
The speed reading fallacy: the case for slow reading - anthilemoon
https://nesslabs.com/speed-reading
======
todd8
I taught myself the techniques of speed reading as a kid over 50 years ago. It
didn’t really help. Fiction has too many characters and twists and turns; I
can’t really read it much faster than 300 wpm or I miss something.

I’m a very fast reader of non-fiction (I have several thousand technical
books). However, I don’t really read every book word for word. After reading a
couple of books on algorithms for example, it’s possible to skim through the
next one only looking for new subjects, better pictures, or new approaches. I
also jump around and read the parts I’m interested in. The result is I have
some recollection of what’s in most of my more recent books, and if I need to
look something up I can often remember where I saw it in the book—like roughly
how far into the text it is and where on the page it was.

~~~
ozim
Question is also, why would people speed read fiction? To pretend that they
are well read and can boast thousands of books finished? I read fiction for
fun, when the book is good I don't want to finish it too fast.

For technical books, I agree it is possible to skim rather quickly through
stuff that I already know with speed reading approach.

~~~
jaredklewis
> Question is also, why would people speed read fiction?

This is a question I always ask all speed readers and the answers are always
so muddled. I can never understand what they are getting at.

Perhaps I relish a good novel more than most, but to me the idea of speed
reading a good novel sounds about as appealing as speed drinking a fine wine.

~~~
TheRealSteel
"speed drinking a fine wine"

You may be underestimating how many people do this as well :P

Personally, I would love anything that got me thru books faster. I've been
reading A Scanner Darkly for months. Admittedly it's more of a problem of
concentration than reading speed, but I do understand the appeal of reading
quickly. You'll simply get thru more books.

That being said - I don't understand people who listen to sped up podcasts, as
I hate burning thru my favourites before a new episode is out. So I think it's
just down to personal preference.

~~~
jaredklewis
Right, I understand the bit about getting through more books, but why? There
are an unreadable number of mind-blowingly brilliant novels out there and
basically no reason to read any them except to enjoy oneself.

If I am enjoying a book, I can’t imagine having the urge to finish it faster.
Or slower. What could possibly be gained?

Edit: also, just some unsolicited thoughts on your struggle to complete a
Scanner Darkly. IIRC, A Scanner Darkly is a fairly average length novel,
meaning you might expect to finish it in ~10 hours of reading. My personal
experience is that it's best to enjoy a novel within a relatively limited time
frame (say a couple of weeks) so that the various characters and plot lines
stay fresh in your head.

If I were in your situation, I would probably question whether:

A) If I actually like the book. If you are even a quarter of the way through a
book and don't like it, nothing wrong with picking up something else. As I
mention above, books are for enjoyment. If you don't enjoy it, what's the
point?

B) If I perhaps don't have time to read a novel now. Sure, nothing wrong with
starting a movie, pausing for dinner and then finishing it afterwards. But
there are limits. You wouldn't want to split a 2 hour film into a dozen ten-
minute segments. And I would argue, wouldn't you want to split a 10 hour novel
into a 60 ten-minute segments either. Just not a good reading experience.
Nothing wrong with putting the book on hold and coming back in a few weeks
once your schedule has calmed a little.

------
keiferski
_“As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but
well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it
will be of far less value to you than a much smaller amount if you have not
thought it over for yourself; because only through ordering what you know by
comparing every truth with every other truth can you take complete possession
of your knowledge and get it into your power.”_

\- Arthur Schopenhauer (1851)

But I wanted to make an additional point myself, which is: the key part of
reading for information is not consumption, but rather memory. It doesn't
matter how many books you read if you only remember a small percentage of each
one. Like any educated person, I've read thousands of books in my lifetime.
And yet I could probably only name the details of a few dozen. This strikes me
as horribly inefficient.

As such, I've been trying to incorporate Spaced Repetition (with Anki) into
the reading process itself. My initial idea is to do two things:

\- add specific lines and information into Anki. E.g. quotes, statistics, and
so on.

\- write a brief one-paragraph summary of each chapter or, in shorter books,
each page. Then add this summary to Anki.

