth. Do they read faster? Visit some deaf
communities.

It's not immediately obvious, but many deaf people don't know how to read at
all. Sign language (hand gestures) is a completely different language,
different from English, Russian, Italian etc. To complicate stuff, there's not
a single global sign language.

~~~
mkl
I have read that some deaf people (with no inner monologue) can read a lot
faster than average (e.g. 800wpm). Confounding that hypothesis, I have also
read that some blind people can _listen_ to synthesised speech at similar very
high speeds (at which point it no longer sounds like speech at all, but
they've learned to decode it by building up gradually).

------
pmoriarty
I practice what could be called "speed listening" \-- listening to audiobooks
and podcasts (and watching videos) at 2x to 3x speed.

It saves a lot of time, and I only wish I'd started sooner.

~~~
martin-adams
I used to do that, but now listen at 1x as it gives me time to have creative
thoughts over what was said which helps me to retain the meaning behind the
words.

~~~
plorkyeran
I listen to most things above 1x speed specifically so that I don't have time
to have creative thoughts about what I'm listening to, as that quickly leads
to me no longer actually listening. Instead I have to specifically pause it if
I want to stop and think about it.

------
zelly
I was obsessed with speed reading at one point and still practice some of the
techniques. I can attest to the author's recommendation to skim before
reading. Especially with challenging material, I find skimming first reduces
anxiety-induced procrastination. The material becomes less intimidating once
you've "gotten to the last page," even if fraudulently. Then you can go back
and read, perhaps selectively and non-linearly, until you understand it.

Speed reading attracted me because I easily get bored and drift off. If the
pace is faster, I can stay engaged better. It's not really about speed or
saving time (the irony of that while posting on HN).

------
enz
I can understand a lot of Japanese words written in kanjis without knowing how
to pronounce them. So I am basically forced to read without any
subvocalization and it’s pretty tough to understand any text longer than 5
lines.

It feels like trying to understand a mathematical proof that has been written
only with mathematical symbols.

~~~
zhte415
Wouldn't a mathematical proof not (only) written with mathematical symbols be
much harder to read?

~~~
tsimionescu
Why would replacing (some) symbols with words make the text harder to read?

~~~
zhte415
Because of ambiguity. And therefore conciseness.

------
Syzygies
So I'm scrolling through this article, reading more carefully at first to
model his thought processes, then picking up a few words per paragraph,
formulating a hypothesis as to what he's saying in that paragraph, making a
spot check to confirm my hypothesis, and moving on. I was oblivious to the
irony here, as I was focused on reading. When I realized I was a
counterexample to his thesis, I cracked up and had to stop.

------
LargoLasskhyfv
I have some problems with this article because of personal experience which
differs. They talk about the constraints of 'working memory' which makes it
unlikely, or even impossible to scan more than a few sentences at once _and_
comprehend them. It just so happens that i sometimes _scan_ a whole page at
once, just by looking at it, and have understood it. But almost only on paper,
and without formulas or diagrams in it. But not every time, or 'at will'. It
just happens.

Not in the sense that i memorized it, and could repeat it word for word, but
the _gist_ of it, the point, message, whatever.

It even varies, because sometimes, when i need to recheck some datum mentioned
like a point in time, or an amount of something, or a cross reference, i
recall exactly where on the page that was, and where that page was. This
happens less on screens of any sort, but more so with real paper. Makes no
difference if fiction, or non-fiction.

I guess it happens from anywhere from 0,3 to 0,5% of everything i read, it
would be up to 5% if i'd only read on real paper. So much for the 'haptics' of
'cyber'...

Anyways, i could read before Kindergarden, because my older Sister tought me,
just for fun. I remember the first word i could read was the neon signage of
some supermarket called 'Hit', because i asked what it meant. That's how it
began.

At the same time this introduced me to the concepts of different languages,
different spellings for the same words, and different words for the same
things in different languages. Because i'm german, and hit is english.

Early school was often boring torture for me because of that. I could read
books and newspapers, and my classmates stuttered along excrutiatingly slow.
This lasted maybe to the 6th grade, then they finally caught up(mostly).

Also around that time i finally realized that i had this ability, and it was
something special. Interestingly again not in my native language, but in
english.

Teacher said go to page xyz and read this, say ready when you are done. I did,
and maybe 2 secands later said: 'Ready!' (Was something about the double
decker buses in London)

I never read that before (at least not conscious) because everything in that
book was boring to me, and of course got reprimanded, which i considered as
unfair.

