Ask HN: How did you learn to mute your inner monologue and speed read? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How did you learn to mute your inner monologue and speed read?

I have always been a slow reader. I subvocalise everything, which makes dialogue fun but progress slow. Now I feel like picking up the pace, but I struggle with the strategy. Apparently I should use my finger or other pointing instrument to guide my eyes over the words at a pace higher than I can vocalise or comprehend.

Does that actually work to eventually cure your subvocalisation? And how long does it take? And are you supposed to read entire books like this, without comprehending them, or should I re-read each chapter again?

I am currently re-reading Adler Mortimer's How to Read a Book, but, so far I only found one paragraph on the subject of speed which amounts to the above follow-the-finger strategy.

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I don't speed read, but here's how I read faster (+50 books/yr):

* Read more. I find myself subvocalizing more when reading about new topics and less with familiar topics. The more you read, the more recurring themes you find.

* Highlighting helps me gamify reading. I'm basically hunting for interesting sentences.

* Appreciate which books are meant to be read quickly (self-help books usually fall into this category) vs. those meant to be read slowly. Give yourself permission to read at the appropriate speed for the given content.

For me speed reading is more about building a mental model of what I'm currently reading. I was just a reading a light novel (very light reading) and I could skip over entire pages, because when you have that mental scene, skipping pages is like taking off your eyes of a movie for a few moments. You can easily recreate the missing context or read the parts over (akin to asking what you missed). I mostly do this for fiction book, as non-fiction are sometimes too dense to do this.

Another trick is to focus on a specific word. Some words I can recognize with the corner of my eyes, I could say. Which means you predict what comes after, and you skip over it and focus on the next word you don't recognize. You go back if what you're predicted don't make sense to what you're currently reading.

All of this is just for skimming. I don't read fiction to remember quotes and the likes, so I used it quite a lot there. I can read 2 or 3 books a day that way. While I can remember the majority of the story, I couldn't quote a single part of it.

For serious books, I read more carefully, and I revert to subvocalizing, but I'm often done with the sentence with my eyes (using my short term memory) before I even subvocalize the first three words. So it's not really a hindrance, although I have found myself needing to reread a specific part as I otfen speed read over it.

Reading out loud helps retain information https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/320377 Musical training can help https://neurosciencenews.com/music-training-memory-children-...

I have the same problem. There was maybe around 1998 big excitement over some program that would take a text and flash the words on the screen one at a time, including a cadence for commas, sentences, and paragraphs. You could set the words-per-minute rate to whatever you wanted.

I dabbled with it, and it seemed promising, but I never really put in a serious effort to break the habit.

Have you tried picking a page or two and reading them a few times a day every day? When learning to read sheet music you do this, and as your brain begins to remember and anticipate what comes next your eyes get used to moving quicker. Just a thought, as I don't have issues with reading text, but might be worth trying.

Ah damn, now I'm aware of my inner monologue! Honestly it just isn't there for me most of the time. It's the same when I read or look at most anything; I'm not thinking in words. When I get stuck on a page or technical snippet I'll sometimes be caught in a loop of reading out loud in my head but not understanding much of it. After enough time the inner monologue fades and I'm back to full speed.

If I have to speed read I slow it down and just use my hand to keep moving forward scanning sentences. I learned it from this book on speed reading. After reading a few pages I try to write down one important takeaway.

I just scan the text quickly with a focused mind and get whatever words I recognize, the meaning is completed automatically. Then read slowly the interesting parts, one or more times for deep thinking, memorization and enjoyment.

I just stopped fighting it. I read slow because I say the words in my head.

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