Bill Gates and Warren Buffett (two of the wealthiest men in the world) were asked if they were to have one superpower, what would it be? They agreed that it would be the ability to read “super fast.” They are not alone when it comes to this particular desire; some of the most successful U.S. presidents and historical figures were also avid speed readers.
After years of studying the art of speed reading, I’ve encountered plenty of nonsense and time-consuming smartphone applications and training classes. This a list of the most simple and helpful practices that have increased my reading speed significantly.
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1. Widen your vision span
To consume more words at a time, you have to train your eyes to expand your vision. The goal is to eventually be able to take in an entire line of text in a single glance, but this takes some training. There are several exercises to help stretch your horizontal vision, and alternating between these practices and exercises actually implements them while reading, and is the best way to progressively absorb more words at once. Simply google “vision span exercises,” and do what works best for you.
2. Don’t read to the very end of the line
No matter how wide your vision span is, we all have our peripherals. When you read to the very last word in a line, you are wasting peripheral vision by using it on blank margins that are on both sides of a line. By getting into a habit of reading until the last couple words in a line, you begin to notice that you are still collecting the first and last words in each line with your peripheral vision.
3. Set the pace with a pen or pencil
To instantly accelerate your ability to flick your eyes across a line of text, set the pace that you would like to read at. Don't worry about comprehending the content. Use a pen, pencil, bookmark, or finger to quickly slide over each line while your eyes follow. Moving faster and faster every page, your eyes are being trained to move at such a speed that muscle memory causes your eyes to naturally move faster next time you are actually reading. This also helps to keep you from regressing back, and further SLOWING you down.
4. Don’t vocalize the words
A lot of what SLOWS you down as a reader is the habit of reading out loud, either saying it or hearing it in your head. By chewing gum, humming, or just ninja focus, it’s possible to eliminate this bad habit.
5. Focus on the first sentence
For each paragraph, it is generally structured in a way that the first sentence is the main statement, and the rest of the paragraph is reinforcement. By slowing down at the first sentence, and speeding up elsewhere, you are comprehending the message without giving every sentence equal value and time.
6. Expand your vocabulary
Howard Berg, the world’s fastest reader, tears through pages as fast as he can turn them. What happens if he were to encounter an unfamiliar word? He would be stopped in his tracks, or at least slowed down. This is what he owes to a lot of his speed: his impressive vocabulary.
7. Use a metronome
Similar to pacing, using a metronome sets a speed at which you should try to keep up. For every beat, attempt to be on the next line so that your brain and eyes become comfortable jumping so fast down the page. You should gradually increase the speed of the metronome to push you past your limits.
8. Minimize eye fixations
Contrary to what you might think, your eyes don’t scan steadily over the words. Reading works in eye fixations, pausing at a few spots in a line to absorb the words in clumps. After widening your vision span, it makes it easier to reduce a line to one or two fixations. Instead of using fixations on each word at a time, the best speed readers get to the point of consuming several sentences in just one fixation.
9. Extract thought units, not words
The only way to consume these massive groups of words and sentences in a single glance is to change the way you collect the information. As opposed to reading, “The cow jumped over the moon,” you should get to the point where you can quickly glance at this quotation, and immediately SEE a cow jumping over the moon. You will know you have mastered this when you begin reading in images rather than spoken word. This is probably the most difficult to do, but will enable you to extract the meaning from sentences instead of slowly hearing each individual word in your head.
10. Read more often
You knew this was coming. Although obvious, this is as important as any of the other tips. Practice makes perfect, so you have to expose yourself to all kinds of literature, at different levels of difficulty, before you are able to just pick up your textbook and fly through it before syllabus day. Like it or not, your education, religion, career, and functioning life all include reading, so why not enjoy it and excel at it?
