How To Increase Your Reading Speed in 60 Seconds

Tip 1: Use Your Peripherals

In school most people are taught to read word-by-word but doing this fails to take advantage of your peripheral vision. For instance, if you focus HERE, you can still see the rest of your computer screen or phone. The same goes for words in a book. The goal is to keep your fixation point in the middle third of the page like in the visualization below and let your peripherals read words outside those imaginary lines. You can move through each line faster and after a little practice, this won’t affect your comprehension at all.

Tip 2: Don’t Vocalize Words

Don’t vocalize words in your head when you read. You might even be doing this right now while reading this article. STOP IT. The reason for this is simply that it caps your reading speed at your speaking speed. We only speak at about 150 WPM but we can read almost double that. It might feel weird when you first start doing this but once you get used to not internally vocalizing words, you’ll be reading nearly twice as fast in no time.

Tip 3: Use A Pointer

You should always use your finger or a pointer to follow along when you read. This reduces saccadic eye movements that cause you to accidentally jump a line or lose your place. Try reading this paragraph using your hand, finger, or pen as a guide. You might be surprised to find that your reading speed has already increased just by using your hand as a guide. Using your hand to read is the easiest way to immediately boost your reading speed. Mix this with the first tip by only moving your finger/hand within the fixation lines mentioned in Tip 1!