These are the steps I followed to increase my reading and they proved to be extremely helpful and effective. I also increased my retention with these steps in all my reading. I previously read at about 150 wpm but just the other day cought myself fly through about 500 pages in just two hours!!! I was really blown away! That is and increase of about 766% burning through about 1300 wmp! I am now in the top 1% of the worlds fastest readers!
1. Two min: use your finger to trace under each line while reading as fast as possible. Reading is a series of snapshots (called Saccades), using a visual guide prevents going back to reread.
2. Three mins: Begin every line focused on the third word in from the first, and end every line focused on the third word from the last. This makes use of your peripheral vision. For example, even when the highlighted words in the next line are your beginning and ending focal points, the entire sentence is “read,” just with less eye movement:
”once upon a time, a duck walked into a bar.”
Move in from both sides further and further as it gets easier.
3. Two min: When you are comfortable indenting three or four words in on both sides, attempt to take only two snapshots – also known as fixations – per line on the first and last indented words.
4. Three min: practice reading too fast for comprehension but with good technique (the above three techniques) for five pages prior to reading at a comfortable speed. This will heighten perception and reset your speed limit, much like how 50 mph normally feels fast but seems like slow motion if you drop down from 70 mph on the freeway.
To calculate reading speed in words per minute (wpm) – and then progress – in a given book, add up the number of words in ten lines and divide by ten to get the average words per line. Multiply this by the number of lines per page and you have the average words per page. Now it’s simple. If you initially read 1.25 pages in one minute at 330 average words per page, that’s 412.5 words per minute. If you the read 3.5 pages after training, it’s 1,155 words per minute and you’re in the top 1% of the world’s fastest readers.
