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I Was Wrong About Speed Reading (2015)

274 points by prostoalex 7y ago

dang 7y ago
A thread from 2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12023791 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12023791
rmason 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    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 7y ago
      To support your point: I read the first sentence of your comment, then scrolled further down to start reading other comments! hahah ;)
      - toxik 7y ago
        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.
    - roel_v 7y ago
      Is it possible to reverse this without giving up phones completely? I can't even sit through a 1.5h movie any more :/
      - emodendroket 7y ago
        Buying a Kindle made me read way more.
        pixelrevision 7y ago
        I’ll second this. If you are struggling to stick with a novel then get some short stories to remind your brain why you used to like to read.
        fredoliveira 7y ago
        Highly recommend Ted Chiang's Exhalation for folks who are down for short (and very good) sci-fi. (I'm not affiliated in any way - just really liked the book)
- pcurve 7y ago
  speed reading ruined my reading comprehension and I never recovered from it. :-/
  - kingludite 7y ago
    I just read out loud, louder if it doesn't work.
- padiyar83 7y ago
  This article feels like a vindication of sorts, for my own speed reading experience. Years ago, I read a book on speed reading, and just as we think everything that is in a book must be written by an expert, starting adopting the techniques without second guessing it. Blamed myself for not being smart enough for loosing comprehension when these techniques have obviously worked for everyone else. Reading this is somewhat liberating.
  - sukilot 7y ago
    How much time did you spend reading the book?
- lordnacho 7y ago
  I think the value of speed reading is more when you're reading about some familiar topic and you want to decide whether there's anything new in front of you. For instance you may want to skip the rehash of some intro material. Works better for some subjects than others.
FartyMcFarter 7y ago
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...
lhurtig 7y ago
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.
scarejunba 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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.
pmoriarty 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    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.
- k__ 7y ago
  Same here. I often start with 1.5x and go up to 2x or 3x after a few minutes. It's extremely important for online courses that would normally take weeks to watch and it starts feeling normal so quickly. When I go back to 1x it feels like people talk in slow-motion. But I think quizzes are important in that context, otherwise the new knowledge won't solidify. I'm always impressed of how much of my duolingo Spanish skills are still present, even if I didn't use the app for half a year or read any Spanish in that time.
- meekstro 7y ago
  I find this also works great with instructional videos like pluralsight and lynda. It's easier on your working memory and concentration and if you relisten to tricky bits as you are going through you have a much deeper understanding that is more richly connected to your knowledge tree than plodding through at normal speed.
- PhasmaFelis 7y ago
  Suppose it depends on what you're listening to and why, but I mostly listen to podcasts for entertainment, and I don't want to rush entertainment. I have enough trouble finding good stuff as it is.
Reedx 7y ago
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.
- quickthrower2 7y ago
  The best way to speed read is if the writer reduces the number of words required to communicate and educate. Of course this takes extra effort, and is also goes against human perception of value. E.g. if you reduced Tim Ferris's book to a single sheet of A4 you could get the point across, but who's going to pay $20 or so for a sheet of A4? Well some execs might pay $2000 - but you won't sell millions of copies like that. Anyway... To sum it up that book: To work fewer hours per week in the long term, set up a business, and figure out how to automate, speed up and delegate as much of the work as possible. Imagine a few cool inspiration inducing anecdotes alluding to a cool lifestyle. Read elsewhere for the bit about how to set up a successful business in the first place, or the details of how to automate and delegate effectively. There you go - 200 or so pages you don't need to read :-)
  - Reedx 7y ago
    That's something I've been wondering about. How many non-fiction books could be reduced by 90% and still communicate 90% of the ideas? I feel like we're losing a lot of time and potential due to filler pages.
    - Swizec 7y ago
      Business books (most good writing actually) are frontloaded. The first paragraph tells you the gist, the first page the important ideas, the first chapter most of what the book has to offer. The rest is there to go into detail and support that first chapter with facts arguments and anecdotes. But here’s the kicker: you often won’t fully grok the first chapter if you don’t read the rest. (or don’t already know it from other sources)
    - baddox 7y ago
      It’s interesting that you specify non-fiction, presumably since part of the point of reading fiction is the process of reading itself rather than simply the plot that unfolds. But of course, that’s also true of non-fiction books. Many people probably enjoy the process of reading Tim Ferris’ books.
SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
> 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!
Terretta 7y ago
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
- GolDDranks 7y ago
  I, as a non-native English speaker who mainly interface English through written language and rarely via spoken language, find this fascinating. I am able to read articles and blog posts in English rapidly and with full comprehension, but I'm totally NOT able to speak out loud most of the words. I find that it's mostly through visual medium the words "come" to me.
