Speed Reading Success: How to Double Your Reading Speed

Introduction 👋🏼

How much more could you get done if you completed all your reading in 1/3 or even 1/5 of the time?

The average adult reads only 238 words per minute (roughly 1/2 to 1 page per minute) [Brysbeart]. However, by the end of this article, you’ll have the tools you need to read at least 3x to 5x faster!

I’ve been researching and refining my ability to speed-read for the past decade. After scouring the internet for legitimate resources (none of that “photo-reading” nonsense), completing several courses (including the Speed Reading course offered at the U.S. Military Academy), and (speedily) reading a handful of books, I’ve distilled the lessons and techniques I’ve learned into this article.

Here I’ll explain how poor reading mechanics are slowing you down, specific techniques to help you become a more efficient reader, and deliberate drills you can use to skyrocket your reading speed and comprehension! 🚀

What’s Slowing You Down? 🐢

“Increasing reading speed is a process of controlling fine motor movement – period.”

~ Tim Ferriss, renowned speaker, writer, podcaster, and author of the 4-Hour book series

Most readers aren’t aware of the habits and mechanics that slow them down. However, if you understand several basic principles of the human visual system, you can eliminate inefficiencies and increase speed while improving retention. Let’s break them down.

1. Subvocalization: Your Inner Voice

Subvocalization is the habit of silently pronouncing words in your mind as you read. This inner voice is something we all develop when first learning to read, but it limits your reading speed to the pace at which you can speak. This is like trying to drive while holding down the brake peddle.

While subvocalization can aid comprehension of complex texts, it’s a significant barrier to faster reading. One key to increasing your reading speed is reducing or eliminating this inner voice, allowing your brain to process information visually instead of aurally.

2. Saccades and Fixations: The Eye’s Journey

You do not read in a straight line, but rather in a series of quick, jerky movements known as saccades (or jumps). Each of these saccades ends with a ****momentary pause, capturing a snapshot of the text within your focus area, known as a fixation. Each fixation lasts about 200 to 300 milliseconds, but frequent, short fixations (like. reading. every. word. in. your. head.) can slow you down significantly.

To feel this yourself, go ahead and close one eye and place a fingertip on top of that eyelid. Then use your other eye to slowly scan a straight, horizontal line in front of you. You will feel distinct and separate movements and periods of fixation.

Efficient readers train their eyes to make longer saccades, reducing the number of fixations needed to comprehend text. Learning to fixate on groups of words rather than individual words can decrease the number of stops your eyes make, allowing you to cover more text in less time.

3. Regression: The Unseen Time Sink

Regression refers to the habit of consciously re-reading text when you’re unsure about what you’ve just read; or back-skipping, often done unconsciously during periods of lost fixation. While re-reading is useful for reviewing material, frequent regression and back-skipping drastically slow your reading and can lead to a loss of focus.

As you can see, subvocalization, inefficient eye movements, and regression can severely limit your reading speed. Addressing these issues is essential for anyone looking to read faster while maintaining comprehension.

Next, we’ll explore how to overcome these hurdles, allowing you to significantly boost your reading speed.

Time to Speed Up 🐇

If you want to read faster without sacrificing comprehension, the key lies in becoming a more efficient reader by refining the mechanics of how you read. This involves reducing subvocalization, optimizing eye movements, and minimizing regression. Here’s how you can implement these strategies to accelerate your reading speed.

1. Reducing Subvocalization 🤐

• Focus on Visual Recognition: Train yourself to see words as visual symbols rather than sounds. Begin by practicing with simple texts where you can focus on absorbing meaning visually, without “hearing” the words. With time, you can apply this technique to more complex material.
• Chunking: Instead of reading word by word, practice chunking—grouping words into phrases or blocks. For example, instead of reading “the cat sat on the mat” as six individual words, see it as two chunks: “the cat sat” and “on the mat.” This not only reduces subvocalization but also helps you process information more quickly.
• Pace Yourself: Use a guide, like your finger or a pen, to move down the page slightly faster than you naturally read. This forces your brain to keep up, reducing the likelihood of subvocalizing.

