Efficiency of Speedreading

[Almantas]

Hi guys,

Just a quick opinion-check. I regularly come across authors who brag about their ability to read 300 pages of business-related books in 4-5 hours and digest most of the stuff they read about. Not to mention our legendary Thai Lopez who probably finishes a 500 page book on Quantum Mechanics while taking a dump.

I know the reading speed varies from person to person and depends on the knowledge of a topic , but being able to read like 60 pages for 5 hours in a row and absorb like 80% of content seems unbelievable. I prefer analyzing information and not taking everything for granted - otherwise what's the point of reading the book? Just for the sake of reading?

What are your thoughts on speed-reading?

 

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[Michael Clark]

I just speed read your thread intro and only understood half the question. The real question is what kind of person reads a book then brags about how quickly he did it.

 

[Almantas]

I just speed read your thread intro and only understood half the question.

Is my English that bad? I must go back to basics...

 

[Michael Clark]

Is my English that bad? I must go back to basics...

My bad, just trying to make a point. Point is, If I (a normal human being) were to read a everything really quickly and only once I'd not retain much of it and I'd probably miss the whole point.

 

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[devine]

First, speedreading is not beneficial in each and every situation.
If book tempo is at 4 words per second with long pauses, speedreading is counterproductive, as synchronization with the flow of the book may be essential. Claude Hopkins' Scientific Advertising is a good example. Very low-tempo book.
If book is telling a story: speedreading is not beneficial.
If book has a complex structure, with a lot of intersecting concepts (Like MJ's TMF ): speedreading is not beneficial.

But.

Speedreading is essential when you need to read 5000 pages of information and find valuable pieces for you.
Speedreading is essential when you have a couple of books that require cross-reading, when you need to stop with one book and read fragements from the second one, then proceed from where you left the first one.
Speedreading is essential if you need to get familiar with large number of concepts and become really fluent in a certain subject or group of subjects quickly. It cannot be done if you read 1 book per week. Actually, I cannot even consider 1 book per day a speedreading. It's not.

Speedreading is not about "reading it fast", it's about perceiving information more efficiently and on a bigger scale.
You cannot achieve that without speedreading for a variety of reasons.

 

[juan917]

Reading and absorbing information quickly is a skill just like any other skill. And because of the amount of information out there, it's a very important skill. If you practice and develop it, you will get better at it. Here's the site I used to develop my fast reading abilities.

http://www.spreeder.com/

 

[Invictus]

I've tried to pick up speed reading and found that my comprehension dropped drastically. Now, to be fair, I could be doing it incorrectly or I could just require additional practice.

I can however, read quite fast. I tore through 60 pages (including annotations/marginalia) today in about an hour for "Eat That Frog." Although the book is:

1. Simple to read
2. Has short pages

And when I was younger I reread the first Harry Potter over the course of a day. Was quite an achievement since the first time I read it (in first grade) it took several months.




From Tai Lopez's speed reading video, I recall that he reviews the Table of Contents and a few additional things so his speed reading isn't actual reading. It's more that he reviews an outline of something, heavily skims the less important or uninteresting parts, and then slows down a tiny bit for the more heavy sections.

This would be like heavily skimming the Sidewalker and Slowlaner sections of The Millionaire Fastlane because they aren't applicable to you, since you want information about how to be rich, not about what makes other people tick.

That said. I think that scanning does have some benefits. Sometimes you come across an article online that you're unsure about. Give it a quick read, and return to important sections (or the whole thing) if you deem it valuable.

I'm still a bit shaky on if I believe people who say they can read a 500 page book with complete understanding

First, speedreading is not beneficial in each and every situation.
If book tempo is at 4 words per second with long pauses, speedreading is counterproductive, as synchronization with the flow of the book may be essential. Claude Hopkins' Scientific Advertising is a good example. Very low-tempo book.
If book is telling a story: speedreading is not beneficial.
If book has a complex structure, with a lot of intersecting concepts (Like MJ's TMF ): speedreading is not beneficial.

But.

