Increase reading speed (Ferriss)
May 16th, 2007 | Published in Productivity, Books & Reading, Quotes | 3 Comments
Reading speed increases to the extent that you reduce the number and duration of fixations per line. That is the verifiable science of speed reading in one sentence.
The process is simple. First, draw a vertical line down the center of five text pages, then draw two additional vertical lines 2” to either side of each center line. Practice fixating only at the points where these vertical lines intersect the horizontal lines of text, then progress to unmarked pages of text. By training peripheral vision and consolidating eye movement, you will be reading at least three-times faster than before.
–Tim Ferriss “The Low-Information Diet: How to Eliminate E-Mail Overload and Triple Productivity in 24 Hours” (pdf), p. 5
May 17th, 2007 at 10:17 am (#)
I followed the method and increased my reading speed from 300 words to 600 words, in 20 minutes! Crazy!
May 18th, 2007 at 6:00 pm (#)
There’s other methods that sometimes help people read faster.
Probably the simplest is to place a ruler below the line you’re reading, to give the eyes a “track” to move along. For someone who has difficulty with normal reading, it can help a lot.
Evelyn Wood and Tony Buzan recommend using your finger or a pencil to point to each word, or cluster of words, being read, and then moving the pointer gradually faster and faster, forcing the eyes to take in bigger fixations to keep up.
Howard Berg does the same with entire paragraphs - though his method is one of speed-skimming rather than speed reading.
I don’t know Tim Ferris’ work, but what you quote sound exactly like the method popularised in the 90s by Geoff Dudley - who in my opinion is something of a fraud when he talks about more advanced methods.
Having said that, I sometimes use a “metronome” method, which is similar in that it involves drawing imaginary lines down the page, one at center-left, the other at centre-right, and jumping between then as I move down the page, in time with an imaginary but strict beat.
There’s a lot of methods, and I spent much of the 1990s reading about them. But IMO the most useful is simply “force yourself to read a little faster, then when you’re comfortable with that slightly higher speed, do it again, and keep it up.”
There is a “barrier” at around 1000 words-per-minute, beyond which such simple methods just won’t work - but 1000 is five times the average, and should be quite adequate for most people.
May 18th, 2007 at 6:30 pm (#)
Interesting. I’ve found Tim’s method to work well, though I’ve tried others with no success. The “track” method reduced my comprehension to nearly zero, I think, so I dropped it quickly.
This method allows me only three (on average) “eye jumps” per page, which has significantly increased my speed while only slightly reducing comprehension (I expect comprehension to get back to normal after I’m used to it a bit more).
Of course, this isn’t always the best way to read — sometimes slowing down is necessary for more tasking authors. But I’ve found this to work pretty well so far.