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How to Increase Your Reading Speed by up 200% With Speed Reading

I was reading this book by Tim Farriss and in it there was a sub-section on learning how to speed read in just ten minutes. Ten minutes – everyone has ten minuets – heck if that’s all it takes to learn to speed read you might as well give this a try what have you got to loose? Just think, if you could boost your reading speed so much that you could read and comprehend a 140 page novel in just 40 min would it be worth trying? I don’t know about you but the cost benefit seems like a no-brainer.

Ten minutes of practice to gain back hours of your life, what do you think?

In Tim’s Book he covers the following 4 steps:

1. Step One - 2 minutes: use a pen or finger to underline or trace along as your read. Apparently when you’re reading you are actually just taking a series of snap shots. Using the interlining technique prevents timely regression.

2. Step Two – 3 minuets: When beginning each line focus on the third word in from the margin, and when finishing a line focus in on the third word from the end of line. This reading technique forces you to use your peripheral vision that, according to Faris, would otherwise be wasted on blank margin space. Take a look at the sentence below to get an Idea of what I’m talking about:

“All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger (it’s impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively. Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold thing, not the strength to suffer” -Niccolo Michiavelli, The Prince

Starting and ending each line by focusing on the bold words allows you to read each line as you would have before, but with less eye movement.

As it becomes easier and easier to start and end each line indented start moving your focus for each line in closer.

3. Step Three – 2 Minuets: Once you have become comfortable reading each line starting and ending each line at the third or fourth word try reading each line with just two snapshots at the beginning and end of the line.

4. Step four – 3 Minuets: Practice reading using the techniques covered above but do it way to fast to gain any real comprehension for at least 5 pages before going back to normal speed. – According to Farris this exercise resets your reading speed. Faris likeness this exercise to a car driving on a highway, normally 50 miles per hour seems fast, but when you’ve been cruising along at 70mph and then drop down to 50mps it no longer seems so quick.

So that’s it, 10 minuets worth of speed reading exercises. Give them a shot and see if they can help you improve your reading. What do you have to loose?.

How to calculate your reading speed:

Count up the number of words over 10 lines of your reading material and then divide that number by 10; this will give you a rough average word per line. Next count up the number of lines over two pages. Divide this number by two and you will have a rough estimate of the number of lines per page. Multiply your average words per-line figure X your average lines per page figure and you will have successfully calculated your average number of words per page. Still with me? Good, lets move on. According to Ferris, if you originally read 1.25 pages per minuet at 330 words per page before training (that’s 412.5 per minuet), and after training you are now able to read 3.5 pages per minuet that’s 1,155 words per minuet, an increases of 180%.!!!!

Parting Food For Thought

A thought about chunking – I was taking to my little brother the other day about the concept of reading faster by taking snapshots of each line essentially “chucking” the words into bit size chunks. During the conversation he told me about this crazy theory that he’s had since high school related to this idea of chunking words or thoughts together. David’s Theory - Certain cultures, or individuals for that matter, are so much smarter than others because they use words or symbols that represent complex thoughts to express them. As an example, my brother sights Asians cultures (who many assume to be quicker studies then westerners) who have languages based on symbols. In their language a single symbol might represent a thought or idea that would take western language many sentences to express. So as his theory goes - because their language is based on symbols that represent so much more than face value, Asian cultures inherently use a form of chunking that allows them to process more information per time spent, then those who’s languages do not chunk/streamline thoughts. Think about it, these cultures by the very nature of their language are born speed readers.

Kinda crazy if you ask me - nice one David.

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