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- Hey friend, welcome back to the channel.
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Let's talk about reading today,
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and specifically how and why to read faster.
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So we'll talk about why being able to read faster is
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a useful skill to have in your pocket.
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And then I'll share (bubbling) five tips
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that I've found really helpful
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for increasing my own reading speed
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so that I can absorb more stuff from the books that I read.
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So why bother reading fast?
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Like isn't reading supposed to be one of those things
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that you take it slow, you enjoy the process,
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and you gain a lot of insight from the book?
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I think that's sometimes true, but it's not always.
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And I kind of think of it like riding a bike.
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So it's like sometimes when you're riding a bike,
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you wanna really enjoy the journey
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and you wanna smell the roses along the way.
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So you wanna go at like three miles per hour
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so you can breathe it all in.
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But sometimes when you're riding a bike,
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your objective is to get from A to B.
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And let's say you're running late for work,
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for your lectures.
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You actually don't really care
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about smelling the roses on the way there.
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You just wanna get there as quickly as possible.
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And I think of reading in the same way.
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Like if a book is really good,
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then I will read it slowly and take my time,
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and take loads of notes throughout,
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and like smell the roses on the way there.
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But the problem is that most books
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and most non-fiction books these days tend to be
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like big idea books where it's like one central idea.
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And then the rest of the 400 pages of the book is
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just example after example after example
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kind of bashing you over the head
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with examples to explain that one idea,
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which you got from the introduction
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or from the first few chapters.
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And so in those cases,
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if I've got the main idea from the book
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or if it's just not capturing my interest very much,
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often I would just blitz through the rest of the book.
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Yes, you could say that once you've got the main idea,
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then you might as well just abandoned the book.
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And in general, I'm a very big fan of treating books
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less like hallowed objects and more like blog posts,
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which is like, if you get halfway through a book
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or even 20% of the way through a book
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and it's not capturing your attention anymore,
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then it's fine, it's okay to abandon it.
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But even though theoretically I believe that,
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and I will fully subscribe to that mindset,
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in real life I often get a feeling of FOMO
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that I'm missing out on like some gold dust
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that might be sprinkled in the book maybe halfway through
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or maybe three quarters of the way through.
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And so in general,
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even if I've got the main idea from a book,
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I will prefer to just kind of blitz read it very,
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very fast rather than abandon it completely.
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So reading faster helps with that.
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But if you know how to read faster,
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then your own default reading speed just improves
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without sacrificing any comprehension.
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And so for me now, it's actually reduced the time
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and emotional investment needed to read a book.
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Like if someone recommends a book to me,
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I know it's not gonna take me six months to read the book.
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I know it will take me a few hours to read the book
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because I can read pretty fast if I want to.
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And therefore, I'm far more likely to pick up the book
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that someone recommends and read it.
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And I've discovered so many good books
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and so many average books
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through that recommendation process.
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So that's why reading faster can sometimes be helpful.
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I'm not saying you should do it all the time.
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I'm not saying you should speed read
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like a proclivity grease monkey.
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I'm saying it is a useful skill to have
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in your pocket for when you need it.
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All right, so tip number one for reading faster is
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to try and reduce subvocalization.
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And subvocalization is what it is when we're sort of,
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we've got that voice in our heads
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that is reading as we go along.
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This is controversial.
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Like if you look at the evidence behind speed reading
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and ways to improve your reading speed,
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there are some people that say
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that subvocalization is legit.
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There are some people say that it's not legit.
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I am not commenting on the evidence here.
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I'm commenting anecdotally,
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and anecdotally I know that for me,
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when I'm reading faster, I read visually.
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Like I see the words and I don't sound them out in my head.
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Whereas when I'm reading slowly,
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or I'm really enjoying a book,
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or if I'm really savoring it,
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or if it's a very difficult topic,
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then I'll be doing the subvocalizing in my head.
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I'll be reading in my head as I go along.
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That obviously means that I read more slowly,
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but it does increase my comprehension.
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Anecdotally as well,
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when slow readers ask me how I read fast,
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and I tell them the subvocalization thing,
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it blows their minds because they just think
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that that is just how you have to read.
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You have to read by having this voice
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going along in your head.
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In my opinion and in my experience,
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you can reduce that amount to increase
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your speed of reading.
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There is some evidence about this.
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Like there was some studies where they do
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functional MRI scanning of people's brains,
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and they have fast readers and slow readers.
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And the fast readers have less activation
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in the bits of the brain that are responsible for speech.
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And that may be some evidence
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that reducing subvocalization is actually legit.
