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481 lines
27 KiB
Markdown
481 lines
27 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: Speed Reading
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date: 2010-06-23
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techne: :rough
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toc: true
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episteme: :broken
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---
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Wait, what? Speed reading? Isn't that pseudoscience? Partially, sure. However,
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not all of it, and that really surprised me. Yes, speed reading *is* real. This
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is my collection of useful hacks.
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Hacking your brain for fun and profit
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=====================================
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Binocular Rivalry
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-----------------
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While working through [Consciousness Explained][] by Daniel Dennett, I encountered
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several experiments that I doubted. So I tried to replicate them. Specifically,
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binocular rivalry seemed weird to me. Binocular rivalry occurs when each of
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your eyes sees a different thing, typically achieved by just setting up a
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barrier between them, and showing different pictures to each, e.g. horizontal
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stripes on the left and vertical stripes on the right, or different letters or
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faces and so on. What happens is that occasionally one side will dominate over
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the other and you will only be conscious of it. Most commonly, at first you
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kinda see both sides, then they partially merge, in a very patchy way, and
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suddenly your vision _flips_, i.e. one side becomes clear and the other turns
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invisible. This process then alternates randomly, unless even a slight
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disruption is introduced to one side, like a moving dot, which causes this side
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to become dominant immediately.
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Allegedly, you may control which side is dominant most of the time, but you can
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not be conscious of both reliably. I didn't believe that and tested it by trying
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to read two texts simultaneously. In fact, I actually managed to do that! The
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main visual problem is focus. It is quite hard to have each eye focus a
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different thing, but using e.g. [DXM][], you can actually pull that off. But even
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without it, you can try to focus a middle point and just make the letters big
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enough so that you can read them even out-of-focus. The real problem comes from
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assembling two sources of input into separate sentences; at first, they always
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mixed and I couldn't understand anything.
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Being Myselves
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--------------
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I then controlled for that by using series of numbers and suddenly I was able to
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read two things at the same time! At first rivalry happened a lot, but soon I
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got into mental soft focus and could read (but not parse sentences) just fine. I
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then speculated that I might be able to exploit both halves of my brain. In
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split-brain patients, who don't have a connection between their left and right
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hemisphere, you actually get two independent consciousnesses and I did read up
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on people that tried to induce this with normal brains.
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Because the left side of vision (i.e. left in both eyes) is handled by the left
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hemisphere and vice versa, you can wear glasses that have either their left half
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on each glass blocked by tape or the right side, and so only give visual input
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to one hemiphhere. This actually causes a significant effect if your two
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hemispheres are currently in disagreement. Some people with depression or
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anxiety were able to reduce it or turn it almost off temporarily while wearing
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such glasses! So for example, you feel very nervous with your therapist, block
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the left side, everything is the same, then instead block the right side,
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woosh!, your anxiety is gone. It comes right back when you take the glasses off,
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but still, way cool.
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So by being able to make each hemisphere dominant at will, you can really fuck
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with your mood. Find where your language side is (typically the left side) and
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block it - you become more empathetic and reading gets harder. Block the other
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side, reading is normal, but relating to content is harder. The effect is
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typically not that large because both sides are still internally connected, but
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I found it quite noticeable.
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Anyway, I tried to improve on binocular reading by separating not only between
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eyes, but sides of vision. Let my left half of my left eye read one thing and
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the right half of my right eye another. Focus gets really tricky that way, but
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it is doable. And lo and behold, I could, albeit slowly, read two things at
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once! Parallel processing, bitches!
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What's that all got to do with speed reading?!
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----------------------------------------------
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Binocular reading isn't really practical (for one, you look ridiculous, two,
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it's very difficult and slow), but I got interested in *other* ways I could hack
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my reading process. If I can read in parallel, can I also read non-linearly?
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Start in the middle of a sentence, jump around and still get it? Read really
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really fast? Maybe subconsciously?
