The course I took promised both, so the problems the article has with speed reading courses are completely fair IMO. They're ridiculous and on par with claimin

The course I took promised both, so the problems the article has with speed reading courses are completely fair IMO. They're ridiculous and on par with claiming a pill will make you lose hundreds of pounds without any effort or work. I've way more than doubled my reading speed from when I took a course 18 years ago. My retention is dramatically higher, as well. The main reason for the increased retention, however, had less to do with the course than a change in the way I consume information from books. If the technical book is worth reading, I read it at least twice. "Read" includes skimming/scanning techniques that I've gotten very good at over 18 years. Thinking "well, I can read 90% faster with these techniques" will result in retention that is very low if you change nothing else. The first read is rapid and haphazard (sometimes just to figure out if it's worth using the book as a source of information). The second read will be honed for specific information (and third and fourth). That serves two points in favor of retention. By being able to get through a massive text in a weekend with multiple reads (versus a single read over a few weeks), that information hasn't become foggy from multiple long breaks/distractions--it's fresh. My second read is cover-to-cover, but focused with note-taking and doing exercises. Subsequent reads are surgically focused on areas where I am weak and are done more slowly. Before, my learning was single-pass (with some section/chapter review). Because of the reduced time/effort it takes me read, I can do so in a multi-pass manner with careful focus on learning the material rather than on the act of reading.