Speedreading is essential when you need to read 5000 pages of information and find valuable pieces for you.
Speedreading is essential when you have a couple of books that require cross-reading, when you need to stop with one book and read fragements from the second one, then proceed from where you left the first one.
Speedreading is essential if you need to get familiar with large number of concepts and become really fluent in a certain subject or group of subjects quickly. It cannot be done if you read 1 book per week. Actually, I cannot even consider 1 book per day a speedreading. It's not.

Speedreading is not about "reading it fast", it's about perceiving information more efficiently and on a bigger scale.
You cannot achieve that without speedreading for a variety of reasons.

If I understand you correctly, it's handy when you're not looking to read for comprehension but for overall? IE: "I need to read this chapter of the textbook, but it isn't as important to know the specific experiments." Essentially just a more effective scanning?

 

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[devine]

If I understand you correctly, it's handy when you're not looking to read for comprehension but for overall? IE: "I need to read this chapter of the textbook, but it isn't as important to know the specific experiments." Essentially just a more effective scanning?

No, speedreading is directly focused on increasing the comprehension. With speedreading you find anchors in text, which connect sentences with each other, giving you a clue of what you read about. People commonly read slow, because they fail to find anchors or don't know they exist. It results in perceiving each phrase, or even each word separately.

Secondly, speedreading requires your brain to be more active. It requires you to pay a lot more attention. It makes not only your reading much more productive, it results in significant increase of your productivity in life in general.

Here's an example of how speedreading is processed with a bit of explanation:

As in this text, there is usually more than one anchor (I highlighted only one), but rarely more than one primary anchor that conveys the main message of the writing. Secondary anchors usually connect contrary parts that emphasize a primary anchor by contrasting with it.

It helps you understand the idea of the writing as a whole and not lose track as long as primary anchor stays the same. Major part of reading fast is to freely orientate in what you read.
Once you know what you read about, phrases become expressions of one single subject.
It's like moving inside your house: you perceive your house as a whole, with different segments of one place. You don't perceive it as a bunch of objects and pathways.
Same goes for reading.

It's a very basic principle that has nothing to do with purely technical aspects of speedreading, but it, alone, can increase reading speed from 200 words per minute to 2000 words per minute effortlessly.

 

[Anon38776]

What are your thoughts on speed-reading?

It doesn't help you learn, as your forgetfulness curve will become steeper with more information to process. It's glorified skimming to me. Speed-reading advice frequently clashes, making it more difficult to learn. There's no research showing obvious benefits to make the difficulty worth it.

Personally, so much information processing would make me anxious and depressed.

It's a very basic principle that has nothing to do with purely technical aspects of speedreading, but it, alone, can increase reading speed from 200 words per minute to 2000 words per minute effortlessly.

Hype.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_reading

The World Championship Speed Reading Competition stresses reading comprehension as critical. The top contestants typically read around 1,000 to 2,000 words per minute with approximately 50% comprehension or above. The world champion is Anne Jones with 4,700 words per minute with 67% comprehension. The 10,000 word/min claimants have yet to reach this level.

https://www.quora.com/Does-speed-reading-really-work-If-so-how

Yes, speed reading works. By training, most people are able to double their reading speed without losing comprehension. 500 words per minute is realistic goal. Beware of anyone promising you the speed of 1000+ words per minute.

 

[devine]

It doesn't help you learn, as your forgetfulness curve will become steeper with more information to process. It's glorified skimming to me. Speed-reading advice frequently clashes, making it more difficult to learn. There's no research showing obvious benefits to make the difficulty worth it.

Personally, so much information processing would make me anxious and depressed.


Hype.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_reading

https://www.quora.com/Does-speed-reading-really-work-If-so-how

I find it an interesting tendency that people with laid back loser attitude to life search for excuses as to why something could possibly not work.

First, reading faster wouldn't make you anxious and depressed, it's actually the very opposite.

Second, 500 wpm is only about 100 wpm faster than aloud reading at high speed with high pronunciation clarity. This is really fast aloud reading, but it's not by any means fast for silent reading.

Third, the gap between top contestants and the world champion is more than 2500 wpm. It's ~4500 words per minute faster than you.
Think yourself why so.