  - Terr_ 7y ago
    I wonder if there's anyone out there who can read a non-alphabetic language (e.g. Chinese) but doesn't even know how to pronounce what they're reading. Maybe an experiment could involve a fictional ideogram language, and compare peoples subvocalizing (or lack thereof) versus their native one.
    - StavrosK 7y ago
      Why not? I didn't know how to pronounce many of the words when learning English, yet I knew what they meant. I did make up my own pronunciation, if that's what you mean.
K0SM0S 7y ago
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.
zelly 7y ago
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).
bigpumpkin 7y ago
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.
meekstro 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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.
enz 7y ago
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 7y ago
  Wouldn't a mathematical proof not (only) written with mathematical symbols be much harder to read?
  - tsimionescu 7y ago
    Why would replacing (some) symbols with words make the text harder to read?
    - zhte415 7y ago
      Because of ambiguity. And therefore conciseness.
- true_religion 7y ago
  That is odd to me because I can read French fairly fluently, but I can’t pronounce the words. I took a summer course a few decades ago, and kept up with the literature portion as that could be practiced alone, but never found anyone to practice speaking with.
Syzygies 7y ago
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.
wbl 7y ago
Hyperlexia is real and quite nice. Sadly nothing you can do to develop it.
ncmncm 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    Skimming is just the extremum of speed-reading. I promise I read your comment at 900 wpm with no loss of comprehension.
furyofantares 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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.
dlkf 7y ago
"I Was wrong About Snake Oil"
droithomme 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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.
tzury 7y ago
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 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    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).
b0rsuk 7y ago
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.
- texasbigdata 7y ago
  Simpler test. Stop doing it and you will notice a meaningful increase. Perhaps that's not a perfectly controlled experiment, but at least enjoy the benefits! :)
- mkl 7y ago
  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).
jl2718 7y ago
Speed reading works for low-information content. For instance, try reading that article aloud to your kids. Nobody will ask you to slow down.
Discombulator 7y ago
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.
znpy 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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.
- edanm 7y ago
  > So reading half a page of a math book at the time would have been completely useless (I was in university at the time). There's a world of difference between mathematics textbooks and regular reading.
FooHentai 7y ago
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.
- texasbigdata 7y ago
  I tested this at age 18 with comprehension tests. The figures escape me but at a pace that was sustainable for no more than 45 minutes, if I recall like 900 words a minute, my comprehension dipped down all the may to mid 70%. But that was roughly 2.5x the pace you would read a textbook at. Maybe more. Worth it? I don't know. But if its meaningless calories, sometimes just finishing helps. There is a ton of day to day "reading" in the form of emails and whatever you do on a computer. For everything else its context dependent.
- dr_dshiv 7y ago
  I've always been a fast reader, but I totally resonate with the slow pace of cognition. My wife thinks at a much faster pace than I -- but slow thinking can often get things done faster! (E.g., if reflection helps improve the task approach). I think reading fast is a really helpful skill though. It requires inhibition (knowing what words to skip) and selection (what words capture the attention) and some specialized knowledge of things like the typical structure of scientific papers.
b0rsuk 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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
flippyhead 7y ago
I sped-read this article so I'm _pretty_ sure it just confirmed what I already think: speed reading works!!
mikece 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    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.
- twic 7y ago
  If you can listen to Busta Rhymes, Aesop Rock, even Eminem, and make sense of what they're saying, you can listen to an audiobook at 1.5x speed.
andai 7y ago
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! :)
viburnum 7y ago
When I don’t subvocalize my brain basically turns off and I stop understanding what I’m reading.
EncryptEntropy 7y ago
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.
m3kw9 7y ago
I could do 20,000 wpm after reading something the first time in 200wpm.
celticmusic 7y ago
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.
no-s 7y ago
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.
steve1977 7y ago
Usually, in reaching "genius levels" of knowledge and understanding, textual input is not the bottleneck. So, don't bother with Speed Reading.
LargoLasskhyfv 7y ago
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
randomsearch 7y ago
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.
dredmorbius 7y ago
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-August/019310.html https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2010-Aug..., 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#link2H_4_0004 https://www.gutenberg.org/files/11945/11945-h/11945-h.htm#li... 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....

