SPEED READING by Kam Knight | Core Message

I recently read Speed Reading. Learn to read a 200-plus page book in 1 hour by Kam Knight. After finishing this book, I now start every new book using the P and P method. Most people avoid reading because it's too boring. When you crawl word by word, slowly piecing together what's being said, the mind drifts off. You finish a paragraph and absorb nothing. The P and P method fixes that. The first P is purpose, a crystal clear purpose, the kind that makes you feel like you're on a mission to find something inside a book that could change your life. The difference between starting a book with a crystal clear purpose and not is like walking into a grocery store with a clear list versus wandering the aisles. With a list, you move with precision. You know exactly what you need, where to go, and you're out in 20 minutes. Without a list, it takes you 45 minutes to do your grocery shopping, and you leave with several items you don't need. When you read with purpose, you get through a book much faster because A, you're hunting for specific information, so you're less likely to regress and more likely to keep pushing forward. B, you're able to quickly move past passages that don't relate to your purpose. Therefore, before you open a book, state your purpose out loud or on paper. Be specific. Not I want to learn about investing. And more like, I want to understand three keystone of long-term investors and start using them this month. The clearer the target, the faster you can move past low value text and get to the text that matters. The second P is preview. If you struggle to come up with a clear purpose at first, wait until you've done this step. The National Council of Teachers of English recommends scanning every book before reading it using an acronym called Thieves. Title, headings, introduction, every word in bold or italics, visual aids, end of chapter questions, and summary. Flip through your next book on the hunt for all seven. It will take 3 to 5 minutes, but it's an incredible investment because it primes curiosity and supercharges your focus. It's like when a friend texts you, "I have something to tell you, but I can't tell you yet. " You spend the next hour forming guesses. By the time they're ready to tell you, you're laser focused and ready to absorb it. Preview does exactly that. You've already seen the interesting headings and bolded ideas, so when you start reading, your brain is filling in the gaps in your understanding rather than learning from scratch. It's on the lookout for answers, and this allows you to move through text faster and comprehend more. I found that having a crystal clear purpose and previewing a book using the Thieves acronym doubles my reading speed. But those two techniques are not what has made Speed Reading the number one speed reading book on Amazon for the past several years. What separates this book from other speed reading books is the elimination of impractical techniques like dragging your finger down the page to guide your eyes while you read, and an emphasis on seeing the words on the page in a whole new way. Most of us read word by word. Each word is an anchor we lock onto, hold for longer than we need to, and then release before locking onto the next word. We repeat this hundreds of times per page without realizing it. Author Kam Knight breaks this habit by looking at the spaces between the words while he reads. It seems like a trivial shift until you try it. In the following passage, I've inserted dashes in the spaces between words. Read the passage by moving from dash to dash instead of looking at the words themselves. You may find that you start gliding through the passage much faster than you would normally, and you're still able to comprehend what you're reading. When you look at the spaces or imaginary dashes between words, you're using your peripheral vision to absorb the surrounding words. Studies show that the brain processes information from peripheral vision 25% faster than direct vision. Luckily, you can do exercises to expand your peripheral vision so that you can look at one space and pick up three or four neighboring words. This means you can jump to every third or fourth space between words and get through a paragraph incredibly quick. Here's how to start training and expanding your peripheral vision. Create three columns of letters with an inch of space separating them. Move your eyes down the middle column and try to pick up the side columns using your peripheral vision. Repeat this until you can read and recall the letters on the edges. Then, add a column of new letters on both sides of the existing letters, so you have five columns, and try to pick up the four outside columns as you move your eyes down the middle column. Do similar training on your phone by opening the Kindle app or any ebook app to a random book. Now, go to settings and narrow the line width to five or six words per line.

As you read the book, move your eyes straight down the center and try to pick up the words on both sides without looking directly at them. It's uncomfortable at first, but after a few days, your peripheral vision starts to expand. When you can capture more words in a single glance, it's like going from trying to recognize your friend by examining one facial feature at a time to just seeing their entire face and knowing immediately who it is. This is analogous to recognizing a complete idea with a single glance when you read so that you can form an image in your mind and grasp what you are reading in an instant. Suddenly, the boredom of reading goes away, and you're deeply immersed in a book. In the end, before you open your next book, take a minute to clarify exactly why you're reading it and what you hope to get out of it. Then go into preview mode and use the Thieves acronym to stir up intense curiosity for what you're about to read. After the preview stage, start flying through the book on a mission to fulfill your purpose. Use your peripheral vision to pick up words as you move through the spaces between words. Imagine there are dashes in those spaces, and you are floating from dash to dash, soaking up the words around each dash with your eyes. As you gain momentum, push yourself to the edge of your comfort zone and move between every third space, every third imaginary dash between words. Soon, you will go faster than what feels comfortable. That's okay. Discomfort does not mean low comprehension. In fact, faster reading often results in more understanding because it keeps your mind engaged, and an engaged mind naturally picks up more ideas. By pushing your reading pace, the pages of a book pull you in, and reading becomes an incredibly rewarding experience. That was the core message I gathered from Speed Reading by Kam Knight. This is the most effective speed reading book I've read in years. I highly recommend it. If you would like a one-page PDF summary of the insights I gathered from this book, just click the link in the description below, and I'll email it to you. If you're already signed up for the free Productivity Game newsletter, this PDF is in your inbox.