People who read really fast won't be found on such championships though. You won't find them selling speedreading courses as they are too busy finding ways to cure diseases, teaching kids or doing their own thing.

 

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[Invictus]

No, speedreading is directly focused on increasing the comprehension. With speedreading you find anchors in text, which connect sentences with each other, giving you a clue of what you read about. People commonly read slow, because they fail to find anchors or don't know they exist. It results in perceiving each phrase, or even each word separately.

Secondly, speedreading requires your brain to be more active. It requires you to pay a lot more attention. It makes not only your reading much more productive, it results in significant increase of your productivity in life in general.

Here's an example of how speedreading is processed with a bit of explanation:
View attachment 13421
As in this text, there is usually more than one anchor (I highlighted only one), but rarely more than one primary anchor that conveys the main message of the writing. Secondary anchors usually connect contrary parts that emphasize a primary anchor by contrasting with it.

It helps you understand the idea of the writing as a whole and not lose track as long as primary anchor stays the same. Major part of reading fast is to freely orientate in what you read.
Once you know what you read about, phrases become expressions of one single subject.
It's like moving inside your house: you perceive your house as a whole, with different segments of one place. You don't perceive it as a bunch of objects and pathways.
Same goes for reading.

It's a very basic principle that has nothing to do with purely technical aspects of speedreading, but it, alone, can increase reading speed from 200 words per minute to 2000 words per minute effortlessly.

Thank you for elaborating. It helps out quite a lot.

I recall that one a previous thread you linked to a video where a speed reader was interviewed. As he was plugging his speed reading course, were you recommending it? If you don't recall, I'll dig it up.

 

[devine]

Thank you for elaborating. It helps out quite a lot.

I recall that one a previous thread you linked to a video where a speed reader was interviewed. As he was plugging his speed reading course, were you recommending it? If you don't recall, I'll dig it up.

No, I wasn't recommending the course, as I don't own a copy, haven't participated in program and cannot review it.

 

[vitality11]

If I read and feel like slowing down to contemplate, I do it.
Speed reading works if you want to breeze through to get the major points.
But if I feel the need to speed read it's probably because the book is not engaging enough for me. Great books contain pages/sentences that deserve to be absorbed and digested properly.

Bruce Lee said "I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times."
For me, it means - take a few books, know them really well, then apply the knowledge to the MAX.

 

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[kytro360]

I see people like Tai Lopez brag about reading 10 books a day and the whole concept is confusing to me. How can someone grasp the concept of a book by skimming through it in one sitting? Makes no sense to me.

 

[minirich]

I see people like Tai Lopez brag about reading 10 books a day and the whole concept is confusing to me. How can someone grasp the concept of a book by skimming through it in one sitting? Makes no sense to me.

What I have heard of "him" he is practicing a different style of speed reading, called photo reading. Im not sure if he is doing the complete process of photoreading, because you it takes more than one go with the book.

Anyway, why are we again talking about Tai Lopez?

 

[Anon38776]

I find it an interesting tendency that people with laid back loser attitude to life search for excuses as to why something could possibly not work.

First, reading faster wouldn't make you anxious and depressed, it's actually the very opposite.

Second, 500 wpm is only about 100 wpm faster than aloud reading at high speed with high pronunciation clarity. This is really fast aloud reading, but it's not by any means fast for silent reading.

Third, the gap between top contestants and the world champion is more than 2500 wpm. It's ~4500 words per minute faster than you.
Think yourself why so.

People who read really fast won't be found on such championships though. You won't find them selling speedreading courses as they are too busy finding ways to cure diseases, teaching kids or doing their own thing.

Are you calling a depressed person lazy? Should I feel guilty? I said, personally. It's very shallow and idiotic to assume that everything would work the same way for everyone. I wasn't searching for excuses why it wouldn't work, I was trying to build up a consensus based on what I could find online and my past experiences with speed reading/reading in general. I used to forget the books I read in about a month, even if I used the information. You could argue that was because I hadn't implemented a study system.