274 points by prostoalex 7y ago

dang 7y ago

A thread from 2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12023791 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12023791

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 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    To support your point: I read the first sentence of your comment, then scrolled further down to start reading other comments! hahah ;)
    - toxik 7y ago
      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.
  - roel_v 7y ago
    Is it possible to reverse this without giving up phones completely? I can't even sit through a 1.5h movie any more :/
    - emodendroket 7y ago
      Buying a Kindle made me read way more.
      - pixelrevision 7y ago
        I’ll second this. If you are struggling to stick with a novel then get some short stories to remind your brain why you used to like to read.
        fredoliveira 7y ago
        Highly recommend Ted Chiang's Exhalation for folks who are down for short (and very good) sci-fi. (I'm not affiliated in any way - just really liked the book)
pcurve 7y ago
speed reading ruined my reading comprehension and I never recovered from it. :-/
- kingludite 7y ago
  I just read out loud, louder if it doesn't work.
padiyar83 7y ago
This article feels like a vindication of sorts, for my own speed reading experience. Years ago, I read a book on speed reading, and just as we think everything that is in a book must be written by an expert, starting adopting the techniques without second guessing it. Blamed myself for not being smart enough for loosing comprehension when these techniques have obviously worked for everyone else. Reading this is somewhat liberating.
- sukilot 7y ago
  How much time did you spend reading the book?
lordnacho 7y ago
I think the value of speed reading is more when you're reading about some familiar topic and you want to decide whether there's anything new in front of you. For instance you may want to skip the rehash of some intro material. Works better for some subjects than others.

FartyMcFarter 7y ago

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...

lhurtig 7y ago

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.

scarejunba 7y ago

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 7y ago
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.

pmoriarty 7y ago

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 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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.
k__ 7y ago
Same here. I often start with 1.5x and go up to 2x or 3x after a few minutes. It's extremely important for online courses that would normally take weeks to watch and it starts feeling normal so quickly. When I go back to 1x it feels like people talk in slow-motion. But I think quizzes are important in that context, otherwise the new knowledge won't solidify. I'm always impressed of how much of my duolingo Spanish skills are still present, even if I didn't use the app for half a year or read any Spanish in that time.
meekstro 7y ago
I find this also works great with instructional videos like pluralsight and lynda. It's easier on your working memory and concentration and if you relisten to tricky bits as you are going through you have a much deeper understanding that is more richly connected to your knowledge tree than plodding through at normal speed.
PhasmaFelis 7y ago
Suppose it depends on what you're listening to and why, but I mostly listen to podcasts for entertainment, and I don't want to rush entertainment. I have enough trouble finding good stuff as it is.

Reedx 7y ago

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.

quickthrower2 7y ago
The best way to speed read is if the writer reduces the number of words required to communicate and educate. Of course this takes extra effort, and is also goes against human perception of value. E.g. if you reduced Tim Ferris's book to a single sheet of A4 you could get the point across, but who's going to pay $20 or so for a sheet of A4? Well some execs might pay $2000 - but you won't sell millions of copies like that. Anyway... To sum it up that book: To work fewer hours per week in the long term, set up a business, and figure out how to automate, speed up and delegate as much of the work as possible. Imagine a few cool inspiration inducing anecdotes alluding to a cool lifestyle. Read elsewhere for the bit about how to set up a successful business in the first place, or the details of how to automate and delegate effectively. There you go - 200 or so pages you don't need to read :-)
- Reedx 7y ago
  That's something I've been wondering about. How many non-fiction books could be reduced by 90% and still communicate 90% of the ideas? I feel like we're losing a lot of time and potential due to filler pages.
  - Swizec 7y ago
    Business books (most good writing actually) are frontloaded. The first paragraph tells you the gist, the first page the important ideas, the first chapter most of what the book has to offer. The rest is there to go into detail and support that first chapter with facts arguments and anecdotes. But here’s the kicker: you often won’t fully grok the first chapter if you don’t read the rest. (or don’t already know it from other sources)
  - baddox 7y ago
    It’s interesting that you specify non-fiction, presumably since part of the point of reading fiction is the process of reading itself rather than simply the plot that unfolds. But of course, that’s also true of non-fiction books. Many people probably enjoy the process of reading Tim Ferris’ books.