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But whatever the evidence says,
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I think that if you wanna increase your reading speed,
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just try and reduce that voice in your head
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and kind of see what happens.
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It will start out very uncomfortable
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and you'll kind of be like blitzing
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through the text and not quite understanding it,
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but with enough practice, this will become second nature.
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And then you'll think, "Huh, why do people read
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"with a voice in their heads when it's just so much faster
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"to just look at the words,
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"and to not have the voice in your head?"
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Point number two for reading faster,
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you actually don't have to read the whole page.
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You can kind of read a little bit in
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from the page on either side.
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And I picked up this tip
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from Tim Ferriss's (whooshing)
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"The 4-Hour Workweek."
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He's also got a YouTube video about it.
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(whooshing) And I hadn't figured it out before,
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but when I started applying this, I did notice,
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anecdotally again, my own reading speed started to increase.
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And there are apparently speed readers
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around the world who swear by this method.
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Basically, the idea is that because when we look at a word,
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(whooshing) our peripheral vision
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can like see the words around the word.
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And so really, normally we look
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at the very first word of a line,
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but then we're wasting (popping)
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peripheral vision because there's empty space to the side.
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Whereas if we start a little bit in,
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and we kind of track our eyes,
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not from the start of the text
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(popping) to the end of the text,
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but like a little bit in,
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we can actually still see all the words
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and visually read without wasting that space.
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(whooshing) So again,
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this is something that I find
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that if I'm actively trying to read faster,
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then I will do this.
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Normally, I don't remember.
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Normally, I just kind of read naturally,
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but if I'm actively trying to read faster,
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what I do is kind of shift my eyes
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from the page almost as if there's
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like a ruler on the end of the page.
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And so I'm only looking,
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I'm only allowed to look in between those areas.
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And I found that that improves my reading speed.
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Again, this is somewhat controversial.
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Like there are some studies that show that this effect,
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it does not exist.
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Anecdotally for me, and for Tim Ferriss,
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and for Nelson Dellis, who's another guy who reads fast,
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who interviewed on my channel, it does sort of work.
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So maybe try it, see if it works for you.
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I find personally that it works for me.
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Thirdly, if you wanna read faster,
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(whooshing) what you can do
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is you can take a pointer and you can
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just kind of scan your finger across the page.
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This works a lot better when you're not reading
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on a screen or when you're not reading
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on a Kindle that has a touch screen,
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but if you're reading a real book.
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The way it works is that because when our eyes move,
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they actually don't move in smooth.
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And in fact, so if you look at my eyes right now,
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I am gonna try moving them smoothly from left to right.
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Back again.
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But it's actually impossible.
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So eyes move in terms of saccades.
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And so it's like bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.
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The only way eyes can move smoothly
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is if they're tracking something.
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So if I, if you now look in my eye,
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now it's moving smoothly
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because it's tracking my index finger.
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Whereas if I remove my index finger,
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there is no way I can force my eyes to move smoothly.
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And because our eyes move in that kind of psychotic way,
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usually when we're reading,
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we're not following smoothly one line
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to the next line to the next line.
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We're sort of kind of saccading back and forth.
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And that in theory,
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wastes a lot of time while you're reading.
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So if you wanna improve your reading,
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what you can do is you can take a finger
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and just kind of scan it along the line as fast as you want.
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And you kind of force your eye to follow your finger.
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And that means that you're not wasting any eye time
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(laughing) in doing saccades
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back and forth between bits of the same line.
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I haven't found any studies that talk about this in-depth,
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but there's this dude called Howard Berg,
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who is like world record holder
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(whooshing) for speed reading.
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And he says that just by using a pointer,
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you can increase your reading speed by 10 to 20%.
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So I think that's pretty good.
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Point number four, something I find helpful is
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to kind of gamify the whole reading faster thing.
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So normally when I'm reading and I'm reading a good book,
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like I said, I will read slowly, I'll take my time,
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I'll take notes, all that kind of stuff.
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But if it gets to a point
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where I'm losing interest in a book,
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or if it's a fiction book and there's just loads
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of description that I don't wanna read about
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'cause I'm just so engrossed in the storyline,
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or if I just wanna kind of blitz
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through the rest of the book,
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I will kind of treat it as a bit of a game for myself
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to see how quickly I can read
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without sacrificing too much of my comprehension.
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And especially with nonfiction books.
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What I do is that I think to myself,
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"Okay, this book is getting boring now.
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"Let me turn this into a game.
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"And I'm gonna see how quickly I can read