How to Read Faster

While reading a book, I am always getting this feeling of frustration thinking about how good it would be to be able to read faster.
My rational thinking is:
“If I could read faster, I could read more books to unleash my potential in the same amount of time”.
Unfortunately, I never challenged myself on this one
.Why? I wrongly assumed that you can only read as fast as you are taught in school.
Spoiler: I was wrong 😅

Improve reading speed

Fortunately, my assumption changed one day.

Can you imagine what I was doing? Yes, you are right - I was reading a book 😀

To be more precise,

I was reading the book “The 4-hour workweek” where Timothy Ferris is explaining how you can read 200% faster in 10 minutes. ⏳

If you did not read the book yet, let me summarize for you below how you can implement these simple tricks to read 200% faster.

Speed reading techniques

See below the 3 top techniques that would help you read 200% faster,

and take your reading skills to the next level.

Stop talking to yourself 🗣

Talking to yourself (or what the experts call subvocalizing) is heavily impacting the speed of your read.

Subvocalizing is basically the process of speaking the words in your head while you read, the primary reason why we are doing this is the way we were taught how to read in school.

Who does remember the school days when the teacher was saying “Read it in your head, not to disturb your classmates”?

According to Forbes,

the average adult reading speed is 300 words per minute, it is pretty much the same pace as the average talking speed.

Bear in mind (well-linked :D), that the thoughts are faster than the words.

If you effectively action this point, you will be reading more effectively than 90% of the population.

Practical TIP: To avoid talking to yourself -or subvocalizing- you can consider reading with instrumental music in the background, chewing gum or even humming. This will effectively take your reading speed to the next level.

Word chunking 📖

Word-chunking is very much connected with the fact of talking to yourself and processing each word in your mind – this is really penalizing your reading speed.

Word chunking is the human ability to read multiple words at once, even though we have been trained since we are kids to read each and every word without missing any single article

Practical TIP: Read the page normally and time how long it takes you to go through the page,

afterwards, for the same page trying to read 3 words at once and time how long it takes.

You will notice that you are able to read much faster and still be able to comprehend what is written.

Once you are comfortable with this technique,

take it one step further by drawing two parallel lines from top to button – separating the text into three equal sections.

Start reading normally from the top left, covering what it is below the line with either your hand or a piece of paper.

Your focus should be on reading each line of the text that is in each section as one big block.

Chunk the words together and read them at a glance, as you would read a billboard on the street.

Keep progressing down the page, as you move your hand or piece of paper accordingly.

In the beginning, it can be challenging – do not give up. 💪

The long-term effect is the reward - you will notice how your reading speed will skyrocket.

Use a pencil/your finger as a guide 📝

When we read, there are plenty of things happening with our eyes - that we do not realize - our eyes have a natural trend to slip and slide through the pages as we read.

This is when the saccadic eye movements 👁concept takes place. Most likely you do not know what this is about.

No worries – I got your cover.

Saccadic eye movements are the jumps our eyes are doing between different fixation points.

If you are reading slow, one of the main reasons most likely will be due to the fact that you have extra saccadic movements that are slowing down your read

Practical TIP: Use a pencil/your finger while reading one line at a time.

Move with the pencil/your finger from left to right and top to bottom, as if you would be creating a zig-zag formation – this way you will ensure you are fully focused on your reading

With this, you will avoid going up and down the page without processing any information.

Practice makes the master 🥷

Only reading the tips above and not putting them into practice, it will not make you a faster reader.

If you are intentionally about becoming a faster reader – practice is the key.

Practice makes the master, make sure you are mindful of above these tips while you are reading.

If you are unsure about what to read next, I leave you here some books for inspiration.

By the way,

I would strongly recommend you read “The 4-hour workweek” by Timothy Ferris this book.

You can find it here.