SlowRobotAhead 7y ago

> 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!

Terretta 7y ago

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

GolDDranks 7y ago
I, as a non-native English speaker who mainly interface English through written language and rarely via spoken language, find this fascinating. I am able to read articles and blog posts in English rapidly and with full comprehension, but I'm totally NOT able to speak out loud most of the words. I find that it's mostly through visual medium the words "come" to me.
- Terr_ 7y ago
  I wonder if there's anyone out there who can read a non-alphabetic language (e.g. Chinese) but doesn't even know how to pronounce what they're reading. Maybe an experiment could involve a fictional ideogram language, and compare peoples subvocalizing (or lack thereof) versus their native one.
  - StavrosK 7y ago
    Why not? I didn't know how to pronounce many of the words when learning English, yet I knew what they meant. I did make up my own pronunciation, if that's what you mean.

K0SM0S 7y ago

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.

zelly 7y ago

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).

bigpumpkin 7y ago

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.

meekstro 7y ago

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 7y ago
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.

enz 7y ago

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 7y ago
Wouldn't a mathematical proof not (only) written with mathematical symbols be much harder to read?
- tsimionescu 7y ago
  Why would replacing (some) symbols with words make the text harder to read?
  - zhte415 7y ago
    Because of ambiguity. And therefore conciseness.
true_religion 7y ago
That is odd to me because I can read French fairly fluently, but I can’t pronounce the words. I took a summer course a few decades ago, and kept up with the literature portion as that could be practiced alone, but never found anyone to practice speaking with.

Syzygies 7y ago

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.

wbl 7y ago

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

ncmncm 7y ago

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 7y ago
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 7y ago
  Skimming is just the extremum of speed-reading. I promise I read your comment at 900 wpm with no loss of comprehension.

furyofantares 7y ago

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 7y ago
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.

dlkf 7y ago

"I Was wrong About Snake Oil"

droithomme 7y ago

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 7y ago
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.

tzury 7y ago

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 7y ago

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 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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).

b0rsuk 7y ago

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.

texasbigdata 7y ago
Simpler test. Stop doing it and you will notice a meaningful increase. Perhaps that's not a perfectly controlled experiment, but at least enjoy the benefits! :)
mkl 7y ago
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).

jl2718 7y ago

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

Discombulator 7y ago

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.

znpy 7y ago

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 7y ago
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.
edanm 7y ago
> So reading half a page of a math book at the time would have been completely useless (I was in university at the time). There's a world of difference between mathematics textbooks and regular reading.

FooHentai 7y ago

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.

texasbigdata 7y ago
I tested this at age 18 with comprehension tests. The figures escape me but at a pace that was sustainable for no more than 45 minutes, if I recall like 900 words a minute, my comprehension dipped down all the may to mid 70%. But that was roughly 2.5x the pace you would read a textbook at. Maybe more. Worth it? I don't know. But if its meaningless calories, sometimes just finishing helps. There is a ton of day to day "reading" in the form of emails and whatever you do on a computer. For everything else its context dependent.
dr_dshiv 7y ago
I've always been a fast reader, but I totally resonate with the slow pace of cognition. My wife thinks at a much faster pace than I -- but slow thinking can often get things done faster! (E.g., if reflection helps improve the task approach). I think reading fast is a really helpful skill though. It requires inhibition (knowing what words to skip) and selection (what words capture the attention) and some specialized knowledge of things like the typical structure of scientific papers.

b0rsuk 7y ago

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 7y ago
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

flippyhead 7y ago

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

mikece 7y ago

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 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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.
twic 7y ago
If you can listen to Busta Rhymes, Aesop Rock, even Eminem, and make sense of what they're saying, you can listen to an audiobook at 1.5x speed.

andai 7y ago

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! :)

viburnum 7y ago

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

EncryptEntropy 7y ago

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.

m3kw9 7y ago

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

celticmusic 7y ago

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.

no-s 7y ago

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.

steve1977 7y ago

Usually, in reaching "genius levels" of knowledge and understanding, textual input is not the bottleneck. So, don't bother with Speed Reading.

LargoLasskhyfv 7y ago

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

randomsearch 7y ago

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.

dredmorbius 7y ago

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-August/019310.html https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2010-Aug..., 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#link2H_4_0004 https://www.gutenberg.org/files/11945/11945-h/11945-h.htm#li... 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....