Speed reading promises are too good to be true
On its own, you&#x27;re not going to magically be able to reduce your reading time by 95% and still maintain the level of retention you get by a slow word-for-word read from a few weeks with an app&#x2F;course.  As the article states, there&#x27;s more to reading than just swallowing a word more quickly.  But the techniques enable you to change the way you consume information by eliminating the bottleneck and associated procrastination of staring down a 1000+ page book and the weeks it will take to get through it.<p>I&#x27;m a huge advocate of speed reading, personally[1].  However, I think the points made in the article have a lot of merit.<p>Speed reading should be seen as a tool for consuming information, but you have to adjust the way you learn accordingly[2].  I can read, cover to cover, a 1000 page book in a few hours.  My strategy for learning from a large book is to read it more than once (often three to four times) to treat the first read as a 30,000 ft view.  I don&#x27;t do included exercises, and I also limit my note-taking.  My second read is with pen and paper in hand.  I break for exercises and notes, but otherwise continue to read just as rapidly.  If I struggled with the concepts, I&#x27;ll repeat the process.<p>Years ago, that book would have taken several sessions to complete <i>the first read</i> and the second read would only be over particular sections.  I&#x27;d be done after weeks, rather than a weekend, which also negatively affected my retention.  Reading from day 1 is built upon and by day 19, it&#x27;s foggy.  When I can do that in an afternoon, it&#x27;s fresh on my mind.  And at worst, with several reads, I&#x27;m still getting through the material in half the time it would have previously taken me and with solid retention[3].<p>It&#x27;s also not something you become good at over night.  After I took the course, I could read twice as fast, but not twice as effectively.  It requires a lot of practice.  When I sit down to read something, I have a goal of learning whatever it is I&#x27;m trying to learn, but I have a second goal of consuming that material more effectively.  The first few years, I focused on reducing my time spent on the first read.  As the years have gone by, I&#x27;ve adjusted my note-taking and methods for retention.  I read a 500+ page book (often equivalent text in PDF) nearly every weekend.  I pick things I am using today and grab books that build on that.<p>[1] I took a multi-week course that focused on the typical &quot;eye movement&quot; techniques along with skim&#x2F;scan techniques.  That course started, for me personally, a rapid change in my ability to consume information from text and I still believe it was one of the most important classes I&#x27;ve ever taken.  I <i>greatly prefer</i> book reading over courses these days because I can completely control my pace from <i>very rapid</i> to <i>word-for-word</i>.<p>[2] I&#x27;m speaking purely of technical reading. I do not speed read fiction and my personal experience is that speed-reading fiction is awful.  I stick with audio books for that.<p>[3] I do not have data to back this up.  I&#x27;ve been reading large, technical programming books for 18 years, and some of that added speed is that I have a relative understanding of the work before I begin.  I know <i>how</i> to read a programming book to maximize my retention and I read programming text to become better at what I do, which is something I&#x27;ve learned how to do from years of practice.<p>[Edit: Added a note clarifying fiction vs technical]