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The speed reading fallacy: the case for slow reading

140 points by anthilemoon 7y ago

Yajirobe 7y ago
'I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It's about Russia.'
kiba 7y ago
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 7y ago
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 7y ago
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.
beobab 7y ago
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 7y ago
  >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_-_Surely_Youre_Joking%2C_Mr._Feynman__Adventures_of_a_Curious_Character.html https://www.e-reading.club/chapter.php/71262/21/Feynman_-_Su... 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!”
yters 7y ago
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.
keiferski 7y ago
“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 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    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 7y ago
      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.
- 7y ago
bwb 7y ago
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.
0xCMP 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    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.
MikeSchurman 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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.
decebalus1 7y ago
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-Intrigue/dp/0735217645/ https://www.amazon.com/Conspiracy-Peter-Gawker-Anatomy-Intri.... 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.
gumby 7y ago
"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.
todd8 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    > 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 7y ago
      "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.
scottlocklin 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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.
saagarjha 7y ago
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 7y ago
  > 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.
durpleDrank 7y ago
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 7y ago
  > Read [..] trick. Oh, it works with single words too!
gnicholas 7y ago
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-recall https://hbr.org/2012/03/hard-to-read-fonts-promote-better-re...
diehunde 7y ago
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.
dredmorbius 7y ago
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.
droithomme 7y ago
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.
Jach 7y ago
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.
wilsonbright 7y ago
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.
stevenwoo 7y ago
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.
dr_dshiv 7y ago
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.
chiefalchemist 7y ago
Regardless of how fast (or not) you read: Understanding > Knowledge Effective =/= Efficient Etc.
calhoun137 7y ago
Whew this is a long article, does anyone have the tl;dr?
magicalhippo 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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-guidelines/macos/windows-and-views/alerts/ https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...
aidenn0 7y ago
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?

140 points by anthilemoon 7y ago

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

kiba 7y ago

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 7y ago

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 7y ago

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.

beobab 7y ago

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 7y ago
>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_-_Surely_Youre_Joking%2C_Mr._Feynman__Adventures_of_a_Curious_Character.html https://www.e-reading.club/chapter.php/71262/21/Feynman_-_Su... 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!”

yters 7y ago

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.

keiferski 7y ago

“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 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    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.
7y ago

bwb 7y ago

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.

0xCMP 7y ago

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 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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.

MikeSchurman 7y ago

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 7y ago
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.

decebalus1 7y ago

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-Intrigue/dp/0735217645/ https://www.amazon.com/Conspiracy-Peter-Gawker-Anatomy-Intri.... 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.

gumby 7y ago

"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.

todd8 7y ago

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 7y ago
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 7y ago
  > 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 7y ago
    "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.

scottlocklin 7y ago

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 7y ago
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.

saagarjha 7y ago

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 7y ago
> 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.

durpleDrank 7y ago

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 7y ago
> Read [..] trick. Oh, it works with single words too!

gnicholas 7y ago

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-recall https://hbr.org/2012/03/hard-to-read-fonts-promote-better-re...

diehunde 7y ago

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.

dredmorbius 7y ago

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.

droithomme 7y ago

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.

Jach 7y ago

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.

wilsonbright 7y ago

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.

stevenwoo 7y ago

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.

dr_dshiv 7y ago

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.

chiefalchemist 7y ago

Regardless of how fast (or not) you read: Understanding > Knowledge Effective =/= Efficient Etc.

calhoun137 7y ago

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

magicalhippo 7y ago

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 7y ago
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-guidelines/macos/windows-and-views/alerts/ https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...

aidenn0 7y ago

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?