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/diy/ - Do It Yourself

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424271 No.424271 [Reply] [Original]

So I've been a slow reader all my life (approx 180 wpm), but I would like to improve myself, so that I don't have to waste as much time reading.

I tried some different exercises and I just got through AceReader Pro. While I did improve some, it hasn't been that much.

So I was wondering if any of you had been in the same situation and if you had any methods of how you can improve speed reading on your own?


Ps. I tried asking /lit/ first, but was completely ignored.

>> No.424279

Read for pleasure more often, it's okay If your a slow reader everyone has strengths and weaknesses its all good. Also when reading for pleasure you will fix yourself reading super fast when you reach climaxes. Best time for readin is when your traveling, limit yourself from phones, go camping and shit, turn off your phone and forget everything around you. Go hiking and read at not, brin a few non- dumbass freinds/relatives that will not pester you or ruin immersion, once they get the whole 'forget everything else' concept they'll get with the program. You will find yourself reading when your bored instead of on your phone. Read before you sleep, overall camping and vacationing will help you relax and provides a great tone to just read and leave the phone in a box somewhere in the car turned off. Once you get back you may find yourself even reading at home more to see what happens next. Just make sure you find a genre you like.

Hope this helps in more ways than just your reading, cheers man.

>> No.424289

I'm a pretty fast reader. I think my fastest read was a 350p book over the space of ~14hr. I'm definitely faster than my wife.

The key to my speed is low digestion. With particularly flowery writing, like Edwardian writers or some of the longer fantasy novels, you can pretty much scan the sentence, pull the grammatically necessary parts out via a latent understanding of syntax and structure, and leave the expounding adverbs and adjectives unread.

"As Marwen approached the dank pit, rank with the stench of rotten feces and blood and crawling with unchecked vermin, she unlimbered her softly glowing longsword, lambent and pure in the thick and oppressive dungeon air, and poised the blade for a strike"
turns into
"chick pulls sword/shit is stanks yo"
in my head.

I read a lot, and I'm an amateur writer as well, so it's basically a skillset I've developed through reading.

My wife digests every word, and it takes her a million fucking years to read a book. That's why I switched her to audiobooks from Audible, or just ripping off from online somewhere.

>> No.424295

Read more.

>> No.424302

>>424289
>350p book over the space of ~14hr

Makes me wonder why you read books you find so totally devoid of content.

>> No.424315

isn't this more of a /lit/ thing?

>> No.424316

>>424302
it's shitty sci-fi and fantasy. I take more seriously written books or scholarly text slower. There isn't a lot of wordcraft in most books nowadays. I still like to plots, I just don't need most of the descriptiveness as it's not particularly interest-capturing for me.

>> No.424327

>>424316
why would you waste your time skim-reading shitty books that you don't like?

>> No.424335

i cant find the study that i read but apparently the only reason in takes so long for people to read is because we internally voice each word in our heads.

so you get a stopwatch and a book and time yourself how long it takes to read a certain number of pages. Keep doing this and eventually you stop saying the words in your head so can read at pretty much the speed you can look across a sentence.

>> No.424339

>>424327
>I like the plot
How about aiming that sperg somewhere else? It's off-putting.

>> No.424352

>>424339
Read some drama then, you pleb.

>> No.424375

skimming makes you lazy and you lose your comprehension skills

>> No.424440

>>424335
but we remember and comprehend the information better when we voice the words out in our head.

skim reading and mute reading come have their drawbacks. you'll have to sacrifice comprehension for speed.

OP, only advice I can give to you is to sleep regularly, a good nights sleep will not only help your remember the things you've done the day before, but it will also give better concentration the next day. synchronise daily routine to your inner clock, try to experiment with different wake up and bed times. for example try to get up earlier, 4-5 AM and go to bed 9-10 PM. study in the morning hours or at least before noon. if you are reading in the evening that's the time when you are the least focused.

needless to say if you're doing drugs, stop doing them when you have to study.

>> No.424472

>>424302
I usually read at about ~50-60 pages/hour and I never thought I was really fast.

But that makes me wonder, since I would read 350p in ~6/7 hours

What is the average rate?

>> No.424478

>>424352
Not that guy but what are you even trying to say?
Fucking stop.

>> No.424488

>>424271
So, to sum up, OP:
To read faster, you must pack a stopwatch, get in tune with your autonomous bodily functions and fall asleep. That should take care of it.

You're welcome, signed /diy/ and that this cocksucker.>>424352

>> No.424507

>>424488
>You're welcome, signed /diy/ and that this cocksucker.>>424352
>that this
You need to read some more too.

>> No.424526

>>424375
>skimming makes you lazy and you lose your comprehension skills
Don't you think this depends on how well you do it?

Certainly reading every word gives you the best comprehension (or at least the best shot at it) but if you skim properly you can have full recall of the material — that says to me that the reader can skim/scan and take in as much as someone plodding through word by word.

>> No.424529

>>424472
Man that totally depends on the page! Line up a few random novels you have on your shelves, compare the word count. There can be a startling difference with just a little larger character size and shorter line length (as in many cheap paperback editions) compared to a smaller font and longer line length (as you might find in a hardback edition).

I did a comparison some years back, the book I was reading at the time was a cheap pulp novel and each page had nearly half the word count of the novel my wife was reading.

>> No.424618

If you're reading for pleasure, forget it; don't worry and just enjoy reading.

If you genuinely need to get quicker at reading
http://www.spreeder.com/

>> No.424682

>>424279
That was atrocious. Did you read what you typed at all? It was painful.

>> No.424684

>>424375
>skimming makes you lazy and you lose your comprehension skills
Can't....understand...what you mean... By this

>> No.424703

Three things I have found that speed up my reading.
1. mentally edit for the data/information that is most relevant.
This is used when you are doing something like reading news, researching, or doing informational reading. It depends on you having an already high level of comprehension.
2. read things with smaller rows.
I find that when I read digital books that I can change the size of the page and margins, when the length of the lines are smaller, my over all reading speed increases. I get the same effect when reading smaller books and when reading things like news papers and textbooks with thin columns
3. Will your thought process faster
This is the hardest and most effective means I have found to increase reading speed. It takes much focus and practice to do and it take even more mental endurance to sustain it for even small amounts of time.

In the end it all comes down to practice and familiarity with the material. With exp you will spend less time processing what you are reading. This theoretically could lead to greater speed.