Read How To Read 10 Books Per Week

Many successful people don’t just read. Instead they sponge up books and articles. They regularly invest dedicated and limited time slots to read books, papers, and blog articles. This gives them an information advantage and stimulates the production of their creative juices. As a result they become more productive and effective.

Most of them have a reading speed significantly higher than an adult′s average of around 250-300 words per minute (wpm). Top readers who apply various speed reading strategies hit around 1,000 to 2,000 wpm with approximately 50-60% comprehension. Anne Jones, who won the Speed Reading World championship six times, reads up to 4,700 wpm with 67% comprehension. She read “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” in just 47 minutes and one second (4251 wpm). Afterwards she reviewed the book for Sky TV.

Also U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt was known for his impressive reading skills. He was said having read multiple books per day. Following his footsteps were Kennedy, Carter and other U.S. presidents who made speed reading a priority for themselves and White House staff. They and many others like Tony Buzan – the world-famous proponent of mnemonic systems and mind mapping techniques – were inspired by the American educator and teacher Evelyn Wood who coined the phrase Speed Reading in the 1960s. Wood taught the speed reading system Reading Dynamics.

By practicing regularly with one of the speed reading apps and applying some of the straightforward techniques described below, after some weeks you can also increase your reading capabilities to 500-700 wpm while retain good comprehension. By training 2-3 months on a regular basis you should be able to achieve up to 1,000 wpm.

RECOMMENDED SPEED READING APPS

Spritz
Thanks to a smart and big PR campaign Boston-based startup Spritz momentarily is everywhere in the media. Unfortunately, not yet available on many devices... Anyway, first things first: Spritz is focused on text streaming technology which is based on RSVP (Rapid Serial Visual Presentation) to display words one after another using a single focal point. The company stresses the fact that the time consuming part of reading lies mainly in the actual eye movements from word to word and sentence to sentence.

Currently you can spritz in English, Spanish, French, German, Russian and even Korean. They’re working on Chinese and a few others right now. The first use of Spritz is an email application for the Samsung Gear 2 and Galaxy S5 smartphone. It′s also working on getting the app to customers beyond the Samsung gadgets soon.

Oyster, in cooperation with Spitz, made Stephen Covey’s Classic “7 Habits of Highly Effective People, 25th Anniversary Edition” Spritzable on their site. After almost 3 hours – yes I took a couple of breaks - I completed the book; I changed the available speeds from 250wpm up to 600-700 wpm (and back) to match my reading level. Overall, a satisfying experience for reading a business book.

Fastr
Fastr serves as a book reader for iPhone, iPod, iPad, and the web. It also trains your reading skills. Fastr operates on a comparable principle as Spritz. However, and I like that a lot, you can choose between two ways of reading - classical and speed reading (using word flash). As such you can train your reading skills while reading your favorite book or an article. Fastr lets you add books from Dropbox, Safari, add files on www.fastr.io website. ePub format is now supported. Unfortunately due to DRM restrictions you are not able to open books bought on Amazon or iBooks. The launch of Fastr′s own book catalog is planned.

A Faster Reader
A Faster Reader uses the same RSVP method as Spritz and is for Android. It is compatible with a variety of reader services such as Pocket, Feedly, etc. You can also share text from Evernote, ColorNote or Google Keep. The in-app purchase to premium provides an interface to the Pebble smart watch (plus many more features). A pretty good app, although the text flow could be made smoother and the text size slightly bigger.

Velocity
Velocity is very easy to use. Its biggest drawback: it′s iOS only. Consequently the company’s next goal is to bring it to Android. Velocity works e.g. with Instapaper, Readability, and Pocket. You can read text, rich text, and word documents from mail and other apps. Velocity is customizable as well, so you can set up your reading preferences.

Reading Trainer
HeKu′s reading trainer for $4.99 is not a speed reading tool; it′s a sophisticated speed reading course to practice every day for approximately 10 minutes. Luckily it′s available for Android, iOS, and even Windows Phone. There are lots of challenging and fun exercises to improve your natural reading rate.

