Ask HN: Have you had success with improving your reading speed?

As somebody who grew up a very fast reader, for me "improving my reading speed" has meant slowing down. Because my goal isn't finishing a book faster, but having deeper understanding.

Things I've used there: notetaking, underlining, pausing and/or putting the book down at the end of chapters, talking with people about the book I'm reading, and actively subvocalizing.

That last one requires a little explanation. For me as a kid, reading was a visual process. I did not hear words in my head. This let me go way faster, but I missed out on things. Puns, for example. It's also not good for appreciating poetry and the like; at 11 or so I remember reading the Lord of the Rings and being just irritated by the blocks of poems or song lyrics. I didn't really appreciate poetry until I started listening to poets recite their own works.

Eventually I realized that a lot of prose was better appreciated at a slower speed, either because of the rhythms of the writing or because if I was going too fast I wasn't thinking about the content enough.

There's plenty of stuff I'll still read very quickly, though, up to the edge of skimming and beyond. But it's sort of like driving past a neighborhood on a busy street versus taking my time walk through it. The faster I go, the more I miss, especially of the subtle stuff.

I am a very fast reader and it's something I picked up by being an avid reader, no meme technique snake oils, just churning through 1 - 2 books a day in my teens, some of them of highly technical nature.

So becoming a faster reader was just a function of reading for me, the more I read the faster I read. My starting point was 1-2 books a week if that, and it took a couple of years of reading until I could do it in a day.

I'd focus more on reading comprehension, doesn't really matter how fast you speed through Dostoevsky if you simply don't understand it and I fail to see the point of being faster if it's not predicated first on understanding the text.

What is wrong in reading slowly?

If you enjoy it and get a better and deeper comprehension, I would even say read slower. Re-read the same sentence a couple of times, Google the definitions of words you are unsure about, and pause to let your mind wander about what you just read. It is what reading is about.

I remember meeting someone at a party who told me they read like 357 books that year. I can’t helped to think they were either lying or didn’t get any understanding of what they are reading. I am sure they thought saying something like that will make look super smart but it didn’t.

Had several friends get deep into speed reading in college, back when Tim Ferris and other self-help gurus in their early days were pushing it as a life hack.

They all abandoned it later when they finally accepted that the learning bottleneck wasn’t their ability to move their eyes across the page as fast as possible.

If you have too much material, pick the specific chapters and subjects you want to read most and start there. Don’t compromise everything just to see it all.

I've had success reading less: take a non-fiction book, figure out the parts you care about, and only read those. Use the table of contents, the index. Scan the chapters for relevant parts, and then come back and read them at the normal rate, or even slower. If someone is saying they read 1-2 books a day, and they seem to know what they're about, that's what they're doing. There is no additional, hitherto unknown gear in the human brain that you can engage to let you read thousands of words a minute and understand them.[1]

I've had success reading more: take a fiction book, read it once quickly — even irresponsibly fast — then read it again for comprehension. You get a lot more out of it, and it sounds like you appreciate getting a lot of out of books. But, this way, you will end up spending more time reading, not less.

The other trick I know is to stop reading. If you are trying to work your way word-by-word through a book, and it's not rewarding you, either skip to the good part, or put the book down and pick up another one. You don't owe the author anything, and the world is full of more good books than you can ever read anyway, so why waste time on bad ones? An English Lit professor told me to make a choice after the first 50 pages whether I wanted to continue or not, so that's my rule of thumb. At first you think "Oh no, I've failed, I'm a bad reader," but over time you see how much more you read and learn because reading becomes pleasurable, and not a chore, once you want to do it.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_reading#Controversies_in...

Not every book needs a detailed reading of every word. If you are reading poetry or a key technical book, sure, you will need to focus on each word but there are lot of books where either you can assume lot of filler (business books, light fiction etc..) or where you are familiar with the subject matter that skimming works best. You can always narrow and focus in small sections if needed. I suppose the real lesson is to not feel guilty of skimming as most books are not worth the time to do detailed reading. The other major time saving is to bail out of a book without feeling guilty. If you frame your repulsion to skimming as wasting time you might find skimming more acceptable.

Some years ago an FT columnist assessed that even the most voracious reader can possibly only ready 5000 books in their lifetime. You should be thoughtful on where you want to spend you focus on.

https://www.ft.com/content/79bfc92a-e3e7-11e7-97e2-916d4fbac...