2. Optimizing Eye Movements 👀

Improving the efficiency of your saccades and fixations is crucial for faster reading. Your reading speed could be expressed as:

Reading Speed = Words Processed Per Saccade × Saccades Per Minute

Therefore, you need to maximize the number of words your brain can process in each eye movement and increase the efficiency of those movements.

• Widen Your Field of Vision: Practice expanding your horizontal peripheral vision span (using deliberate conditioning drills) to take in more words with each fixation. Instead of focusing on individual words, try to capture 3-5 words with each glance (similar to chunking). This reduces the number of saccades and fixations required to read a line of text.
• Reduce Fixations: Work on reducing the number of fixations per line. A typical reader might make 5-7 fixations per line, but with practice, you can reduce this to 2-3, which significantly increases reading speed. Try to mentally divide each line into just two or three “stops” where your eyes pause, and practice reading at that pace.

3. Minimizing Regression ⏪

• Trust Your Brain: Often, readers regress because they doubt their comprehension. Build trust in your reading abilities by challenging yourself to move forward, even if you’re not 100% sure about a particular sentence. Your brain is capable of piecing together meaning from context as you continue reading.
• Improve Initial Comprehension: Focus on fully engaging with the text during your first pass. Techniques like highlighting key points or summarizing as you go can help ensure you understand the material the first time, thereby boosting your confidence and reducing the need to go back.
• Pacer Techniques: Again, using a pacer can help reduce regression by keeping your eyes moving steadily forward. This simple tool can work wonders in breaking the regression habit. (Seeing a pattern with this one? Don’t worry, we’ll discuss it with the drills next)

By systematically reducing subvocalization, optimizing your eye movements, and minimizing regression, you can transform yourself into a much more efficient reader. Next, we’ll discuss deliberate drills you can use to refine your reading and see instant improvements

Speed Training ⏱️

Speed reading isn’t just about understanding the techniques; it’s about practice—a consistent, deliberate practice that trains your brain and eyes to process text faster and more efficiently.

Now we’ll discuss finding your untrained baseline reading speed and a deliberate protocol for increasing your reading speed (in just 10 minutes!) Then we’ll calculate your new, trained reading speed, and discuss a few other drills you can use to become a more efficient reader.

First – Establishing Your Baseline 🏁

Before diving into speed reading drills, it’s crucial to establish a baseline reading speed. This gives you a starting point to measure your progress.

Online Method: Countless websites allow you to test your reading speed, and often your comprehension with targeted questions, for free! Here’s a quick, easy, free resource I found so you can test yours:

Swift Read – Reading Speed Test

We have no affiliation with this website whatsoever, just thought it was a great resource!

OG Physical Method: If you want to test your speed with something you have on hand:

1. Choose a Book and Set Up Your Timer: Select a book with a comfortable level of difficulty – ideally a standard 200+ page book with minimal pictures or interruptions. Start at the top of a normal page, then using a timer or stopwatch, time yourself reading for one minute.
2. Calculate Your Words Per Minute (WPM): To determine your WPM, first calculate the average number of words per line – count the words in 10 lines, then divide by 10 (this can also be extended to average the number of words per page when you get faster!) Next, multiply the number of lines you read in one minute by the average number of words per line. This gives you your initial WPM.

Document Your Baseline: Regardless of which method you chose, record your current WPM as your baseline speed. Regularly update this as you practice, to track your improvement over time.

Second – The Speed Reading Success Protocol 🏋🏼

Now that you’ve established your baseline, it’s time to start practicing.

As a general rule, you will need to execute this protocol at 3x the speed of your target reading speed. For instance, if you currently read at 300 wpm and your target reading speed is 900 wpm, you will need to practice at 2,700 wpm (roughly 6 pages per minute, or 10 seconds per page). This is very similar to overspeed training in running and swimming, as it trains your eyes and brain to comprehend information at a faster rate than you’re currently comfortable with.

The 10min training protocol is split into two deliberate drills – to be completed one after the other:

1. Over-Pace Yourself (to address regression and fixation duration)
2. Perceptual Expansion (to address peripheral vision use)

Over-Pace Yourself

Using a tracker, like a pen, can help minimize regression, back-skipping, and lengthy fixations. If you used a pen or finger while calculating your reading baseline earlier, you’ve already employed this technique to guide your eyes efficiently. Now, we’ll apply this concept to enhance your reading speed.

