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xamdam comments on Intelligence Amplification Open Thread - Less Wrong
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For something slightly different, I am attempting to increase my reading speed ( I am primarily an English speaker, but English was my second language, which probably explains the initial slowness) using QuickReader app for iPad.
This app lets you predefine the reading speed (timing yourself and word counting is annoying) and uses a pointer to pace you through the material.
I am up to 380 wpm in the app, cannot confirm how transferable the skill is outside of the app quantitatively, but it feels like there is some improvement, though sometimes it feels like I am rushing through faster than I comprehend; OTOH my iPad is always with me and I have electronic versions of a lot of my reading.
One thing to fix down the line is to have "trained modes" for materials of different difficulty and ability to trade off recall for speed.
One problem I have had with speed reading techniques is a difficulty in adapating to the wide variety of reading habits one may employ.
I speed read both research papers and novels, but in very different ways. With research papers I browse and download many, skim abstracts, jump into the middle of papers, usually look first at the pictures, then eventually start reading paragraphs. I usually can 'get' the paper's key concepts without having to read most of the text, although it depends heavily on the type of paper.
When reading a novel, I usually alternate between full reading for important/interesting portions and skip reading for boring or fluffier parts. I typically skip long visual descriptions (I find that whatever visual imagery I randomly summon usually works just about as well). When skip-reading, I typically scan the upper left corner of a paragraph and it's first sentence to decide if I want to skip it. I rarely spend more than a day or two on a novel. If it is really unusually good I will spend more time with it.
I have yet to find more advanced techniques that actually allow me to read dense material at higher speeds. The simpler level-of-detail control is effective enough and doesn't sacrifice comprehension for important material.
Oh, wow. I literally pause reading completely at non-trivial visual descriptions in novels to build the scene in my mind, and rarely go on until I have imagined the whole thing and sat on it a little bit. I find that the "page-to-imagination" process is the most relaxing and pleasant thing to me about reading most novels, so I relish it. (That might be a property of the sort of literature I tend toward, though -- a lot of magical realism.)
Interesting. So I used to do that more often, and may still in some cases, but what I eventually found was that it just wasn't worth it. Not because I don't like the detailed visual imagery.
But because I found that what my mind would conjure up regardless was just as good, and actually the explicit visual wordcraft often doesn't make for better imagery. It depends of course. A good character description is more important to me than say a complex architectural description.
Do You Skim?-- a discussion of reading styles-- there's much more variety than I would have expected.
A little more discussion of the subject.
I read novels in the same manner just a step further, I purge character and place names from from my memory just keeping the relations. If the book is really good, well maybe I will check out some discussion or the sequels and pick up the names then (they usually stick if its very good). If its just good, I won't bother with the names and just discuss the idea or the themes behind it.
I find I keep all the enjoyment of the novel while saving a small bit of memory this way.
Tim Ferris' speed reading tutorial.
"How to read an article about speed reading in 20 minutes" would me a more honest title, considering that some brain re-wiring is required.