Stay Attentive

You pay attention (hopefully) when your friend tells you a story, while you are on the phone getting directions, and during confrontations with your roommate(s), but you rarely stay this attentive while reading a book. The reason you stay alert in the previously mentioned circumstances is that you have established a personal connection with the party involved. This is why you find it easier to stay attentive while reading books with great characters, because you build up personal connections with these characters and are genuinely interested in what happens to them.

Sadly, most people fail to establish the same level of personal connection with the author of the book they are reading. The author is using the medium of written text to converse with you, to educate you, to entertain you. When you read, imagine the author becoming a real physical presence. Listen to an author's story like you would listen to a friend's. Speak to your book's author, ask him or her questions and jot down the answers. You can even debate the author, although try to stay civil and open-minded, as we would hate to see you slap, punch, or otherwise harm a book.

Change your assumptions about written text. Books are not inanimate objects, they are frozen interactions with the author. Thaw them and drink up the knowledge held within.

Accelerate to Visual Speed

In order for your reading speed to surpass the speed of speech, you will need to be able to transform the visual representation of text into meaning without hearing the sound of each word in your head. The habit of sounding words out in your head as you read is called subvocalization, and is probably the deepest engrained reading habit instilled in people. The habit started at the very beginning of our reading careers, when our first reading teachers had us pronounce written words so we could associate the audio representation with the visual and thus add the words to our speaking vocabulary. These teachers were (and probably still are) oblivious to the fact that they were instilling a very low reading speed limit in each of us by emphasizing the importance of learning the audio equivalents of written words and thus encouraging subvocalization.

When you subvocalize, your reading speed is limited to the rate at which you can hear the sound each word makes. After subvocalizing for years and years, your comprehension becomes dependent on hearing the audible versions of words. The reason long-time subvocalizer's usually backtrack is because they failed to sound out the previous passage in their heads and consequently failed to grasp the meaning of the passage.

Here are a couple strategies to overcome subvocalization:

• Overload your audio facilities -- Try humming a tune or counting, "1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3..." while reading. This will overload your audio facilities, preventing you from sounding out words in your head.
• Let go and speed up -- Temporarily let go of the need to comprehend every passage 100%, and instead focus on increasing the rate at which your eyes move across the page. Practice your pacer techniques at 150% of your normal speed. At first you will be catching only bits and pieces, but after a couple minutes your mind will begin to adapt to this faster pace, picking up more and more of the meaning residing in the text. Speed is the key to breaking the subvocalization habit. You can visually take in thousands of wpm, but only speak rates in the low hundreds (auctioneers speak around 250 wpm according to wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Words_per_minute).

Fly Higher

In the beginning, you read letter by letter, aggregating them to form words who's meaning you memorized. Then you began building your vocabulary, adding a word to it each time you could recognize a word, not by dissecting it into a sequence of letters, but by clumping the letters together into a meaningful structure. You probably stopped your reading development at this stage, thinking that was all you needed to learn to read well. You learned how to crawl and have settled for crawling through all of your books, when you could be experiencing the exhilaration of soaring.

Your focus was on individual letters, but moved higher until it was on individual words. It is time to start flying at higher and higher altitudes. Begin by reading in groups of two or three words. Visually focus on the middle of the word group, stretching your peripheral vision to grab the entire group. Train yourself to pick up more and more words per eye fixation and you will soon be reading in ideas.

Move Forward

If you want to read faster, you must give up the luxury of allowing yourself to frequently regress while reading. Regressing, in the context of reading, is the act of allowing your eyes to backtrack to what you just read. Regression is a crutch you have become dependent upon as a result of thinking it is inconsequential if your mind wanders while reading and causes you to glide over information-rich passages without even attempting to gather what is being said.

Think of reading a book as watching a movie in a theater; you better be paying attention because if you miss what a character says, you will be unable to rewind the movie. Your mind will stop wandering when you stop regressing, because you will focus very intently when you hold yourself to only one exposure of a particular passage (except for previewing and reviewing).

Kicking the Regression Habit with a Pacer:

The most effective way to kick the regression habit is to use a pen, notecard, cursor, or your finger as a pacer while reading. Using a pacer feels natural (try underlining the rest of this post with your finger) and will force you to become conscious of your regressions, providing you with the key to overcoming the regression habit.

There are numerous pacer techniques, which can viewed in an upcoming post titled "Pacer Techniques -- From Basic to Advanced," but you should begin with the basic underlining technique, which consists of simply underlining each line of text with your pacer's edge just above the reading surface at a smooth, consistent pace that is fast enough to provide an appropriate challenge.

Preview

When you preview your book, you gain a basic understanding of the book and how it is structured. The familiarity you gain from the preview process will significantly increase your reading speed. Previewing will also increase your reading endurance (the duration you are able to read without having to consciously force yourself to focus), because you will be building curiosity about the book's content.

Previewing Non-Fiction:

If you are just starting the book, read the cover, preface, and table of contents. For a particular chapter, skim the entire chapter, focusing on headings and topic sentences (usually the first sentence in a paragraph). While previewing, you want to become genuinely enthralled by the information residing in your book, but be careful to resist the urge to stop and read entire pages, because we want to bottle up that curiosity and use it to keep you focused. Finish your preview by reading the chapter summary. You should be cruising during the preview. It should never take longer than 5 minutes to preview a chapter.

Previewing Fiction:

When you preview fiction, read the cover and table of contents. Then, skim the entire book very quickly. Your goal is to rapidly identify the main characters and gain a basic understanding of the plot. You may skip previewing for fiction if you wish to completely avoid the possibility of spoiling any part of the story. However, doing so will result in a slower reading speed.

Set a Timer

When you set a timer for a reading session, you are ordering your brain to stay focused on reading your book for the set duration.

Setting a timer will:

1. Increase your reading speed -- There's a magic to an imminent deadline. Setting a timer will create a time pressure that will force you to focus on reading. This heightened focus will complement your tendency to work harder and faster while being timed and result in you cruising through your reading.
2. Provide a means for tracking progress -- By timing yourself, you will be able to calculate your reading speed. We recommend calculating and writing down your reading speed (words per minute, or WPM) at least once a week.
3. Help you schedule breaks -- Taking breaks to rehydrate and get your blood flowing will increase your reading endurance and effectiveness. We suggest reading in blocks of 30 minutes with 5 minute breaks.

Define Your Purpose

Why are you reading?

You want to get something out of what you read, but what is it? Take a proactive approach and clearly define your purpose for reading before you begin. Clarity is the key to having a strong purpose. Your chosen purpose will be prodded for weaknesses as you read, and if your purpose is porous with vagueness, wandering thoughts will break through your focus and cause you to falter in your reading.

You will enjoy the following benefits by having a strong, clear purpose for reading:

1. You will stay focused for longer durations and consequently complete your reading much faster.
2. Your comprehension will increase because you know what you information you desire and you will be actively searching for it.
3. You will be more enthralled with your reading because you will be conscious of how reading will further your larger goals.