My experiences with speed reading are that once you get up to a certain speed, your thinking speed is the limiting factor, not the way your eyes move. Correct me if I’m wrong, but most speed reading techniques offer nothing in terms of how to think quicker. Rather, they are methods of moving your eyes more efficiently.
On his old site lukeprog hosted a speedreading guide, the gist I got from it was that speed reading is appropriate for non dense material (such as self help books, popular science or light fiction) but after certain adjustments like following your line with a pen, keeping a challenging pace and keeping awareness of lines further down the page, watching for key terms to keep you conscious of the direction the book was moving in, there was little one could do to read more than 400 wpm while retaining a high rate of retention. A quicker pace is essentially well thought out scanning, which is wholly appropriate when you are looking for specific bits of knowledge that relate to you.
Since he updated his site I can’t find the specific essay for reference.
Hm. I think that there are some people (say 1%) who can read as fast as 600 wpm and with high comprehension. And atypical folks like Kim Peek can definitely read much faster than 400 wpm, more like 1000 wpm. It would be interesting to know how fast various members of LW can read.
If speed reading is a learnable skill and not strongly genetically determined like e.g. IQ, learning to read faster would be one of the most promisising ways to become more awesome.
What do you think of speed reading?
My experiences with speed reading are that once you get up to a certain speed, your thinking speed is the limiting factor, not the way your eyes move. Correct me if I’m wrong, but most speed reading techniques offer nothing in terms of how to think quicker. Rather, they are methods of moving your eyes more efficiently.
On his old site lukeprog hosted a speedreading guide, the gist I got from it was that speed reading is appropriate for non dense material (such as self help books, popular science or light fiction) but after certain adjustments like following your line with a pen, keeping a challenging pace and keeping awareness of lines further down the page, watching for key terms to keep you conscious of the direction the book was moving in, there was little one could do to read more than 400 wpm while retaining a high rate of retention. A quicker pace is essentially well thought out scanning, which is wholly appropriate when you are looking for specific bits of knowledge that relate to you.
Since he updated his site I can’t find the specific essay for reference.
Hm. I think that there are some people (say 1%) who can read as fast as 600 wpm and with high comprehension. And atypical folks like Kim Peek can definitely read much faster than 400 wpm, more like 1000 wpm. It would be interesting to know how fast various members of LW can read. If speed reading is a learnable skill and not strongly genetically determined like e.g. IQ, learning to read faster would be one of the most promisising ways to become more awesome.