Ask HN: Want to Learn Speed Reading. Where to Begin?

Hello -

I want to try speed reading but am not sure where to begin. I've seen others mention it in posts and am curious about programs, methods and results.

Thanks!

brutos · 14 years ago

The easiest hack I've found is to inhibit subvocalization through just repeating "one, two, three" or any other phrase in your mind while reading.

The second "hack" is to try to make reading chunks as big as possible. Try not to focus on a single word.

The third trick is to minimize eye movement. Try reading the first line normally and the second line backwards.

phamilton · 14 years ago

Also guide with your finger to maintain speed. The tip of my index finger used to be all black after big reading assignments.

cafard · 14 years ago

Having been around during speed reading's first vogue in the 1960s, I have to say that I think it overrated. To the extent that it works, I think that it is plain old skimming, which people hardly need to be taught. If you can read something at triple speed and comprehend as much, that text probably had a lot of padding.

blyuher · 14 years ago

You may start with this rather good and detailed overview of techniques: http://muflax.com/experiments/speedreading/

adrianp · 14 years ago

There are some resources mentioned in this post: http://howtolifeguide.com/post/16664436505/how-to-read

gregorymichael · 14 years ago

Richard Zorn made a book called Speed Reading. I believe it's out of print. But you can probably find it on Amazon. Small book. I read it in highschool. It works.

linguistbreaker · 14 years ago

Read a book you've already read. Or a short story. Then read the short story again, but faster.

Another trick is to read extremely technical papers in a field you're not familiar with. This can help you to stop subvocalizing as well as teach better syntactic cue'ing like chunking via prepositions etc.

metaclass · 14 years ago

You just need to spend more time reading and your speed will increase naturally.

For example, I read a lot and it usually takes me no more than 2-3 hours to finish an average fiction book(about 0.5 mb in size) in my native language(I didn't received any training in speed reading)

kloc · 14 years ago

You may find this link useful : http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/07/30/speed-readin...