Reading is an ancient art form perfected over millennia. Great thinkers from Aristotle to Darwin immersed themselves in the written word to download genius and change the world.
Fast forward to today. Our attention spans are fragmenting. Most struggle to finish a book per year. But with the right techniques, you can leverage books to rapidly expand your mind.
In this article, I break down every facet of reading by drawing from cognitive science, speed reading techniques, productivity hacks, and learning best practices. If you want to double, even triple your reading speed while retaining way more, you’ll find every strategy you need here. Buckle up buttercup.
Environment: Where You Read Matters
Like a surfer finding the perfect wave, environment dictates reading performance. Dial these factors in to enter reading flow state:
Sit Upright
Don’t read lying down no matter how tempting. Our brains associate horizontal positions with sleep. So reading in bed causes drowsiness making you lose focus. Sit upright in a firm chair or couch to stay alert. And don’t risk dropping books on your face! Besides dental bills, this conditions your brain that “lying down = reading” messing with sleep cues.
Pro Tip: Face a window for natural lighting. Avoid backgrounds causing visual distraction.
Schedule Daily Reading Sessions
Without structure, good intentions shrivel. We overestimate free time and underestimate interruptions. So even if you “want” to read more, you won’t. Prime your subconscious to expect reading by blocking off set times. Treat reading like an important meeting.
Start small – pencil in 20 to 30 minute daily sessions. Use phone reminders too. Gradually expand as the habit solidifies.
Soon reading will anchor your day. You’ll eventually associate certain times with reading – like before bed. Now it naturally gets done without pushing yourself.
Use Your Finger
Your eyes actually jump around instead of moving smoothly. These rapid movements are called “saccades”. So even when scanning lines of text, you’ll repeatedly lose your place. This causes rereading sentences 2-3 times wasting mental energy. The solution – use your finger!
Run it under text as you read. This anchors your gaze stopping slip-ups. It also helps you descend into deeper focus. The tactile feedback reaffirms your reading progress. Before long, you’ll enter flow drifting for pages without losing your spot. Your reading speed will be unleashed in the process.
Psychology: Fall in Love With Reading
Beyond environment lies mindset. Because reading is as emotional as it is mechanical. Think of each book like a romantic relationship. The more excited and engaged you are, the faster intimacy grows.
Here’s how to seduce books:
Drop Boring Books
Reading should uplift, not weigh you down. So date around with different books until you find the perfect match. Building reading stamina takes time anyway. When the prose sparkles and pulls you forward, magic unfolds. Can’t wait to continue the affair? That’s your green light to commit.
Bad fit? No judgement. Toss it aside half-read without looking back. Abundant fish in the sea my literate friend.
Skim Redundant Passages
Non-fiction authors often repeat the same point ad-nauseam. You’ll get one new insight explained six different ways with various examples. Don’t feel pressured to read these bloated sections in detail. Absorb enough to understand then briskly skim or skip ahead.
As your comprehension strengthens, quickly identify fluff versus substance. This condenses books to their essence dramaticizing speed.
Follow Your Evolving Curiosity
Our interests aren’t static. They morph in tune with life stages and maturity. The 18 year-old version of you craved vastly different books. So did last year’s model.
The most magnetic books meet your curiosities here and now. They scratch an itch or paint a vision of your future self. This intrinsically pulls you through pages quicker. So keep your reading list fresh by pruning genres and authors irrelevant to current growth trajectories. Feed your ever shifting appetite.
Juggle Multiple Books
Imagine dating just one person at a time. Dangerous! Early infatuation fizzles. Differences surface. So we’d never commit. Same with reading. Sticking to one book inevitably hits slow patches causing disengagement. The solution? Date multiple books simultaneously so you’re perpetually wooed.
Have 4-5 books on the go across fiction and nonfiction domains. When energy for one dips, delve into another. This sustains momentum. Plus variety keeps things electrically interesting preventing boredom. You develop more literary relationships in the process.