It's like having a photocopy before the 'inner eye' which slowly fades, but
not exactly like a photocopy, because then i could read from it and repeat it
letter for letter, and word for word, which i can't.

So i'm wondering what do they mean when they talk about 'speed reading', does
this include the necessity of memorizing everything, being able to do it
anytime, or just the 'lossy' compression of meaning like i (sometimes) do?

In case of the latter, then from my point of view that is like blind people
(from birth on) talking about color.

some edits: spelling, structure

------
dredmorbius
The recommendations for more effective reading largely match those in Mortimer
Adler's _How to Read a Book_ , particularly chapters 2 (The Second Level of
Reading: Inspectional Reading) and 7 (How to X-Ray a Book). Both address how
to rapidly determine a book's _structure_. More generally, Adler suggests
approaching reading with _intent_ , that is, what are your goals in reading a
book, often corresponding to the type of book. Fiction is different from
poetry, practical books, history, science and mathematics, philosophy, and
social science (each addressed in the book).

I'm reminded of an HN perennial, "Why GNU grep is Fast"
([https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-
current/2010-Aug...](https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-
current/2010-August/019310.html), discussion
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1626305](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1626305)),
which boils down to two rules:

#1 trick: GNU grep is fast because it AVOIDS LOOKING AT EVERY INPUT BYTE.

#2 trick: GNU grep is fast because it EXECUTES VERY FEW INSTRUCTIONS FOR EACH
BYTE that it _does_ look at.

 _If you want to read faster, read less, and read more intelligently._

By "read less", I mean simply _don 't waste your time on irrelevant material._
For pleasure reading, this doesn't mean skipping large parts of books, in
general (there ... _are_ exceptions), but it _could_ very well mean skipping
entire books, or deciding that you really _don 't_ want to read them. For
nonfiction, it may very well mean sucking the marrow out of their bones
without getting bogged into the detail. There are few writers who are highly
synoptic and for whom all words matter (this is more common in philosophy than
elsewhere, though I can think of other examples).

By "more intelligently", I mean understanding what you hope to gain
(amusement/entertainment, general information, specific answers to questions,
understanding or rebutting an author's arguments, etc.). Skip what doesn't
address that goal, and stop once you've attained it.

There is a tremendous amount of published material. There have been about
300,000 traditionally published books _annually_ in English since the 1950s,
if not before, and over the past decade or so, "non-traditional" ("vanity",
self-published, print-on-demand, ebooks, etc.) raise that number well over 1
million. Given roughly 300 million to 1 billion native English speakers, this
means one book per 300 to 1,000 people.

Quality literature is far less common. Many authors have commented on the
folly of reading other-than-excellent books. I'd suggest _some_ sampling of
the common genres, but ... don't get stuck there, if you can help it.

Shopenhaer addresses this in "On Authorship and Style":

 _Writing for money and preservation of copyright are, at bottom, the ruin of
literature. It is only the man who writes absolutely for the sake of the
subject that writes anything worth writing. What an inestimable advantage it
would be, if, in every branch of literature, there existed only a few but
excellent books! This can never come to pass so long as money is to be made by
writing._

[https://www.gutenberg.org/files/11945/11945-h/11945-h.htm#li...](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/11945/11945-h/11945-h.htm#link2H_4_0004)

Diderot the broader problem of a superfluity of books and information
overload:

 _As long as the centuries continue to unfold, the number of books will grow
continually, and one can predict that a time will come when it will be almost
as difficult to learn anything from books as from the direct study of the
whole universe. It will be almost as convenient to search for some bit of
truth concealed in nature as it will be to find it hidden away in an immense
multitude of bound volumes._

[https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?entryid=2877](https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?entryid=2877)

(This was, of course, a solutions-oriented pitch for a technical IT solution
Diderot was launching, the _Encyclpaedia_.)

A depressing tendency of most speed-reading programmes, and discussions, I've
encountered, is that few show any wareness of these extant models and guides.
Which makes one wonder if their authors actually read intelligently....

~~~
sitkack
I am a huge Mortimer Adler fan, do you have any other recommendations in the
same vein?

You might also like the books by
[https://cs.adelaide.edu.au/~zbyszek/](https://cs.adelaide.edu.au/~zbyszek/)

~~~
boneitis
Just got done reading Adler's How to Read a Book a few days ago.

Recommend: Ward Farnsworth.

Apparently some law school dean who has written some books on law, none of
which I have read. I personally just picture him more as a classicist.

