How Fast Do You Read?

I wish I could read faster than I do.  I've often thought how cool it would be to have the abilities of Matt Damon's character in Good Will Hunting.  How cool would that be?

Along these lines, here are two highly intelligent people I've met commenting on their speed reading habits.

Tyler Cowen:

The best way to read quickly is to read lots.  And lots.  And to have started a long time ago.  Then maybe you know what is coming in the current book.  Reading quickly is often, in a margin-relevant way, close to not reading much at all. 

Note that when you add up the time costs of reading lots, quick readers don't consume information as efficiently as you might think.  They've chosen a path with high upfront costs and low marginal costs.  "It took me 44 years to read this book" is not a bad answer to many questions about reading speed.

Hmm... maybe I'm not doing so bad after all?

Jane Galt:

I read fast. Really fast. I read about six paperback pages a minute, give or take. I suspect many bloggers are fast readers--I recall speaking to someone who sat behind Glenn Reynolds at a conference, and reported his lightning fast reading speed with awe and wonder in his voice.

I have never taken a speed reading course, and never tried to learn how to read fast; I've been doing it . . . well, I don't know how long, but at least since I was in junior high school. The only tricks I know for learning how to read fast are:

1) Be born to parents who read fast, and a lot 2) Read a lot yourself when you are a child

As I get older, though, I've figured out how I do it: I skip things. This may seem obvious, but I actually had to catch myself doing it; it is not a conscious process, and if I think about it, I can't do it. Somehow, my brain selects chunks of text that it thinks won't convey new information, and avoids them. Perhaps this is not optimal, but it works well enough for me to have made A's in most of my college lit classes.

And here is an article along smilar lines in Slate:

And after a month of desultory effort, I have some good news: You can read much faster than you already do. Really! But there's a secret. The secret to reading faster is …

Reading faster.

Read the whole thing, but read it fast!

See Cowen's other time management tips here and here.

Ali shares his thoughts on Tyler's post here.