When I was a young girl, I had a dream that I would read all the books in the entire world. As a 33 year old woman, I am nowhere near achieving that task. However, my love of reading has not waned one bit. I no longer read as much as I used to, and I mostly read non-fiction these days, but I still love to read and wish I could read more.
Several years ago, I became interested in learning how to speed read. Every attempt I made was met with failure as those who claimed they had the secret to rapid reading techniques appeared to be nothing more than scam artists interested in selling you their high priced courses and books. Then, along came Tail Lopez.
Tai Lopez swept the internet by storm claiming that he reads a book a day via speed reading methods and could teach people how to becoming wealthy beyond their wildest dreams. I won't lie, I bought his 67 Steps course and completed it. I'm still broke. hahahahaha
He had one video that showed exactly how claims to read a book a day (which I will discuss shortly).
Tim Ferris is another internet sensation. Some people are often skeptical of people who become famous from marketing done on the internet, because somehow it does not seem as legitimate. However, Tim Ferris's celebrity came from experimenting on himself. He is a self-proclaimed human guinea pig, and has taught himself languages, starved himself, stabbed himself, drugged himself and almost everything in between.
He too has a book about how he learned to speed read.
This post will examine their two videos and give you the opportunity to see which of them lives up to their hype.
First, Tim Ferris' method:
Tim Ferris outlines some step by step instructions based on research he sites as being relevant to reading speed. Here are the steps.
- Choose a book with no bullet lists, charts, graphs, etc. but just standard text
- Figure out approximately how many words per page are in the book through averaging from one page
- Read for one minute, and figure out how many words per minute you read
- Your goal is to double or triple that number
Ferris says that when most of us read we read word by word. In his technique he teaches you to use your peripheral vision by drawing indents on your book as a guide. He recommends drawing lines down the page. The boundary being one word inward from the margin. His reasoning is that now, when you are reading, your eyes should be "zig-zagging", but your parameters will be the boundaries that you have drawn (at the one-word break-point).
He then says that if you do this for 5-10 pages with no trouble, bring the margin in by another word, and continue this process. Either using lines drawn once again or estimating. His assumption is that you will catch the remaining words in your peripheral vision.
The logic behind this method is that you are wasting time and energy when your eyes are scanning parts of the page where there are no words (in the margins and crease).
Another biological weakness he seeks to remedy in his method is the issue of eye tracking. He states that when the eye is scanning, it does not scan smoothly. It does a series of saccadic movements, jumping from one focal point to the next.
Example of saccades in face recognition. Image Source
He says that due to this feature of our eyes (which is that our eyes are constantly doing this sort of "scanning" motion), we lose a lot of time doing tasks like reading that only require our eyes to look from left to right across the page. For this reason, a "pacer" (as he calls it) would help us to keep our eyes focused on where it should be focused for best results. He believes the finger is good enough. One can use your finger and keep track of where you are on the page, gliding your finger across the page as you read to keep your eyes focused on the appropriate portion of the page.
He recommends that you take some time to practice these techniques for a period (maybe about 10 minutes on each. So, as follows:
- 10 minutes (or 5-10 pages) reading with the conservative margins (when the margins are brought in by one word)
- 10 minutes (or 5-10 pages) reading with margins reduced by another word-length
- 10 minutes reading using a pacer
Now, what he wants you to do is use these techniques and read for about 5 minutes at a pace slightly FASTER than what you are normally comfortable with to a point where you are losing about 10% comprehension.
The final step, is to go back and do all of these steps again, reading at a pace you are comfortable with and time yourself.
He says that the majority of people who follow through with these steps will come through reading at a pace 50% faster than what they started with, and some people he says may double, triple and even quadruple their reading speed.
Now, let's see what Tai Lopez's technique is:
One of Tai Lopez's claims to fame was in telling people that he reads a book a day and that's why he's so smart and can give such great advice to everybody. So, here is his technique that he is teaching people.
He says he can teach people to read a book in 10 MINUTES!
He says that the biggest lie people have bought into about reading a book in a short amount of time is that they have to read a book from start to finish one time.
So, basically, his speed reading technique has nothing to do with reading a book. 😳
Here are his rules.
- Read book summaries.
- Skim a book at least 3 times.
- First skim (2 minutes) - cover, inside jacket, back, table of contents
- Belief system (most books only have one or two good ideas in them)
- Sometimes read the very first chapter (sometimes they put the best stuff in the first chapter - first one or two pages)
- Second skim (5 or 10 minutes) - Read first paragraph/page of each chapter and skim the rest (might mark pages)
- Speed Read Rule - Don't panic, don't give up. You are training your mind to learn how to focus
- Look for pages where you may have marked. This is the part where you will actually read certain portions in detail.
- You can come back for more information about specific things you need from the book in the future.
So, what do you think about these guy's different techniques? Do you have a preference? Was one better than the other? Were they both beneficial? Were they both bad? Leave a comment with your thoughts! I look forward to hearing them.
More about me:
Nwudo is about encouraging Africans to read, write and do business in their own languages.
Mission Summary: I believe the world is big enough for everybody to enjoy it's abundance and we all have to learn to work together not taking away from each other, but complimenting each other, because when everybody feels empowered, everybody wins. I think some of the biggest problems we face in the world today comes from an imbalance of power. It is impossible for two people to see things eye-to-eye when they are not on level playing field. So, I think when everybody feels like they are living to their full potential, everybody is encouraged to help each other fairly. That is why I love the blockchain system that we are moving into. That is why I love the information age. That is what I hope to encourage Africans to take advantage of.
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There are still others on YouTube who say their methods of reading a million books a month is listening to audio books at 2x speed and other methods.