So far, I've been able to recall far more information about the books I've
read, even if it takes 5-10x times longer to read them. Overall, I'd consider
that an effective sacrifice.

~~~
war1025
Just because you can only remember specific parts of a few books, doesn't mean
the information from those books hasn't been incorporated into your mental
model of the world.

~~~
keiferski
Of course, but I'm referring more to comprehensive works in which the details
matter, rather than a "one big idea explained in 200 pages" book.

~~~
war1025
For sure. I was hoping my comment didn't come across the wrong way. I think
there is definitely value in remembering what / where you read something.

------
scottlocklin
I'm pretty sure her conclusions are baloney. She admits the main speedreading
takeaway: visual understanding is much faster than subvocalized reading.

As for the other statements; of course you can't read complex or deep text by
glancing at it and taking it in in one line or paragraph. Imagine trying to
learn topology or something that way; you will fail. You have to slow down to
the point you're working problems on the side in a notebook. Same thing for
learning a new language; looking at the grammar table won't help: I have to
internalize it by repetition. Deeply aesthetic poetry; you have to vocalize
it, or it doesn't even begin to make sense. Similarly, complex fiction you
have to slow down to figure out what is going on, sometimes rereading passages
or whole chapters. Sometimes this also needs to be vocalized (Modernist types
like Joyce & Pound).

But for stuffing clearly written briefing type texts, speed reading is the
absolute shizznizzlenuts. That's why Kennedy found it useful; that's pretty
much what the man read all day at work. Low end college coursework also fit
into this category of reading material. Lots of business stuff also does. Her
neuroscience balognia about saccades may be true to some extent, but you can
skip over or infer most simple sentences in the exact same way that Gmail and
Outlook completes your sentences via semi-markov models.

Again: it works for simple texts. It also probably works better if you're
smarter and a better reader in general, and so taking a bunch of average
people and drawing conclusions from their results is pretty useless.

~~~
wtetzner
I imagine it would also be helpful to quickly determine if something is worth
taking more time to read carefully. Or maybe to get a quick overview of the
contents of something before you really dig into it.

------
Yajirobe
'I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It's
about Russia.'

------
0xCMP
There is a neat book I picked up in Highschool called _The Manual: The
Ultimate Study Method_.

It was cool. It advocated multiple forms of meditation for concentration
training so you could speed read a book. Using your increased concentration,
which was mentioned as super important, you'd do pass 1 of 3 speed reading
through using the Visual Method mentioned. Meditation and clearing your head
were mentioned specifically to reduce regressing, but it was okay to regress.
Pass 2 would involve creating an outline of all the topics and information.
Pass 3 would be creating a visual mind map of the information.

Point for me was that speed reading helps only to filter or get a first pass
on something, but I doubt anything really complicated can be understood by
simply speed reading it. Or even simply reading it once.

~~~
gdubs
Interesting you mention concentration and meditation. It seems, for a lot of
people at least, that the highest leverage thing is alleviating distraction;
self-interruption and fatigue.

~~~
FooHentai
There's a major extra aspect to the approach mentioned here; via multiple
passes you aren't limited to the progressive/incremental mental image that a
single pass, no matter how well-focused, would provide.

------
beobab
I do the visual reading thing that is mentioned in the article. I get a sort
of "movie in my head" when I'm reading, and often become unaware of the words
on the page. Sometimes I have to pause to let the action catch up to where I
am on the page, and sometimes I'll be focused on one character in a story and
miss incidental things that happen in the book to another character.

I can read just under a couple of pages of a standard paperback in about a
minute. It's a pleasant way to spend a few hours.