RECOMMENDED READING STRATEGIES

Whilst you certainly can increase your reading speed by using above-listed speed reading apps, in parallel you should exert some of the following proven techniques (the Reading Trainer covers some of them. By the way, to evaluate your reading speed click here):

Preview
In particular helpful for getting a general idea of long and heavy reading material without over-loading you with all details. Generally you would read in full the first one to two paragraphs of the respective book or article. Afterwards, of each successive paragraph you would ready only the first sentence. At the end you would read the complete last one to two paragraphs.

Skimming
An excellent technique to read lighter material or books and articles which you′ve read before. It is done by forcing your eyes to move faster and to sweep across each line by picking up only a few key words in each line. Skimming often results in lower comprehension rates.

Clustering
Looking at groups of words instead of one at a time is called Clustering. You need to train your eyes to see words in clusters of three to five words at a glance. Try to relax your eyes without concentrating on every word. Instead apply a soft focus like looking at a beautiful picture or painting.

Meta Guiding
By using a finger or a pen as a pointer, the eye can be challenged moving faster along a text. It′s like drawing invisible shapes on a page of text in order to broaden the visual span for speed reading.

Suppressing Subvocalization
Subvocalization is a natural process which is defined as the internal speech made when reading a word; allowing the reader to imagine the sound of the word as it is read. It is believed being a major reason why individuals do not learn speed reading by themselves as they mentally want to pronounce each syllable. An effective exercise that everyone can apply to avoid subvocalizing is to use their inner voice by humming or counting while reading at their normal rate (either in their head or out loud).

Avoiding Regression
Readers should always continue reading forward. Never going backward. Even – and especially – when they feel they have misunderstood or missed something. The brain will automatically fill the gaps.

If you′d like to learn more about various speed reading strategies and extremely powerful exercises I suggest you study Breakthrough Rapid Reading by Peter Kump. It is the best book which I've read on speed reading. After 2 to 3 months of daily practicing I′m sure you′ll fly through any book. Go for it!

SUMMARY AND FINAL THOUGHTS

Personally I′ve considerably improved my reading speed and comprehension by using the Faster Reader app, practicing 3-4 times per week with the Reading Trainer, and applying the most relevant speed reading strategies. Once Spritz will be available on iOS and Android devices, it should become a compelling alternative.

Certainly, one must be careful not to confuse speed reading with skimming, i.e. finding the right balance between "speed" and "comprehension.“ This is closely linked with the the risk associated with possible misunderstandings due to low comprehension, and the advantages resulting from gaining information quicker than usual.

Of course, also - and especially - the type of reading is relevant. I usually apply speed reading when reading business books, studies, or articles. Or when I re-read already known material. And e.g. not when reading great literature like John Williams’ splendid and deeply moving novel Stoner which is a work of humble perfection and inspiration. In addition, I would only use it on a reduced and limited scale when reading highly complex books and articles. Knowing speed reading gives me the opportunity to chose and adapt my reading speed in a flexible manner. You can always slow down, if you′d like to. Finally, one cannot automatically assume having understood each page and aspect of a book, etc. even when heaving read it slowly.

Speed Reading takes practice. It′s best done, if you′d like to try it, in a comfortable and quiet environment where neither eyes nor mind are distracted. As you increase your speed over time, it is crucial to permanently challenge yourself to read at faster speeds.

What do you think? Are you a speed reader, a connoisseur reader, or both? Any experiences made with speed reading apps or specific techniques?

Looking forward to reading your comments here soon!

Best regards,

Andreas von der Heydt

*****

Andreas von der Heydt is the Country Manager of Amazon BuyVIP in Germany. Before that he held senior management positions at L'Oréal. He′s a leadership expert, innovator, executive coach, and NLP master. He also founded Consumer Goods Club. Andreas worked and lived in Europe, the U.S. and Asia.

Please click 'Follow' if you would like to hear more from Andreas in the future. Feel free to also connect via his LinkedIn Group Coaching or Consumer Goods, or via Twitter and Facebook.

Other recent and popular posts by Andreas von der Heydt:
25 Hot Tech Startups To Watch For
The Best Niche Strategies To Compete With The Goliaths
14 Rules To Become The World′s Fastest Company
How Zappos WOWs Its Employees
What The Best Brands Will Do In 2014

Photo: istock.com