You're trying to read faster by holding on tighter. It's never going to work. I struggled with the same thing. You're sabotaging your own expectations by using words like "skim" and "repulse". If you're going to improve your reading speed, you need to stop priming yourself for failure.

As another poster said, you should plan to use different reading techniques for different books. Recreational reading is much easier to read super-fast. Textbooks and research papers just aren't. It's similar to how an encryption algorithm works: your brain is really good at finding patterns. You can read faster by letting your brain do the work it's designed to do. Fiction books are very repetitive in their writing style. Technical works aren't; their content is very dense, and there is hardly any repetition. You'll never find easy patterns and repeated words there. They're not very compressible, and they're not very speed-readable.

Speed reading is all about look-ahead, look-behind, and pattern recognition. You are having a hard time because you are trying to force your brain to do it all algorithmically lock-step. Ideally, you want your eyes to maintain a steady rate of scan. Try to avoid using a finger like another poster said; it slows you down in the long-run. Eventually, your brain will start assembling words you have just read with words you're about to read, and give you the sentence in total.

It feels really weird the first times you do it. You're trying to let your brain to do more of the repetitive processing on its own, without you explicitly telling it to do that.

It takes a lot of practice. It's achievable. Keep pushing yourself, but you need to relax while you're doing it. It's a very delicate and tricky balance to achieve, if you're starting out as a slogging reader.

I have ADHD, so reading is painstakingly slow. I still want to and enjoy reading, though, so I have also looked for ways to improve my reading speed.

I’ve tried for years, and ultimately it has come at the detriment of reading comprehension and my enjoyment.

I am actively in the process of reading books lovingly. I am trying not to care how long it takes me to get through a book, and to just enjoy what I’m reading. It’s tough, but has improved the experience for me.

I'm not sure how fast I read, but my SO used to read a lot faster than me. I did some searching online and found a couple of techniques and now I'm slightly faster than my SO. But I, too, find magic in minor word choice, and when I'm reading quickly and encounter something good I slow down and savor it. I re-read it multiple times. I read it aloud. But I'm able to read much faster on average than I did before, and I MUCH prefer it. So don't be afraid you'll lose out on something just because you're reading faster. In fact, you'll be able to read more in the same amount of time, and therefore you'll get to experience more magic.

Talking here from my experience. I didn't succeed much in making myself read faster, but when it's come to listening I've easily trained myself to consume most of the content at 3x speed and for some fiction books I can go even faster depend on who is reading and quality of recording.

This obviously wouldn't work for reading technical documentation, but if you watch some educational videos on programming on something you can also easily handle 2-3x when watching video lectures. Though getting used to high-speed video is harder.

Most importantly listening at high speed is super easy to learn. You just starting listen some podcasts or books at 1.1 and gradually increase the speed by 0.1x each time you certain that current speed is comfortable for you. In two weeks you'll certainly handle 2x with no problem at all.

PS: My personal record is listening whole The Expanse book at 4.5x, but it was only possible because I was just laying with my eyes closed and enjoyed the ride. Of course I only listen at 2-3x speed when doing something at home or walking outside.

If you shut off your internal monologue and read by just looking at the words (instead of vocalizing them in your head) you can dramatically improve your speed and not lose any value.

It's like reading music, you just look at it and understand it. I think slow reading speeds might be a function of how we're taught to read, because when you learn music etc it's entirely different.

I created a tool that helps people read faster on screen. [1] Although it started out as just a fun idea, it’s now been licensed by companies like Blackboard and has won awards from MIT Solve and the United Nations Foundation. It is especially helpful for people who read slowly, but it was originally created to help all types of readers (and was actually one of the most popular Show HNs back when I launched). [2]

There are browser plugins and mobile apps, and we’ll soon be integrated by a digital ebook platform.

1: http://www.beelinereader.com

2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6335784

Why do you need to read books faster? What's the hurry?

I recommend checking out the book "Train Your Brain for Success" by Roger Seip. There is a section in this book that teaches you to read faster while improving your reading comprehension.

> The idea of reading only 5 words in 8 repulses me.

One of the biggest concepts in the speed-reading section of the book is that a lot of people sub-vocalize the words in their heads. This limits your reading speed to around 150wpm. If you want to read 450+wpm, you have to be willing to "fill in the gaps" as you read.