I don't read non-fiction like that, though. It just doesn't happen, and I
don't know how to make it happen.

~~~
winchling
_> I get a sort of "movie in my head" when I'm reading_

I think this means you're doing it right! In Polanyian terms, your _subsidiary
awareness_ is on the particulars of the typography and the words allowing your
_focal awareness_ to be on the fun bit, i.e. on the meaning.

This ability, I think, depends just as much on how interesting and enjoyable
the content is as it depends on your reading skill.

For more Michael Polanyi I recommend this superb (audio, non-fictional)
lecture:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVx8KhsZYPw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVx8KhsZYPw)

 _> I don't read non-fiction like that, though. It just doesn't happen, and I
don't know how to make it happen._

This may be because the books are boring. For instance, textbooks. Here the
reading is mainly about _searching_ for the relevant material, so the focal
awareness is on the text itself. However, Feynman's _Hairy Green Ball Method_
seems applicable:

[https://www.e-reading.club/chapter.php/71262/21/Feynman_-
_Su...](https://www.e-reading.club/chapter.php/71262/21/Feynman_-
_Surely_Youre_Joking%2C_Mr._Feynman__Adventures_of_a_Curious_Character.html)

 _I had a scheme, which I still use today when somebody is explaining
something that I’m trying to understand: I keep making up examples. For
instance, the mathematicians would come in with a terrific theorem, and
they’re all excited. As they’re telling me the conditions of the theorem, I
construct something which fits all the conditions. You know, you have a set
(one ball)—disjoint (two halls). Then the balls turn colors, grow hairs, or
whatever, in my head as they put more conditions on. Finally they state the
theorem, which is some dumb thing about the ball which isn’t true for my hairy
green ball thing, so I say, “False!”_

------
droithomme
I'm a slow reader myself. Reading fiction I'm slow. Reading non-fiction I'm
very very very slow. I can type faster than I can read. I can read blog posts
and news articles fairly quickly. I found in college that against other
students using fashionable speed reading techniques I completely beat them
academically. The speed reading didn't pick up on subtle ideas and wasn't able
to capture complex ones.

I have a relative who is a natural speed reader and who has perfect recall. I
realize this is a controversial claim as perfect recall (sometimes called
photographic memory) is a myth. It's not a myth more likely extremely rare. I
could give her a book around 300 pages she had never seen before. She would
read it in about 15 minutes. I then could ask questions about the book and she
would answer by exactly quoting sections and citing the page number. So... was
this helpful? Well she never went to college or did anything with her life. It
was just a weird thing she could do naturally which she didn't exploit except
to read and remember precisely absolutely vast numbers of books.

------
decebalus1
It depends on the book, really. There are some very deep books which one
should totally take the time to read slowly, comprehend the ideas and retain
them to some extent. But lately I've been noticing that the majority of recent
non-fiction books are basically filler added around an idea which could have
better been an essay. I would definitely speed-read those. My latest example
would be [https://www.amazon.com/Conspiracy-Peter-Gawker-Anatomy-
Intri...](https://www.amazon.com/Conspiracy-Peter-Gawker-Anatomy-
Intrigue/dp/0735217645/).

Not to mention the numerous pop-sci books which are a detailed history of
science in disguise. I'm actually abandoning those. I'm tired of reading about
the personality quirks or life stories of Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg,
Schrödinger whenever I pick up a book about quantum mechanics.

Life's too short to invest your time (slow read) in filler material.

------
dredmorbius
High-speed reading is a technique, and as with all techniques, it has its uses
and limitations.

For reading, generally, I strongly recommend Mortimer Adler's classic _How to
Read a Book_ , itself an HN perennial, see
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12209446](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12209446)
(or all:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?q="how%20to%20read%20a%20book"](https://hn.algolia.com/?q="how%20to%20read%20a%20book")).

 _If you 're trying to determine what to read_, or want to _rapidly get an
overview of a book_ , or _are "visually grepping" for specific content_, then
the tricks of speed-reading, _especially_ of chunking, skimming paragraph
ledes, and _not_ vocalising or subvocalising, help.

If you're reading for deep understanding, you'll want to fully absorb the
material (and work through the exercises!), though this can also involve
several passes -- for textbooks or nonfiction, I'll scan the ToC, and then the
chapter (especially for section/subsection titles), then read through in full.

Treating such reading as _an inquiry_ rather than simply as _data transfer_
helps tremendously.

And of course, if you're reading quality literature or poetry, you'll want to
savour the language, words, rhythm, meter, and rhyme. Go slow. You'll
appreciate it all the more.

Reading plays or dialogue-rich content is a particular skill -- try reading
_with different intonation_ or to sort out what possible alternate meanings
might exist. Shakespeare is of course excellent for this, though many other
plays (or film screenplays) are as well. Realise just how much latitude the
actor or director has in translating from _words on the page_ to those uttered
on the stage or screen.

------
gumby
"Speed reading" comes from a functional view of activities: You eat in order
to power your body, you read in order to acquire that all-important
"information", you go to school to acquire "job skills".

Which is true but so what? They are elements of life; sometimes you grab a
quick bite on the go and sometimes you sit down to a multi-hour meal, yet both
are "eating". Likewise with reading.

------
MikeSchurman
Every time something like this comes up, I'm reminded of something Alan Kay
mentioned, which I can't find but I'll try and remember: "I realized at an
early age that to prevent needing to read a book more than once, I should read
in a way so I remember what I've read". I'm very curious what method he came
up with to do this. Being a genius probably helps.

