How to SPEED READ
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LearningTranscript
00:00Hey friend, welcome back to the channel.
00:01Let's talk about reading today
00:03and specifically how and why to read faster.
00:05So we'll talk about why being able to read faster
00:08is a useful skill to have in your pocket.
00:10And then I'll share five tips that I found really helpful
00:13for increasing my own reading speed
00:14so that I can absorb more stuff from the books that I read.
00:17So why bother reading fast?
00:18Like isn't reading supposed to be one of those things
00:20that you take it slow, you enjoy the process
00:22and you gain a lot of insight from the book.
00:25I think that's sometimes true, but it's not always.
00:27And I kind of think of it like riding a bike.
00:29So it's like sometimes when you're riding a bike,
00:32you wanna really enjoy the journey
00:33and you wanna smell the roses along the way.
00:35So you wanna go at like three miles per hour
00:37so you can breathe it all in.
00:38But sometimes when you're riding a bike,
00:40your objective is to get from A to B
00:42and let's say you're running late for work,
00:43for your lectures, you actually don't really care
00:45about smelling the roses on the way there,
00:47you just wanna get there as quickly as possible.
00:49And I think of reading in the same way.
00:50Like if a book is really good, then I will read it slowly
00:53and take my time and take loads of notes throughout
00:55and like smell the roses on the way there.
00:57But the problem is that most books
00:59and most nonfiction books these days
01:01tend to be like big idea books
01:02where it's like one central idea
01:04and then the rest of the 400 pages of the book
01:06is just example after example after example,
01:09kind of bashing you over the head with examples
01:11to explain that one idea which you got from the introduction
01:13or from the first few chapters.
01:15And so in those cases,
01:16if I've got the main idea from the book
01:17or if it's just not capturing my interest very much,
01:19often I will just blitz through the rest of the book.
01:21Yes, you could say that once you've got the main idea,
01:23then you might as well just abandon the book.
01:25And in general, I'm a very big fan of treating books
01:28less like hallowed objects and more like blog posts,
01:31which is like if you get halfway through a book
01:32or even 20% of the way through a book
01:34and it's not capturing your attention anymore,
01:36then it's fine, it's okay to abandon it.
01:38But even though theoretically I believe that
01:40and I will fully subscribe to that mindset,
01:43in real life, I often get a feeling of FOMO
01:46that I'm missing out on like some gold dust
01:48that might be sprinkled in the book,
01:49maybe halfway through
01:50or maybe three quarters of the way through.
01:52And so in general,
01:53even if I've got the main idea from a book,
01:55I will prefer to just kind of blitz,
01:57read it very, very fast,
01:58rather than abandon it completely.
01:59So reading faster helps with that.
02:01But if you know how to read faster,
02:03then your own default reading speed just improves
02:05without sacrificing any comprehension.
02:07And so for me now,
02:08it's actually reduced the time and emotional investment
02:11needed to read a book.
02:13Like if someone recommends a book to me,
02:14I know it's not gonna take me six months to read the book.
02:16I know it'll take me a few hours to read the book
02:18because I can read pretty fast if I want to.
02:20And therefore, I'm far more likely to pick up the book
02:22that someone recommends and read it.
02:24And I've discovered so many good books
02:26and so many average books
02:27through that recommendation process.
02:28So that's why reading faster can sometimes be helpful.
02:31I'm not saying you should do it all the time.
02:33I'm not saying you should speed read
02:34like a productivity grease monkey.
02:36I'm saying it is a useful skill
02:37to have in your pocket for when you need it.
02:39All right, so tip number one for reading faster
02:41is to try and reduce sub vocalization.
02:43And sub vocalization is what it is
02:45when we're sort of,
02:46we've got that voice in our heads
02:47that is reading as we go along.
02:49This is controversial.
02:49Like if you look at the evidence behind speed reading
02:51and ways to improve your reading speed,
02:53there are some people that say
02:54that sub vocalization is legit.
02:56There are some people say that it's not legit.
02:57I am not commenting on the evidence here.
02:59I'm commenting anecdotally.
03:00And anecdotally, I know that for me,
03:02when I'm reading faster,
03:04I read visually, like I see the words
03:06and I don't like sound them out in my head.
03:09Whereas when I'm reading slowly
03:10or in really enjoying a book
03:11or if like I'm really savoring it
03:13or if it's a very difficult topic,
03:14then I'll be doing the sub vocalizing in my head.
03:16I'll be reading in my head as I go along.
03:19That obviously means that I read more slowly
03:20but it does increase my comprehension.
03:22Anecdotally as well,
03:23when slow readers ask me how I read fast
03:25and I tell them the sub vocalization thing,
03:27it blows their minds
03:28because they just think that
03:29that is just how you have to read.
