How to ACTUALLY absorb books 3 times faster (using science)

on the 21st of July 2007 World speedreading Champion Anne Jones took her place at a desk in a famous London Bookshop the final installment of Harry Potter the Deathly Hallows had just arrived from the publisher and the world was waiting to find out how the story ended an had been asked to read it as quickly as possible by a newspaper so that they could be the first to write a review can you guess how long it took her to read all 784 pages 4 7 minutes that's a reading rate of over 4,200 words a minute or an entire page every 3 and 1/2 seconds can you read a page like this in 3 and 1/2 seconds no neither can I just imagine the possibilities if you could it would be like magic but this wasn't magic speed reading courses and techniques have existed for decades but how can it be possible when a typical reading speed of a college educated adult lies between 200 and 400 words per minute can we really believe that some people read 10 times faster and can anyone learn this could you let's find out in this video we're going to explore the science of reading we'll look at research from the last 50 years to see if there does exist a magic method that will enable you to read and understand at superhuman speeds but I have to warn you controversy lurks within some of the speed reading claims let's get going have you ever searched for speed reading techniques if yes you'll probably know the two most widely recommended strategies to read faster and if you haven't I'm about to tell you can you guess what they are instead of focusing on a few words at once some people suggest using peripheral vision to take in Far More visual information perhaps as much as a paragraph or even a page this clever hack giv gives them the power to peruse thousands of words per minute and it makes a lot of sense so why don't we all do it because it's biologically impossible I might as well tell you that to keep my fine physique I bench press a Tesla Model y three times a day so this paper explains it really well look at this so pretty much anything outside of the fobal viewing area is just too blurry to read and the F viewing area is really small it's about the width of your thumb when you hold it at arms length out from your eye so that the eye has two types of light sensitive neural receptors rods and cones I guess you've probably heard of them but do you know what they do cones are the High Definition True Color sensors that work better in bright light and can see detail and color the rods are like an old TV from the 1950s and can only see in black and white cones are located mainly in the fobil area with rods generally outside Nature has optimized how the system Works cones transmit every detail they detect to the brain information from the rods though is pulled and then transmitted you can think of it as a type of lossy file compression like a grayscale JPEG detail is not preserved anything falling onto this part of the eye will be blurred and if it's a word you won't be able to read it research has shown that words become impossible to make out at just 3° visual angle away from the point of fixation the suggestion that you can process large amounts of text in a single glance according to research is probably not the case instead we need to look at sacks they hold the answer do you know what they are if not don't worry you soon will but before that do you remember I said there were two methods that are widely recommended peripheral vision is the first which isn't particularly useful what about the second you know it's that voice you hear in your head when reading oh Giles you are gorgeous uh no not that voice the voice of the text here's mine Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank some speed reading advice tells us that to read quickly we must silence this voice because it limits our maximum reading speed silencing it will set us free and this seems plausible although in practice it can be quite difficult however if you look at the science and the research these claims are questionable why do you read it's to understand to learn to comprehend I think we can agree on that and the inner voice plays an essential role in that process how do we know several Studies have shown it this excellent paper summarizes dozens of them it highlights Decades of research showing that eliminating or minimizing the innervoice results in decreased comprehension there's also evidence that subvocalization could play a role in helping word recognition leading to increased reading speed this page paper by the same author hints at that very possibility more research is needed to fully understand the role of the inner voice but from what we already know it's important it helps you understand it's your friend you don't know how happy that makes me Giles as you can see some of the advice given about speed reading has very little evidence to support it worse much of the evidence contradicts some of the most popular advice do you ever find that when you're reading you occasionally have to move your eye back over something to understand it properly it's very common most people do it even skilled readers and they're called regressions a lot of speed reading advice suggests you should train yourself out of doing this as it slows you down in fact there are speed reading apps that attempt to completely eradicate regression by using rapid serial visual presentation this is RSVP applied to hamlets to be or not to be [Music] cqu well done you've just read the whole thing in 5 seconds moving wasn't it research has been done into this as well so what do you think