I have to admit I have been obsessed with how to read faster for quite some time. At first, it was for school; then, it was for work. At first, I have bought this course, which has helped me a lot. And my rate of words per minute I could read was skyrocketing. Within the first three weeks, when I was applying what I was taught in my opinion in the best speed reading course, I was able to read over 750 words per minute, which was an insane improvement for me at the time. I knew I could continue with the methods from the program, but I also heard some great reviews for Breakthrough Rapid Reading, which after reading, I can recommend. And I believe to this day that this book has also helped me tremendously with my speed reading.
I believe I have read that book under 2 hours, which at the time, again, was a breakthrough for me. I have never read over 250 pages under three hours before. But I was still chasing that 1500 words per minute. And to be honest, I have never achieved that. Maybe I was able to get around 1100 to maybe even 1200 words per minute, but I never passed that. And if someone asks me if the book has helped me more, with the speed rate of my reading or the course, I have almost no answer for them. It was a combination of both, and if someone is new to speed reading, the course might be better to start with. And who knows, you might get better results than I ever had with it.
Sorry for this long introduction, now I am going to share with you my best tips on how to read faster.
BTW: If you don’t know where you can legally download almost any ebook for free, read this article.
Subvocalization has slowed me and probably everyone the most in reading. It took me a while to get rid of the “speaking” the words to my self in my head. Our speaking speed is a lot more limited that the reading one, so getting rid of this lousy habit is a must if you want to learn how to read faster and do it!
Most people experience that by stopping the voice in your head can almost instantly double your reading pace.
How to stop subvocalizing easily to read faster
Probably the easiest and the best piece of advice I have ever received on this topic was that I should distract myself and my brain somehow. I know that it sounds bizarre, but it works. Just use your index finger to follow the words in the book. If you don’t want to do that or it did not work for you. Try to listen to music while reading or chew a piece of gum. Chewing a piece of gum works for most people, but if you are reading over an hour a day, it is not a good habit.
Don’t read words
Again, I know that this might be a bit weird, but don’t read just words. Try to learn how to read the content in phrases or even chunks of the text. Most people read by individual words, that is also one of the reasons why they can read on average around 200 words per minute if that. From the research I have been presented, we as humans should be able to read up to nine words at the same time. So this is a no brainer, that teaching yourself how to read phrases rather than words alone, will increase the rate of our reading a lot.
No more re-reading
Another fairly common mistake is re-reading the text you read a few seconds ago. Sometimes it is a sentence, but sometimes it is a whole paragraph. This is another big no-no. But it was probably the hardest thing out of all of these I am sharing within this article. But in retrospect, the re-reading has held me back a lot. I always had the feeling that if I did not understand every single line of text, that I won’t get it. But after readings 100s of books, I have realized that I do not gain almost any new knowledge or understanding from re-reading the text.
And according to data I have seen, over 30% of total reading time is consumed by re-reading.
This is the best tip on how to read faster.
Read more! It is as simple as that. Reading is a skill like any other. It takes time to improve. And it improves with what? Practice. The math is simple, do more you will read, the better you will be at doing so! It is not rocket science, yes there are few great tips and tricks on how to read faster within days. But you will still at the end of the day have to read and read a lot more if you want to master this skill.
How to read more? Set a goal for a week. Let say that you want to read 100 000 words per week. Let’s bump that number up after a month or so to train yourself and challenge yourself.
Also, what has helped me a lot, I was switching books quite a lot. One day I would be reading Novels, and the next day, I was reading almost textbooks. If I were you, I would read five books that are your favorite or in your genre, and the sixth book would be on an entirely different topic with a different writing style.
My Last Tip On How To Read Faster
And this does not only specifies how to read faster but to all skills in general. In this day and age, we are always on our phones, distracted continuously with sounds, etc. And I am not going to hate on that or say it is terrible for us. Maybe it is, perhaps it is not, I can’t be the judge of that. But this environment for learning skills or learning, in general, is entirely wrong. If you truly want to master reading and improve your speed/rate of words per minute or second.
Try to create an environment in which you can 100% focus only on reading. For example, what I have done was that I started waking up an hour and a half before anyone else. I woke up, made my coffee, and I went to the bathroom because it was the most silent room in the house. And then I have spent the next 50-70 minutes just by reading. I had no phone around me and no other distractions.
And at first, it was quite hard to focus for a whole 50 minutes or more, but after a few weeks, it was second nature for me. I have tried to create another 50 to 70-minute block during the day, where I could practice reading. But I just wasn’t able to find a time and place during the day, where and when I could read for almost an hour without anyone distracting me. So I have only stuck to my morning routine, which worked. But I bet if I were able to allocate another hour to this, my speed reading would improve.
If you want to become better at reading faster, you don’t have to wake up at 5 am like I did. But allocating time for undisturbed reading is very crucial, and it can, and it will accelerate your progress, so if you can, please do it!
How To Apply These Tips For The Best Results
First of all, don’t try them all at the same time. Try to work on these slowly one by one. Of course, the last one about reading more can or has to be combined with the rest of them.
My Last Thoughts
If you genuinely want to learn how to read faster, I highly suggest either try this course or read this book. Both of these have helped me a lot. I prefer the combination. If you are brand new to this, maybe start with the course and buy the book later.
Do you have to purchase any of these to increase your reading speed? No, you don’t. You can apply these tips I have shared with you, and your rate will improve over time with practice. But from both of these, I have learned so many tricks and tips that have helped me transform my reading to an entirely new level. These are the best tips on how to speed read that are available online. Only with these, you will see significant improvements. If you combine these also with the ebook or course, or if you can get both. You will be soon reading over 1000 words per minute.
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