The Truth About 'Speed Reading'

MAWL_SC · 2017-01-21T15:07:11+00:00

You stole this from an article written in 2015 https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2015/01/19/speed-reading-redo/

mikesteane · 2017-01-21T09:29:48+00:00

Woody Allen did a thing about a fellow who did a course in speed reading and read War and Peace in two hours. When asked what it was about he said "some Russians."

To improve your reading speed, read a lot.

[deleted] · 2017-01-21T13:23:41+00:00

Speed reading is a good example of what's wrong with the modern world.

It's a slave's way to improve efficiency without understanding.

Being red pilled is about deeply comprehending well thought out writings in order to take action, instead of cramming trash thought up by smart marketers / random shit that won't get you anywhere.

analonlybitch · 2017-01-21T13:34:54+00:00

I would comment, but I sped read through your post and don't remember what it was about.

sir_wankalot_here · 2017-01-21T10:24:33+00:00

Good post.

It’s simply not possible to comprehend what you’re reading and avoid using that inner voice.

True, but the spoken word in most professional podcasts is approximately 160 words per minute. You can speed up the spoken word by approximately 3x and still be able to understand it. So it comes to about 500-600 words per minute.

Most people when they read unconsciously move their lips that means they are stuck at 160 words per minute. Stop doing that. Another factor is most people still read like they did in elementary school, subconsciously they sound out each syllable. It is possible to look at each word and with practice recognize it as a word without this deciphering process. So at 600 words per minute, and average novel is 100,000 words, you could read it in 3 hours.

The rest of the article I agree with, most alleged speed reading courses are BS unless they use the principles I mentioned or variants of them.

Advantage of reading is you can digest information quicker, as another person said here, get better at reading by reading lots. As for the excuse you don't have time, Stalin read a book a week, proof of this is the notes he kept. He managed to find time between doing things like personally signing 50,000 to 100,000 death warrants, figuring out new ways to terrorize people, going on long rhants, micromanaging the Soviet Union etc.

Stythe · 2017-01-21T15:12:57+00:00

What's better, speed or quality? The latter done with as much of the former as possible, without sacrificing the latter.

In the age of instant gratification I'm not at all surprised that people concerned with speed while our quality of living decreases.

Why do you need to speed read? If you're interested in the material and want to learn it, you should be dedicating time to it, like you would any other thing.

HeinousFu_kery · 2017-01-21T15:37:25+00:00

There are a couple of other things to consider involving content - if you're working with several languages at once (and this includes mathematical formulas) you lose speed as you switch back and forth.

Technical and philosophical tracts are often also stop-and-start as you go through new concepts and not just new verbiage. I've had a single technical paper (~20 pages) take several days as I work through the math and try to absorb the concepts, but I read "The Great Gatsby" in an afternoon and really enjoyed it.

scrangos · 2017-01-21T15:56:56+00:00

Uh, its totally doable to read without the inner voice. I took some classes when I was very young and let me clarify that speed reading is mostly a skimming technique, and was explained as such.

The first step was stopping the inner voice. Its fully negating that aspect, when you do it right you sort of understand it without actually reading it in the traditional sence. You can do it even if not speed reading and get every detail but its kinda pointless to do so. Other steps are silhouette recognition (not actually reading the letters but the silhouette of the words) and expanding how far from the focus of the eye you can read. Its something like using Spritz but in wider chunks. You're supposed to be able to do multiple lines at once in thin paragraphs but i never got the hang of that, hard to keep it in order looking at all at once. You also practice by reading news or short stories once and then writing down what you understood and comparing to improve at understanding.

Since its skimming, the reading comprehension is not perfect and requires practice. That was also taught at the class. Being rusty i can speed read the text you wrote looking at two points per line and moving on (like dividing the line into thirds and looking at the two middle points) though its not perfect understanding, you dont speed read if its important to get every detail.

Its super useful when trying to quickly find something specific in a large body of text. Or if you want to get a quick summary of a lot of news very quickly. Or going through page after page of google results. Its a tool to be used in certain scenarios. Totally useless for reading an engineering text book for example.

Photo reading is similar but more vague and even faster. Photo reading is where you get to the point where you are looking at a whole page at once. You wont get a lotta details that way though.

The_BitterTruth · 2017-01-21T15:59:04+00:00

What does this have to do about sexual strategy?

JoRocKStaR · 2017-01-21T16:02:07+00:00

Seen this same topic on 5 different subs today.

TooYoungToBald · 2017-01-21T17:10:18+00:00

Maybe it's just me, but speed reading lead to a slight speech impediment for me because I don't talk very often and compensated by using a natural voice in my head when I read.

Then that voice went away and I tried to speak too fast which caused my words to stumble. Had to get back in the practice of reading slowly to fix it.

