## The art of reading faster and understand better Speed reading is a reading technic that is used to improve the reading speed. It's a useful skill for [Inspectional reading](Inspectional%20reading.md). Reading speed is measured using the Word Per Minute (WPM) metrics and score to a comprehensive survey. There's some reluctances from people about speed reading, saying that we lose the pleasure of a book by reading it too fast. We need to keep in mind that speed reading is just a tool we add to our reading toolbox, not the prerogative of reading. It's like having a Ferrari : this is not because you have a sport car that can go to 300km/h that you always need to drive that fast. A Ferrari also has the ability to run at 20km/h and let you see the landscape while you're driving. To be more precise, we should rather talk about "variable-speed-reading". The speed should be choose according to the type of book we're reading, the goal we want to achieve and our comprehensive ability. Every book should be read no more slowly than it deserves and no more quickly than we can read it with satisfaction and comprehension. Speed reading combine multiple technics, most of them are reading with a guide in hand and using it to let our eyes browse with certains patterns : jump words, speed up the cadence, read sentences backwards, scanning a document, transversal reading... One of the most known author on speed reading is Tony Buzan, who's also well known for popularizing [[Mind maps]]. ## Why do we read slowly? What is slowing our ability to read faster is our propensity to sub-vocalize what we're reading (you know, that little voice in your head. 😬 ). It's also because our eyes are blind when they're moving. That's why we need to words to read. But our mind can totally fix a group of words instead of words alone, or even complete sentence. Back reading (when you read back a sentence because you think you didn't understand it), is also a factor of slowness. We need to let it go and better trust our brain when it comes to understanding. Back reading don't help to understand better. ## Practicing with a guide To practice speed reading, we can just use a guide to go slightly faster than the speed we're used to. By doing this in continuously, without stoping or reading back, we'll start to lose the need of fixing things and sub vocalizing.  More than just going faster, we can practice [Selective reading](Selective%20reading.md) and don't read useless words, such as pronouns, coordinating conjunction and selectively read important words (usally longer words). Our brain will alone make fill the voids and give a meaning to the text we're reading. The guide will help us to gradually increment the speed. First linearly (moving from left to right and going at the beginning of each new sentences), then with multiple tricks by “drawing” different patterns: - Reading two sentences at once by placing the guide between two lines (works also with three, four, `n`) - Going from top to bottom in a straight line to red lines on the go - Same but with two guides: one at the beginning, one at the end, jumping from one sentence to the next - Using zig-zag patterns to read transversely, with more or less wide spaces between lines - Read sentences right side up then backward, same, the brain will flip sentences to understand it I always use the back of my pen as a guide (cf. figure above), so I can just flip it and take my [Litterature note](Litterature%20note%20to%20quote%20and%20reference%20content.md). As it's golden colored, it creates a big contrast with the white paper and allow me to stay way more focus, so better understand what I read. ([202106122307 Reading with a pen in hand is a way to test our understanding](202106122307%20Reading%20with%20a%20pen%20in%20hand%20is%20a%20way%20to%20test%20our%20understanding.md)) ## References - [La Lecture Rapide - Tony Buzan](La%20Lecture%20Rapide%20-%20Tony%20Buzan.md) - [How To Read A Book, The Classic Guide To Intelligent Reading - Mortimer J. Adler, Charles Van Doren](How%20To%20Read%20A%20Book,%20The%20Classic%20Guide%20To%20Intelligent%20Reading%20-%20Mortimer%20J.%20Adler,%20Charles%20Van%20Doren.md) - [How To Take Smart Notes - Sönke Ahrens](How%20To%20Take%20Smart%20Notes%20-%20Sönke%20Ahrens.md)