How to Read 5000 Words Per Minute

Speed reading is not a complicated topic. While there have been books written and three-solar day seminars held almost the subject, they're generally full of fluff and practice sessions. What nosotros're going to encompass hither is the eighty% that I call back really matters. The other 20% is the fun "oh, permit's go from 1,000 wpm (words per minute) to 5,000 to 20,000 wpm" stuff – in other words, the unnecessary stuff. I think it'south fair to say that most people just want to get their reading speed upwards to the point where they can whisk through information and reading material easily and without effort. There's no existent need to ready speed reading and comprehension records. In The Dojo, our productivity community, nosotros accept preparation course just for speed reading.

There are a number of ways you can learn speed reading. I personally learnt it through a combination of classes, talking to people who read speedily and through reading a couple of books. You're going to become the complete set of basics here – where you go from here is entirely up to you.

Here are the components to learning speed-reading:

1. Foundational Beliefs and Best Practices. These are the very important and oft unspoken ideas behind speed reading, and things you should continue in listen while you're learning this skill and going virtually your everyday reading.
2. Reading with a pen. This is speed-reading 101: using a visual aid to break old habits and instill new ones.
3. Reading without a pen. Going from conscious competence to unconscious competence.
4. Photoreading. This is the next step beyond speed reading. Information technology's a completely unlike way to await at information absorption.

Foundational Beliefs and Best Practices

Let's start with the basics.

The showtime premise of speed reading is that the fashion most people read, is incorrect. Well-nigh people sound out words when they read – either out loud, or using an inner vocalism in their heads. This is an effect of how we were taught to read when younger – sounding out each give-and-take 1-by-one, out loud. The problem with this is that it limits the speed at which you read to the speed of speech, which is relatively slow.

If you desire to look at this in term of representational systems, the strategy that most people follow is:

Or, if you lot read out loud:

The proper strategy for reading fast is this:

What this ways is that as your eyes scan through words, sentences and paragraphs, your heed creates internal visual representations of those words and organizes them into images. This happens at multiple levels:

• Word level. This is where each word becomes an object or action in your internal images.
• Sentence level. This is where you scan each sentence, and so class an image from it.
• Paragraph level. This is where y'all can browse each paragraph, and and then form an image of ready of images or a short movie from it.
• Page level. If you get really good at speed-reading, you'll be able to translate multiple paragraphs or entire pages into images.

The mode to train your encephalon to read with a visual external to visual internal strategy, is to utilise a visual aid, which we'll talk over in the section Reading with a Pen beneath.

Every bit equally important as how you read, are the foundational ideas behind why y'all read – your philosophical approach to reading if you lot volition. Here'south some beliefs that I've found useful when it comes to treatment reading and data:

• You don't have to read everything.
• Yous don't have to read in society.
• You lot don't accept to speed read all the time.
• You don't have to have perfect comprehension.

Let's wait at these ane-by-one.

Non Reading Everything

There seems to exist this strange thought (especially amongst students and academics), that you take to read absolutely everything. This is just not truthful, and information technology's something that I wish I paid more attention to during university. You don't have to read everything.

The presupposition behind this is that when you read, you lot read with a purpose. Usually, this is the extraction of data from a piece of text. Once yous have that information – you're done. There'due south no need to read any longer.

If you've spent fourth dimension in higher, you'll know that the textbooks they issue are huge. In fact, I would say that most of those textbooks are only filler – y'all don't need to read all of information technology, just the relevant parts for your learning and education.

Outside of an academic context, I accept a rule: if I start reading a book and after a chapter information technology still sucks, I'll cease reading it and move on. No point wasting your time on something that won't assistance y'all get to your purpose for reading.

Not Reading in Club

Another misnomer is the idea that you have to read cover-to-encompass, start-to-finish. This is rubbish. There's absolutely no reason you can't commencement by reading the decision or summary, then go back to the introduction or bound effectually through unlike capacity. Sometimes it's worth picking what you're interested in from the table of contents or index and starting there.

Not Speed Reading all the Time

When I tell people that I speed-read they usually ask me to "prove that information technology works" or inquire me about comprehension rates. This is only dizzy. It'south not necessary to read fast all the fourth dimension – sometimes you desire to ho-hum downward and enjoy a good novel. Fifty-fifty with non-fiction material, sometimes you want to take your time (speed reading takes concentration). The reality is this: as y'all read, sometimes yous'll be "speed reading" so to speak, scanning apace through paragraphs and pages. Other times (in the aforementioned session), you'll slow down and read word-past-word.

