Knock, knock, bookworms, end-of-year incoming! How are your reading goals? 👀📖
If you find you’re a few books off your ideal pace, well, we’re here to help you catch up. Check out below some useful tips & tricks on how to increase your reading speed so that you can slay all those reading goals you set for this year. 🤩
With the holidays just around the corner, there’s no better time to check your reading progress. This time of year feels like the perfect blend of cozy downtime and fresh motivation. It’s a chance to unwind with a warm drink, reflect on what you’ve accomplished, and maybe tick off those books that have been sitting on your TBR this year, patiently waiting for their turn. 😩😩
Speed Reading or Increasing Your Reading Speed?
First things first, you need to identify the purpose of your reading. Do you want to focus on a higher number of finished books, or do you want to actually remember what you read? 😅
- Speed reading helps you rapidly skim & scan through text and even read words in batches instead of one at a time. This will help you absorb information quickly, and it prioritizes speed over comprehension. It also often sacrifices deep understanding or details in exchange for speed, and it’s very useful when you want to quickly review large amounts of material. Best believe it will help you finish a certain amount of books on your TBR—and we ALL want that! As more of a non-fiction bookworm, you’ll find this technique a lot more effective and practical. 🤩
- When you want to increase reading speed and comprehension, then you need that perfect balance between faster reading with the retention and understanding of the content. The good news is that it’s ideal for all kinds of reading: academic, deep learning, or casual reading with better efficiency.
If the number of books you’ve read is not the answer you’ve been looking for, then keep on reading and discover 7 proven ways to actually improve reading speed without losing comprehension. 😉
Why Should You Improve Your Reading Speed Without Losing Comprehension?
Reading speed can be a valuable skill, but speed alone isn’t enough. If you’re flying through pages without truly understanding what you read, you’re only skimming over the words.
Comprehension is the key to making your reading meaningful—it helps you connect with the reading material, retain the information, and apply it effectively – or simply just enjoy it more.
This balance between reading speed and reading comprehension becomes especially important when reading for learning, critical thinking, or professional development. 📚
Improving your reading speed while maintaining comprehension means you’re not just processing words faster. Actually, you’re efficiently unlocking the insights, knowledge, or enjoyment the author intended to share. It’s the sweet spot that transforms reading into a tool for lifelong learning, intellectual growth, and sharper thinking. 💡
Like any skill, mastering this balance takes practice. So, take your time, enjoy the process, and remember: it’s not just about how fast you read; it’s about how much you truly understand. 🤭
8 Best Ways on How to Increase Reading Speed and Retain More Info
“The first and most powerful lesson of speed reading is that it is a skill to be learned – not an ability you’re born with.”
Justin Hammond
1. Eliminate Distractions
A good reading session starts with the right reading environment, so make sure you reduce any external distractions and find a quiet, comfortable space with good lighting and a comfortable reading nook. You might also want to put your phone on silent and turn off all those buzzing notifications so that you can fully focus on your reading.
But it’s all fun and games until you remember you have a meeting tomorrow, and now you can’t focus on your reading anymore. 😅 You might wanna train those internal distractions, too, while you read if you want to increase your reading speed.
Set reading time and be intentional about it. If an idea or thought pops up in your mind while you read, write it down and tell yourself that you can deal with it later after you finish your reading. It’s understandable if you forgot to send an important email, but with most things, all you need to do is take a deep breath and remind yourself that it can wait. 🤭
2. Reduce Subvocalization
Subvocalization (silently pronouncing words in your head as you read) or the so-called ‘inner monologue’—however you wanna call it, will slow down your reading. Most people tend to read at the same pace as they talk, so to increase your reading speed, you must limit your internal voicing.
So, what can you do? Try to discipline your eyes—yes, they need that too. Try to train your eyes to move smoothly from left to right (or the other way around, depending on the language you’re reading) at a static pace. Sweep your finger underneath the lines of text at a steady speed and make your eyes follow your finger with it. This way, your eyes won’t have time to linger too much on a certain word or phrase.
Another way to reduce that inner monologue is by putting on some background music. You can also try softly humming along with the tunes and maybe chew gum or snack while reading to keep your tongue and lips busy while you fly through those pages. 🤭
3. Try Visual Processing While Reading
Isn’t it weird that you can actually read what’s written above, even though the letters are clearly not in the right place? 😅 This classic internet trivia demonstrates that if the first and last letters of a word are in the correct places, you can still read a piece of text.
💡According to researchers, the human brain processes images 60.000 times faster than text, and 90% of the information sent to our brains is visual. As it takes only 13 milliseconds for the human brain to process an image, as readers, we must learn how to recognize words as images or ideas to process them faster.
While we read, we do a lot of visual processing. Take, for example, when you read the word “carrot,” you don’t have a mental image of the word itself in your mind; instead, you think of an actual carrot.