could this be a useful way of reading at extremely high speeds well in 2014 a team from the University of California San Diego put it to the test they used a trailing mask like this that reacted to the eye position of the subject once the subject made a forward sard away from a word it was masked remaining so even if they look back at it here the Asis show the position of eye fixations what did they find regressions are crucial to understanding what we read here's what the paper said our data showing the relationship between regressions and reading comprehension are the most compelling evidence suggesting that reading without the ability to reread parts of the text when necessary decreases comprehension accuracy what we see here and it's hardly surprising is that there always exists a trade-off between speed and comprehension there are methods that work and we are coming to those remember I mentioned sards earlier let's focus on those sards are the quick eye movements you make as your focus jumps between words while reading a line of text understanding these will help you read more effectively scientists have spent over a 100 years studying them and recently by using high-speed video cameras connected to computers they've discovered the ey makes several fixations as it jumps along a line of text it's not a smooth process and it's attempting to place words in the fial region each fixation last around 250 milliseconds typically each sack Ard takes 20 milliseconds and during the entire process of IM movement although your brain isn't reading it's constantly processing the already seen words can you guess what the key finding from all this researches reading speed is not limited by the ability of your eye to move along the line of text or to take in information it's cognitive processing that slows you down subvocalization and regression are both both necessary to maintain a high level of comprehension and are frequently used by skilled readers now I've done my research I've seen what not to do can I speedread let's put it to the test I'm going to try to speedread the biography of Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson here goes wish me luck oh that was good it's about Elon Musk so how can you increase your reading speed without sacrificing comprehension by far the most important factor for reading more quickly are your language processing skills you need to practice with language remember when we were talking about sards and fixations earlier research shows that fixations are shorter for more familiar words and some familiar words are skipped over completely as your language processing skills and vocabulary increase the number of words familiar to you will go up and so will your reading speed there is a way of signific ific anly increasing reading speed by two or perhaps even three times but it does come with a cost to comprehension although it can be useful sometimes you probably already do it but research might be able to help you do it more effectively it's skimming when skimming you're usually looking to extract important information from a text it's often suggested that you should zigzag your eyes across the page or columns but research shows that this is a poor strategy it's better to approach it systematically if it's a book first look at the table of contents to understand the structure read headings the first and last paragraph of each chapter and if you're focusing on a particular section the first and last sentence of each [Music] paragraph because the research doesn't provide explanations into how super fast readers like Anne Jones who I mentioned at the start of the video are able to read at such high speeds and this paper which which I've used for a lot of the research in the video it's an excellent paper and there's a link in the description acknowledges that and only speculates as to how it might be possible it says effective speed readers appear to be intelligent people who already know a great deal concerning the topic that they're reading about and are able to successfully skim the material at rapid rates and accept the lower comprehension that a company's skimming but from what I've read about Superfast readers there seems to be more going on than that because I think for an ordinary reader like me if I tried to read at those speeds my comprehension would go to zero so there's something that these super fast readers are doing that we don't completely understand and I think it's likely to do with language processing so work on your language processing and read as much as you can have you ever dreamed of a career in data analytics of course you have that's why you're here then I want to introduce you to the Google data analytics professional certificate not your typical data science course but a full program designed by Google here's the deal it's suitable for beginners self-paced and remote friendly making it easy to fit into your schedule you can be job ready in 6 months with just 10 hours a week no prior experience needed you'll learn data cleaning analysis and visualization using spreadsheets SQL R programming and Tableau after completing the program you'll be ready to start your new career plus the certification will spruce up your CV and Linkedin profile I've seen the possibilities of data analysis firsthand and the career avenues that a program 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Channel: Python Programmer

Views: 115,984

Keywords: speed reading, how to speed read, science of speed reading, speed reading research

Id: 5RfMMBTLDms

Length: 11min 43sec (703 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 29 2023