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I Was Wrong About Speed Reading (2015)

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Re: I Was Wrong About Speed Reading (2015)

#51

Post by shanemhansen »

Reedx wrote: post #31
quickthrower2 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best way to speed read is if the writer reduces the number of words required to communicate and educate. Of course this takes extra effort, and is also goes against human perception of value. E.g. if you reduced Tim Ferris's book to a single sheet of A4 you could get the point across, but who's going to pay $20 or so for a sheet of A4? Well some execs might pay $2000 - but you won't sell millions of copies like t…

That's something I've been wondering about. How many non-fiction books could be reduced by 90% and still communicate 90% of the ideas? I feel like we're losing a lot of time and potential due to filler pages.

That's what Reader's Digest did: summarize.

Re: I Was Wrong About Speed Reading (2015)

#52

Post by kortex »

Reedx wrote: post #11

Reading speed strikes me similarly to typing speed when it comes to programming. It's fun to read/type fast, but it's not really the bottleneck.

Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.

This applies to surprisingly many tasks in life.

That said, I've been pushing to hit 100 wpm typing with minimal typos for years just because it's a nice round number and I keep ending up just shy. Character typos aren't even that big of a deal, as I find a good chunk of mistakes are actually "thought-os" where I type in the completely wrong giraffe. So being able to recover dynamically from misakes is valuable too.

Re: I Was Wrong About Speed Reading (2015)

#53

Post by ergocoder »

Reedx wrote: post #11

Reading speed strikes me similarly to typing speed when it comes to programming. It's fun to read/type fast, but it's not really the bottleneck.

This is true to some degree.

I'd like to think of a better analogy.

Typing in programming is like running in soccer.

It's definitely a problem if you type slowly or can't type for a long period of time.

Passing the certain speed and endurance, typing faster doesn't help much.

It's the same with soccer.

Re: I Was Wrong About Speed Reading (2015)

#54

Post by brownbat »

Reedx wrote: post #31
quickthrower2 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best way to speed read is if the writer reduces the number of words required to communicate and educate. Of course this takes extra effort, and is also goes against human perception of value. E.g. if you reduced Tim Ferris's book to a single sheet of A4 you could get the point across, but who's going to pay $20 or so for a sheet of A4? Well some execs might pay $2000 - but you won't sell millions of copies like t…

That's something I've been wondering about. How many non-fiction books could be reduced by 90% and still communicate 90% of the ideas? I feel like we're losing a lot of time and potential due to filler pages.

There are "X for busy people" series that provide abbreviated summaries of the core ideas in popular works of nonfiction.

I suppose the gamble is that it's hard to know which nonfiction are mostly fluff in advance though.

Re: I Was Wrong About Speed Reading (2015)

#55

Post by leetcrew »

hanoz wrote: post #47
Buttons840 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked with some programmers who were so slow at typing I would find myself reluctant to help them with their "hands on" work, like directing them to try something in the REPL for example, or even just asking them to run a shell command. It was a struggle for me not to excuse myself as soon as possible once they started typing. They seemingly couldn't get a single word out without a typo, and would frequently hu…

> couldn't get a single word out without a typo, and would frequently hunt down other places in the code so they could copy paste that 6 character variable name The latter seems a good strategy for coping with the former, does it not?

it's more like a pathological workaround.

it's similar to people who spend years doing "hunt and peck" typing. if you practice enough, you can get up to a decent speed, but you would have been much better off taking a couple weeks to become a mediocre touch typist.

Re: I Was Wrong About Speed Reading (2015)

#56

Post by ncmncm »

Wrong guy is wrong.

It is possible to speed-read TFA with no loss of comprehension, because it is information-light. Most things available to read are, and when you are obliged to look at them, often a glance at each paragraph tells you all you need to know.

Things that are really worth reading are information-dense. Then, the time to think about what is presented dominates, and the time to take in words is negligible. Sub-vocalizing can aid comprehension by slowing you down, and by providing additional information via the rhythm of the presentation.

The last book I read by Robert Sapolsky took me 30-60 minutes for each of the last 30 pages, because they were tying together all the material in the rest of the book, and really gave full value for those minutes.

So, speed read what you must read, but choose material that delivers for careful study, and read it as slowly as it deserves.

Re: I Was Wrong About Speed Reading (2015)

#57

Post by eddyl »

dredmorbius wrote: post #2

The recommendations for more effective reading largely match those in Mortimer Adler's How to Read a Book , particularly chapters 2 (The Second Level of Reading: Inspectional Reading) and 7 (How to X-Ray a Book). Both address how to rapidly determine a book's structure . More generally, Adler suggests approaching reading with intent , that is, what are your goals in reading a book, often corresponding to the type of…

Adler's "How to Read a Book" (the 1972 edition) also recommends to avoid subvocalization and to use your finger as a "pacer" to guide your eye across each line. I was surprised to see that the author of this article suggests that these two techniques are not supported by scientific studies. I'm glad I have not gotten far in adopting these!

Re: I Was Wrong About Speed Reading (2015)

#59

Post by pcurve »

rmason wrote: post #4

I took a speed reading course one summer when I was in college. My mother thought that it would give me an edge. First they test you and my reading speed was already on the high end of normal. In the course I did theoretically more than double my reading speed. But my comprehension was based on the test they gave me. Plus I noticed that I tired quickly doing speed reading. I was a kid who loved to read and had no pro…

speed reading ruined my reading comprehension and I never recovered from it. :-/

Re: I Was Wrong About Speed Reading (2015)

#60

Post by Mirioron »

kortex wrote: post #52
Reedx wrote: post #11

Reading speed strikes me similarly to typing speed when it comes to programming. It's fun to read/type fast, but it's not really the bottleneck.

Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. This applies to surprisingly many tasks in life. That said, I've been pushing to hit 100 wpm typing with minimal typos for years just because it's a nice round number and I keep ending up just shy. Character typos aren't even that big of a deal, as I find a good chunk of mistakes are actually "thought-os" where I type in the completely wrong giraffe. So being able to recover dynamicall…

I wonder why some people type faster. If tested, I average around 125 wpm in reasonable tests (625 cpm really). I've never tried to learn to type quickly. I've never had anything beyond a $10 keyboard and I don't even type like it's taught (my hands overlap on some characters). Despite that I type quite fast with few errors - most of my mistakes are also related to typing in something completely different. It was quite shocking to me when I found out that my friends typed at below 80 wpm when trying to type fast.
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