So, the next time you read, try to associate what you read with an image of that word or start imagining the stories you read about. You’ll see that the more you read, the more you can file multiple images with the words in your memory, and in time, improve your reading speed. 🧠
4. Try PhotoReading
Did you know that our conscious mind can process 40 bits per second, whereas our unconscious mind operates at a staggering 40 million bits per second? Maybe that’s why you sometimes find it difficult to read at a very fast pace. 😅 But you can learn how to take advantage of your unconscious abilities and unlock their hidden potential in order to expand the processing capabilities of your brain. 🧠
PhotoReading is a technique developed by Paul Scheele that claims to increase reading speed of 200 words per minute to a reading speed of 25,000 words per minute.
It seems impossible, right? But with practice and a lot of discipline, you can improve your reading speed and comprehension with PhotoReading. Here are a few tips to get you started:
- Be intentional and prepare your mind to be focused;
- Before jumping into reading, preview the whole content and identify key information;
- Look for those keywords and key concepts that you already know;
- Relax your eyes, and help your peripheral vision expand so that you can grasp more reading at once.
In time, you’ll be able to read quicker and train how much you learn while reading in the limited time you have available. 📖
5. Use A Pointer to Avoid Backtracking
Your eyes naturally move in tiny jumps, so-called saccades, shifting from one word to the next. To increase reading speed, you need to practice reducing these to focus on key parts of the text.
You can try out Meta Guiding, a type of speed reading to control your reading—by using a pointer, such as a finger or a pen, to guide your eyes across a text horizontally, focusing on one line at a time. This helps you stay focused and maintain a consistent reading pace. 😌
6. Take Notes While Reading
Taking notes while you read might just be the most useful and helpful thing you can do. It’s one of the most effective ways to retain information without going back and forth, looking for where you read that cool stuff; was it a hundred or fifty pages ago? 🫠
There are multiple ways to help you become a better reader and increase your reading speed by using the Bookly App, especially the note-taking feature. 🤩
It can be a great tool for both physical and digital books, and you can use it to jot down key ideas, questions, or summaries in your own words to solidify your understanding of what you read.
For all you bookworms out there finishing books late at night and who don’t have the energy to write down your favorite scene (or all of them!), you can also take pictures of your favorite quotes or passages in the app. Very short sentences or even a single word can help you jog your memory about a concept, idea, or parts of it. When you finish a section or chapter, write a short explanation in your own words in the app for each quick note. Easy peasy so that you can move on to the next book in a jiffy. 🤓
Try out different note-taking methods and adapt them to your needs so that you can increase reading speed and retention.
7. Keep Track of Your Reading Speed
There are two metrics when you’re looking for tangible proof of your progress with books: lines per minute and words per minute (WPM).
Bookly can help you incorporate the practice into your routine. 🤩 It’s never been easier to track your reading stats and watch your progress soar! You’ll get insights on everything—from how many hours you spend reading each day, week, or month to your average pages per minute and reading speed.
You can review your stats daily, weekly, or monthly and have real-time feedback on your reading journey. You can even find out what your maximum number of pages or minutes read in one day was. How cool is that? ⭐
8. Read more and Often
Increasing your reading speed requires real commitment and regular practice. You need to invest time in training both your mind and eyes to function more effectively. So make sure you set daily reading time on (preferably) varied topics. 🧠
Useful ways to incorporate more reading into your day:
- Read for a set amount of time every day as part of your morning or night routine—set the tune of the day or end it at a more relaxed pace;
- Always have a book with you wherever you go—your backpack, your nightstand, keep a book close whenever you might get some time to read;
- Have a break, have a book! Try incorporating short read breaks as part of your day, set your reading goal, and get to read more;
- Try audiobooks! A very handy option, mostly if you commute or travel a lot;
- Join reading challenges to motivate you to read more: book clubs, reading communities, readathons, anything that will get you to reach your reading goals faster and share about what you read.
Challenge yourself and gradually increase the length and difficulty of your material in time—maybe give that 800-page book a chance. 😅
With a few simple tweaks to your reading habits, you can easily increase your reading speed while still enjoying all the details!
And also…
Track All Your Reading Progress and Increase Your Reading Speed With Bookly
Whether you track your reading progress in a spreadsheet, journal, notebook, or app, just remember to do it!
Bookly will help keep you accountable, track your books, improve your reading habits, and help you increase reading speed while understanding what you read.
Start developing a reading habit with Bookly, and watch that TBR pile shrink with each day! 😎 And while you’re at it, don’t forget that Bloo, your reading assistant, will always be by your side and help you improve! 💖
Download Bookly for iOS 👉 https://bookly.app.link/nAH81rtpg9
Download Bookly for Android 👉 https://bookly.app.link/4TMM20xpg9
