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Off-Topic Speed reading

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mikhael

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Hi, though it might seems stupid question I really would like to know yours opinion regarding the subject. Moreover, I would be appreciate if you would like to give some tips.
So, the questions are, how fast can you read? Have you ever tried to develop this skill? If yes, what did you do, and did it works?
 
I can read pretty fast, (naturally) and I even took a speed reading course a long time ago. I suppose there is a place for it, but generally I prefer to read as slow as I can within reason, and according to the situation at hand.

I suppose there is a continuum of sorts

Reading to quickly get the gist of the subject...
Reading for precise comprehension...
Reading for pleasure...
 
Hello,

+1 @offwidth

@mikhael
A method which works well:


Otherwise, always looking for introduction, conclusion and summary first, then if necessary, the main titles. That way, I read only if this fits my goal, and only the necessary contents.

Kind regards,

Pet'
 
My grandfather used to speed read, watch the ball game, and still whoop me in cribbage.
 
I got into Speed Reading after High School while I went through military service to prepare for university.

Short answer: It's likely* a complete waste of time. Your reading speed has little to do with anything and will vary widely depending on what you are reading and with what intent. And simply reading and re-reading has nothing to do with effective learning and decades of experience and dozens of studies show that these are some of the least effective and most time-consuming study techniques you can use.

Longer answer:
I usually practiced for 30-40 minutes a day sticking to 2 methods.
3-2-1 method: Read for 3 minutes at a comfortable pace, mark how far you got. Re-read the same text in 2 minutes. Re-read the same text in 1 minute.
2-2-2 method: Read for 2 minutes at a comfortable pace, mark how far you got. Try to read twice as much in 2 minutes. Try to read three times as much in 2 minutes.

With both methods you summarize what you have read after every step and try to ask questions (look for "critical reading") before re-reading. Mind-mapping can be used as well. But I newer found this to be any better than a simple list.

My reading time improved by about 20% over a 6 month period using easy-to-read texts before I started to stagnate. This never carried over to texts I needed to read while actually studying (civil engineering and development studies). And after about a year without practice I reverted close to my starting speed using the same texts I used to practice. But at that point I was much better at studying anyways.

EDIT: I started at about 200 words per minute using SciFi texts and peaked at about 240-250 word per minutes.

*EDIT2: I added "likely" because you might learn that your reading technique or eye-sight is holding you back.
 
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+1 to Tim Ferris's method, posted by @pet'

I don't use speed reading very much, though. A lot of the reading I do requires a high level of retention, so I just read slower. If it's something that I just need to breeze over, and I can afford to miss some of the information, then speed reading will cut my reading time by about half.
 
This isn't exactly "reading" - but if there is an audiobook version of your book, you can listen at 1.5x or 2x and consume the same amount of info in less time.
 
This isn't exactly "reading" - but if there is an audiobook version of your book, you can listen at 1.5x or 2x and consume the same amount of info in less time.

I do that with YouTube videos. You can almost always understand the content just fine at 2x speed, or at least 1.5x speed.
 
Anything worth reading is worth reading slowly -- more than once.

"A good book gets better at the second reading. A great book at the third. Any book not worth rereading isn't worth reading."
--Nassim Nicholas Taleb​

Speed reading is like speed eating.
 
For most of us mere mortals, there's a time and a place for the ability to skim, summarize and extract.

Having even just a bit of foreknowledge on a short topic can sometimes let us get away with "speed reading." For many years, I was subject to annual language proficiency tests, which included a fairly lengthy reading section. In this sort of instance, glancing over the multiple choice questions and answers before diving into a wall of alien hieroglyphics gives us a clue as to what we're searching for, so we're not getting bogged down in paragraphs that are often largely irrelevant. Also, being armed with an understanding of the culture can often help us eliminate one or two options from A, B, C and D right off the bat (if it reflected positively on Israel, it was probably not the correct answer).

If you'll pardon a bit of my darkness, like it or not, I feel that our modern day and age is pushing us to speed read (how effectively we do is another matter), and I don't believe it's doing us any favors. Given the sheer volume of online media competing for our attention, even a curmudgeonly 20th century fox like myself all too often now finds the ole attention span starting to meander while perusing articles, or even, to my dismay, an actual book without any glowing rectangles to stare at. It can at times be a struggle to force myself to focus, even when there is a genuine desire or an absolute need to fully understand a broad, nebulous subject in which I lack any prior background.

While I do envy the folks who claim to have read a mind-boggling number of books in an equally amazing short span of time (yet still seem to have a life...), I'm privately more than a little skeptical how much they truly distilled.

