Finally...read all the books you have been putting off!
Imagine being able to read a whole book in under 3 hours? How much could you learn? Get your work done faster and go home a couple of hours earlier?
The only downside would be that you need to take about 10 books with you on your next vacation…
What I have found
I’ve have never been a fast reader. I think the only reason that I am currently in the average now is through the sheer volume of reading I have done over the past couple of years.
The other day I read a blog post by Tim Ferriss (Find it here) on how to speed read using a method called PX. This exercise takes around 20 minutes to complete and my result was:
I increased my reading speed by 75%
The method can be summarised as follows:
1. Use a book (that you can lay flat of 200+ pages), pen and a timer. If you do not have a timer use egg timer
2. Calculate current reading speed with total comprehension
3. Apply Techniques (described here), total time 11 minutes. without paying attention to comprehension
4. Calculate new reading speed with total comprehension
My old method
For the last year or so I have been applying somewhat of a speed reading concept when reading anything that I have to learn from in order to take an action. i.e. some market research at work for example. This didn’t involve reading ALL the words but rather filtering out what I didn’t need. I followed this process (for each individual chapter of a non-fiction book):
1. Read the introduction thoroughly to gain an understanding of what this chapter will teach me.
2. Read the conclusion, which summarises the key points of the chapter
3. Flicked over the remaining pages of the chapter, making sure to understand any diagrams, or read thoroughly any points that I thought might be relevant to what I wanted to get from the document/book I was reading.
4. Read the intro again, to make sure I got the point of the chapter.
Why This doesn’t always work
My old method, however, will not always work. Especially If I am reading:
- A book for my pleasure (including fiction)
- A Biography
- Some non-fiction books that don’t break up their chapters with titles and/or in a logical order
So It’s safe to say that I will be moving down the avenue of using the PX method when I read from now on. When the book permits, Imagine combining both methods…
My Results
My book: contained 270 pages.
It had an average of 11 words per line (taken over 5 lines).
With approx 27.8 lines per page (taken over an average of 5 pages).
My Initial Speed Over 1 minute was (24 lines x 11 words per line) = 264 WPM
After I undertook the 11 minutes of exercises my final speed was (42 lines x 11 words per line) = 462 WPM
A Speed increase of (462/264) of 75%
So given that my book was 270 pages long it contained (270 x 306 words per page) 82,620 words, meaning that I could complete the entire book in (82,620/462) 179 minutes or 2 hours and 59 minutes.
This is obviously assuming full concentration for the entire length of the book, which naturally may not be possible. However, even if I wasted an extra hour during my reading time (including jotting down some notes), I am more than happy with reading a whole book in under 4 hours.
Take Action
If this looks like something you might be interested in and you think it would help you out then:
1. Visit Tim’s blog and undertake the quick 11 minutes of exercises as he specifies. Calculate your own WPM reading times from this.
2. Remember next time your reading ALWAYS use a pen or your finger to follow the lines, since doing the test I have found this helps a lot. It will also help to remind you to use the techniques that are described.
What do you think? Have you had any other methods for reading (or consuming) information faster? How do you think reading faster would be able to help you?