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Now we're getting there! First, let me clarify one thing: speed reading literature
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is a complete and total *mess*. Barely anything scientific, vague claims, lots
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of lies and false promises, no clear terms, nothing. To remedy this, I'm going
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to state *exactly* what I mean and what this is about:
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Speed reading involves any technique that makes you read a normal text faster
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**without sacrificing comprehension**. No, it's not **skimming**: that only
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tries to give you a basic overview of the text. The idea is to be able to
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understand the text just as if you had read it "normally", even though the
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process of getting there may be very different. There are techniques to organize
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your reading better, like first skimming through and getting a feel for the
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structure and so on, and they are all useful, but that's *not what this is
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about*. We want pure reading speed, nothing more, nothing less.
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But what can be achieved? First, measure your current reading speed. Say, pick a
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Wikipedia article, read it, time yourself and then count the words. Average
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among most people is about *150-250wpm* (words per minute). Good college
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students read at about *300-350wpm*. A fast conventional reader gets up to
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*500wpm*, maybe *600wpm* if they are really good. Speed reading, on the other
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hand, falls into a range of about *800 to 1500wpm*. For some texts and some
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people, this can go even higher, but as a reasonable general limit, 1500wpm is
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about it.
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Because a normal page in a book has about 350 to 450 words, depending on font
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size, people typically read about 30 pages per hour, college students about 50
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to 60 and speed readers about 150 to 250. Those numbers are of course averaged
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over a lengthy text and don't have to be constant - a difficult paragraph may
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slow you down and a simple one may just fly by.
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What about **comprehension**? There are two components to it: **understanding**
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the text and **remembering** it. Understanding means being able to follow it,
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being able to give a summary of it and so on. Remembering involves still knowing
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details, all characters or arguments involved and so on. Basically, if at the
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end of the book, you don't sit around confused what the fuck just happened, you
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*understood* the text (and didn't read James Joyce). If you can also pretty much
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tell someone everything you just read, you also *remember* it. The two are
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usually closely connected, but not always.
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I am only interested in techniques that *maintain* a high level of
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comprehension, typically a retention of 80-90% of the content. Sacrificing
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quantity for quality is right out. Nonetheless, it is still true that topics
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that are difficult to understand will always be read slowly, no matter the
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technique used. Reading about theoretical physics will be slow unless you have
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studied it. No speed reading technique will fix this problem. Most texts,
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however, fit nicely into your rough skill level and the limiting factor is in
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fact your reading, not your understanding.
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Related to that, a common objection to speed reading is that it kills the
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enjoyment, or that maybe you are just reading too easy texts. "Why hurry
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something good?" I don't agree with this sentiment *at all*. If you enjoy
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reading so much, why not read at 1 sentence per hour? Why not watch Star Trek at
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one scene per day? What, that would be mind-numbingly boring? Why yes it would!
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Also, if you increase your throughput, you become able to handle more complex
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structures. A series filling thousands of pages is suddenly just as manageable
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as a comic book was before. Reading up on moral philosophy by reading works
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by/about the 10 or 20 most influential thinkers over the course of a week or two
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is doable. Books become what Wikipedia articles were before. So if you don't
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like high bandwidth and all the benefits that come with it, this just isn't for
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you.
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Finally, a note on **subvocalization**. When reading, there are basically 4
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different aspects of sound:
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1. *Reading out loud*. This is what beginners may do, or what you do when
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reading to someone. It was actually quite common in ancient times and the
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idea that you could read silently was very weird to many Romans.
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2. *Reading to yourself internally*. You basically still do the same thing,
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including moving your tongue, but you don't produce a sound. This is often a
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transitional period for early readers (and quite useful - there is some
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evidence, including my own experience, that learning new languages is easier
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when subvocalizing). It will disappear on its own once you become more
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confident.
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3. *Subvocalization*. You still *hear* the sound, but you don't feel that you
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produce it. Muscle movement doesn't exist (at least not any you would notice)
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and speed is greatly improved. You often skip words, or only hint at the
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sound. This is the normal mode for most people to be in, even many deaf (who
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often are not 100% deaf), and this is the *inner voice* most of us use to
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think, at least some of the time.
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4. *Reading in silence*. Finally, reading without hearing any associated sound.
