Ask HN: How to read faster

http://squirt.io/

Edit: There's an active-ish subreddit about Speed Reading[0], maybe you'll find it useful.

0.https://www.reddit.com/r/speedreading

They cost a lot more but its a small price to pay to get through the material in a way that I actually absord.

https://github.com/SFTtech/splash

It needs a lot of polishing but may be a good start for you.

I think trying to find ways to retain what you've read versus how fast you've read something will be more beneficial in the long run. In addition, by become better a reader and retaining what you've read, I believe your speed will increase naturally.

My issue was staying focused on what I've read without wandering off somewhere else in my brain. With patience and a little devotion, I was able to overcome that and find the true joy in reading.

2) when you read a fiction book have a pen and pad of post-its. Everytime a new character is introduced write their name on the post-it and stick it to the page. Maybe asterisk the margin to help you locate it quicker. You can add more info to the post-it as it comes up.

3) get someone else to quiz you. Have them do this onnce a week.

4) after every session close the book and try to paraphrase what you read.

Stop after every paragraph. Consider - do you agree with the author? Do you have past experiences that support or challenge his claims? What can this be used for? What else is interesting about it?

When reading a novel, try to identify clever things the author did here. If relevant, try to guess what the solution will be to the mystery.

When reading a math, physics or programming textbook (or paper), stop every time the author is about to present a new tool or solution. Spend a few minutes trying to solve it yourself before reading his solution.

Do all the exercises.

You'll consume less books per month, but will come out knowing much more (in total) than if you just ran through them.

A few years ago, I did an experiment where every time I read something online I had to post some thoughts about it. I read much less, and gained much more from every bit I did read. I especially like how the comic strips came out - I gained a lot of new appreciation for the relation between art and story:

http://iconcurandfurthermore.tumblr.com/

[0] https://youtu.be/jeOHqI9SqOI

- Get a book about speed reading. It should cover both techniques for reading the words faster, and for using the structure of the book to retain more during each pass. Do the exercises in the book.

- Pick stuff that has a high signal/noise ratio. That way, the limiting factor will be your brain's ability to process the content, rather than your raw reading speed.

- Only read high-quality books. Spend time reading reviews on Amazon for each book before you start, to ensure that it's a book that you will find useful/entertaining at this particular time in your life.

- Prioritise what you want to learn.

- In fiction books, go faster through parts which cover familiar ground. Sure, there might be some unique perspective that you miss occasionally, but you'll more than make up for the loss with the time you get to spend on new stuff.

Reading fast is one thing and comprehension/retention of the material is another. Ideally, you would want to improve all three simultaneously. That's why I'm suggesting start off with smaller, more manageable passages and analyze your understanding as you progress. You may get every question wrong in the beginning, but don't let that bum you out. Keep doing a few passages every day and you should definitely see improvement.

Once you build up a strong base, you can move onto articles, like you would find in The New Yorker for example, that can span several pages and are littered with more complex ideas and examples. You really won't be able to test yourself with questions at the end, but you can ask yourself general questions, like:

"What was the main idea?"

"What side did the author take?" (if the piece was argumentative in nature)

"What were two examples that the author used to support their claim?" (again, if a claim was being made)

Be honest with yourself, if you find it difficult to answer questions like these, read through the article again and go through it with a highlighter (sparingly, mind you). Also, you can write little notes in the margin to help you gather the content and your thoughts as you go along.

I hope this helps and best of luck :)

Twenty years ago my grandparent finished a 400+ book in two and a half days while I was playing around. He did something else in between. I've never finished the book to this day - or maybe I did, but I don't remember. I was in a virtual contest to match those 2.5 days to retain anything of value.

Edit: As you concentrate more you tend to read faster. You get into the flow state and stuff. Also, I find several speed reading techniques to have some value (peripheral vision, non-vocalisation etc.)

I have found that people who enunciate every word they read in their heads read a lot slower than those who can pattern match (without reading out the word in their head). I belong to the earlier category and have friends who belong to the latter. No matter how fast I tried to read, I could never finish a novel in a night (like the others did).

It's really easy to see which one are you - try and read a line of text making sure you do not read out the words out in your head. If the line makes absolutely no sense to you, you are like me. The text pattern needs to be converted into audio, which then links to meaning. Maybe its just the way our brains are arranged.

What has worked very well for me is listening to books on audible. I can easily listen to most books at 2X (and sometimes 2.5X) the speed of narration. A typical large book (like the recent one on Elon Musk) is about 14 hrs narration. I could successfully finish the book in less than 7 hours - something I could never do if I was just reading it. I also feel like I retain more, although I cannot be sure of this without more data.

This does seem to require a pretty strong visual memory to be able to store and recall the "look" of a word, and you also need to have a relatively extensive vocabulary, or else you will be bumping into unfamiliar words that you have to look up or infer from context.

That's what works for me, anyway. YMMV

To comprehend faster, concentrate on imagining and visualizing the ideas you are reading. This will keep your mind more focused on the ideas rather than simply the sound of words.

