"Speed-reading"

[blazed]

Hello
I just wanted to hear your thoughts about speed reading?
For those who are not aware of what speed-reading is, it's as simple as the word
You are basically fast at reading (800+ words per minute) instead of the average 200-250 words per minute
I'll include the Wiki for those who are lazy and want to look it up
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_reading


Personally, I am really intrested in this, it would make it damn easier to learn stuff in life (some methods make it possible to have a comprehension of 80%) so it's not stuff you will forget after 5 minutes.
You will not waste 6 months learning something you are interested in, you can learn it damn faster, which personally I think is huge. As I spend alot of time at school, I would most likely get alot of spare time, doing the things I like to do if I were to learn this. And it would make a drastic change to my life, mostly positive I think

Do you guys just think it's bullshit or something that you would like to try out?
I have not gotten so deep into it saying that it has made a change yet but if it works I'll be glad I took time for it

Kulver made a thread about this a few years ago, but I'm not into that necro shit
https://evilzone.org/video-tutorials/dvd-about-photoreading/msg49311/#msg49311

If someone wants the videos I'm looking at, I'll be glad to upload them

[x40a0e]

I have actually looked into this quite a bit, but I'm fairly skeptical. From what I have read, increases of this magnitude will allow for ~80% comprehension, but only in non-technical material.

I mean, think about anything you've learned that was complex and difficult to understand. How much of the time "reading" was actually reading vs. trying to digest and make sense of what you are reading. To me the whole speed reading thing to digest highly technical material more quickly would be like learning to type faster so that you can program faster. The bottleneck doesn't lie there.
If you do have any success with this though, please let me know, I would be very excited to be proven wrong here.

[Xorsion]

I'll agree with x40a0e here. Reading through something and 'studying' (as in reading through something while trying to understand as much as possible - which is often very different than the socially defined school-like studying) are two entirely different things. Speed reading through difficult-to-comprehend text will only get you as far as understanding some of the main points (likely not even all of them, since some might depend on the context). Of course, all this also depends on how easily you can make connections on the subject at hand.

If you absolutely want/need to speed read, you should do it in case you need to *recall* information. It'll work fine because, having studied the material, you'll then be able to make the necessary connections by speed reading alone.

Personally, if saving time feels important to you, I'd suggest simply neglecting (often loudly, if need be) to go through material you don't care about. However, this might get you in trouble in settings where conformism is required, such as school and stuff.

[rogue.hackz]

I won't be dismissing the idea completely though, there are ways to learn to improve your memory, retention also techniques to be able to read and learn faster. At first I found a video tutorial course on a torrent site and I was a bit skeptical.

https://imgur.com/MxcLXG8

I went through the first few videos and learnt that some of what they said were actually true. In particular I remember the author of that course solved the problem of retention by visualizing things, and making it personal to you so that everytime you think about that particular thing you can correlate to something in your past or something you've seen before to help you remember better.

I know it's kind of hard to explain, but what he said was that your brain is just like the muscles in your body and needs training. It won't happen over night though, but slowly as you practice more and train harder you will eventually be a super learner and at the same time be able to retain 80% of what you read.

I haven't had the time to go through that course but hopefully will try it out in the next few days and give feedback whether it worked for me or not.

Also I wanted to give a link to that course on the torrent sites but for some reason wasn't able to find it, dunno if they took it down. But there are similar courses or books related to that which you can try and see if it works for you.

[blazed]

I won't be dismissing the idea completely though, there are ways to learn to improve your memory, retention also techniques to be able to read and learn faster. At first I found a video tutorial course on a torrent site and I was a bit skeptical.

https://imgur.com/MxcLXG8

I went through the first few videos and learnt that some of what they said were actually true. In particular I remember the author of that course solved the problem of retention by visualizing things, and making it personal to you so that everytime you think about that particular thing you can correlate to something in your past or something you've seen before to help you remember better.

I know it's kind of hard to explain, but what he said was that your brain is just like the muscles in your body and needs training. It won't happen over night though, but slowly as you practice more and train harder you will eventually be a super learner and at the same time be able to retain 80% of what you read.

I haven't had the time to go through that course but hopefully will try it out in the next few days and give feedback whether it worked for me or not.

Also I wanted to give a link to that course on the torrent sites but for some reason wasn't able to find it, dunno if they took it down. But there are similar courses or books related to that which you can try and see if it works for you.

That's the course I'm using
They want you to go through the course for 4-6 weeks to learn everything, but it's goddamn hard to make it into your daily life
https://www.udemy.com/superlearning-speed-reading-memory-techniques/
I can upload it if that's requested however it may take a while due to my slow internet 
I got the whole updated course etc.