When I was in university, for my Android course I implemented a speedreading app that worked by a) identifying a pivot character in the word and b) showing each word in the same spot of the screen, with the pivot of the word centered (as opposed to normal center justification), at a rate that the user could increase to their comfort.

Over the course of researching the specific algorithm we were using, I learned about eye saccades and speedreading theory. Even untrained users of the app could break 400 WPM comfortably using our test data, and regular users on our team were able to comfortably maintain over 700 WPM without previous training in speedreading.

The big takeaway for me, which actually improved my reading speed for physical texts, was the thing that slows you down the most when reading is eye movements. If you can will your eyes to move over lines faster, you can read faster. YMMV depending on the nature of the text (deeply technical stuff with unfamiliar words is gonna take more time to read thru, a big weakness of the automated speedreading app) but if you make a habit of trying to read faster, you'll find you improve over time.

Best speed reading technique is actually to just skip the boring bits - the fluff that most nonfiction books include to move the narrative between ideas or to reiterate a point. Combine that with note taking and you have a very powerful reading technique. Same thing for most fiction, because a lot of words are spent on exposition and to get a character to/from a scene.

There’s certain kinds of dense nonfiction this doesn’t work for (dense because it doesn’t have filler), or literary nonfiction (that you can slowly savor for the writing or narrative).

I used to relish a choice set of words to describe an idea in a way that just makes it click for me, but I’ve found that (a) this doesn’t lose that because a well written sentence that doesn’t communicate anything of substance is actually a bad sentence (style over substance), and that most sentences (in nonfiction) are pretty bad, and that’s ok. Moreover, I’ve found that simpler writing ends up being more effective, regardless of any personal preferences for Cormac McCarthy-like prose.

1. Practice reading without subvocalizing the words in your head

2. Read sections, lines, or blocks of text at a time instead of word by word.

3. Use your hand/fingers/ruler/index card/etc as a guide to help focus on each line at a time, until you can do the above without them.

4. Read more, practice the above

Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics books discuss these in more depth.

Yes, this bookmarklet will transform webpages into a more readable form:

javascript:void function(){javascript:(function(){var a=Math.floor,b=document.querySelectorAll("p, title, a, ul"),c=[],e="",f="",g="",h=0,k=0,l="",m="",n=window.open("","_blank");for(var d in b){var i=b[d].textContent;i%26%26(c=c+"\n"+i)}for(f=c,e=f.replace(/\n/g," <br></br> "),g=e.split(" "),h=0;h<g.length;h++)k=a(g[h].length/3)+1,l="<span style='font-weight:bolder'>"+g[h].substring(0,k)+"</span><span style='font-weight:lighter'>"+g[h].substring(k,g[h].length)+"</span> ","."==g[h].substring(g[h].length-1,g[h].length)%26%26(l+="<span style='color:red'> * </span>"),m+=l;n.document.write("<html><p style='background-color:#EDD1B0;font-size:40;line-height:200%25;font-family:Arial'>"+m+"</p></html>")})()}();

You can also find it here: https://www.locserendipity.com/Hyper.html

If you want a TTS system, this one is free: https://www.locserendipity.com/TTS.html

If you want to increase the rate of speech, download the HTML of the page and change to_speak.rate=1; to whatever rate you need.

Use both together for an even better effect. I once read Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment in an evening with these techniques combined.

If you want to try a method that flashes text with a pivot character, I have tried and implemented that, too: https://locserendipity.com/Speed.html

I recently listened (cheating I know ;) to "How to Read a Book" by Mortimer J. Adler. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/567610.How_to_Read_a_Boo... It is an old book, 1940/1972 but still relevant.

Their philosophy is basically to focus on quality rather than quantity. Find the books worth reading and read them at "normal" speed.

“Great speed in reading is a dubious achievement; it is of value only if what you have to read is not really worth reading. A better formula is this: Every book should be read no more slowly than it deserves, and no more quickly than you can read it with satisfaction and comprehension.”

― Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

I mean, speed reading is basically skimming (but without skipping words, if it makes any sense) and indeed, you won't be able to properly appreciate minor word choices in literary work. For me, speed reading is basically letting your subconscious brain absorb the words, instead of your conscious part. I once cheesily described it as "reading with your heart". You won't miss the feeling of the story, or the general content of a technical post, but you'll miss these tiny linguistical choices.