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No inner voice, but direct meaning, just as you look at a map, for example.
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Because visual processing is, for almost everyone, vastly superior to aural
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processing you can read much faster that way. Personally, I believe that the
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problem is that to understand an inner or outer voice, your brain has to
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simulate sequential processesing, but the brain is only parallel. This
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makes it all quite slow. Visual processing on the other hand is not - you
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can parse many parts of an image or scene at the same time and only
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coordinate results at the very end. Also, your visual hardware is far more
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optimized and greater in size.
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Techniques
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==========
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The Conventional Approach - How to read fast the normal way
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-----------------------------------------------------------
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The easiest hack is to just read faster - you do everything you'd normally do,
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just faster. As I mentioned, you can go up to about 600wpm that way. When I was
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starting out with speed reading, I was already reading at 450wpm. How did I get
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that fast?
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I could credit reading practice. I do read a lot, especially on the web, but
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that's not all that plausible. I know enough people who easily read just as much
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as I was reading at 14, and I was reading about 400wpm back then, too. Most
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people never seem to go beyond 250-300wpm, no matter how much practice they have
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reading texts.
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So what *do* I credit? Video games. I'm serious. I played a *lot* of shooters
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and racing games and this really improves your ability to react *fast* and react
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to inputs from *anywhere* in your field of vision. You are also forced to shift
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your attention around a lot and figure out threats as fast as you can. I also
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notice that in anyone I know that played a lot of fast games: Their attention
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jumps around a lot faster than normal, no matter what they are working on.
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The typical example is taking a gaming teenager and having their teacher watch.
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Give the teen a computer menu to figure out, or a form to fill out or something
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like this, and watch how the teacher desperately tries to keep up, even though
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the teacher surely has more reading practice. Still, no chance whatsoever, and
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the same goes for all non-gaming teens. But any gamer will have no problem, no
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matter the age.
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So if you read only 200 or 300wpm, you are not playing enough. Get Quake 3 or
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Halo or Starcraft, a big supply of caffeine and *train*. After a while, your
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reading speed will pick up, I'm certain of it. Some people, especially those
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with ADHD, may be better at this than others. Sometimes, a short attention span
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really pays.. oh shiny!
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Turning off subvocalization
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---------------------------
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The most important change to achieve any kind of real speed is getting rid of
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the dependency on subvocalization. The rationale is simple: as long as sound is
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involved, in any way, even just at the last step of comprehension, you will not
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go faster than about 600wpm. Forget it, it's impossible.
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However, the idea is *not* to permanently turn off subvocalization. It does have
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some useful purposes. It's quite good at understanding names, or unknown words,
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or reading anything sound-based, like poetry. However, the vast majority of text
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is entirely disconnected from sound. (Some languages maybe more than others.
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French and English are already only remotely linked to their actual spelling,
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but many Chinese languages have basically *no* written pronunciation. It also
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has never stopped any scholar from reading old languages, whose sounds have been
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lost to us.) Ideally, we would like to read visually whenever possible and only
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resort to sound when necessary.
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So let's cut out the middleman. But how? I'm going to present three techniques that
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worked for me, but before I do that, I want to address one common problem.
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It is quite typical to worry how to *suppress* subvocalization. How do you *not*
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think in a certain way? The short answer is: you don't because you can't.
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Thought suppression never works. You can't *learn* to not think of a cow by
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*trying* to not think of a cow. Try it yourself! By giving attention to the idea
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of a cow, and you must, otherwise you wouldn't know that you are not thinking of
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it, it will always come to mind again. However, certainly *can* not think of a
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cow - by not giving cows any kind of attention. The same goes for
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subvocalization - the following techniques will simply not care about it and
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will in fact make it impossible to use it. It will disappear on its own.
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Chunking
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--------
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A chunk is the largest unit of information you take in at once. When you learn
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reading, your chunk size is "one letter", slowly building up to "one syllable"
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to "one word". Unfortunately, most people stop there. The goal is to enlarge
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your chunks to multiple words, maybe even whole sentences at once. Chunking is
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the whole meat of speed reading. It's the main trick to discover.
