Speed Reading is Ineffective

[user2932]

Found this Article Online:
https://medium.com/the-mission/speed-reading-is-bullshit-f5acbee7f59e

Reading is important. That goes without saying. However, we’re also busy. And when we’re busy we take short cuts.
While we want to read better — that is to read for deep understanding, we settle on reading ‘quicker’ and confuse the two.
This entirely misses the point of reading.

I regularly read over 100 books a year and talk about what I’m learning on my blog.
One of the most frequent questions I get is on how to read faster. This request almost always includes a link to a book, “scientific article,” or random blog post telling you how to read 10x faster while having a photographic memory.
It’s all bullshit. There is a way to read faster. But it’s not what you think.

The best way to read faster is to read more.
Better and quicker are not the same. A good book, like good sex or a date, is something you don’t want to end.
You’re not rushing to the finish (ok, maybe sometimes you are but let’s skip the quickies, shall we).
Instead you’re totally immersed in the activity — you want it to last forever. It’s supposed to take some time.

Don’t fool yourself. While reading is the key to getting smarter, speed reading is just a fancy way of fooling yourself into thinking you’re learning something.
And as the famous physicist Richard Feynman said, “you are the easiest person to fool”. In reality Speed reading is just turning pages quickly.
Reading fast is not thinking. If you’re reading fast you’re not thinking and challenging what you’re reading. You’re not being critical.
You’re not making connections with existing knowledge. You’re not arguing with the author. You’re not reading something at the edge of your cognitive ability.
 
All of that is work. And if you’re not doing the work, you’re only walking away with surface knowledge. Reading is mentally demanding.
Reading fast is worse than not reading. Reading fast gives you two things that should never mix: surface knowledge and overconfidence.
And that’s a recipe for really bad decisions. Bad decisions reduce the free time we have. After all, we have to run around fixing all of these mistakes.

(When you think about it, a lot of people spend their days correcting poor initial decisions. This gives you even less time to read. Whoops.)

My Notes:

Speed Reading, is very ineffective when it comes to retaining and comprehending the information given.
Speed Reading is especially bad when it comes to studying CM. As any CM subject is 博大精深 (Broad and Profound)

There is no way someone can retain all the knowledge written in a CM book just by speed reading through it.

Then writing a damning review about it is extremely disrespectful and deceptive.
Can you really trust a review written by someone who just speed read through it?

[fengshuiartist]

speed reading has it's place to gather information.  Often use as tool for research info gathering. Every method has it's place. No professional book reviewer in the entire world would consider speed reading  a valid method to do a book review. Real review would have the book in their hands to refer to and not depend on memory of their speed reading that they did earlier. Not many have a great recall in detail of what they read like 1 hr ago.  Unless you are some memory champion.

Most serious learners skim through a book and speed read to familiarize the materials.  They go over books multiple times. I often do photoreading method.  which applies skimming, speed reading, incubation period, brainstorming period, and also conscious reading after wards . It engage more thoughtful process of storing information. It also works on structure organization of the book. Most people read sentence by sentence but don't see the big picture of how the book is structurally organized. that helps you understand too as it allows you to see category which help organize info.  you go faster speed in areas that you know about and slower in areas that require more efforts to understand.  Of course you also have multiple run through so it's not just one time speed reading.

speed reading alone isn't reliable.  Brain need exposure many times to a subject to create neurons. Hence why its' useful to get different author perspective as different presentation makes your brain more flexible.  One cannot remember or comprehend with just speed reading.

For sure 100% fact, you can't learn skills with speed reading. Skills like metaphysics isn't just knowledge base. It has to do with critical thinking and analysis processing too.  It's a different kind of knowledge.

Reading isn't just about reading to get through the book. it's about comprehension , memory recall.