His grasp on English writing knocks me off my feet. It is seriously something
to behold.

His book on explaining chess tactics (also available online free[0]) is an
absolutely amazing display of effective communication in writing.

In another writing style, he has three books[1][2][3] and apparently an
upcoming fourth[4] where he presents an idea/concept, cites meaningful
examples in the wild of their use, and provides his own commentary to touch up
on his chosen topics. They make for delightful reading.

[0]: chesstactics.org [1]: Farnsworth's Classical English Rhetoric [2]:
Farnsworth's Classical English Metaphor [3]: The Practicing Stoic: A
Philosophical User's Manual [4]: Farnsworth's Classical English Style

~~~
boneitis
I also like to read some Mary Beard blogs/articles from time to time.

------
lhurtig
Reading with intent gets me more of what I want than any of the speed reading
techniques I've tried or practiced. Business non-fiction books in particular
tend to do a good summary in the first chapter, and spend the rest of the book
expanding on the main concepts. I'll read the first chapter and call it good
if I've got it, or listen on audible at 1.8x if I want more reinforcement.

------
randomsearch
Several times people have told me I’m an exceptionally fast reader. I notice
if I’m in a group and we’re asked to read a sheet of paper (eg some training
seminar) I’ll usually be done way ahead of everyone else.

I vocalise everything. It’s usually a lot faster than you’d say it out loud
though, probably if I tried to read out loud that fast I’d trip over words.

The secret is rather boring: I’ve just read a lot. I rarely have problems
recognising words, so that’s key. For many types of reading I also infer
content a lot, and it seems like my brain completes sentences, then I’ll
continue on and “jump back” if one of the words was not as expected. I very
easily for those tricks where people write “gondolas in Vienna”, so my brain
is obviously doing a lot of inference.

I’ll often read the economist cover to cover, and I used to do the same with
newspapers where I was young. Maybe reading every single word on such a
variety of topics fixes the “surprised by words” category.

My tip is: read thoroughly and carefully and vocalise, read enough and the
speed will take care of itself.

------
b0rsuk
Do people using languages like Chinese, Japanese or Korean read faster? In
Chinese and Japanese a single character often means a word. In Korean, a
single character is 3 letters. It's very simple: words use much less space in
languages like that, so you need to move your eyes much less. Would a Chinese
or Korean person read the same work of literature faster than an European -
assuming they know all the words?

If "visually condensed" languages like that do facilitate faster reading,
converting to a different language is the way to go! What a lovely research
topic for neuroscientists!

~~~
tarsinge
I don’t know for reading speed but for speaking speed the interesting fact is
that less dense languages are spoken faster and dense language slower,
resulting in a similar information throughout no matter the language[1]

[1]
[https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/9/eaaw2594](https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/9/eaaw2594)

------
scarejunba
I think my reading efficacy can be improved significantly by not spending time
reading junk and spending more time reading good stuff.

