Reading faster is a bit like running faster.
Running faster can be broken down to two things – a faster cadence,
or how quickly you’re taking each step or stride, and the length of your stride.
If you’re taking super-fast steps that are really short,
or you’re taking really long steps that are super slow, you won’t run at your maximum
speed. You need to optimize both cadence and stride length. It makes sense, right?
And in the same way, reading faster can be broken down to two things as well – how quickly your eyes
move, and how effectively your brain comprehends what you’re reading – speed and comprehension.
It’s no good skimming through a page of text super-fast if your brain doesn’t
comprehend anything, or if you’re reading at the pace of a snail to make sure you
comprehend every single word, you’ll either fall asleep from boredom or run out of time.
A quick thank you right now to Shortform for sponsoring this video and helping me
explain this stuff to you – but you’ll hear more about them a little later.
Now the good news is, if you’re like the vast majority of people, you can use one simple
technique to instantly double your reading speed and still comprehend almost everything.
So in this video I’m not just going to show you this one simple technique,
I’m going to hack your reading speed and make you instantly read twice as fast
during this video, and then see if you can triple your reading speed and even 4X your reading speed.
Now here’s a simple fact – your eyes are attracted to movement.
We can take advantage of that fact by leading your eyes along a line of text with a physical
object. You could use a pen or pencil, or just go old school
and use your finger. This is called a visual pacer. You’ll be looking at the words,
not your finger, but your finger will set the pace your eyes move.
Most people have been reading at the same speed for years,
and that’s an ingrained habit you need to overcome if you want to read faster.
So this is how you can train your eyes to move at a higher speed.
The average reading speed is somewhere around 200-250 words per minute. To get used to using
a visual pacer I’m going to use a finger to lead your eyes along each line at 250 words
per minute for 60 seconds. All you have to do is read along at the same speed as the finger. And
after this we’ll increase the pace and you’ll see how easily you can super-boost your reading speed.
OK, so first challenge, read at 250 wpm for 60 seconds, ready set go.
And stop there.
Alright, that was the average person’s reading speed of 250wpm,
so it was probably pretty comfortable for you.
But now we’ll take it to the next level. I’m going to increase the reading speed to 500
words per minute, instantly doubling how fast the average person reads.
Again, just follow along with the finger setting the pace.
Are you ready? 3, 2, 1 – go!
And stop.
How’d you go? Comment below and tell me if you were able to keep up, but you probably discovered
two things – first, your eyes were easily able to move at the faster speed set by the visual pacer,
and second, your brain was able to comprehend pretty much everything you read.
Pretty cool, right? That’s how you can instantly double your reading speed.
But how about going even faster? Well, the academic literature says that at
speeds higher than about 500 words per minute, your comprehension will begin
to fall and you won’t understand the text as well as at your normal speed.
Well, let’s try it now and you can judge for yourself.
But first, a brief word about the sponsor of this video,
Shortform. When I want to suck the knowledge out of a book quickly, I either use speed reading
techniques or I listen to the audiobook version at 2X speed. But Shortform is my newest favourite
time-saving platform to devour almost all of that same knowledge in a fraction of the time.
Shortform produces uber-high-quality guides to non-fiction books, they’re like book summaries
on steroids. Imagine being able to consume 90% of a book’s value in only 10% of the time.
There’s a 1-page summary that gives a 10 minute overview of the whole book,
and this is already seriously better than other apps like Blinkist.
If you want to go deeper, there’s a chapter-by-chapter full guide,
which summarizes and analyses each major set of ideas.
There’s original commentary and analysis that connects ideas between different books,
there are interactive exercises, and the book guides even have audio, so you can listen and
learn on the go, and even listen to them at 2X speed if you’re feeling impatient.
Now to be clear, I don’t use Shortform to avoid
reading books. I’ve gotten into the habit of using it to check out the key ideas of a book.
Sometimes I decide to read the full book as well, which means I quickly get
powerful insights from a lot of books but only deep dive into the most valuable ones.
And you can check it out for yourself for free, because I’ve arranged a
special deal for Memorize Academy viewers to receive 5 days of free unlimited access
and an additional 20% discount off annual subscriptions. Just join through my link in
the video description below, and you’ll see why I’m loving Shortform so much.
Alright, back into it. This challenge is going to be at 750 words per minute, which is 3X the
average reading speed. And then after this we’ll go for broke and aim for 1000 words per minute.
So, same as before, follow along with the visual pacer for 60 seconds. Ready, set, go!
Time’s up!
Alright, how was that? Again, let me know in the comments.
You can test your own comprehension by asking yourself questions about what you just read.
Use the standard 5W’s and H questions – who, what, when, where, why, and how?
This speed probably didn’t feel comfortable to you,
but you can balance that against your level of comprehension.
Reading 3X faster but only comprehending 75% of what you read might be acceptable depending on
the situation and what you’re reading, it’s totally up to you where you draw the line.
And now for the big challenge – how will you go at 4X the average reading speed?
1000 words per minute!
This might feel completely overwhelming and you might hate me for it,
but just push through and see at the end what level of comprehension you had.
OK, take a deep breath in, slowly let it out, and ready, set, go!
Congratulations, you made it to the end! But, how did it feel? Were your eyes able to keep up
with the visual pacer? Was your brain able to take in and comprehend any of the information?
Keep in mind that reading at 1000wpm is like driving a Formula 1 racing car when
you normally ride a bike, it just takes practice to get better at it.
If you want to play around with reading speeds even
more you can adjust the playback speed of this video and go crazy.
But no matter how hard or easy you found any of these challenges,
you can improve both your speed and comprehension with training and focus.
Tell me in the comments how you went in each of the challenges,
and I’ll see you in the next video. Bye!