BigSloppySunshine · 2017-01-21T17:33:41+00:00

As an actual speed reader, I'll have to say you're incorrect about this.

Yes, the reading comprehension is probably your problem but an advanced reading comprehension is part of speed reading. Our eyes don't stop on a word to read it, either.

I found out when I was made to read aloud in class and when I looked up everyone was looking at me funny. My only handicap is how quickly I can talk for reading aloud.

In middle school they tested me and some of the other kids at some point and gave me stuff to read and questions afterwards. They take the time it took you to read each story into account and use that with the correct answers to determine your reading level.

I got college+. When I asked what that meant they said I had gotten max scores.

I learned later from a visitor for kids in the gifted program that if someone takes longer than a couple seconds to read a page of text they aren't a speed reader. Especially if they can't comprehend what they're reading at the same time.

I'm glad you improved your reading skills but don't blame us for your insecurities and inability to excel.

It's been entirely useless to me and when reading for leisure it's still more enjoyable to read at a slower pace. Stretch a book out longer and let your mind get entwined the world inside...

You probably have to read a lot of books, or maybe it's just an ability that's intrinsic to our nature and cannot be learned. I've been reading since I was 3 and I remember when I started I would memorize the words to the book the first time I read it. Some people use that skill to pretend to speed read, that's why it's important to use new reading material in tests.

I can read something and it sounds like an auctioneer if I talk, but then people complain they can't understand me. And that's slowed down so my mouth can keep pace at all. Slowing down to the point people are happy with your reading is like swimming through mud.

logicalthinker1 · 2017-01-21T17:37:26+00:00

What the fuck did I just read? Stupid as fuck

qitjch · 2017-01-21T18:18:34+00:00

I used the EyeQ program for a few years back in college and it definitely helped me read more quickly and slowly stop sounding out all of my words as I read.

JackGetsIt · 2017-01-21T18:27:46+00:00

Here's a deeper problem with speed reading. Let's assume that someone can increase speed AND comprehension. To say like 800 words per minute. There's a third level to consider: Internalization. Very few people in the world have a brain that can 'Internalize' information at the rate they read and comprehend it.

By internalize I mean comprehend something at such a level that I can use it in my life, connect it to other experiences, manipulate the information, and teach it to others. Another way to say 'internalize' is 'mastery' over the information presented.

Very, very few people that read fast or slow internalize what they read and that's really the issue at hand. The modern world is very very much low on internalization. Internalization takes time, reflection, practice, application and life experience.

ek1995 · 2017-01-21T08:55:12+00:00

Do you live in the Hollywood Hills?

Are you in your garage with your Lamborghini?

Are you more proud of your bookshelves you've installed than you are of your Lamborghini?

Shiva-Lingam · 2017-01-21T12:17:08+00:00

And all this time I thought I could speed read at 3,000 words per minute and thanks to a guy on the internet now I know it was a lie. I thought I could understand all the books I've read over the past 14 years of speed reading (on average 1 a day, but some days 5+), but now thanks to a guy on the internet I know the truth and I'm back to reading 1 book every two weeks.

To further that, expert speed readers who were studied also subvocalized, they just did it faster.

Subvocalization is the first thing a speed reader learns to stop doing.

Just download mega speed reading by Howard Berg, put in the work and then you can talk about speed reading. Because while you keep thinking it doesn't work, I'll keep reading in 1 year more books than you can in a lifetime.

theredpill22 · 2017-01-21T13:06:32+00:00

When I read, mentally I can read maybe 6 or 7 words in a sentence with 10 words, just as an example. From there, I can mentally fill in the gaps for the other 3 or 4 words, using my intuition and years of reading. This is all done at a very fast pace. So I can "read" a passage of 1000 words by only actually physically reading 600 or 700 of the words.

As a result I can read roughly 650 wpm. I was able to read before I started elementary school and I had a reading age of 12 at the age of 6 according to my primary school teachers. I stayed up all night reading as a kid and I read every book we had in our primary school bookcase. To the point where my teacher called me a bookworm (not in a nice way either, she was a fat post-wall tramp who spent a lot of class time reading cosmopolitan and the likes)

My father is similar, he's read thousands of books and he started reading before he started school, same as me. He gave me new books to read all the time.

redolas · 2017-01-21T14:43:07+00:00

This is NOT THE TRUTH, it's just an opinion. Your personal opinion, based on the experience/research of one person: you.

[deleted] · 2017-01-21T17:58:49+00:00

Speed reading is a GODly amount of bullshit.

Title	The Truth About 'Speed Reading'
Author	Imroger5
Upvotes	77
Comments	48
Date	January 21, 2017 8:30 AM UTC (9 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/TheRedPill
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/TheRedPill/comments/5p9pmg/the_truth_about_speed_reading/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/TheRedPill/the-truth-about-speed-reading.40206 https://theredarchive.com/post/40206

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