Memory doesn't seem to be the problem, but like x40a0e said, you might spend time trying to understand what they are saying. But then again, if you read the whole paper 3 times faster than any of the other, you can spend more time figuring that out
So I suppose that speed-reading would be most usefull during theory tests, maybe like History but in like Math it will not help you anyway.



And regarding "saving time" I've done this all my life without even thinking about it, most people call me lazy that way but I'm happy I get some time over to work on something else than sitting 2hours on the same subject.
And with speed-reading I suppose you can learn so damn much, in much less time than normal. And since everything is on the internet nowadays I doubt there is a limit of how far you can go

[smack.it]

Yes, you can read fiction and novels like this, but when you actually want to learn something? Do you really think you are able to comprehend complex ideas by just going scanning the text? If so then, you wouldn't be here. It works on some level obv, mostly to find information. There is no need to read the whole book if you are looking specific information, therefore you scan it. Everything has its own place, don't buy this marketing crap people are trying to sell you.

[blazed]

Yes, you can read fiction and novels like this, but when you actually want to learn something? Do you really think you are able to comprehend complex ideas by just going scanning the text? If so then, you wouldn't be here. It works on some level obv, mostly to find information. There is no need to read the whole book if you are looking specific information, therefore you scan it. Everything has its own place, don't buy this marketing crap people are trying to sell you.

Well, like rogue said there are ways to improve your memory (which I have  done) and there, I have seen succes.
But you are wrong when you say scanning

The course I'm looking at (which I ripped, so I didn't pay) contains basically 3 steps
1st Improve memory, else you will never be able to remember everything you read
2nd Preread to gain motivation. 1 second prereading, where you catch up details, and ask yourself questions, why/how/when about these specific details. This will give you more motivation and therefore, more concentration when you eventually will completely "speed read" the whole thing
3rd Speedreading, remove the subvocalization and make use of the techniques you earlier learned

I will try my best to update this thread when I see some progress.
I have gotten better memory, when I use the techniques. However I'm having problem with using them on a daily basis which makes it hard to going onto the next step and eventually speed-reading

[smack.it]

http://www.supermemo.com/english/company/wozniak.htm
He has many interesting articles, but the one i'd like to emphasize is spaced repetition. Basically just using flash cards, but the whole idea really hits home. It really comes handy learning programming/languages or basically w/e you want to remember. Probably the most known software to use is Anki, they also have mobile version for it.

[Dr4g0n]

I can read fairly fast, there's a break off point between understanding and remembering what you read, and finishing the thing you are reading. It reminds me of a quote I heard a long time ago by Woody Allen, "I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia."

[3ncrypt10n]

When Humans read at a pace which they can utter the words they see, they are reading with a processing of about 16 bits but when the subvocalization is minimized processing for increases to about 12 Million bits. However memory is effected with great power over each option even with the human with the best memory in the world they still wouldn't recall much more than a normal human would when reading at that pace.

[applebucked]

Speed reading never really worked for me. I forget even if I try to read intently. Relied on speed reading quite my whole life and it left gaps on my knowledge so now I try to really intently focus on something, as hard as it is.

[felderman]

Tried to speed-read, worked for a really short time, then just gave up. Not really my thing.

[truecam]

I  usually skim. The secret is knowing what to skip and what to read. For novels, I read the  first chapter thoroughly, and based on that I will either skip through dialogue a lot, skip through description based text, or a little bit of both. It takes a lot to of time to hone, but once you do, you can read books in 1 hours per 200 pages. However for nonfiction, I usually skim  all the chapters for about an hour, then I will decide which chapters I skip, and what chapters I read. This most of the time works, especially for books on programming, but does not work well on books that focus on physics or engineering.

[inability]

Personally, I am wary of any method that claims to offer more than 50% comprehension. Most speed-reading methods tend to be centered around skimming, which is detrimental to comprehension especially for information-rich texts, and eliminating subvocalization, which might be slightly better but in the end is still not going to get you anything above, say, 60% comprehension. From the Wikipedia article you linked:

The World Championship Speed Reading Competition stresses reading comprehension as critical. The top contestants typically read around 1,000 to 2,000 words per minute with approximately 50% comprehension or above. The world champion is Anne Jones with 4,700 words per minute with 67% comprehension.

At some point, you're going to get a diminishing ROI in terms of word speed vs. comprehension.

[Ethereal Specter]

Speed reading is based on a few metrics: time, words read, and amount understood. By implementing a test after a document the amount understood can be quantified. Then it's all about manipulating these three values to create the most words read and understood in the least time. The theory should be explored by looking into the physiology of visual perception and the processes that it takes to reach the brain. Then practical applications can be developed in the form of exercises.