For this exercise, use a pen held in your dominant hand. Hold the pen flat against the page for optimal control, then underline each line of text with the pen (with the cap on), keeping your eye focused just above the tip. This serves as both a tracker and a pacer, helping you maintain a consistent speed and reducing fixation time.

Now to use the pacer to increase your speed:

1) Basic Technique (2 minutes):

Practice underlining each line, keeping your eyes focused above the pen tip. Do not worry about comprehension for now. Move through each line in 1 second or less, increasing speed with each page. Try to actually read, but under no circumstances should you take longer than 1 second per line. Continue this for 2 minutes straight.

2) Speed Drill (3 minutes):

Repeat the technique, reducing the time to ½ second per line (2 lines per “one-one-thousand”) for 3 minutes. Comprehension may drop, but that’s normal. Focus on maintaining speed and technique – don’t daydream! This drill is designed to train your perceptual reflexes and facilitate adaptations with your visual processing systems—don’t slow down!

Perceptual Expansion

Untrained readers often waste time on margins, spending up to 50% of their reading effort on blank space by focusing on the first word to the last in each line. By training your peripheral vision to register more words and minimizing time spent on the margins, you can increase your speed by more than 300%!

For example, if you start reading a line at the third word and end three words from the last, you avoid focusing on the margins; thereby eliminating unnecessary eye movements and greatly enhancing speed.

1) Basic Technique (1 minute):

Using the pen to track and pace, start reading 1 word from the first word of each line and end 1 word from the last. Maintain a pace of 1 second per line.

2) Intermediate Technique (1 minute):

Increase the margin by starting 2 words from the first word and ending 2 words before the last word. Keep the same pace.

3) Advanced Speed Drill (3 minutes):

Start 3 words in from the first word and end 3 words before the last. Maintain a pace of ½ second per line (2 lines per “one-one-thousand”). Comprehension might be low but focus on maintaining speed and technique. This drill is designed to condition your visual system for faster reading.

These exercises are designed to train your brain and eyes to work together more efficiently, making faster reading not just possible but sustainable.

Third – Calculate Your New WPM 🏆

Immediately after completing the above 10-minute protocol, re-evaluate your newly trained reading speed.

Feel free to re-use the online test you used for your original rate, or try the physical method: Mark your first line and read with a timer for 1 minute exactly- Read at your fastest comprehension rate. Multiply the number of lines by the average words per line to determine your new words-per-minute (wpm) rate.

Let us know how you did!

Fourth – More Speed Reading Success Drills ⏳

Here are several other drills you can use to focus on improving specific mechanics.

1. The Notecard Pacer 👇🏼

This is an improved technique that combines the pacer and peripheral expansion drills from the above protocol.

The pacer method involves using a pen, your finger, or a notecard as a guide to help your eyes move quickly across the page. This technique prevents your eyes from fixating too long on any one word and encourages faster reading.

How to Practice

Place a notecard horizontally on your page below the first line. Similar to the pen pacer, you will be moving the card steadily down the page while you read to control your reading rate.

• Stop Reading Margins: Now, similar to the peripheral technique, draw a vertical line at the top of the notecard underneath the first/second/third word from the beginning/end of the line. Now use these lines as guides for starting and ending each line.
• Reduce Fixations, Improve Peripheral: You can continue expanding this method by drawing set lines on the notecard to divide the whole sentence into set fixations (i.e. one line at four words in from the start, one line in the center of the page, and one line at four words from the end).
• Speed: Once you’re comfortable with either of the marking techniques, practice using the notecard in the same way as the pen – forcing yourself to read for 2-3 minutes at a time only spending 1 to 1/2 second per line. You can also make a peace sign ✌🏼 with your hand and use your fingers as markers and pacers for reading – splitting each line into only two fixations!

Why it Works

This technique effectively improves your saccades and visual span by increasing the length of your visual jumps and reduces subvocalization by chunking words and reading with your peripheral vision. It also helps reduce regression by maintaining your forward momentum while reading.

