digest
Short Summary
Main recommendation: Speed reading can be learned quickly by using your hand as a guide to move your eyes across each line, so you read visually rather than hearing each word in your head. Howard Berg, a self-described world's fastest reader and former Guinness record holder, says this method can raise reading speed by about 20% in minutes and roughly double it with a longer training session.
Key Points
- Howard Berg says most people read about 200 words per minute and "hear" each word internally, which limits speed.
- He compares fast reading to driving: experienced readers process more at once and form a "movie" in their head rather than a voice.
- Berg says he holds a Guinness record for speed reading at 80 pages per minute, supported by ten media documents.
- In a demonstration on the show, he read roughly half of a 600-page fraud-focused textbook in about five minutes (he also said elsewhere he read '300 pages') and summarized its main lessons.
- He claims his training can double reading speed in a four-hour session and will also teach retention techniques, and mentions trainees who used it for the bar exam and a master's program.
Details Worth Noting
- Concrete instructions:
- Take a book at home and time yourself for one minute while reading normally. Mark with a pencil where you stopped.
- Go back to the first page of a chapter.
- Use your left hand to sweep from the left margin to the right margin, one line at a time, and have your eyes follow your hand.
- Move your hand as fast as you can while still understanding what you read. If comprehension drops, slow down slightly to find your comfortable limit.
- Practice this for about 10 minutes so it becomes a habit.
- Return to where you started, time yourself for one minute again, and read using the hand technique at your fastest comprehension speed. Berg says this should produce a 10 to 20% improvement.
- The fraud textbook discussed covers employee payroll fraud, travel expense fraud, identity fraud, and check fraud, and Berg says businesses should avoid giving one person too much unchecked control.
- Berg's claims about trainees passing the California bar at 19 and earning a master's in math at 19 are his own statements and were not independently verified in the segment.
Bottom Line
Berg's central point is that slow reading comes from mentally voicing each word, and that a simple hand-guided visual technique can noticeably speed up reading. His specific claims about records, dramatic speed gains, and training outcomes are presented as his own experience rather than independently verified results.