And let the speed increase on it's own. You can't push your speed, but it will automatically increase when you are reading more efficiently.

See "Reading with the Right Brain" on Amazon for a fuller explanation of how to read faster and more effectively.

Think about it this way: I think almost everyone's done some form of exercise in school or online that shows how bad most people are about absorbing details unless they know they're significant when they see them. Imagine spending 10 hours walking around an unfamiliar mall, even if you took concentration breaks, and being able to answer specific questions about your experience. How many times did you go around? How many people did you see? How many stores are there? Can you list them? You probably couldn't answer any of those, but you probably would remember a few of the most significant moments. Someone who bumped into you, a crying child, a shoplifter, a beautiful stranger, a shirt you wanted.

If you tried, and knew ahead of time, you could probably actually answer one or two of the above questions by actively spending most of your limited attention--but I would bet you'll remember even less about the rest of your experience. You might not even notice the beautiful stranger.

You can, of course, train yourself to become more aware of your surroundings as they pass by, and if you saw something you wanted to remember you could practice some techniques to make it more likely you'd hold on to the details. Now, imagine being able to remember your answer to any of those questions about the mall trip two years later. Unless you regularly reference the mall trip and your answer, you'll probably forget.

This doesn't mean reading books you don't remember is useless. Our experiences still rub off on us, affecting who we are and how we move in the world. You don't say what kind of books you're reading, nor what you hope to remember about them later. I think those are where the best answers to your question lie. Some books have little more than one or two ideas worth remembering; read them as fast as you can (both speed-reading and skimming techniques can be of use, here). Others can change your life, if you unpack them as you go; you would be a fool to hurry through them.

Learning to understand the words passing under your eyes at a high rate of speed is a great tool, but be aware that you're reducing the life-surface-area of what you read when you do so. You'll make fewer connections as you go, so it gets increasingly important to use other strategies for making them. Engage with significant ideas as you find them. A summative note is a good start, but it's better to connect it with other ideas, apply it to a problem, expand on it, or talk with someone about it.

- One of the most common technique is to not read every word as such, instead, read a chunk of words together, and don't 'voice' them. It takes some practice to be able to do this, but to check if you are reading correctly, see if you can hear every word in your head while you read it. If thats the case you are doing it wrong. And when you start doing it right, you will notice the change in speed.

- I read non-fiction mostly, and find it very annoying when the author beats around the bush before conveying his point. Its a very natural phenomenon among authors to write an entire paragraph, when the point could have been conveyed in a single line. (Infact, I fear I may be doing the same in this comment ... :P). Agreed that most books are proof read multiple times by many people, but some loops still come in the final print.

- In most cases, we are expecting something from a book. Either guidance on something specific like finance, or motivation, or something else. There are places in a book where you know for sure that this is not what you are seeking. Skim through that part, and move ahead. Believe me, this will save a lot of your time, and you will come out with the same value in a lot less time.

- Writing something yourself also helps to identify presence of the above 2 factors. You will re-read your blog for sure, and most blogging time is spent on deleting redundant parts, than writing. In every iteration, you will find more things to delete. Be ruthless in this process, respect the reader and don't waste his time. Once you do this yourself, you will know whether the author of the article/book that you are reading has done it.

- As for your point about retaining what you have read, I wouldn't worry much about that. We feel that most of the information has faded away quickly, when in fact, it just gets filtered, and when a topic relevant to what you have read comes up, you will be able to access what you read, not exactly maybe, but the gist of it. Its a very pleasant surprise when this happens. (Daniel Kahneman has some interesting things to say about this kind of information retrieval)

- Lastly, read Paul Graham and Sam Altman's essays. they are precise, no wasted words at all. Also, Ben Horowitz's answers, and his book Hard thing about hard things.

- Measure against these benchmarks, and you will realise that you will have to really 'read' much less overall. For the remaining part, employ the advice of @SonOfLilit in the comment below.

- Broaden your focus. You don't read each letter individually, you recognize the word as a whole. Likewise, you can, with practice, train yourself to focus on more words at a time. Try looking at one word and reading the words on either side, then practice reading half a line of a book at a time, then 1 line at a time. Think of your eyes as sponges soaking up a group of words at a time.

- Don't vocalize the words. If you have trouble with this, read so slowly that your brain gives up reading words "aloud" in your head.

- Focus on the chapter titles, first / last paragraphs, and any key info (e.g. bold sentences). Read those parts several times and really focus on them. This is where most of the important information lies. You will likely forget the rest of the chapter no matter how fast/slow you read it.

- Don't worry if you miss some parts from reading too quickly. Don't go back to re-read anything. Getting the general theme is more important that every single sentence.

- Retention is actually higher if you read faster, because your brain can put the big picture together faster. If you don't believe that, try reading a book 1 sentence a day.

As for memorizing things for school, look into Memory Palaces, Person-Action-Object, and Mnemonics. Visualizing things helps. Associate things you want to memorize with the absurd and unusual to make it stick out. It also helps to have a dirty mind when making associations. Our brains are wired to prioritize sex, so sexual scenarios are more memorable.