That is, I have a prioritization problem not a throughput problem. Most people
I know are like this.

~~~
sitkack
Most books have value, even if it wasn't what the author intended. Read a book
like you would eat a meal, smell it, take small bites of a couple chapters and
see if it is something you like or would like to make on your own.

So many people start at one portion and slog their way through like a backhoe
excavating a building site. Skim, summarize, catalog and synthesize. Of course
all of this is directed at non-fiction works.

------
flippyhead
I sped-read this article so I'm _pretty_ sure it just confirmed what I already
think: speed reading works!!

------
andai
I have learned to read both slower and faster. The trick is that you can use
both in the same session, and for many materials, this is by far the best
approach.

My comprehension went up massively when I started reading out loud in the
evenings, despite how childish it feels sometimes. I noticed I got a lot more
out of audio than text (I tend to read too fast and not let things sink in),
so I started recording my own audio for on the go.

I realized while doing this that reading out loud works great for me because
it forces each word to sink in, rather than rushing ahead as was my habit.

Another thing I learned from listening to audio is, I come back to it many
times, so I end up "reading" the same books sometimes dozens of times. And
this is precisely what is at the core of many speed reading systems: multiple
exposure.

Scott dismisses "read as fast as you flip the pages" courses. It's important
to clarify this. This is actually his first tip later in the article, "Skim
before you read!" The difference is, beyond just a skim and a read phase,
there is an extra "photo-read" phase added on the front.

Have you ever opened a page, and a word or passage jumps out at you,
_visually?_ The word "sex" for example, has just such an effect. The idea here
is you must read with purpose, with intention, with questions, and if you do,
then while you are scanning the book with your eyes, you are _building a map_
of the material, so when you come back to it later, you will remember where to
look to find what you need.

In many cases, a book is large and we are only interested in a small fraction
of the material. This is the case for most textbooks and their exams, or for a
personal project only some aspects will be necessary to extract. The multi-
pass approach to reading allows you to locate everything you need, learn where
it is, ask questions and keep coming back to it as needed.

Reading slower to build comprehension when you need it can integrate perfectly
well with this nonlinear approach: you find what you need faster, and then you
give it all your concentration, making sure you understand each part before
continuing.

(Of course, this will give rise to yet further questions you can explore the
rest of the text with! :)

------
dang
A thread from 2016:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12023791](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12023791)

------
no-s
The practice of speed reading is not the same as the ability to read quickly.
I don't speed read, I read very quickly and often at the rate of page at a
glance (I often tell people not to leave confidential papers exposed so I
won't accidentally read something I shouldn't be privy to). When people ask me
how they can learn to read more quickly, I ask them if they would consider
reading more.

------
jl2718
Speed reading works for low-information content. For instance, try reading
that article aloud to your kids. Nobody will ask you to slow down.

------
bigpumpkin
My personal experience with speed reading is that the limiting bottleneck
factor for me is the speed at which i can internalize complex grammatical
structures.

I also sub-vocalize some words but not others. In fact, the claim that one
must sub-vocalize every word is contradicted by my experience reading Chinese
characters, sometimes I can understand characters without knowing how to say
them.

------
znpy
This article kinda confirms what I've felt when I read about speed reading: if
you're reading anything other than fiction/romance, comprehension is the
bottleneck.

So reading half a page of a math book at the time would have been completely
useless (I was in university at the time).

~~~
texasbigdata
I trained myself on how to speed read at age 16 by accident (when compared to
a medical school friend who went to a bootcamp and employed roughly the same
techniques). Anecdotally the depth of the material is inversely correlated
with reading speed.

For fluff magazine type pieces, the extra speed is helpful however if it's a
textbook or anything dense, the bottleneck is usually somewhere else.

Still worth doing though. If you run the math out spending 40 hours like my
friend did for even a 2% speed gain is likely a positive return over the
course of your life.

The one downside is the feeling of annoyance when hearing anyone else
subvocalize as they read. The nagging feeling of "you could be going faster!"
is annoying.

------
mikece
In a similar vein: the millennial fascination with speed listening: consuming
podcasts and audiobooks at 1.5 to 3x speed. The point about comprehension is
key: if you complete Altlas Shugged in 8 hours but don’t understand the
motivation of the characters, what was the point?

~~~
edanm
That's a fair question, but that doesn't mean you _shouldn 't_ listen faster.
You should listen at the speed you feel comfortable at (and potentially work
on increasing that speed.)

Some recordings of the same book have a several-hour difference between the
different recordings. Different narrators read at different speeds, and most
of them aim for clarity to _all_ listeners. I don't think there's any specific
reason to listen to the slowest recording, just like I don't think there's any
specific reason not to speed up a recording to where you are comfortabl.

~~~
mikece
I completely agree: I can reread an audiobook at 2x or more but if I want to
comprehend something meaty theN 1x with a few re-listens to selected sections
is in order. And for dessert listening (podcasts) which are more about
entertainment than learning are okay to zoom through.

------
EncryptEntropy
About three years ago a buddy of mine suggested that listening to course
lectures or general podcasts/audiobooks/Youtube tutorials saved him a massive
amount of time counted in hours by simply putting the playback speed of
everything he listened to as high as he could muster. At least 1.5x for
Youtube videos, often time he listens to podcasts and books in 2x. I argued
that this is tantamount to speed reading and that he’s losing half the
comprehension anyway, may as well slow it. I’ve tried it and believe it’s
about as successful as speed reading.

------
furyofantares
My speed reading method is just to skip every other paragraph. It's really
surprising how effective this is for a lot of texts, and you can adjust how
much you skip as you go, dependent on the text.

~~~
Mirioron
I think a better method is to read at least the first sentence of every
paragraph and last sentence on short paragraphs. This way you have an idea on
what the paragraph is about.

Another thing you can do is scan the paragraph you're skipping when reading
the other paragraph for keywords.

------
Discombulator
Not familiar with the author, but good on him for admitting he was wrong. I
find that most people are not able to admit their faults (without endless
hedging), and those who can deserve some respect.

------
meekstro
Mind map the book starting with the conclusion then toc.

If a book takes more than 4 hours to mind map it's either a good book or
poorly organised.

The reading speed isn't the constraint. It's placing the knowledge in your
knowledge tree without tiring yourself out. Only read the key parts of the
knowledge tree slowly in depth.

Use A3 paper and a click pencil. Speeds the reading right up. When the books
mapped, explain the mind map to someone.