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Once you read at a very high speed, it really makes a huge difference how large
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your chunks are. Here's a little demonstration:
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<%= image("fast.gif", "chunk size 1") %>
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<%= image("slow.gif", "chunk size 4") %>
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Both animations run at the same reading speed of 1000wpm, but the first one
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shows every word on its own, while the second one uses groups of 4. If you watch
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it for a while, you should be able to read the second one, but the first one is
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a lot more difficult. However, notice that it will also get easier once you know
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what the sentence is. This is the trick behind chunking: pattern prediction. If
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you have a good clue how a sentence is gonna develop, you can read more of it in
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one go. This is why this will only work when you know the language well and the
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text contains not too many unfamiliar ideas.
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Once you go beyond about 10 chunks/second, visual processing starts lagging
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behind more and more. After-images, too slow eye movement and so on start
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interfering with your reading. This means you can read maybe 600wpm if you read
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every word on its own, but increasing your chunk size from just 1 to 2
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immediately doubles your speed! The benefit is obvious, so pacing trade-offs
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when increasing chunk size are often worth it.
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The highest possible chunk size, according to all sources I read, seems to be
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about one paragraph, which is about 100 to 150 words long. I suspect that a main
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problem here is the size of the area you can keep in focus. Chunking a whole
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page at once is probably impossible because you could never get all words to be
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sharp and readable.
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A very useful technique for training purposes is **Rapid Serial Visual
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Presentation**, or RSVP for short. That's quite a big word, when really, it just
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means "flashing words really fast", exactly like the two animations before.
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The best RSVP I found is [Eyercize][], even though it has
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the stupidest name *evar*. Nonetheless, it's the only speed reading tool I know
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with support for fixation points and complete customization. I usually set it to
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2-3 fixation points per line, about 5 lines of context and increasingly higher
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speeds. I occasionally ignore the marked line and read the upcoming context
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instead, though. [Spreeder][] is also nice and maybe
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easier to use at first.
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I would also recommend [Look, Ma; No Hands!][], a book that teaches semantic
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chunking very well. It's quite short and precise. You get results very fast.
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To make chunking possible, you have to watch out for the right **font size**.
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You can only see about 5 degrees sharp enough to read. If you hold out your arm
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and make a piece sign, then your index and middle finger are about 5 degrees
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apart. So it is crucial to get enough words into focus.
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I was often reading texts at very high font sizes, like 30pt or so. Hey, I have
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bad eye sight and sit quite far away from my monitors. But I found that this
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makes it really hard to read fast, so I fixed my setup. I moved my monitors a
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lot closer and decreased my font size. *A lot*.
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In my experience, a font size of 12pt (assuming normal DPI) is the *largest* you
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want to use. I currently read websites at 10pt, which seems to be the best
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compromise between readability and strain on the eyes. (I also find it hard to
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read Japanese below 10pt. There just aren't enough pixels left.)
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At those sizes, the font used matters a lot. I've always been very fond of the
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Microsoft fonts, even though I haven't run any of their systems for years. The
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Google Droid font is also very nice. Regardless, experiment and use something
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that is clean and very easy to read.
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Speaking of font size, column width matters just as much. It's no use if you see
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a lot of text, but the current paragraph fits into one huge line across your >20
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inch display. Ideally, you would get a whole sentence into your focus at once.
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The maximum line length therefore should be about 100 characters or 20 words.
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If you are a console hacker, then I'd also recommend checking out bitmap fonts.
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They really shine at such sizes. Remember that you can only fix bugs in code
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that you see. The more lines fit on your screen, the better you can debug.
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Faster pacing
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-------------
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This is where the "speed" in "speed reading" comes from. Chunking is the
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requirement, but it on its own won't make you faster. The human body, and that
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includes the brain, is very efficient at avoiding work. It is a ruthless
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optimizer and always do what is easiest *right now*. Being good at conserving
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energy is the reason we are still here, but also why any kind of exercise is so
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hard. If you *somehow* can get away with spending less, you will do so. That's
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why you only get muscle growth if you push yourself hard enough to make it
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absolutely necessary. You will never get stronger just by jogging, and you will
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never get faster by reading at a comfortable pace.
