

Ask HN: How do I improve my reading speed? - vinutheraj

The more you can read, the better.<p>I was currently reading Linus Torvalds' blog, where he mentions he has a reading speed of 100-150 pages/hour. That sounds awfully fast for me.<p>How fast do you guys read ? Any good techniques to increase one's reading speed ?
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Zev
You know that inner voice you have when reading, that mentally speaks what
your eyes are reading? Tell it to shut up.

When I read, at most, I'll say the first two words of a sentence every two to
three sentences in my mind, before reading turns into more of an absorption of
whats on the page. Obvious exceptions being when I'm reading something like
Infinite Jest or Finnigans Wake (which sits unfinished on a table at home).
But those books are _difficult_.

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bluemetal
I find cutting off sub-vocalizing does not help at all, instead it totally
messes with how much I comprehend or remember the material I'm reading.
Instead I make that little voice in my head go as fast as I can, and it works.

Try practicing talking as fast as you can to a friend, like comically fast -
but without making mistakes or abbreviating anything. I used to do this with
my sister when I was a little kid all the time, and I have a pretty decent
reading speed now. (Can easily finish something like one of the biggest Harry
Potter books on a slow Sunday)

As always, heavily technical material takes longer to read. But something like
a larger HN discussion thread I can comfortably get through in a couple of
minutes. Goodluck!

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trouble
If I'm reading fiction or something that's not too heavy, I tend to read at
800 - 1200wpm. Anything technical or with oddly shaped sentences/paragraphs
slows me down to 600 - 800wpm. I'm not sure how many pages/hour that is, but I
can finish off a 400 page novel in a couple of hours if I'm not distracted or
interrupted.

I can only suggest what techniques work for me; I never intended to turn into
a speed reader and can't recall perfectly the process of becoming one (I was
mad about books as a kid/teenager and read novels very regularly from about
the age of seven). But anyway, I don't subvocalise the words as I read,
although I just realised I do as I write lol. I also ignore all the little
words, like conjunctions and articles. My brain just seems to skip over them
and focus on the nouns and verbs. Depending on the length of the paragraph
(this doesn't work if it's huge), I look at the block of words and take in the
order of nouns and verbs to 'see' the information being presented. That is, I
don't 'read' left-to-write; it's more like observing a picture.

Also, I tend to subconsciously force myself to maintain/improve my reading
speed quite frequently, by being aware of how long I'm spending on a book or
article and setting a deadline for when I want to be finished then speeding up
to make sure I meet it. This is a result of me not really being able to
justify the time I spend reading books and articles 'for fun' instead of
studying or working.

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kostko
Here are a couple of things I've tried that work:

-Try using a pen or your finger to guide your eyes through the words in a line with a uniform speed. This will prevent your eyes to slow down at certain words.

-Try using a "L" shaped piece of paper to guide you through the words, and to prevent the previous word to be shown. This will prevent the unconscious backtracking of the eyes.

-Stop pronouncing the words your read in your mind. Try keeping a 'hmmmm' voice in your head to prevent vocalization.

While I found these techniques useful, I do not use them while reading the
things I enjoy. I use them usualy just to skim over articles and comments to
get to the important parts, and to avoid the bulk.

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fbcocq
I can finish a 500 page book in about 4-8 hours. Building the scenes in my
head is much more of a bottleneck than the actual mechanics of reading.
Complicated scenes, e.g. The Pillars of the Earth, which is heavy on
architectural terminology I'm not familiar with, and a huge amount of
characters, e.g. Good Omens, slow me down considerably.

Also, being within earshot of people having a conversation slows my reading
down to a grinding halt so my technique to read faster, outside of reading
more, is basically finding a quiet place.

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jolan
I took a reading class in high school. The concept is to read 3-5 words at a
time and process the current block while moving onto the next block.

The biggest problem is information retention/comprehension losses though. I
believe in my program they aimed for 70% retention or better on minor details
and 100% on major ones.

It takes practice to develop but it's very useful when using search engines
and whatnot. I tend to not use it when pleasure reading.

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makecheck
I actually think reading speed has a lot more to do with how things are
written, than any reading skill.

For example, when I write code, I try to arrange things in such a way that my
eye won't have to move much horizontally. I always put function names at the
left margin, with return types above them, so that they're all "scannable"
(because they are always in the same general place, my eye doesn't have to
guess).

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zasz
I read about that quickly if it's fiction, or if the concepts in the text I'm
reading aren't that difficult. My theory on how I got to that point is just
that I used to read a shit ton of books all the time. One happy summer, I
polished off a book every single day.

So my advice is--just read more, a lot more than however much you are reading
right now.

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damoncali
I've read slowly all my life. Turns out I have some subtle, but fixable vision
problems. Find a competent vision therapist and get an exam - you may find
something.

Of course if you already read quickly, I don't know if you'll find much.

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keefe
there's all sorts of different kinds of reading.

it's not even particularly challenging to scan text at 100-150 pages per hour.
That's about 30s per page, you can do an awful lot in 30s if you set your mind
to it.

I filter things in stages if we're talking about articles/posts. I'll glance
at a rate of something like 10s/page first, sorting out sets of documents that
may be interesting.

Next up, look a little longer, filter out crap, get the basic idea and then
determine what needs to be read for deep content.

Once you are reading for deep content or enjoyment, it's totally dependent on
the material.

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vyrotek
<http://www.spreeder.com> \- Saw this posted here once. It helps you learn to
read faster.

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macuser1234
Push yourself and get into the habit of using it for your online reading
through its bookmarklet. It's been amazing for my reading speed.