03:31You have to read by having this voice
03:32going along in your head.
03:33In my opinion and in my experience,
03:34you can reduce that amount
03:35to increase your speed of reading.
03:37There is some evidence about this.
03:38Like there are some studies
03:39where they do functional MRI scanning of people's brains
03:42and they have like fast readers and slow readers
03:44and the fast readers have less activation
03:46in the bits of the brain that are responsible for speech.
03:49And that may be some evidence
03:50that reducing sub vocalization is actually legit.
03:53But whatever the evidence says,
03:54I think that if you want to increase your reading speed,
03:55just try and reduce that voice in your head
03:57and kind of see what happens.
03:58It will start out very uncomfortable
03:59and you'll kind of be like blitzing through the text
04:02and not quite understanding it.
04:03But with enough practice,
04:04this will become second nature
04:05and then you'll think,
04:06huh, why do people read with a voice in their heads
04:09when it's just like so much faster
04:10to just look at the words
04:11and to not have the voice in your head?
04:13Point number two, for reading faster,
04:14you actually don't have to read the whole page.
04:16You can kind of read a little bit in
04:18from the page on either side.
04:19And I picked up this tip
04:20from Tim Ferriss's The 4-Hour Workweek.
04:22He's also got a YouTube video about it.
04:24And I hadn't figured it out before,
04:25but when I started applying this,
04:27I did notice, and I go to it again,
04:28my own reading speed started to increase.
04:30And there are apparently speed readers around the world
04:32who swear by this method.
04:34Basically, the idea is that because when we look at a word,
04:37our peripheral vision can like see the words
04:40around the word.
04:41And so really like,
04:43normally we look at the very first word of a line,
04:45but then we're wasting peripheral vision
04:47because there's like empty space to the side.
04:49Whereas if we start like a little bit in
04:51and we kind of track our eyes,
04:52not from the start of the text to the end of the text,
04:55but like a little bit in,
04:56we can actually still see all the words
04:58and visually read without wasting that space.
05:01So again, this is something that I find
05:02that if I'm actively trying to read faster,
05:05then I will do this.
05:06Normally, I don't remember.
05:07Normally, I just kind of read naturally.
05:09But if I'm actively trying to read faster,
05:11what I do is kind of shift my eyes from the page,
05:15almost as if there's like a ruler on the end of the page.
05:17And so I'm only allowed to look in between those areas.
05:20And I found that that improves my reading speed.
05:22Again, this is somewhat controversial.
05:23Like there are some studies that show
05:25that this effect does not exist.
05:26Anecdotally for me and for Tim Ferriss
05:28and for Nelson Dulles,
05:29who is another guy who reads fast
05:30who I interviewed on my channel,
05:31it does sort of work.
05:32So maybe try it, see if it works for you.
05:34I find personally that it works for me.
05:35Thirdly, if you wanna read faster,
05:36what you can do is you can take a pointer
05:38and you can just like kind of scan
05:39your finger across the page.
05:41This works a lot better
05:43when you're not reading on a screen
05:44or when you're not reading on a Kindle
05:45that has a touchscreen.
05:46But if you're reading like a real book,
05:47the way it works is that because when our eyes move,
05:50they actually don't move in smooth.
05:52And in fact, so if you look at my eyes right now,
05:55I'm gonna try moving them smoothly from left to right.
06:01Back again.
06:04But it's actually impossible.
06:05So eyes move in terms of saccades.
06:07And so it's like a bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.
06:10The only way eyes can move smoothly
06:12is if they're tracking something.
06:13So if I, if you now look in my eye,
06:17now it's moving smoothly
06:18because it's tracking my index finger.
06:20Whereas if I remove my index finger,
06:23there is no way I can like force my eyes
06:25to like move smoothly.
06:27And because our eyes move in that kind of saccadic way,
06:29usually when we're reading,
06:30we're not following smoothly one line to the next line
06:32to the next line.
06:33We're sort of kind of saccading back and forth.
06:35And that in theory,
06:36wastes a lot of time while you're reading.
06:38So if you wanna improve your reading,
06:39what you can do is you can take a finger
06:40and just kind of scan it along the line
06:42as fast as you want.
06:43And you kind of force your eye to follow your finger.
06:45And that means that you're not wasting any eye time
06:48in doing saccades back and forth
06:50between bits of the same line.
06:51I haven't found any studies that talk about this in depth,
06:53but there's this dude called Howard Berg,
06:55who is like, you know,
06:56world record holder for speed reading.
06:58And he says that just by using a pointer,
07:00you can increase your reading speed by 10 to 20%.
07:02So I think that's pretty good.
