How to Speed Read | Tim Ferriss

Take a book with fairly standardized formatting, meaning mostly text with few bullet lists or graphs.

1. Figure out roughly how many words are on a page.
2. Establish your baseline. Read for one minute at your normal speed. Then figure out how many words roughly you have read. That’s your words per minute rate (wpm). 
3. Train yourself to focus on the middle third of the page while just dotting down the page.
4. Track with your finger. Trace underneath the line as you read to ensure your eye doesn’t bounce to previously read material.
5. For five minutes, read slightly faster than your comprehension allows.

We were taught to read word by word, so we start at the furthermost left word of a book and read to the furthermost right word. However, the problem with that is that the margins don’t have any words.

• Remedy this by drawing lines going down on either side of the page. But draw it one word in on both sides.
• Instead of looking at the first word all the way to the left, start at the line you drew on the left and then end at the line at the right. You should not have trouble reading and still have full comprehension.
• Do this for 5 - 10 pages, then indent by another word on either side.