But opposite to what people are saying here, I find speed reading is great for technical documentation or for the first reading of a technical book. In pair programming sessions it's quite obvious because people will waste time reading SO answers that are obvious dead ends, for instance...

I've noticed these tools increase my reading speed:

* Sprint reading: http://www.sprintreader.com/. You can install a Chrome extension here: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sprint-reader-spee...

* "Bionic Reading": https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/usdy2...

Here’s a cool trick that popped up here a while ago: https://bionic-reading.com/

It seems that if you bold the first half of every word, it’s much easier to read quickly.

Yes, and the way I did was just by reading more, but reading speed is quickly capped by reading comprehension. Be skeptical of anyone who claims very high words-per-minute (WPM), for they do not comprehend what they read, but fool themselves into believing they do.

Similarly, not everything can be understood at the same speed - certain things demand slower reading. And this is where you have to ask yourself: "What am I reading this for? What do I hope to get out of this? How well do I need to understand this?". The answer to these questions will inform your reading speed.

I have successfully cultivated a “third speed” somewhere between close reading and skimming, which is helpful for cruising through casual books like Robert b Parker novels , etc, but I still prefer reading slowly as I can visualize better and appreciate word choice, sentence structure etc when I do.

My advice is to just cultivate a wide vocabulary as that will help you out the most (each time you have to think about a word’s meaning slows you down, IMO, more substantially than a minor difference in the speed at which you cruise over words.)

My reading backlog was so large I finally decided to just skim a few books and pull out the most important parts, and ended up remembering more from those books than when I try to read every word.

IMO it’s not a good idea. I feel like I hurt my reading comprehension and enjoyment by learning speed reading techniques.

Now the temptation is always there to speed up on a few paragraphs and it’s hard not to.

This has been around for a very long time, long enough for Cheech & Chong to parody it [1].

Paraphrasing what Woody Allen said:

I took the Evelyn Wood speed reading course and it really works! I read "War and Peace" in a hour, and I had perfect comprehension! It's about Russia.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_Woodhead_Speed_Reading_...

Yes.

But as a result, my appreciation for "slow" reading had increased dramatically, where before it was a frustration.

Both have their place.

A good place to train, or generally use to speed-read to the best of your capacity, at least for digital text, is spread0r: https://github.com/xypiie/spread0r

> The idea of reading only 5 words in 8 repulses me.

Go to Project Gutenberg. Find a 100+ year old book that you're not going to get preemptively sentimentally attached to. Practice accelerating your reading with that.

That is exactly how I broke myself of the extremely self-limiting habit of having to subvocalize every single word like I'm still in kindergarten.

I took a speed reading course in middle school and it sped up my ability to read quickly. Most of the course was practicing a technique where you use your fingers to highlight the text, so that your eyes could focus (similar to bionic reading).

But it really only works for non-fiction and easy fiction, so it worked really well for standardized testing.

What is the point of reading fast? It degrades the value you get out of it. Might as well just read some notes or reviews or summaries written by other people.

Obviously reading fast is better than reading slow, but if you're going to read faster than you can think / process the content, I don't think that's useful.

I tried improving my reading speed and I succeeded. But it’s a shallow metric because I found that my retention 1 and 6 months later was poor.

I realised retention is what I actually care about and slowed down instead. I read slower now, take notes, review the notes when I’m done reading. I end up reading less but I retain more.

Two simple ways:

1. Read more

2. Use a finger or bookmark to help guide you.

Speedreading techniques or consuming too fast just seems redundant to me. While I’ve been able to comprehend a good amount at a fast speed, it just isn’t enjoyable.

Having your learning be rate-limited by your reading speed is like having your coding output be rate-limited by your typing speed.

No. I'm still bound by my comprehension rate, even though I can "read" (that is, recognize the words) very quickly.

What you folks think about text to speech services? I tend to actually enjoy following a highlighted text while listening.

I focus on understanding what I read, speed is secondary.

So, depending on the text I read, I adjust the speed.

On the contrary, I had great reading speed as kid.

Then I got astigmatism and my reading speed took a nose div

Obviously hn. The best way to improve reading speed is to have others read things for you

have you looked into bionic reading? it anchors your eyes to only the first letters of the word and help you speed through the next, there are chrome extensions for it if it was implemented on your reader yet, assuming its digital

Sounds like a depth-first vs. breadth-first problem to me.

For information, I scan. For pleasure, I read.

At the cost of comprehension yes