07:03Point number four,
07:04something I find helpful is to kind of gamify
07:07the whole reading faster thing.
07:08So normally when I'm reading and I'm reading a good book,
07:10like I said, I will read slowly,
07:11I'll take my time, I'll take notes,
07:13all of that kind of stuff.
07:14But if it gets to a point
07:16where I'm losing interest in a book,
07:17or if it's a fiction book
07:18and there's just loads of description
07:19that I don't want to read about
07:20because I'm just so engrossed in the storyline,
07:22or if I just want to kind of blitz
07:23through the rest of the book,
07:24I will kind of treat it as a bit of a game for myself
07:27to see how quickly I can read
07:29without sacrificing too much of my comprehension.
07:31And especially with nonfiction books,
07:32what I do is that I think to myself,
07:34okay, this book is getting boring now,
07:35let me turn this into a game
07:36and I'm gonna see how quickly I can read
07:38while still understanding the gist of the chapter.
07:41In general, I'm a big fan of gamifying
07:42all of the different components of my life
07:44because it just makes life more interesting
07:45and it means that skill acquisition,
07:47like learning new stuff,
07:49just becomes so much more fun
07:50when you turn it into a little game
07:51that you play with yourself.
07:52That sounds weird.
07:53And finally, if you want to take in more
07:54from what you're reading,
07:55this is not really a tip for reading faster,
07:56but it's still useful,
07:57it's actually to write a summary
07:59or a review of the book that you've just read.
08:01If I'm trying to speed read, I will do this,
08:03but I've also started doing this
08:04with all of the fiction and nonfiction books
08:05that I'm reading.
08:06And the easiest way I've found
08:07to take these notes from books
08:08after I've read them
08:09is by using Notion
08:10who are very kindly sponsoring this video.
08:12If you guys haven't heard,
08:13Notion is like my favorite app in the world
08:15and I use it for absolutely everything
08:16from like my notes for medical school
08:19to teaching assignments,
08:20to tracking my gym workouts,
08:21to handling all of the elements
08:22of this YouTube channel
08:23to work it with my team.
08:24And also recently to take books
08:26from all the notes that I've ever read.
08:28So I've actually got two different templates for this.
08:30I have a fiction template
08:31and a nonfiction template.
08:32They're gonna be linked in the video description
08:34so you can duplicate them
08:35into your own workspace.
08:36By the way, Notion is completely free.
08:37So if you haven't got an account,
08:38you should sign up for one,
08:39link in the video description.
08:40And so within my book notes database,
08:42let's take, for example,
08:43Show Your Work by Austin Kleon.
08:45This is one I've taken very seriously.
08:46This is a nonfiction book.
08:48And so what I've got is
08:50I have the book in three sentences,
08:51impressions, who should read it,
08:53how the book changed me
08:54and my top three quotes.
08:55And that is like the minimum
08:56that I will do for every book that I read.
08:58And if I'm feeling particularly keen,
09:00I will do like a whole summary
09:01and notes about the book,
09:02which I am working on slowly publishing to my website.
09:05And I think just doing this,
09:07even just doing like the book in three sentences
09:09really helps me engage with something,
09:10especially if it's a book that I've speed read
09:12or like read really fast
09:13and I've got the main idea.
09:14It forces me to really think,
09:16okay, have I actually understood
09:17what this book is about?
09:18And if not, I'll just open it up on Kindle
09:20and just kind of blitz through it again
09:21to find out, okay, what was the key point here
09:23and can I put it into my own words?
09:24And for fiction books,
09:25I've got another template
09:26that has kind of what it's about,
09:27how I discovered it
09:28and then just some general thoughts on the book.
09:30Again, I'm working on uploading these to my website
09:32so I can have a nice list
09:33of all the books I've ever read,
09:34including reviews and ratings and notes and summaries
09:37and all that good stuff.
09:38So if you wanna read faster,
09:39I'd highly recommend
09:40that you also take notes
09:41and summaries of the books
09:42that you've read after the fact
09:43so that you can test your understanding of them
09:45and do some active recall
09:46and spaced repetition on that.
09:47And as I said,
09:48Notion is my favourite way of doing this.
09:50Free templates, free download,
09:51everything linked in the video description.
09:53If you like this video,
09:53you might like to check out the video over here,
09:55which is called How I Remember Everything That I Read,
09:57which is about the seven different levels
09:59of this whole thing
10:00about taking notes from books.
10:01This, what we've talked about
10:02is about level five,
10:04but there are lots of levels before
10:05and a couple of levels after,
10:06so you should definitely check out that video.
10:08Click over here.
10:08Thank you for watching
10:10and see you in the next video.
10:10Bye-bye.
10:11Bye.
10:12Bye.
10:13Bye.