~~~
meekstro
And map Technical books that build on concepts backwards. Your brain wrestles
away and it clicks into place by the time you are explaining the mindmap.

------
tzury
speed reading?

for me, reading a book is a treat. Something I rearly manage to make time for,
and when I do, I'd rather enjoy every paragraph.

You don't chew a great food as fast as you do with simple one, right?

------
NateEag
The full article claims that it's impossible to reduce saccades by reading
multiple lines simultaneously.

I know that claim is false because I have experienced reading an entire book
by perceiving two to four lines simultaneously.

I've only had that happen once, on incredibly easy double-spaced material, but
humans are capable of it.

Note that I am a natural speed reader and aphantasiac - those may be
contributing factors (I've noticed the most talented visualizers I know are
all slow readers, and discussion leads me too believe it's partly because they
can't help stopping to visualize, while I cannot stop to visualize).

~~~
WA
But what's your recall on the text/information? I bet this is easier with
simple, repetitive books that have lots of unnecessary filler words.

~~~
NateEag
This was about two decades ago, and it was a piece of fiction I didn't care
much about, so I can't tell you what my recall was like. I do still remember a
character name and very rough snippets of the setting and plot, so it didn't
all evaporate.

It did not have filler words, but it did have simpler vocabulary than most of
what I read (it was fiction aimed at school children).

------
SlowRobotAhead
> This was masked because the books I was reading had enough redundancy to
> make following along possible with impaired comprehension.

Clever trick speed reading book writers!

------
steve1977
Usually, in reaching "genius levels" of knowledge and understanding, textual
input is not the bottleneck.

So, don't bother with Speed Reading.

------
viburnum
When I don’t subvocalize my brain basically turns off and I stop understanding
what I’m reading.

------
wbl
Hyperlexia is real and quite nice. Sadly nothing you can do to develop it.

------
m3kw9
I could do 20,000 wpm after reading something the first time in 200wpm.

------
FartyMcFarter
I tried the Spritz link up to 700 wpm, after closing the page my eyes felt
weird for a while. This may be due to the black background and the fact that I
was focusing a lot on the text, but in any case I would not recommend it...

------
K0SM0S
I've been reading (and writing) considerable amounts, pretty much every day
all my life since I was 12-ish (and ~15), 37 as I speak. I'm cognitively no
genius by any metric but certainly 'well capable' relatively to most people
(strong points being speed of thought, clarity/precision to a fault, powerful
synthesis). I however have a bad factual memory in general, I need to 'do' or
'understand' things to really memorize (e.g. I suck at poems, lyrics, can't
even remember mine, but I love systems, physics, logic).

Without explanations or hazardous 'hypotheses' (hum) as to why, here are my
observations and personal 'tricks'. Spoiler: no magic, just directed effort,
solving for X.

\- There is an inverse relationship between speed and depth of information
input. The faster you take it in, _even if you feel like you understand all of
it_ (and may, factually), the shallower your actual _intake_ will be in the
long run. Generally. Emotions act as a catalyzer for memory, but cloud
thinking temporarily.

\- The more massive a piece of content (book, article..), the _slower_ I want
to go if I aim at a constant result (comprehension, food for thought, memory,
etc). I may speed up when cruising if the content lends itself to that
(repetitive, very structured, etc). Essentially, whenever recent memory won't
cut it to think and remember, because there's too much content, or it's too
complex, I need my long-term memory sparked into activation.

\- I read fast in general, but it has nothing to do with 'techniques' related
to the act of reading itself: it's entirely a mental 'mode' or 'state', that I
only ever get otherwise in sports, this moment when you just _trigger_ the
beast and _commit_ entirely to victory. When you just won't fail, when it's
'all-in'. That level of focus, of concentration, is best exercised with
training, of any kind. So indeed you need to _think_ , not just read, and
actually want to even _write_ and _use_ the substance if you are to maximize
its results on you.