The 4.5kWPM record could very well be held by an outlier with a mind that handles text differently. Should I (and everyone) feel guilty for not being Einstein, too?

What does "2kWPM effortlessly" mean? Are you saying that's not hype? I was actually going to do the maths and say that 3-5 books/day is a reasonable amount (based on those maths) before you edited your comment for hype. Highly doubt you'd get even near 80% comprehension at 2k, not even talking about 30-50% effortlessly.

 

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[devine]

Not that I address this message to you, you're actually on my ignore list, I write it so other people could have a glimpse of what efficient reading is like.

Reading 20 books in a week, compared to reading 1 book in a week, results in a significant increase in quality of life.

Some may argue that "it's better to master one book than to read 100", but it only means that whoever says that after reading this message doesn't understand the whole point of it, and the problem is not with my explanation.

You can still read just one book, but applying these principles will make you 100x more productive with it.

Spoiler: Answer to you:

Are you calling a depressed person lazy? Should I feel guilty? I said, personally. It's very shallow and idiotic to assume that everything would work the same way for everyone.

>

It doesn't help you learn, as your forgetfulness curve will become steeper with more information to process.

I wasn't searching for excuses why it wouldn't work

>

There's no research showing obvious benefits to make the difficulty worth it.

What does "2kWPM effortlessly" mean? Are you saying that's not hype? I was actually going to do the maths and say that 3-5 books/day is a reasonable amount (based on those maths) before you edited your comment for hype.

Easy, comfortable reading.
Yes, that's about 3-5 books in a day on average.

And to everyone else:

Highly doubt you'd get even near 80% comprehension at 2k, not even talking about 30-50% effortlessly.

There is absolutely no accurate way to have any clue about what "comprehension %" could possibly be. Especially considering that meaning of a word "comprehension" is obscure in such context.
Being deeply in cognitive science, especially in cognitive psychology and linguistics, I constantly pursue more effective ways of teaching kids and this is my primary field of interest, but at this moment I'm yet to see any scientific explanation and evidence, as for how it's possible to determine comprehension rate in % value without using neurotechnological instruments that detect certain activities of our brain during the process of reading.

Point of speedreading is actually not speadreading itself, increase of speed is a by-product of better understanding of what you read.

As it is, reading is very inefficient: you read slowly. Your comprehension is actually a lot weaker than if you would listen to a person telling the same message to you.
That is a result of processing each word on its own and decoding letters one by one, instead of perceiving each word as a whole and multiple words as a single expression of a subject. With this approach, sentences are nothing but a group of words put together. It takes enormous effort to process objects individually, which is why reading tempo sometimes is as low as 3-4 words per second.

Try reading the text you've already read at least once - your reading speed already should be reaching 400-500 words per minute.
Try to read it as slow as if you would read new information - it's not so easy when you already have some understanding of what it is and what it's about.
That's because processing, once you have an idea of what you see, becomes fundamentally different.

If we could talk about "comprehension %", I'd say it approaches really low numbers with average reading. So all statements about speedreading resulting in "67%/insert funny numbers here" comprehension are laughable.

If @Taykamant would read the post he attempted to comment on, from the beginning to the end of it, he would realize that increasing your comprehension results in drastic increase of speed.
Look carefully at image that I attached previously.
Does it makes sense now?

Remember: it's not about speed. Don't let the title fool you.
It's about fundamentally different processing of text.

Now, I won't answer to your further comments, @Taykamant, because everything is already explained in this thread and I don't plan to waste my time on arguing with you.

 

[Perrots]

I see people like Tai Lopez brag about reading 10 books a day and the whole concept is confusing to me. How can someone grasp the concept of a book by skimming through it in one sitting? Makes no sense to me.

I watched one of his videos and he said sometimes one paragraph in enough for him, which is fine some people can grasp the entire content of a book based off one page, but theres so much knowledge i dont know how you can read a book and want to miss out on everything else.

 

[Perrots]

Tim Ferris has a nice method to teaching speed reading if anyone is interested just search it on google and it will come up.