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To get faster, we need a kind of setup that makes it easier to process text
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faster than anything else. The best way to do this is to externally enforce a
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high speed. For digital texts, you can use the RSVP again. I prefer short
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sprints, so take a text of at most 5000 words, which is about a longish blog
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article. Take your current reading speed and multiply by 2. Use a chunk size you
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are comfortable with, or about 3-4 words when in doubt. Try to keep up, but
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never slow down. If you missed too much, try again, at the same speed. You may
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change the chunk size, but never decrease the words per minute!
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Don't worry that you will not get everything at first. In fact, don't worry if
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the text makes no sense at all. Concentrate and try to get as much as possible.
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At first, you may only make out a word here and there. Soon, you make out
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groups. Whole chunks. The occasional sentence. Then some meaning returns. That's
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when you do the next step - you go *faster*.
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Because the computer shows the text for you, you can't cheat. You can't fall
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back and read a sentence again or slow down in any way. You must either pay
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attention and use your eyes maximally efficient or you won't understand the
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text.
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Here's an idea for an exercise and how I did it. Because I read at 400wpm, I set
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my speed to 800wpm. I would read like that for about 5 minutes. Then I increased
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my speed to 1000wpm, again for 5 minutes. Then go back a bit, to 900wpm, which
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will now seem much easier. Continue alternating between "can kinda keep up" and
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"can barely make anything out" for a total of about 30 minutes, maybe an hour at
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most.
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The principle behind this is a bit like high-intensity interval training where
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you run as fast as you can for 20 seconds, then jog for 10 seconds and repeat
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this in total for 5-10 times. The idea is not to be able to always run as fast
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as during those sprints, but by putting this huge, but short pressure on your
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muscles, to greatly increase your normal speed.
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It is perfectly normal and actually good to be confused and not understand
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anything during this exercise. :) This speed is far too fast for your internal
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voice to keep up and your brain is under huge pressure to make any sense of what
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you are reading asap. Once you go down to a more normal rate, you will actually
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overshoot and read faster than you thought would be necessary. Voilà, you read a
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bit faster! The brain gets used to this high speed and soon comprehension
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returns. In fact, I found that I got bored now if I would read at 400 or 500wpm,
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even after just one week! Be warned that this may annoy any non-speed-reading
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observer. ;)
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As material I used minor blogs I enjoyed reading, but didn't care too much about
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if I missed anything, and novels I had already read or that were kinda
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predictable. That way, if you go blank from time to time, you can find back
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into the text easily. And it's a great chance to read Twilight without any
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guilt! (You can find usable novels in .txt or .pdf form in certain bays or,
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for older texts, in the Gutenberg archive, for example.)
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It took me about a week to read 800wpm that way without missing anything. After
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two weeks, I could keep up 1000wpm almost all the time, and 1200wpm if I really
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concentrated. You don't have to do this all day, but try to do at least 20
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minutes daily.
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Reading nonlinearly
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-------------------
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Finally, it's time to fully exploit the parallel processing and to do more
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aggressive pattern prediction. It's time to throw away the chains of
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<del>oppression, comrade!</del> intended text flow that the author gave us and
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to read in any order and any direction that gets to the meaning faster.
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Reading nonlinearly just means you read text the same way you look around. You
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jump to the points that look most interesting, figure out the context around
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them, then jump to the next spot. But if you read everything sequentially, you
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can't do that! At least, you'd have to go back and start reading the current
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sentence you're in.
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Imagine your vision would work sequentially - like normal reading. You go into a
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room and move your eyes to the upper left, start moving them to the right, line
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|
by line, until you have scanned the whole room. Sure, you would *see* everything
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|
eventually, but it would be *way* stupid and inefficient. Instead, you first
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have a quick look around, maybe 2 or 3 unconscious eye movements, to figure out
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if anyone is in the room and where the interesting stuff is. Nothing unusual on
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|
the floor or ceiling, so you skip those areas altogether. But you saw something
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like a face over there, so you concentrate more on this point until you
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recognize who it is (and in what mood they are). This takes maybe a second or so
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in total, and you may have only actually looked at 5% of the scene, but you sure
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know everything that matters. So why not read that way?