\- It's very important for me to begin slow, whatever the average pace later
on. I need to get acquainted with the author, their go-to vocabulary and
grammar subsets, the point they're making. Sometimes it never clicks and the
whole piece is tedious for me. Sometimes it's so clear I feel like I could
have written it myself, at least the structure of it. It's a thing, hard to
explain. I guess why all we have our own favorites and dreaded authors.

I like people who speak relatively fast because I don't get easily distracted
or bored when they talk to me, so speeding up audiobooks is a personal treat;
but there's a limit if I want to retain anything more than fuzzy snapshots of
partial points. I may understand 100% on the spot (I actually do nothing else
but listen and focus), but it's evading memory, evaporating in the long run.
Ultimately it means that book won't change me beyond a few impressions, it
just won't make its mark, it never had a chance to imbue my consciousness —
only my superficial cognition. However sharp, it can't substitute for the real
thing.

An exercise I do if I really want to use or remember (be 'changed') by some
piece of content — article, book, chapter, quote, podcast, piece of code... —
is to do the "good student duty" of writing a short essay: summarize what you
read, raise a few interesting points about it, elaborate a bit beyond (make
that new material become food for your thought, _use_ it like it's a new word
you just learned, or a new math technique).

It only takes ~30 minutes or so, easily 10 minutes if the material is easy, an
hour if it blew your mind, I don't know... well worth it, because it has a
lasting power for years. But do it well, because that exercise you 'submit' to
no one but yourself will become part of the memory of that content, you will
_see_ your own words sometimes before/above the actual author's.

Hopefully this helps someone trying it my way. The hard way. The no-genius no-
magic no-trick way. The way that lets one play in the present with stuff
learned 10, 20 years before.

TL;DR: the faster you read, the shallower it gets beyond some sweet spot,
probably biological but trainable; speed is good when it forces you to focus,
but not beyond that — it must not become a distraction from actual
understanding. If that is your goal. Using at least in thought what you read
is my preferred way to really internalize something, make it _mine_ , thus
remember it for _long enough_ usually. At least I probably won't be able to
forget that it exists, and then I can search it for finer points.

------
droithomme
I read extremely slowly compared to most, but seem to come up with more
insights as well as debunkings.

A relative of mine is a natural born speed reader. She can read several 500+
page dense works a day. This is suggested to be impossible. I've personally
tested her on her recall after having her quickly digest a work she's never
seen before. She has perfect recall and can tell me what page a given passage
appeared on, and recall from memory what comes next.

It's a savant ability. Probably less than 1 in a million, or perhaps billion.

She can't do anything with the ability. It's useless to her practically. She
works minimum wage jobs, is married to an unemployed guy, and is always poor.
She doesn't have any marketable talents. She continues to read huge amounts of
material when she can find it. She long ago read all of the books in her small
town library's fiction section. Discussing a topic she can cite references to
it as if she is a search engine, but like the search engine, she doesn't have
any insights into what any of it means.

I've suggested to her she try to market the ability, do a tour and show off.
But she hates attention and craves nothing more than a quite reclusive life
free from other people. Being publicly acknowledged as a freak would be the
worst possible outcome for her, as far as she is concerned.

~~~
LargoLasskhyfv
I can somehow relate to that feeling of hers. One thing other people tend to
do if they recognize this ability _IS_ using you as a 'search engine', which
over time is a burden, because it is distracting you from whatever you are
doing at the moment, and when you complain, you are accused of being
unhelpful.

------
celticmusic
I've never understood speed reading. I've never believed in the claims because
there's just no way someone is comprehending by doubling their speed.

------
dlkf
"I Was wrong About Snake Oil"

------
ncmncm
Wrong guy is wrong.

It is possible to speed-read TFA with no loss of comprehension, because it is
information-light. Most things available to read are, and when you are obliged
to look at them, often a glance at each paragraph tells you all you need to
know.

Things that are really worth reading are information-dense. Then, the time to
think about what is presented dominates, and the time to take in words is
negligible. Sub-vocalizing can aid comprehension by slowing you down, and by
providing additional information via the rhythm of the presentation.

The last book I read by Robert Sapolsky took me 30-60 minutes for each of the
last 30 pages, because they were tying together all the material in the rest
of the book, and really gave full value for those minutes.

So, speed read what you must read, but choose material that delivers for
careful study, and read it as slowly as it deserves.

~~~
WA
You don't talk about speed reading, you talk about skimming.

The claim of speed readers is usually: Read 900 words per minute or more with
no loss of comprehension.

~~~
ncmncm
Skimming is just the extremum of speed-reading. I promise I read your comment
at 900 wpm with no loss of comprehension.