Side Note – Digital Reading:

Once you’re comfortable dividing a page into a set number of fixations, you can transfer this skill to any medium! For instance, if you’re reading on your phone or tablet, imagine two lines running from the top to bottom of your device, dividing your screen into thirds. Now, try reading each line of text by only jumping between these two imaginary lines.

You’ll find yourself reading in a short zig-zag pattern down the page that’s much more efficient than reading the whole line. If you’re reading on the web or an app like Kindle – you can also adjust the text size to change the amount of words you’re chunking or turn on continuous scrolling to use the top or bottom of your screen as a pacer. The flexibility offered by mobile devices, and its compatibility with speed reading habits, is why I prefer reading any material on my phone.

2. Peripheral Vision Training 👁️

You already know peripheral vision plays a crucial role in speed reading by allowing you to absorb more information, but it doesn’t exactly come naturally to most. So, here are some ways to “open your eyes.”

How to Practice

While reading, focus on the center of the page and take in the surrounding text with your peripheral vision. You can also read line by line while only staring down the center of the page and see how many words around the center you can read without moving your eye.

Why it Works

Enhancing your peripheral vision enables you to capture more words per fixation, reducing the number of eye movements needed to read a line of text.

App Practice

You can also practice with specially designed exercises or apps that train your peripheral vision to recognize and process words outside your direct line of sight. Apps like Spreeder (no affiliation) allow you to practice chunking/peripheral reading by flashing groups of words at set WPM rates. While possibly useful for overtraining, I prefer to read organically rather than rely on an app.

Schulte Tables

Numerous sources also advocate for training with “Schulte Tables,” which involve identifying peripheral numbers in an increasingly large table without moving your eyes. These are not only useful for expanding your peripheral vision, but they also add some variety to your speed reading routine. I used these a lot when I started, and I was able to find a free app for iOS that allows you to try it for yourself called Speed Reading: Schulte Table (once again, no affiliation, just a cool resource!)

3. Skimming and Scanning ⏩

Skimming and scanning are techniques that involve quickly moving through the text to identify key points or specific information. It’s important not to confuse this “vague summarizing” with speed reading – as one is preparatory and the other is for actual execution.

It sounds simple, but pre-reading materials like articles and textbooks for key information is one of the easiest ways to boost your speed, understanding, and retention of information.

• How to Practice: Begin by skimming through a paragraph to get the general idea (for textbooks, this could just be the intro, headings, and conclusion), then go back and scan for specific details, such as names, dates, or key concepts. With practice, you’ll be able to extract essential information more quickly.
• Why It Works: These techniques not only increase your reading speed but also improve your ability to discern what’s important in a text, boosting both efficiency and comprehension.

Additional Recommendations:

• The key to success with speed reading success drills is consistency. The more you practice, the more natural these techniques will become, and the greater your reading speed will be.
• If you’re using your new speedy skills for studying, I’d recommend that you not read 3 assignments in the time it would take you to read one; but rather, read the same assignment 3 times for exposure and recall improvement, depending on relevancy to testing. This is also helpful for very technical material you may be reading.
• Alternatively, if you’re reading for pleasure there’s no need to rush! Feel free to practice if you want, but I prefer to take my time when I’m reading for enjoyment, especially right before bed.

Conclusion

Mastering the art of speed reading is all about enhancing your overall reading efficiency, comprehension, and retention. By eliminating subvocalization, optimizing your saccades and fixations, and minimizing regression, you can train your brain to process information more quickly and effectively.

These techniques require dedication and consistent practice, but the rewards are worth the effort. With time, you’ll find that you can breeze through material that once seemed daunting, freeing up valuable hours for deeper study or other tasks. The goal isn’t just to read faster—it’s to read smarter.

Now that you’re equipped with these strategies, it’s time to put them into action. Start integrating these drills into your daily routine (perhaps by reading some more of our articles 👀), and watch as your reading speed and comprehension skyrocket! 🚀

Here’s to your success and growth!

~ Andrew Mizell

P.S. Let me know in the comments below where you started and how much you improved! If you have any additional questions, feel free to post them below. Happy speed reading! 😄

P.P.S. Know someone else who would benefit from learning how to read faster? Don’t leave them out! Click the buttons below to share this resource with a friend!

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