Speed Reading: Does It Actually Work?

BY SOFO ARCHON

For most of my life, I’ve loved reading books. And ever since my teens, I’ve been reading almost nonstop.

Why is that?

Because books have taught me countless important lessons that I would never have learned otherwise—lessons that have completely changed the course of my life.

In my early adult years, I began to wonder whether I could find a way to read faster. At the time, I was obsessed with learning and read constantly. In fact, I read so much that I could finish an entire book every other day. But that wasn’t enough for me. I wanted to read even more. Yet there never seemed to be enough hours in the day. Or perhaps I simply wasn’t reading books the right way. If the latter were true, I thought, perhaps I could learn to read more books in less time.

Soon afterward, I did some online research on how to read faster. Before long, I came across several blogs offering advice on mastering the art of speed reading, including tips from the productivity guru Tim Ferriss.

The speed-reading techniques recommended by Ferriss and most other bloggers were roughly as follows:

• Focus your attention on reading as fast as you possibly can.
• Zip your finger or pen across the lines as a tracking and pacing tool.
• Try not to speak in your head the words you’re reading.
• Don’t stop to reread anything you haven’t fully understood.

So I tried those techniques—and guess what? They actually worked!

After only a few days of practicing speed reading, I could read books much faster than before. But I soon realized there was a problem: reading was no longer a joyful experience. On the contrary, it had become soul-draining.

Every time I held a book in my hands, it felt as though I were fighting a battle with every page I read. A voice in my head constantly yelled at me to read faster. Naturally, because I was so focused on finishing books as quickly as possible, I couldn’t enjoy the process of reading.

Just take anything you enjoy and focus on getting quick results from it, and you’ll understand what I mean. For example, if you enjoy exercising but focus only on losing weight or building a six-pack, you’ll likely end up hating it. Or if you enjoy painting but rush to finish your work just to post it on social media, there’s a good chance you’ll soon lose your love for it.

Sadly, from the moment we are born, society teaches us to sacrifice the present for some future goal. In school, for instance, we are encouraged to study not for the sheer joy of learning but simply to get good grades. As a result, by the time we finish school, many of us have been conditioned to see learning as something unpleasant.

As adults, we strive to be highly efficient and productive in nearly everything we do. We become so focused on our goals that we can no longer relax and enjoy the present. Time never seems sufficient, so we rush to accomplish more and more. And while we may achieve many of our goals, the price we pay is often chronic stress and anxiety.

Realizing that speed reading had stolen the joy from my reading experience, I stopped practicing it—except on certain occasions, as I’ll explain later. I thought, “I might be able to read more books in less time, but if that makes reading unpleasant, what’s the point? It’s a silly, even masochistic, thing to do. And if I enjoy a book’s content, why would I want to rush through it? It makes absolutely no sense.”

When you enjoy something, you naturally want to spend more time engaging in it rather than trying to finish it as quickly as possible. For example, if you enjoy sex, would you try to make it last as little time as possible every time? I bet not. And if you did, I’m pretty sure that it would turn from an orgasmic play of love into dull, tedious, repetitive work.

Beyond stealing the joy from my reading, speed reading also weakened my ability to truly learn from books. In my rush to finish books as quickly as possible, I gave myself little time to pause, reflect, or absorb new ideas. The deeper layers of meaning—the subtle insights you catch only when you linger over a sentence or reread a passage—slipped right past me. Instead of engaging with a book and allowing it to challenge my thinking, I treated it like a checklist item. As a result, I remembered far less of what I read and understood most of it only at a surface level.

That said, I don’t think speed reading is entirely useless. It can actually be quite helpful in certain situations. For example, I still use it when reading books I don’t consider worth much of my time, either because they aren’t very good or because they don’t particularly interest me. In such cases, speed reading allows me to skim the material and extract only the information I find valuable, saving me considerable time and energy. However, when I read a book I truly enjoy, I make sure to immerse myself fully in it and savor the experience, no matter how long it takes me to finish it.