~~~
dredmorbius
Understanding the _structure_ of the book (or realising that it lacks one)
helps tremendously.

See Mortimer Adler's _How to Read a Book_ for an excellent guide. Most of the
techniques it describes are ones I've long used -- it's been an excercise
largely in validation, though with a few additional tricks and bits.

------
magicalhippo
Today I had _yet_ another user complain that our program didn't do the right
thing, when in fact it was doing exactly what the user had told it to.

The issue seems to be that while this dialog is crystal clear when you read it
slowly and understand all the words, most users appear to read what they think
it says, and select the dialog option according to that.

It's not a wall of text or anything, it's a medium length sentence on the form
"Select Yes to [...], press No if you want [...]". I ran it past the support
guys and they thought it was clear as well. But apparently it's very easy to
get wrong.

In all cases the users go "oooohhh, that's what it's saying" when they get
told to read it carefully, and after that they select the correct option and
make the program do what they want.

I spent a fair amount of time figuring out the most clear and correct way to
present the choices, but apparently I failed hard... oh well, that dialog is
getting rewritten tomorrow!

~~~
rgovostes
This is one of the parts of Apple's Human Interface Guidelines that I
appreciate the most when I use other operating systems, in particular Windows.

> Give alert buttons succinct, logical titles. The best button titles consist
> of one or two words that describe the result of clicking the button. [...]
> To the extent possible, use verbs and verb phrases that relate directly to
> the alert title and message—for example, View All, Reply, or Ignore. Use OK
> for simple acceptance. Avoid using Yes and No.

Suppose opening a document gives me an alert that says, "This document
contains macros. Macros may contain viruses that could be harmful to your
computer. Do you want to disable macros before opening the file?"

With simple Yes/No buttons, I might hastily jump ahead after reading the first
sentence and think that affirming the dialog means, "Yes, I know it contains
macros."

Or I might hastily jump ahead after reading the second sentence and click,
"No, I'm scared, don't let this malware infect me."

Or I might mistake it for another pop up that happens all the time and also
has Yes/No buttons, and not realize until it's too late that I've accidentally
enabled macros.

Yes, users should read dialogs, but good UI design can help.

[https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-
guideline...](https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-
guidelines/macos/windows-and-views/alerts/)

------
stevenwoo
That web page only loads the first paragraph for me but there is a huge
advantage to being able to read very fast with comprehension for certain
material - the gauntlet of standardized tests American kids go through is much
easier for both verbal and math skills tests (essentially most of them -
because they have to use some words for most problems) and a lot of tests
going through university level because one has time to go through an entire
test once, answer all the questions, and go back and double and triple check
your answers and evaluate multiple choice answers several times. At least when
I took those tests a generation ago, the time allotment is overly generous if
you can read fast. I read slow when reading for pleasure or learning
something.

------
yters
For non fiction, I do best with a quick read to get the overall picture of a
book and its organization and argument, then think about whether there are any
interesting questions to ask of the book, and zoom into those portions to read
more carefully.

------
saagarjha
I vary my reading speed based on the material I'm reading: it's important to
understand that not everything you read is worth 100% of your attention, and
it's not a big deal if you can't recall every detail of the last article that
ended up on Hacker News. As such, I "skim" most of the things I read–what's
important to me is 1. knowing when to slow down (the thing I'm reading is
interesting/complex/the details matter) and 2. keeping enough "metadata" to be
able to find the actual content later if I need it.

~~~
commandlinefan
> can't recall every detail of the last article that ended up on Hacker News

In fact, many commenters take this speed-reading model of hacker news articles
to its logical conclusion.

