Summary

The website provides techniques and strategies to improve reading speed and comprehension, known as speed reading.

Abstract

The article "How to Read 3x Faster" introduces the concept of speed reading, a skill that allows individuals to read quickly while maintaining a high level of understanding. It suggests that the average reading speed of 220-350 words per minute can be tripled or more through specific methods, such as improving eye control, creating optimal reading conditions, using visual guides like pens or fingers, and analyzing text structure before reading. The author emphasizes that while speed reading can significantly enhance productivity and allow for faster consumption of books and other written content, it's also important to balance speed with comprehension and enjoyment, especially with fiction. The article also touches on the psychological aspect of reading, such as subvocalization, and encourages readers to practice and push their limits to continually improve their reading speed.

Opinions

The author believes that everyone has the potential to read faster and that speed reading is a skill that can be learned and mastered with practice.
Speed reading is portrayed as a way to enhance productivity, enabling the author to read an average of a book every 4 days.
The article suggests that the brain can process information at higher reading speeds than most people are accustomed to, and that this capability can be unlocked through training.
While the author advocates for speed reading, they also acknowledge that it may not be suitable for all types of reading materials, particularly complex books where comprehension may require slower reading speeds.
The author posits that reducing subvocalization can speed up reading but also believes that maintaining some level of subvocalization can aid understanding.
There is an emphasis on the importance of enjoying the reading experience, suggesting that speed reading should not replace slower, more immersive reading, especially for fiction.
The author encourages experimentation with various speed reading techniques, such as variable scanning and the "S" method, to find what works best for the individual.
The article promotes the idea that speed reading can be applied to all forms of reading, including blog articles, newspapers, and Medium articles, to save time and increase efficiency.

How to Read 3x Faster

Unlock a New Useful Skill Today

On average, an adult reads between 220 and 350 words per minute. But do you know you can easily triple this rate, and even more? This is called speed reading.

Speed Reading

Speed reading consists of using methods and techniques to read very quickly while maintaining a good level of understanding.

Some people can read very fast, for example, contestants in the world speed reading championship can read 3000 words per minute while understanding 80% of a text. But this is the elite.

Others “lambda” readers like me can read 1000 words per minute while keeping the same understanding level as someone reading 200 words per minute. But, wait:

How can we read faster while understanding as many things, or even more?

Your brain has capabilities you didn’t know it had and can work very well with high reading speeds. I don’t really know why, but it’s a fact, and it works this way for me and everyone else.

I think everyone should learn to read faster because it can greatly improve one’s productivity, and it can allow us to gain so much time while reading. For example, I read on average a book every 4 days, while reading only 30 minutes or 1 hour a day. Before I learned to read faster, it was impossible to do this, but now, I can easily read at least 54 books in one year, and even nearly twice this.

How to Read Faster

Eye Control

The first step is to have good eye control. This means controlling your vision, both central and peripheral.

You want to reduce the number of jerks that your eyes make when reading.
You must not focus on each word. Even if you don’t focus on the word consciously, your eyes have seen it and your brain will understand it.
You want to reduce the pause time between saccades. Saccades are when you move your eyes from one word to another. The shorter the pause time is, the more you gain time, obviously.
You also want to avoid going backward when reading a book. You can’t understand anything, and if you have not understood something, it’s not a problem, keep reading and you will understand it later. (sometimes this can’t work, especially when reading complex books, so going backward can be allowed depending on the situation).
You can start reading from the 4th word of the line and finish 4 words before the end while understanding everything. It’s because your peripheral vision can see words around the one you’re focused on.

Optimal Conditions

Reading quickly requires some brain work. In order to optimize this and reduce the load on the brain, it is necessary to put yourself in the right conditions.

Prefer natural lighting and a good position.
Have a good seat, half-rigid and half-soft, and not inclined. It should not be too comfortable else you will fall asleep, and not too hard else it will be painful.
Position the book at a certain distance from your eyes (I recommend 50cm but it depends on your ).
You also need to be concentrated and “determined” to read (I mean if you don’t want to read, read later, don’t force yourself to read).

Meta-Guide

The meta-guide consists in using a visual guide (pen, finger…) to guide your reading. This allows you to speed up considerably.

There are several possible guidance techniques:

Read lines 2 by 2.
Variable scanning: read more than 2 lines at a time.
Reverse sweep: also read on the way back, when you return to the beginning of the next line.
S: read one line forwards and one line backward.
Zigzag: read in diagonal.
Vertical ripple: read vertically while focusing on the center of the page.
Double margin: read the extreme left and the extreme right of the page at a time.

These techniques may seem impossible for someone who doesn’t know speed reading, but trust me, they are possible. They just require some practice to be mastered. You can even combine them to make them more powerful. For example, I like to combine the variable scanning and the S, to read 3–4 lines at a time when going forward, and another 3–4 lines when going backward. It allows me to read 6–8 lines in 3 seconds.

Text Analysis

Before reading a text, have a quick look at its structure to get an overview of how the information is presented to you.

Spotting

If you have in mind the precise information you are looking for, you can locate it quickly by don’t reading the whole text, but just by spotting some keywords related to it.

Optimization

Once you master the techniques above, you can try to improve your reading.

One thing you can change for sure is subvocalization. You know, when you’re reading you’re saying in your head what you read. It can slow you down a lot. So you can try to reduce subvocalization as much as possible. Some people will advise you to stop completely to subvocalize, but I think it can be good to keep some subvocalization to help to understand when reading.

Finally, you can also try to always go beyond your limits. As someone wanting to run faster or for a longer time will constantly improve the length of his runs, someone wanting to read faster have to try to go beyond his limit. I like to do small sessions sometimes when I just pick up a text and try to read it as fast as possible, without especially trying to understand.

Final Note

Speed reading can seem realistic if you’ve never experienced it, that’s why I think you should give it a try before saying “it doesn’t work”, or “it reduces understanding”. Trust me, it changed my life, and I enjoy reading so much now because it’s not like I’m wasting my time to finally don’t understand a whole book.

Also, sometimes it’s good to don’t read fast, and just enjoy the book. Because I have to say speed reading is good to absorb a lot of information from technical or informative books, but when it comes to fiction, it’s also nice to take your time to dream and represent visually the book.

Speed reading is also extensible to all the things you can read. For example, you can read faster blog articles, newspapers, articles on Medium, etc…

I hope you’ll try to read faster. If you want to know more about speed reading, there are a lot of books talking about it. The one is “The Speed Reading Book” by Tony Buzan, I liked it a lot.

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