3 Techniques to Speed Reading Part I: Listen up, eyes!

Photo by Moriza on Flickr

This article is Part I of a three-part series. Read Part II and III.

Reading non-fiction faster is one of the core skills of being effective. It gives you more valuable information in less time, and more time to execute the knowledge you gain. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of bullshit out there, and it all costs a lot of money. Here’s what I’ve discovered as valuable lessons, completely free. 

How do we read?
In school, we are taught to read letter by letter, word by word, to construct meaning. This works when you learn to read and you can’t get comprehension from context, but they should have told us a few years later that there are better ways. Reading doesn’t have to take ages. Reading (non-fiction) has no other goal than comprehension, adding value to information and giving you knowledge to build on. There are two parts to this: Knowing how to read what you read, and knowing what to skip.

Be smart and read faster. You don’t have to go through everything with a lice comb. Let the lawyers do the reading like the kids do.

Improving technique I – Eye movement
We tend to read every word, or at least every few words. However, you can see several words to the left and right of your focal point. Take advantage of this fact. Have a look at this image:

speedreading

 

By fixing your eyes at the three points – and nothing else – you’ll get all the information with a solid technique. Try reading the above paragraph slowly, line by line, letting your eyes focus at the vertical lines. Try it again a little faster. Now try it, a bit faster than comfortable, on a longer text. Just focus on making your eyes stop at approximately the same place on each line, and nowhere else. No stuttering across the line, just three stops in a fluid motion.

If the points are a bit too far away, try for four stops instead of three. Practicing this technique will widen your eyespan, so you might go back to three later.

Further tip: If you feel more comfortable reading with a pointer (pen, finger), you should do that. Just hold it above the sentence you’re reading, not below. Your eyes can float more easily to the next line that way.

Part II and III will be along shortly. Subscribe to the blog to get the rest!

4 Responses to “3 Techniques to Speed Reading Part I: Listen up, eyes!”

  1. [...] This is Part II of a three-part series on speed reading. Read Part I. [...]

    by 3 Techniques to Speed Reading Part II: It’s All In Your Head — Clever With Words
    on 17. Feb, 2009

  2. [...] is Part III of a three-part series on speed reading. Read Part I and Part [...]

    by 3 Techniques to Speed Reading Part III: Reading Faster by Reading Less — Clever With Words
    on 17. Feb, 2009

  3. I just saw your site for the first time tonight. I saw the latest Evernote posting that you made and really liked it so I subscribed (One closer to your 1000). In reading this article I have to say I don’t really get what you are talking about. I love the subject of “speed reading” and wish greatly that I could learn to read faster. When you say read the paragraph the first time slowly, are you saying just look at each line of text at the vertical line and read that way without looking away from the vertical line? This is a real problem for me. when I look at the fist line and focus on the vert. line 1 the most I can see is the word clear. Even if I added another vert. line or two I don’t think this would help me. Am I misunderstanding something?

    by Phil Reynolds
    on 18. Feb, 2009

  4. Phil, thanks for subscribing. I’m seeing that the text might be unclear. I’ll try to edit it later.

    This is what I’m saying (I think you got it, but maybe others might need this): What I’m saying is let your eyes jump from vert line to vert line across the horizontal line. In practical terms, for the first couple of lines: the focus points would be the word “clear”, “one”, “one”, the end of “bearable”, “and”, “is”, “happy” and so on.

    If you can’t see more than one word, you need to train your eyes a bit. It is possible to expand your eye span. I recommend this book, 10 Days to Faster Reading, by Abbey Marks-Beale. Many books cover these tips, and I just extracted the gist of what I’ve learned many places, but I think this one is the best introduction while giving many practical tips for all sorts of people.

    Tip II and III will most surely be effective still, though. Good luck!

    by Chris
    on 18. Feb, 2009

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