------
wilsonbright
I have always felt read slow helps you make connections intentionally and
helps in better retention. Slow reading is an intentional choice. But it is a
choice between when to do or not. With so much information around today
through various mediums, speed reading/skimming helps to go through
information quickly to get an understanding if you have to proceed further or
not. I guess we switch between both of these modes time to time based on how
important the information we are taking in.

------
diehunde
It would be better to teach non-fiction writers about concise writing so we
don't have to read 300 pages when they could deliver the same info in 100
pages or less.

------
kiba
If I want to truly understand something and retain information, I slow down my
reading to a crawl and start taking notes on index cards.

I then later transfer those index cards into notes on my computer into
equivalent "cards", which let me edit or rework the information on the fly.

Sometime, I transfer some of the information into Anki SRS, requiring yet
another rework into flash cards, and permanently anchoring the information
into my brain.

------
kasey_junk
I speed read ‘naturally’ particularly I’ve been told that I ‘chunk’ & ‘visual
read’. I have to take the reading experts word for it as to me it’s just
reading.

All told I’d say it’s neither positive or negative. I’ve had to teach myself
techniques to slow down especially on technical material but I can get through
business style reading extremely fast. Different texts and contexts require
different techniques.

------
greyfox
i went to school with many kids in what were called "k-level" courses (high
school courses in early grades before courses with dual credit were offered)

I often noticed how they could read MUCH faster than i could, and appeared to
be actually retaining the information.

Me personally, if i read too fast im literally just "seeing" the words on the
paper pass my eyes. I could read a sentence very fast, out loud, and not
understand it.

I've always been a slow reader. My sister took speed reading "lessons"(?) when
we were younger, apparently she had a problem with reading so my parents felt
the need to enroll her in some type of weekend (speed?) reading program that
was held at a hotel conference center in a trendy area of our city... it was
probably snake oil because i only recall her going once or twice then never
returning (perhaps the program was only a day or two long? even worse? how do
you really learn anything?)

And I had her share the speed reading techniques with me in an attempt to
learn to read faster myself but never could do so.

I dont think that speed reading is all that its cracked up to be.

------
aidenn0
For whatever reason, I do auditory reading at a much faster pace than is
usually listed in articles like this (over 500WPM for typical paperback
fiction; technical content is limited by my thinking, not how fast I can read
the words. The same is true for more poetic narratives). Anyone know of any
studies on that?

------
Jach
Speed reading, or not subvocalizing, is analogous to touch typing, or not
looking at the keyboard. Both are needed for peak WPM metrics, but particular
WPM isn't that relevant. Relevant metric is "faster". Even for things that
'need time', it'll take less time with those skills.

------
dr_dshiv
Google scholar search term. Find highly cited paper with title that resonates.
Read abstract. If interesting, load, look at pictures and captions.
Discussion. Scroll between intro and conclusion. Lit review & results. At
somepoint, check cites or citations. Ad infinitum.

Speed reading.

------
durpleDrank
Read the first sentence of a paragraph, and the last. You'd be surprised how
much crap goes in the middle. Not so great for important stuff, but if you
need to zip through something quick it's a good trick.

~~~
ASalazarMX
> Read [..] trick.

Oh, it works with single words too!

------
gnicholas
Using less-legible fonts leads to slower reading, but better recall. [1].
There's clearly a case for slow reading if comprehension and/or recall are
primary goals.

Generally speaking, there's a continuum of activities from glancing to
skimming to reading to 'close reading' (a term of art in education). It's not
surprising that for most people, there is a tradeoff between speed and
comprehension/recall.

EDIT: are the downvotes for the first paragraph or the second? Comments would
be more helpful!

1: [https://hbr.org/2012/03/hard-to-read-fonts-promote-better-
re...](https://hbr.org/2012/03/hard-to-read-fonts-promote-better-recall)

------
chiefalchemist
Regardless of how fast (or not) you read:

Understanding > Knowledge

Effective =/= Efficient

Etc.

------
bwb
I've read really fast since I was a kid, I usually read 100 to 150 books a
year, but I def read non-fiction a lot slower as its a dif reading exp.

------
calhoun137
Whew this is a long article, does anyone have the tl;dr?

