we've been looking at speed reading in depth.

In this video we looked at the science of how our

eyes move over text and how our brains process that text.

And in this video we looked at some common

speed reading techniques and showed how

they're really not as effective as a lot of people want to believe they are.

So, the question still remains, though.

Are there ways you can legitimately

increase your reading speeds?

Well, I believe that there are

and in this video I want to give you

five different methods

that you can use to actually read faster.

The first method is deceptively simple

and, well, maybe a little bit inconvenient.

It's to simply read often, read widely,

and read challenging material.

I emailed a post-doctorate researcher

at the University of San Diego named Elizabeth Schotter

who's done a lot of research on speed reading for this episode.

And I asked her, what are the skills that

help people learn to read faster?

And she told me, for skilled readers who are still reading

at that 200 to 400 words per minute range,

they're people who have a lot of experience reading,

who have a lot of command over their language and vocabulary

a lot of prior background knowledge they can

use to apply to whatever it is they're reading quickly.

This indicates what you probably already know.

Reading is a skill, and like any other skill

that's worth the time to take to build,

reading does take time and practice to get good at.

Now this next method will help you

if you have the same problem with reading

that I have. When I'm trying to read non-fiction,

I really want to know what's in the book,

but I'll often find myself getting bored or,

more commonly, I'll read one sentence that will

send me down a mental rabbit hole of sorts,

and then I'll find myself daydreaming.

So to reduce the instances of boredom and daydreaming

when you're reading, I have two different ideas for you.

And the first one is to form what I call an

"Interest Link" with something you're already interested in.

And that's a term I completely just made up right now,

but the general idea is to try to connect the thing

you're reading, with something that you already have

a lot of interest in.

Another idea is to do a little bit of experimenting

to find your optimal spot for reading.

For example, this arm chair is not a good spot for me to read.

Whenever I read here I find myself daydreaming all the time,

and that's why I tend to do a lot

of my reading outside instead.

Okay, so, third method.

And this applies mainly to textbook reading

or readings where you already know the

specific type of information you want to pull out of it

or at least have a general idea.

And it is to "Pre-Read" before you start actually reading.

And by pre-reading I mean

going through the chapter headings,

the table of contents,

looking at bold and formatted text throughout the chapter,

and going to the end of chapter and

looking at the vocabulary terms

and the review questions.

By doing these things beforehand,

you're essentially priming your brain

to notice the most important information

when you're reading, and that will

let you do the next method, which,

and this is gonna go completely against everything you

probably think I've been building towards in this series.

"Skimming"

Even thought we've established that skimming is

a form of reading where your comprehension is lower,

it's still an essential skill because, let's face it,

the text that you're presented with in the book

is way more than the text that you actually need

to put into your brain.

Skimming is a great way to get yourself

through the monstrous amount of reading

you have to do to get the gist, or overall idea,

when the actual small little details aren't

quite as important to get.

Now my favorite method of skimming is one that

Cal Newport came up with called "Psuedo Skimming."

And this is basically a method when you go through

your textbook reading and you skim through

the paragraphs looking for the specific paragraphs

that are more important than the other ones.

The ones that hold main ideas, concepts,

and the things you need to remember.

Once you've identified one of these main paragraphs,

then you can slow down and read for

comprehension so you can remember what's in it.

But for the rest of them, skimming will suffice.

When you're pseudo skimming, a good way

to pick out those important paragraphs is to

pay attention to the first and last sentences

of each paragraph, because those ones will

give you an idea of what the rest of the

paragraph contains.

And, to close this video out, the fifth and final

tip for improving your reading speed... hang on.

Should we really be talking about reading speed

as the metric here, or should we look

a little bit broader and be thinkig about learning speed

as the important thing?

I think that people who wanna learn to speed read

are often motivated by this desire to

become the kind of person who can say,

"I read three books this week."

And I think that's the wrong motivation.

Reading shouldn't just be an achievement.

Like, Good Reads is not an achievements list

and your bookshelf is not a trophy case.

By the same token, though, the acquisition of knowledge

is also something that can lead you down the wrong path

because in terms of speed reading, I think it

encourages us to think of our brains like those

ticket machines that take your tickets at an

arcade and tell you how many bouncy balls

you can get at the price counter.

Our brains don't work that way, but trying to

speed read can convince us that they do,

and then we're just trying to feed the tickets in

faster and faster. That's not how learning works.

What about really taking the time to

ponder and chew on what you've learned,

compare it with your world view?

I think speed readers are constantly concerned

with this idea of comprehension, that even if

their systems work, comprehension isn't really

the only goal here.

The writer Scott Berkun put it better than I ever could.

"Reading comprehension does not equal wisdom Comprehension is for a test, wisdom is for your life."

So, here is the final method.

When you read, also take the time to

do something with what you just learned.

Take notes, write a summary, compare what

you learned with your current view of the world,

and use that information to do different things

and make better decisions.

All of this is gonna help you more effectively

encode the information, have to reread less,

and essentially will increase your overall

learning speed, which should be the goal.

Hopefully, some of the methods in this video

can help you read faster, but ultimately,

it's a matter of your priorities.

If you wanna read more, stop watching this video

and start reading.

And then make a habit of it.

If you're still interested in this subject

and want somewhere to start,

then you can check out the companion

blog post for this video, which has

some links to some other excellent articles on reading,

and also you can check out my essential list

of books for students if you want

some book recommendations.

Beyond that, if you enjoyed this video,

you can hit the "like" button to support this channel

and let me know your thoughts down in the

comments, and, as always, thanks for watching.

(upbeat music)

Hey guys, thanks so much for watching this final

video in my speed reading series.

Now if you want to get new videos every single week

on being a more effective student, then click

that big red "subscribe" button right there.

You can also get a free copy of my book

on earning better grades, so if you want one

just click the picture of the book right there.

And, as I said before, you can find all the notes

and links to other articles and the companion

blog post by clicking the orange button right there.

In last week's video we looked at some common

speed reading techniques, so check it out

if you haven't seen it.

And if you'd like to connect or ask questions,

I'm on Twitter @To

or you can leave a comment down below.