Investing in Reading
Reading is one of the few skills that accelerates the acquisition of almost every other skill. Treat it as something you can deliberately get better at — not just a thing you do.
How much time do you spend reading text on a screen or page every day? How much of your workday and general everyday goings-on require processing words?
And when was the last time you tinkered with how you read? When was the last time you changed your reading strategy?
~4 hours. Almost everything. Middle school. Elementary school.
Standard answers.
Most people read wrong. They read everything at the same pace — regardless of text difficulty and importance of the material. They insist on making 'eye contact' with each word and saying it silently in their own head. They don't ask themselves the bigger questions about what they're reading and why, except right before and just after the act.
Seems incredibly obvious in hindsight, especially since I have always considered myself a slow reader, but being able to read faster is a massive competitive advantage in today's world (assuming constant comprehension/retention). So, I spent the last month or two reading a few books on reading (meta). The results were surprisingly strong. Depending on the material I'm ~30-300% faster and I'm now aware of how to improve further.
Key findings:
- Read with a purpose, not with guilt. Before reading, decide what you are trying to get. Once that purpose is fulfilled, you are allowed to stop. Not every book deserves full analytical attention.
- Speed comes from technique and flexibility, not rushing. To read faster, use your hand as a pacer, reduce subvocalization by seeing words rather than silently saying each one, minimize regressions, and train your eyes to move smoothly across the page instead of fixating word-by-word. Speed up once you understand the paragraph’s main point, especially after the topic sentence, and slow down for dense arguments, signal words, unfamiliar concepts, or important transitions. The key is to stop trying to “get everything” and instead read only as deeply as your purpose requires.
- Match reading depth to book quality and difficulty. Most books should be skimmed, inspected, or selectively read. A small number deserve slow analytical reading. An even smaller number deserve rereading over a lifetime.
- Active reading means extracting structure, not passively absorbing words. For serious books, ask: What is the book about? What exactly is being argued? Is it true? So what? Good reading means finding the author’s architecture: key terms, propositions, arguments, and unresolved problems.
- Retention comes from active recall, organization, and connection. Rereading and highlighting feel productive but are weak. Better learning comes from retrieval practice, spaced repetition, interleaving, elaboration, and connecting new ideas to what you already know. Reading well is not just input; it requires output.
In case you're interested, these are the three books I read. Would highly recommend all, especially the first two (in that order):
- How to Read a Book, Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren
- Breakthrough Rapid Reading, Peter Kump
- Make It Stick, Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III, and Mark A. McDaniel