Triple Your Reading Speed Pdf 18
Teodolinda Mattson
As I mentioned before, I got interested in the topic of speed reading and bought a couple of books on the subject. One of these books is "Triple your reading speed" by Wade Cutler. I finished reading it a couple of weeks ago and waited with the review to self-assess my progress in speed reading.
Speed reading is quite difficult to measure. In the initial speed-test in the book I scored 280 wpm for a short article. In subsequent speed tests I reached 350-380 wpm on short articles, and 300 wpm on a whole book ("Animal Farm"). I think that it does represent nice progress (not tripling, of course, but a few 10s of %s of acceleration) since concentrating on a whole book for a few hours is much more difficult than concentrating on a short article for a few minutes.
I really enjoyed this book since Mr. Cutler presents techniques which are down to earth. Speed reading is one of those topics where you get promised wonders, pay money to achieve it and after a short excitement period find that you haven't gained anything. In this light, a book like "Triple your reading speed", while having a loud name, stands pretty well overall since the techniques in it are practical, believable, and it contains lots of exercises to test your skills. In fact, the "teaching" phase itself in this book is very short - probably less than 50 pages long. The book explains how expanding the peripheral vision is important in order to catch more than one word with a single glimpse, how sub-vocalization (the act of saying the words "in your head" while you read) is harmful and how to stay focused on what your read withoud spending time jumping forward and backwards. The rest of the book is packed with exercises - short articles that take 2 - 15 minutes to read, with their word count and a comprehension test. This way you can not only test the speed but also your comprehension of the text.
Comprehension is a big topic in speed reading. Skimming is not what I'm trying to achieve - I want to actually read the whole text and understand everything I read. Thus, it's obvious that the reading speed must depend on the difficulty of a text. No speed-reading marketing guru will ever convince me that a normal human being can read a challenging non-fiction book at 1000 wpm understanding everything. It just can't happen - in difficult books I find myself slowed down not by the speed of my eyes seeing all words, but by my brain trying to process the text and understand it. I do recognize that many simpler texts, like most novels, can be read quicker - since there it's the speed of the eyes what limits me.
I feel I learned from this book and have already improved. But to further improve one needs a lot of practice - which is what I'm doing now. In every book I read, I try to adjust my pace to the material and read as fast as I can understand it. I feel my reading speed has indeed improved, and I hope that with further practice it will improve even more.
So this book is recommended - in the sea of charlatan information, it has somesolid advice and good exercises to get on the improvement path. Don't expect toreally triple your reading speed, though (unless it's really slow, like < 150wpm), especially while retaining an acceptable comprehension rate.
When it comes to reading, priming is your internal SatNav. By asking that one simple question, you articulate what you want, where you want to go and give yourself a big picture view. By going through this simple process, you are more likely to pick up relevant information when you start reading.
Our eyes don't move smoothly; they move in fixations, stopping to take in information and then move on. Because of this, you will often end up re-reading what you just read, this is known as back skipping and regression (where your eyes jump backwards in the middle of a sentence either consciously or sub-consciously).
To improve comprehension and increase memory retention, you want to act like a detective during and after reading. Identifying the gaps in your knowledge, and asking searching questions that help connect what you read with what you already know, increasing the odds of it sticking in your mind.
The biggest challenge with speed reading is that for most people, the promise doesn't turn into reality, and it just doesn't seem to work. A similar occurrence happens with memory strategies. There is a tendency to jump in before laying the groundwork, leading to several common mistakes that stop people getting started or cause burnout.
Remember what it was like as a learner driver? You were so focused on the process that you probably didn't take much else in. Speed reading is no different; it takes time for your brain to switch onto automatic pilot, and take in words.
Whether you want to learn how to play golf, do yoga, code, improve your memory or speed read, understanding the reasons 'why' you want to do these things, will go a long way to enhancing clarity and increasing motivation.
Most Americans spend just under six hours per week reading books. At the average reading speed of around 300 words per minute, and with an average novel having 64,000 words, this comes out to about a book and a half each week. But a slate of new technologies*, including Spritz and Velocity, think you can do better. By doing little more than reading through one of these technologies, the companies say, you could push your rate up to four, even five books per week.