Not Having Perfect Comprehension

The other common request of speed readers is "perfect" comprehension. I'm telling yous now that in that location's no such matter. Your comprehension will go down a bit when yous speed read – before, yous were sounding words so using the sound of those words to build visual images (a ho-hum procedure). Now y'all're using visual representations of world to build visual images (a faster, if initially unfamiliar process). If annihilation, the quality of your comprehension changes rather than the actual "percentage". I personally recollect that the thought of comprehension testing speed readers is featherbrained, equally when you read, you lot read for a purpose and for certain $.25 of information anyway – no one cares if you call up every single fact and statistic from a book, or what the sixth word in the 22nd sentence on page 371 was.

A corollary to this is that you don't need to sympathise absolutely everything in a slice of text. Nosotros mostly read to empathise primary concepts anyway. If you really admittedly must understand everything, you should be taking notes (or drawing a mindmap), and you can always reread certain sections to notation downward facts and figures.

A couple of other ideas that will help with speed-reading:

• Book summaries are oftentimes as good as the volume itself. Wikipedia tin can exist quite useful for this.
• eBook readers like the Kindle or iPad are awesome for speed reading.

Reading with a Pen

Now that yous have a strong foundational base from which to outset speed reading, permit's wait at the actual mechanics of it.

The beginning affair to do is to get a pen (or chopstick or straw or whatsoever other course of pen-shaped visual aid). As you start reading, place your pen at the offset of the paragraph, and movement the pen, left-to-right with a steady pace. When you lot reach the finish of the sentence, go to the next, and follow left-to-correct. Your eyes should follow the pen. And you should read in accord with the movement of the pen.

This will feel a piffling weird at first, equally you'll keep trying to audio out the words. But stick with it, and eventually your encephalon volition give in and you'll first "reading" at the pace which your pen moves. The trick is to get-go with a slower left-to-right movement, and speed it up over time.

Reading with a Pen.

As you get comfortable with reading with a pen moving left-to-right, you can outset trying unlike variations to help you read even faster:

Left Right, Correct Left.

This is where you go left-to-right for one judgement, then become backwards right-to-left on the next.

Zig Zagging.

This is where you move the pen diagonally, crossing 2-3 sentences at a fourth dimension, and then zig-zagging back other style for the adjacent ii-3 sentences.

Moving vertically downward the page.

This is where your visual focus sits in the middle of each paragraph, and every bit you lot guide the pen downwards the page, your peripheral vision picks up the contents of each paragraph, and your mind translates information technology into meaning.

Reading without a Pen

The simple way of reading without a pen is to utilize your finger.

The more than avant-garde style, is that eventually the visual patterns that you're used to using with a pen will be replaced by your eyes simply focussing in those patterns – you'll be able to zig zag, or read vertically downward a page without having a physical visual assistance.

Photoreading

Photoreading is the next level of speed reading. Information technology's an entire reading organization in and of itself – if you're interested in it, their website is http://www.photoreading.com/.

The idea behind the system is to put yourself in a cocky-induced altered land (using principles similar to meditation) where you tin absorb information simply by looking at page, then turn to the next page, then adjacent folio, then next page. I've personally never taken one of their courses, but I've met people who have and it'southward the existent deal.

What I do is a fleck different. I could never become the "photoreading" land to work for me the mode it seems to piece of work for others, merely I still practise it. Hither's what I took away from reading their book and talking to trained photoreaders:

• When y'all offset reading a new book, start with scanning and skimming everything. Expect through a volume's chapters, table of contents, index, blurbs, and feel complimentary to dive into diverse chapters and reads bits and pieces as yous feel similar.
• Practise the photoread. This ways sit down downward, quiet your mind, concentrate, and modify your visual focus and then you're picking up things on the periphery. Extend this periphery to the edges of the volume. Now pic through folio-by-page and get through the whole book. For some people, this is enough. They'll be able to either actively or spontaneously recall information from the book. Personally, I find this tough.
• Create a mindmap based on initial scanning and skimming, and the photoread.
• At this point you have a number of options. You can choose to speed read the book normally, filling in the mindmap equally you go. You lot can read the chapters you want. Or you tin can read it randomly slice-by-piece. There'due south no arroyo that'due south suitable for every book or text – information technology simply depends on your purpose for reading and the nature of the book.

Whether or not you believe in the idea of photoreading, the organisation itself is extremely effective for reading books. It merely works differently for dissimilar people.

Next Actions

• Really consider the thought that you don't take to read everything.
• First practicing speed reading with a pen. Equally y'all get better, driblet the pen. Once you lot've got that down, accept a look at photoreading.

Have any questions about speed reading? Ask away in the comments!

Photo By: Liz Grace

normanmosearold.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.asianefficiency.com/systems/speed-reading/