 

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[Anon38776]

@devine You started with personal attacks and continue being condescending towards me and my opinion at every chance you get. Yes, I made some personal attacks in response to yours. No, I don't always do this, I try to be nice, reasonable, and open-minded. All I did was point out that what you're saying doesn't fit with what the majority of the internet thinks about speed reading. It's not what I think about speed reading. It's not what people with experience think about speed-reading. It made me think that you either have a con up your sleeve, or you really have some ground-breaking speed-reading technique.

I'm not going to ask for a counter-argument. I think everyone wants more information about your way of speed-reading. I don't understand it from what you've explained so far. There's no information regarding speed-reading and anchors online. The image you posted is only public on TMF . Where does the image come from? What courses have you taken to read like this?

TL: DR; Your sources, please?

 

[devine]

@devine You started with personal attacks and continue being condescending towards me and my opinion at every chance you get. Yes, I made some personal attacks in response to yours. No, I don't always do this, I try to be nice, reasonable, and open-minded. All I did was point out that what you're saying doesn't fit with what the majority of the internet thinks about speed reading. It's not what I think about speed reading. It's not what people with experience think about speed-reading. It made me think that you either have a con up your sleeve, or you really have some ground-breaking speed-reading technique.

I'm not going to ask for a counter-argument. I think everyone wants more information about your way of speed-reading. I don't understand it from what you've explained so far. There's no information regarding speed-reading and anchors online. The image you posted is only public on TMF . Where does the image come from? What courses have you taken to read like this?

TL: DR; Your sources, please?

It doesn't matter what the majority of internet thinks, if you want great results at certain things: you should be concerned with searching for insights coming from people who are effective at what you're interested in.
I never ask myself "what some people on the internet think about x, y, z", I just find whoever does it the best and analyze their approach.
What majority of the internet thinks? How could I possibly care.

No, I was never taught speedreading and I don't think it's something that has to be taught. I've been asked multiple times about what I think of some video or technique, but I, personally, don't do it like this.
I don't follow the text with my hand.
I don't force myself to read from the top of ligatures.
I analyze areas of texts instead of reading a single line. This way some phrases get into my area of eye focus multiple times and with more context it makes more sense. Not that I don't understand it from the first time, I just perceive text more as a whole.
I know a lot of people who do it the same way, but I don't know anyone but Howard Berg who is teaching speedreading, so I cannot recommend anyone. I don't know how he teaches it, so I cannot comment on that. All I know is that he does it differently. I agree with his insights on psychology of reading though.

I practice speedreading since about age 11 and it was never a big deal. It's just another thing you need to practice, and the it is not a rocket science: if you don't become better at something with time - you're doing it wrong.
If you're doing something for 20 years and doing it effectively the same: it means you have a laid back attitude towards it.
Just like people who go to gym for years and look exactly the same.
Reading is not any different.

Regarding how to do it, I already gave a lot of clues on how to. If you cannot find a clue in messages that are full of clues, maybe it's time to start actually processing information in your brain instead of asking to explain it to you? (it's a rhetorical question)

 

[Anon38776]

@devine Where's the image from?

 

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[GMSI7D]

Hi guys,

Just a quick opinion-check. I regularly come across authors who brag about their ability to read 300 pages of business-related books in 4-5 hours and digest most of the stuff they read about. Not to mention our legendary Thai Lopez who probably finishes a 500 page book on Quantum Mechanics while taking a dump.

I know the reading speed varies from person to person and depends on the knowledge of a topic , but being able to read like 60 pages for 5 hours in a row and absorb like 80% of content seems unbelievable. I prefer analyzing information and not taking everything for granted - otherwise what's the point of reading the book? Just for the sake of reading?

What are your thoughts on speed-reading?

speed reading is BS in my opinion. this is just my opinion.

either i read the right carefully chosen book completely and aborb it

or i don't read the book at all.

either i read again and again the right carefully chosen book to aborb it ( TMF , think and grow rich and so on )

or i cast it in the trash

we can't really scam our brain by thinking that a quick look at a book will make the deal.

quality is better than quantity

this is the pareto law : 20 % of books are the right books and 80 % of them are BS