digest
Short Summary
Main recommendation: To read faster, reduce subvocalization, the habit of silently pronouncing every word to yourself, which caps reading speed at talking speed (roughly 150 to 250 words per minute). Jim Kwik's three hacks are stretching yourself by reading faster than normal, listening to instrumental Baroque music at about 60 beats per minute, and using a pattern interrupt such as humming, counting, or chewing gum to occupy the mouth while reading.
Key Points
- Subvocalization is the inner voice that reads each word aloud in your mind; if you must say every word, your reading speed is limited by your speaking speed rather than your thinking speed.
- Fast readers recognize words and phrases such as dates, city names, or abbreviations like "NYC" without pronouncing them, much as drivers recognize a stop sign without saying "stop."
- Kwik says leaders are readers and cites Tony Robbins, Brendon Burchard, Bill Gates, and Oprah Winfrey as fast or strong readers, and claims John F. Kennedy read at roughly 600 to 800 words per minute (some say 1,000) while speaking at about 300.
- Stretching yourself to read faster pushes the mind to skip filler words such as "and" and "there," since readers are reading for ideas rather than words.
Details Worth Noting
- Concrete instructions:
- Stretch yourself: deliberately read faster than your normal pace, using reading drills.
- Listen to music without lyrics, such as classical music; Kwik prefers Baroque music at about 60 beats per minute to help drown out the inner voice.
- Use a pattern interrupt to occupy your mouth or mind while reading. Options he mentions: humming, counting numbers internally (one, two, three, four, five), chewing gum, or biting your knuckles, which he says is not very sanitary but works for some people.
- For advanced practice, count your eye fixations as you read: label each line segment one, two, three and group about three words per fixation, moving left to right (or right to left for right-to-left languages), then to the next line.
- Expect the tricks to feel distracting at first; the brain adapts and comprehension tends to improve as attention shifts to the page.
- Kwik notes that improving comprehension makes you naturally read faster and retain more, so understanding is the target, not speed alone.
- Kwik's earlier episode, "How to Read Faster" (episode seven), is referenced as a prior resource, and listeners reported gains of 25 to 50 percent, with some doubling their speed.
- He jokes that whether chewing gum is good for your brain depends on the quality of the gum you use.
Bottom Line
Reading faster is largely about breaking the habit of pronouncing words internally, so the mind can process ideas at its natural speed while your mouth and inner voice stay occupied.