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A good exercise I found was to enforce a time limit per page. I set up a
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timer[^pororo] to give me a little beep every 20 seconds, following which I
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|
would *have* to turn the page, no matter how far I was. This would equal a
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|
reading speed of about 800wpm for a small paperback. You do this for maybe 5
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|
minutes, then go faster. Go to 15 seconds, then 10, then 5. Finally, go back to
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20 again. It will now be far easier.
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|
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Sometimes, it was no problem to read a page very fast, but soon I could tell on
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|
first sight if I would be able to make it or not, *before* being conscious of
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|
any content. If I recognized the page as hard, I would scan it rapidly first,
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|
working out the structure and main phrases on it. This would take only a few
|
|
seconds, but reduce the difficulty of the page drastically. I could then clarify
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|
the missing pieces, reading them far faster than before. Like with vision, you
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|
first establish where core ideas (=people) or interesting words (=colors) are,
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then concentrate on them exclusively.
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|
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Instead of going for whole pages, you can also train to read multiple lines at
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once. At first, start with 1 second per line, for maybe a minute. Read any way
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|
you want, but after 1 second, move on to the next line. It helps to trace the
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|
lines with your finger or a pen to enforce a consistent speed. Then do 2 lines
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|
simultaneously in 1 second, again for a minute. Then 4. Then whole blocks of
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|
texts, ideally whole paragraphs. Such huge blocks are very nice for skimming and
|
|
getting a feel for the book, where everything is and what the main ideas will
|
|
be, but it's a bit troublesome for normal reading. Still, it took me about 2
|
|
weeks to get used to reading about 2-3 lines at once. I now have a far broader
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|
pattern in which my eyes move over the page, not clinging to every word, but
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|
rather "painting" the page in a zig-zag pattern with a brush about 2-3 lines
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|
thick.
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|
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|
Another good exercise is to read *backwards*. You start at the end of the line
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|
and right to the beginning, i.e. for an English text, you read right-to-left.
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|
Once you got a bit of practice at that, you can alternate and read in a zig-zag
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|
pattern. The advantage is two-fold: you save a lot of eye movement and you get
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|
used to understanding sentences out of order.
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|
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|
Combined with a harsh time limit, I found that this exercise greatly improved my
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|
ability to jump in the middle of a paragraph, figure out what's going on and
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|
assemble meaning by moving into all directions, not just left-to-right.[^ltr]
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|
[^ltr]:
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|
It may help if you are used to multiple languages that have a different
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|
word order or writing direction. German and Japanese, for example, build up
|
|
quite large word stacks and you may end up with a sentence that keeps on
|
|
piling up modifiers and objects without revealing the crucial verb or target
|
|
at the end, so maybe this practice makes it easier for me to adapt to
|
|
backwards reading than for others. Also, Japanese is read both left-to-right
|
|
and up-to-down (and then right-to-left), depending on context, so I'm
|
|
already used to changing directions.
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|
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|
Once you go beyond a certain speed, it stops being uniform. I noticed that I can
|
|
read consistently at 300-400wpm using my previous techniques, but when speed
|
|
reading I vary between 700wpm to 1200wpm from page to page. Especially dialogue
|
|
really slows me down. This also means that each book has its own speed, so
|
|
measuring reading speeds in "words per minute" stops being useful. "Bits of
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|
information per minute" would be better, but how do you calculate that?
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|
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|
[^pororo]:
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|
I wrote my own timer for such purposes. You can check it out on
|
|
[Github][Pororo]. Basically, you set a timer for each level
|
|
of the task, like a 23s timer for the page and a 200page timer for the book.
|
|
Alternatively, I used the metronome function of my mp3 player, especially
|
|
when reading on the train or when waiting for something.
|