Is it too late for an old coot like me? I’m a year younger then you. Do you remember the titles and/or authors of those two books you followed?I've said it elsewhere in the forum but I can repeat.
How do you read so fast, what’s your secret?
In about 10th grade in high school I was quite frustrated that I could not get through all the baseball magazines I was buying.
Bought two how to read faster books at a bookstore and did what they told me to do.
Did it for two years. Started at 350 and ended up at 900 word per minute.
Four things:
1) Slowest readers read a letter at a time. Then progressively its an entire word. Several words. Then, finally lines Instead of reading left to right you read in an S down the page. You can read backwards, with your brain putting the word in the right order. That takes no time to be doing that.
2) This I did for 10 minutes a day. I said I started at 350 words per minute. For 10 minutes on something you were already reading .. push yourself to be reading at an uncomfortable speed. You are still having the same comprehension. Just is not a relaxed feeling. So say I pushed myself to 365. Next day more staring comfortable speed is now 360. Push myself for 10 minutes at 375. Now I'm starting the next day at 370. And, so on. this takes no extra time as you are doing it on something you were already reading.
3) Look up every word you do not know. This took tons of time because I had to stop reading and look up the word in the dictionary. I was 15-17 years old at the time and I was intensely disciplined at this. Looked up every word and was brutally honest with myself as some words I'd look up 8 or 9 times as I'd tell myself that I still did not know it. This was great for taking the SAT verbal towards the end of this. Did not see a word in them that I did not know. Also, took a separate test in high school that said I now had the vocabulary of a journalist. About 50,000 words.
Knowing the words stops you from pausing to try to figure out what the word means from the context. Most times you cannot.
4) Never go back to read. I used to constantly go back and reread. Just keep going.
Doing the above will take you a long way toward increasing your reading speed.
I always tried to sell people on it by saying you could read much more in the same amount of time or you could take less time to read a given amount.
Finally, people think you will have less comprehension if you are reading faster. It's the contrary. When you read slowly when you mind wants information fed to it so much more quickly .. the mind wanders. The faster you read the closer you are getting to how fast your mind wants information inputted into it.
Statistics: Posted by Nicolas — Mon Oct 27, 2025 9:40 pm — Replies 283 — Views 43741