Effectiveness of Speed Reading
Regardless of which reading method you use, the evidence points towards the fact that speed comes at the sacrifice of understanding.
Depending on what you’re reading, this might not necessarily be a bad thing: If you’re trying to get through a dry piece to capture a few key points or you are going through a short piece that’s easy to understand, speed reading strategies might make sense.
MORE IDEAS FROM THE ARTICLE
- Skimming: quickly going through passages to find the main points.
- Meta guiding uses a pointer, such as your index finger or a pen, to guide your eyes along the lines of text.
- The vision span method uses the span of human eyesight to read words in batches.
- Rapid serial visual representation (RSVP): an electronic reading system displays words one at a time.
- Choose different reading pieces for different occasions: articles and light reads can be reserved for short periods. Books that require less focus can be listened to in audio format etc.
- Incorporate reading into your daily habit: put a book on your bedside table.
- Share your reads with others, to help you to better understand and appreciate what you read.
- Reflect on your reading: take notes or check out films that are based on novels (to compare interpretations).
RELATED IDEAS
A mental model is a mental, simplified depiction of how something works. It influences our perception, decisions, and behavior.
Learning means upgrading your mental models. The more models you have — the bigger your toolbox — the more likely you are to have the right models to see reality.
Research found that audiobooks stimulate the brain differently but just as deeply as reading.
With print books, you need to provide the voice, imagine the tune and rhythm of speech, the intonation, stress of syllables, and so on. All this gets provided for you when listening to audio. With audiobooks, you're using different methods to decode and understand it. But it still deeply impacts your thoughts and feelings.
The brain develops stronger analytical skills and gets into critical thinking mode, forming new connections and even creates new ideas.
Deep focusing on a book is one of the best investments of your time.