Speed Reading is Dead

Bye-bye speed reading. Hello tempo reading.

In the previous section, we looked at non-linear reading. This is the idea that you don't read a book from left to right.

You also don't read all of a book at the same speed. This—along with many other reasons—is why speed-reading is BS.

Here's a quote from Reading Difficult Ideas illustrating why advanced readers adjust their reading speed to suit different purposes:

Students facing enormous amounts of reading must learn to distinguish between different purposes (for reading) and make the adjustments to their reading speed, based on knowing these purposes. The reading polarity--between "getting the gist" and "close scrutiny." And this may vary within a single text. Good readers read for the gist of things, then at times for main ideas, and at other times for detail and then again at times for inference and application--developing critical thinking skills. Poor readers do not discriminate. They read at the same speed all the time. John Bean writes, "The lesson here is that we need [to know] when to read fast and when to read slowly."