How to Speed Read — Transcript

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1. 0:00greetings folks Tim Ferris here author
2. 0:02of 4-Hour Work Week tools of Titans Etc
3. 0:05I think a lot about ingesting
4. 0:07information and it sounds so sexy
5. 0:10doesn't it learning how do you speed up
6. 0:13the consumption of say text if you want
7. 0:16to read faster how do you do that
8. 0:18without succumbing to some pseudo
9. 0:20science nonsense about uh speed reading
10. 0:24there's a lot of garbage out there but
11. 0:26how can you improve your ability to
12. 0:29absorb written information without
13. 0:31sacrificing comprehension there are some
14. 0:33very straightforward ways to do it I'm
15. 0:34going to show you that right now and I
16. 0:37will use these two books to demonstrate
17. 0:39so these are fiction and non-fiction
18. 0:42respectively how to get filthy rich in
19. 0:44rising Asia one of my favorite uh recent
20. 0:47fiction books uh which I generally don't
21. 0:50try to read super quickly but these
22. 0:52books are the same size so I'll show you
23. 0:53then vagabonding which is one of my
24. 0:55faves has been since 2004 all right so
25. 0:58let's take just for the sake of
26. 1:00Simplicity and I would recommend you do
27. 1:02the same a book that has fairly
28. 1:04standardized formatting in other words
29. 1:06there aren't a lot of bullet lists there
30. 1:08aren't a lot of graphs it's mostly
31. 1:11text and since we can only manage what
32. 1:15we can measure step number one is
33. 1:17figuring out roughly how many words per
34. 1:21page are on uh this particular say
35. 1:25spread right and then throughout the
36. 1:26book so you're going to go through and
37. 1:28you're going to count say on a page like
38. 1:31this the number of words in 10 lines
39. 1:35okay so you come up with a total divide
40. 1:36it by 10 that's your average number of
41. 1:39words per line and then you can see here
42. 1:43most books have a consistent number of
43. 1:46lines per page you multiply that let's
44. 1:48just say it's 30 okay you have an
45. 1:50average of 10 words per line that's 300
46. 1:52words per page great easy enough all
47. 1:56right what we want to do next is
48. 1:57establish your Baseline so you're going
49. 1:58to read for one minute you're going to
50. 2:01be focusing on reading at your normal
51. 2:04speed of course now you have an
52. 2:06experimental or observer effect so it
53. 2:08might be slightly off but that's all
54. 2:10right you're going to read for one
55. 2:12minute and uh then you're going to do
56. 2:15the math multiply it out and figure out
57. 2:17how many words roughly have I read that
58. 2:19is your words per minute rate
59. 2:22wpm and uh what we do should help double
60. 2:26or triple that without too much trouble
61. 2:29all right now
62. 2:30uh I'll do a demo before we go into how
63. 2:33to mess with your
64. 2:34book if you look at say my nose all
65. 2:38right in this
66. 2:39video can you still see my finger of
67. 2:43course you can can you still see my
68. 2:44finger over here yes you can that is
69. 2:46your peripheral vision even if your
70. 2:47fixation point if your primary point of
71. 2:49focus is right here when we read most of
72. 2:54us when we are taught to read we read
73. 2:57word by word so we go from the fur fmost
74. 3:00left word to the furthermost right word
75. 3:03and so on seems logical the problem with
76. 3:05that is is you're not using any of this
77. 3:07space or the margins and the way that
78. 3:11you then remedy
79. 3:12that is by drawing lines on some pages
80. 3:18and I would suggest you indent one word
81. 3:21from either side okay and so what that
82. 3:24might look like
83. 3:28is something
84. 3:31like this so now you have lines going
85. 3:33down either side of the page and instead
86. 3:37of starting all the way to the left
87. 3:40you're going to start at this line and
88. 3:42then you're going to end at that line so
89. 3:43much like a say typewriter with a return
90. 3:47carriage going down you're now going to
91. 3:49be zigzagging just as you would normally
92. 3:52but the parameters or the boundaries
93. 3:56have been moved in by a word you will
94. 3:59you will not have any trouble reading
95. 4:00and you you should still have full
96. 4:02comprehension and if you do this for say
97. 4:055 to 10 pages then if you're not having
98. 4:07any trouble whatsoever you can inbt by
99. 4:10another word and you can either use
100. 4:12lines or you can spitball it you can
101. 4:14estimate it
102. 4:16and by doing this alone just that you
103. 4:19can train yourself to get to the point
104. 4:21where effectively you are very much
105. 4:24focusing on the middle thirdd of the
106. 4:28page and you're just dotting down the
107. 4:32page left to right and that in and of
108. 4:35itself could easily double your reading
109. 4:37speed without sacrificing comprehension
110. 4:40uh the next observation just
111. 4:42mechanically that can be very helpful is
112. 4:45that the eye doesn't track in a clean
113. 4:49smooth line when you are say glancing
114. 4:52from left to right right so if you want
115. 4:54to do a test close one eye you put a
116. 4:57finger on that eye and then slowly track
117. 4:59across the wall on the opposite side and
118. 5:02what you'll notice is that the eye jumps