TL;DR (I died a little inside when I learned what that meant...): If something is worth reading, I strongly feel that it's worth taking our time and even enjoying the process.
 
TL;DR (I died a little inside when I learned what that meant...): If something is worth reading, I strongly feel that it's worth taking our time and even enjoying the process.

Haha... yes, TLDR is definitely a sign of our shrinking attention span. I know it has happened to me to an alarming degree. I find that the only way I can consume a lengthy article these days is if I jump back and forth between it and other things a few times. Almost like my brain NEEDS to be distracted in order to function.
 
Since the thread is about reading,I wanted to mention a classic, How to Read a Book, by Mortimer Adler. I think its philosophy of reading. In depth analysis. Different books calls for different types of reading. He encourages reading world classics to 'enhance our mind', and has a list of 100 top books, that one must read etc. It has been a while I read it, I loved it so much, I read it again.
 
I do that with YouTube videos. You can almost always understand the content just fine at 2x speed, or at least 1.5x speed.
30 years ago as a callow youth I used to volunteer as a reader for the Royal National Institute for the Blind. People would send in documents, text books, novels, even a phone bill once and I would read them onto tape and they would be sent back to requestor.

I always tried to read with emotion, emphasis, really tried to turn it into a voice over performance basically. All the time blissfully unaware that any blind person would just crank up the tape to 3x speed and I'd sound like Chip and Dale.
 
Actually, when studying textbooks it enhances comprehension in most cases if you are able to skim text strategically - and then spend some time on making notes. However, it requires a lot of focus.

But I am lucky to be a fast reader by nature. But I am a slow reader when it comes to novels and philosophy.
 
For any practicing musician reading this thread, the ability mentioned by @Anna C to change playback speed is also very useful for slowing down a piece in order to practice along with it. I often have students practicing at 0.50 (half speed) or 0.75 speed (3/4 speed) as they learn a piece of music. I teach piano from a series of books which are popular enough that simply putting the name of the piece and author's name into the YouTube search box brings up multiple recordings of it.

As of the last time I checked, the ability to choose a different playback is not available if you're playing a YouTube from your browser, but it is available on the YouTube app on mobile.

One more off-topic bit of information for anyone interested. If you need to have fine control of the playback speed of an audio recording, there are apps that do this very well. We use a $15 app called Amazing Slow Downer that can fine-tune pitch and speed independent of each other - faster couldn't sound like a chipmunk - and in very small increments. This app also lets you export your speed-adjusted recording as a separate file. The app is available in a free version you can play around with but it's limited to 2-minutes in length for any file. NB: To do this with a YouTube, extract the audio from it - there are free web sites that will do this for you.

-S-
 
As of the last time I checked, the ability to choose a different playback is not available if you're playing a YouTube from your browser

It's available on a browser. I use it every time someone posts a form check. My brain sees things at .25 or .5 or even 2x speed that it doesn't see at normal speed. It's interesting...

Great info about the Amazing Slow Downer app and about extracting audio from a YouTube video.
 
It's available on a browser. I use it every time someone posts a form check. My brain sees things at .25 or .5 or even 2x speed that it doesn't see at normal speed. It's interesting...
I should have said that more carefully. It's not available on a browser on a mobile device, at least not my browser on my device, which is Safari on an iPhone on the latest iOS. It is available via any browser on a desktop computer.

-S-
 
Great info about the Amazing Slow Downer app and about extracting audio from a YouTube video.
It's brilliant if you want or need to sing along with something but it's not in the right key for your voice. Extract the audio, feed it to the app, and pick your key. Useful for karaoke tracks, e.g.

-S-
 
It's not available on a browser on a mobile device, at least not my browser on my device, which is Safari on an iPhone on the latest iOS.

My Chrome browser on my Android phone has the playback speed control, but I know you Apple users have to put up with some deficiencies... :p
 
Well, don't I feel like the outlier. I have been a speed reader most of my life. I started reading early in my life, and I have always enjoyed reading. I have read novels, like the Harry Potter books in a few hours, as in, I received it that morning, and finished it before dinner.

Yes, I retained some of the information for some time as well. However, when I read on my kindle app, I will go back a few pages to make sure I remember the plot line. For me, reading for pleasure is done at a pace that I feel like reading, nothing else. For tests or exams, I will read faster, but I will also read the passage a few times in rapid succession, for reasons that which I cannot explain. That has just always been my way of taking tests. Yes, in school, HS, college, and even during my Master's level classes, I was usually one of the first students to complete the exam.
 
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