A few month back, I wanted to increase the amount of books I read per month. I was driven by some sources that claimed that effective people read several books a month. It was something that I thought to be impossible given my reading speed. How could I increase my reading speed to read three mid-size books a month (mid-size being approximately 300 pages per book)?
During my studies, I frequently came across some speed reading techniques. Due to the fact that I wanted to become a better student, consuming more content in a shorter period of time, I read about techniques where you skip lines, only read every third word, or jump to the next line every three words.
In order to confirm your increase in speed later, it helps to know how fast you are reading initially. Hence, set a timer on 1 minute start reading. When the timer is up see how many lines you read and multiply this by the average number of words per line. This number is the amount of words you can read per minute.
Tim suggests to start with cutting off one word of each side of the lines. You can do this by just drawing a line vertically on both sides of the page. You will then just read between this two vertical lines. The peripheral viewing of your eye will still allow you to see the other cut-off words, without actively reading them. An example to explain this can be seen by the picture below.
Another technique further increasing my reading speed, was helping my eye to stay focused, and disrupting its natural behavior of jumping from one position to the next. Take a pen or your index finger and move it along the lines. It helps to smoothly letting your eye move over the lines.
Prior applying the techniques, I was able to read 116 words per minute (yes, I am super slow). After the speed increase I was able to read 310 per minute. I read 114 pages in 2 hours including a little coffee break. To my biggest surprise, I was able to summarize the what I have read afterwards very detailed. One additional hint from my side, I found it more relaxing if I would read the first and last line of each page as well as paragraph breaks fully in order to increase my comprehension. The result was amazing and it changed my entire reading behavior.
Hi, I just started reading 4 Hour Body after hearing a podcast about it. In two weeks I have lost 9 pounds so far by cutting out everything you said to and stopped drinking energy drinks. No more joint pain. Less chest pain (hoping that will self regulate). About the part of the guy eating the bag of oreos and twizzlers on the plane and you not understanding how. Without going into detail I just wanted to suggest you might sit in on a few 12 step meetings for over eaters. That is if you wanted to understand it more. I am very thankful for your inspiration. Hope to meet you someday.
Nope. Subvocalisation (saying the words to yourself) is something that slows you down a lot when reading. The good news is that you can learn to outpace it. Reading faster than you can comprehend (trick #3) will help a lot, the rest seems to be down to practice.
I suffered a TBI in a car accident last summer which dropped my reading speed to about a 1st grade level. After 6 months of vision therapy, I am now at a 6th grade speed (as well as significantly decreasing my glasses prescription and strengthening my focusing flexibility). Excited to try this out and get back to reading more. While audiobooks are wonderful, reading is better.
I read much faster in French (my first language) than in English (my second language). I can get away with some speed reading in French without losing too much comprehension, but it is unpleasant, stressful, and exhausting. Does that get better with practice, or does speed reading always feel like a job?
Also, are you ever able to speed read in a second language? Or do you have any technique to improve reading speed in a second language (just reading as fast as a native speaker would be great for me)? Whenever I try to speed things up in English, my comprehension is just destroyed. I might as well just look at the pretty pictures.
I keep falling short on my total reading goal each year. When I found this video, I had literally just put down a book that I want to speed read through. I watched the video, picked up my book and kaboom. Thanks for changing the game for this bookworm!
Hello Tim Ferriss, I am Rio Grande do Sul attorney, Brazil, I have 28 years and like most people always have many commitments, until the day in a bookstore I found his book Work 4 hours per week, it struck me as I am used to reading motivational books, but none really tells how to apply and this book is different, as reported cases and you just fit in your profession and you just want to. I believe that always looked for innovations and improvements without relying on manual labor 24 hours a day, but for a purpose, and his book has shown me that I was right, I have recently applied some of his teachings come and getting better results, I could not even take little vacation or retirement, but soon I will. I leave my story because people like you to convey your teaching, they deserve to be recognized worldwide. Reader hugs Dr. Diego Idalino Ribeiro.
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