119. 5:05right and these are I believe I've never
120. 5:07actually heard this said I've only read
121. 5:09it a million times cic movements uh the
122. 5:12eye will jump from fixation point to
123. 5:15fixation point and you can see this with
124. 5:17Retina scanning and eye tracking which
125. 5:19uh I've seen a fair amount of just in
126. 5:22psychological studies I've been an
127. 5:23experimentor and a subject both at
128. 5:25Princeton where I did stuff actually in
129. 5:27the lab of Danny Conan who who wrote uh
130. 5:30Thinking Fast and Slow incredible
131. 5:32incredible scientist but I was just
132. 5:34clicking space bars looking at stuff on
133. 5:35the screen uh and then at UCSF and other
134. 5:38places how do we utilize that what that
135. 5:40means is when you're looking at a given
136. 5:42page your eye isn't moving
137. 5:45smoothly across each line it's fixation
138. 5:48fixation fixation so the
139. 5:51less that we can regress meaning bounce
140. 5:54back or bounce up you want to stay on
141. 5:57that reliable forward path and the fewer
142. 6:00fixation points we have it's just a math
143. 6:02problem the less time we're going to
144. 6:04spend reading each page so what does
145. 6:06this mean this means that thus far we've
146. 6:09just been looking at the page and
147. 6:11reading what we're going to do now is
148. 6:13use a Pacer so you could use your finger
149. 6:16and now you are actually going to
150. 6:19track with your finger Trace underneath
151. 6:22the line like so and try to think of two
152. 6:26fixation points per line for your eye
153. 6:28but this will keep you from bouncing up
154. 6:30to previously read material we've all
155. 6:32had the experience of being really
156. 6:33sleepy say and feeling like you've read
157. 6:35the same two lines five or six times
158. 6:37this is partially because your eyes are
159. 6:39tired and you end up back skipping and
160. 6:41jumping all over the place all right so
161. 6:43then you use your your marker your Pacer
162. 6:46to move down the page and the last test
163. 6:51I would have you run or experiment prior
164. 6:53to remeasurement so let's say you do
165. 6:55that for 10 minutes and so you you've
166. 6:58you've moved in the in the boundaries uh
167. 7:02the the edges of the page so to speak
168. 7:04where you stop and go to the next line
169. 7:06and then you're minimizing the number of
170. 7:07fixations and you're preventing back
171. 7:09skipping by using Pacer the next thing
172. 7:10you're going to do is say for five
173. 7:12minutes is to read slightly faster than
174. 7:15your comprehension allows so you want to
175. 7:17get to the point where you're losing
176. 7:19maybe 10% and the effect that we're
177. 7:22looking for is resetting your comfort
178. 7:25set point in Reading at full
179. 7:27comprehension in other words if you're
180. 7:29used to always driving at 30 mph and
181. 7:32then you get to the point where you're
182. 7:34on a highway say I was just in Texas and
183. 7:36it was speed limit 80 mph oh my God does
184. 7:39that feel fast and suddenly you feel
185. 7:41like you're operating at very high speed
186. 7:44you then dial back when you go into say
187. 7:46a 55 Zone it feels like 30 all right
188. 7:49you've adapted to the faster speed so
189. 7:52for 5 minutes just practice reading with
190. 7:55slight comprehension loss so a little
191. 7:57bit faster than it's comfortable and
192. 7:59then what I want you to do is retest
193. 8:01your word per minute rate so now you're
194. 8:02going to use the bumping in from either
195. 8:05side you're going to use the pter and I
196. 8:06want you to make sure that you have full
197. 8:09comprehension and in doing that I would
198. 8:12wager that the vast majority of you uh
199. 8:15probably close to 100% if you followed
200. 8:17all these instructions will have at
201. 8:19least improved your reading speed by 50%
202. 8:21some of you will double triple quadruple
203. 8:24your reading speed without sacrificing
204. 8:25comprehension no Voodoo no magic
205. 8:28involved it's just understanding the
206. 8:29mechanics of the eye a little bit about
207. 8:31the uh about Optical perception and then
208. 8:34recognizing how you can optimize that
209. 8:37for the printed page and that's it so
210. 8:39congratulations you've probably double
211. 8:41or tripled your reading speed and for
212. 8:44poetry for fiction you can always read
213. 8:46slower but now that you have a Ferrari
214. 8:48instead of a Yugo you can choose from a
215. 8:51wider range of speeds so there you have
216. 8:54it have fun reading I recommend both how
217. 8:58to get filthy rich and r in Asia and
218. 9:00vagabonding among many many others
219. 9:02there's a world out there to explore so
220. 9:03I'll let you get to
221. 9:05it if you enjoyed this video I want to
222. 9:08propose you check out the podcast the
223. 9:09Tim feris show why has it been number
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226. 9:16does it have 70 million plus downloads
227. 9:18because I interview world-class
228. 9:19performers from Athletics business that
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230. 9:24imaginable entertainment to tease out
231. 9:27the routines the habits the tools that
232. 9:28you can use
233. 9:29so checking out the Tim Farah show