Learning: Cementing Concepts In Long-Term Memory
Reading is useless if forgotten. Fortunately, learning science reveals how to lock concepts into long-term memory:
Write Summaries
Highlighting and underlining are dead methods. They delude you into thinking volumes were absorbed. Instead extract and translate key ideas into your words. This forces deeper mental processing through:
- Selecting most salient points
- Explaining them absent the author’s style
- Finding examples applying the principles
In other words, synthesizing raw content into an original derivative. Now you own the knowledge.
Writing embeds meaning through multiple sensory channels – visual input, kinesthetic typing, auditory internal words – gluing concepts in place. Studies confirm teaching others material right after reading cements up to 90% retention. So pretend you’re instructing these ideas to a novice!
Pro Tip: Maintain a digital commonplace book or use Read wise to automatically save highlights. Revisit these nuggets when creating your own content.
Apply Principles Immediately
Watering seeds of knowledge through application makes them bloom. Without output, input gets squandered. Say you read a book on starting an online business. Don’t just consume this like a documentary. Start actual ventures applying lessons as you go.
Social skills book? Talk to real people immediately practicing techniques.
Dating book? Ask someone out that week leveraging advice.
The experience of using concepts leagues deeper retention versus passive reading. Output clarifies knowledge gaps prompting richer input cycles too. So read with purpose – to evolve into your highest expression of self. Books guide the journey but only if acted upon.
Raise Your Words Per Minute
Thus far we’ve focused on retention maximization. But let’s turbo boost raw reading speed shall we? I’ll share tactics allowing me to read 300-400+ words per minute with rock solid comprehension. Enough to finish an entire book each day!
Remove Subvocalization
We instinctively read by internally pronouncing each word. This subvocalizing throttles speed to our talking pace. But you can directly absorb written words without sounding them out. It just takes retraining visual pattern recognition and building fluency.
Try now – can you understand this text without subvocalizing?
Pretty simple right? Start practicing reading without voicing sentences in your head. Master this to break speech speed barriers when reading.
Acceleration Methods
Packed schedules make reading time precious. So optimize those minutes to the maximum:
Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP)
Apps like Spritz display single words in rapid sequence. As your eyes fixate, comprehension flows faster by eliminating saccades. Gradually notch up WPM. Spreeder does this for entire sentences helping you chunk more content.
Skim Headers and Text
Scan section headers, subheads and summary paragraphs first. This surveys structure providing context to anchor detail reading. Then glance over text as you move down pages to predict content flow. Periodically stop to thoroughly read captivating sections. Weave above strategies together to slash reading time and skyrocket absorption.
Not Enough? Try Speed Reading
True speed reading involves special techniques to surpass averages of 600-700 WPM with full understanding.
How? By streamlining fixation points:
1. Take In Multiple Words Simultaneously – Use peripheral vision to register 2-4 words in a glance instead of 1
2. Reduce Fixations – Train saccades to span greater distances fixating less while retaining meaning
3. Kill Regression – Eliminate backward doubling to re-read phrases
Check my detailed guide to self-taught speed reading to learn these exceptional tactics.
Implement just a couple tips here and expect at least 2X reading speed gains.
But raw pace shouldn’t outrun purpose. Rebar reading into your personal growth and change accelerates. Books that alter neural wiring, upgrade beliefs, illuminate blind spots – these transform from forgettable trivia into enduring wisdom as their ideas reshape your life.
That’s the ultimate goal.
Now Over To You
Hopefully you’re itching to hit bookshelves (or e-readers) and road test some techniques! Bookmark/save this guide and return to master additional dimensions over time. Little optimizations compound into vastly enhanced reading experiences that stick.
So which tips resonated most? How will you apply them to unlock faster reading, sky high retention, and consistent book love into your life? Did I leave any game changing tactics out? Share your thoughts and reading epiphanies by commenting below!
