How to Read Faster | Jim Kwik

Traditional speed reading is more associated towards skipping words, right? But you don't really get good comprehension, but you get— sometimes scanning is very useful. Sometimes you don't need to learn everything, and the fastest way to learn something is to kind of skim through it. That's the fastest way to learn it. How many people want their doctor just to get the gist of what she's reading? Right? That wouldn't be the goal, right? There's a Woody Allen quote that said, I took a speed reading course, I read War and Peace, it's about Russia. That wouldn't be the goal, all right? So there's 2 parts to reading. There's reading speed and there's reading comprehension. Now, I'm gonna give you some distinctions because I think really genius, and I don't care if it's the champion Formula 1 racer or it's a top athlete or it's a business professional, I think genius, they have these patterns. They're always looking for these patterns and they're incredible at their pattern recognition, right? And they look for patterns. And that's all that I do with geniuses. I find out the patterns of how someone can learn a language 4 times faster than somebody else. The patterns on how someone could give a speech without notes. You know, the patterns that someone who could just go around and just remember everyone's name naturally. That there's always a method behind the magic. There's always a method behind the magic, right? You could see somebody demonstrate some kind of genius, but someone could see that and say, well, that's really great. Good for him, and then leave. I wanna say, that's really great. How does he do that? Right? And that's the difference that makes the difference, right? This is the difference. Someone could go to the gym, and you see that person bench pressing all that weight, and you're like, oh, that person could do it 'cause they're really strong. That's not the right cause. What you should look at the person is like, no, that person does it. That's why they're very strong, right? And so, here's the difference. Your brain isn't like it's full that you could put more in. The more you could hold, the stronger it is, the more it can hold. You know, I have people all the time. I had somebody call me up, like, at the office. I was the first one in. She was like, I love you. I love you. This is amazing. I was like, whoa, who's this? And she was like, I found it. And I was like, what'd you find? She was like, have you ever hid something so well or come up with a password that's so clever?

Yeah.

You don't even remember what it is?

Yeah.

She was given this heirloom, this family heirloom, this necklace, if you will. It went to her from her grandmother. It didn't go to her 3 sisters, it didn't go to her mom, it went to her, and she was entrusted to keep it safe, right? And she hid it somewhere in the house, and for 3 years, 3 long years, she couldn't find it. And she got so much slack from her family and everything. She thought I'd lost it, she thought it got stolen, whatever. 2 weeks after going through our online, like, our memory training that we have, she wakes up in the middle of the night, 3 o'clock in the morning. She runs down 2 flights of stairs. She goes behind the boiler into this little crevice, and what does she pull out?

The necklace.

The necklace, right? I was like, wow, I didn't teach you how you could find misplaced things. She was like, you know what? I just feel like the past couple of weeks, my brain is alive again, because it got the exercise, right? And it started remembering names, started to be able to learn, her focus started to be— because most of us don't work out our mind. Right? We work out our bodies, right? And so let me tell you about the distinctions and these patterns that I'm talking about. There's 5 things that keep you really fast, the 5 things that keep you from reading slowly, right? And I'll write them down quick. The first one is just lack of education. Lack of education. Are you born with the ability to read?

No.

No one, like, was born, they just crawled out to the, you know, the waiting room, started speed reading magazines, right? Right? No, you're not born. So how do you improve? Your reading speed?

Practice.

Yeah, because practice makes what?

Progress.

Progress, good. Practice makes progress or practice makes permanent, right? Practice makes permanent. That's how you create a habit, right? Because when's the last time you took a training called reading? How old were you? A class called reading?

Elementary school.

Elementary school. So how old are you? 6, 7 years old? 7 years old. That's the last time you took a reading class. Now, has the demand and the difficulty Increased a little bit in your reading since you were 7? A little bit or a lot?

A lot.

A lot. They say the amount of information doubles, like, every 6 months or whatever, right? Dizzying speeds, right? And so, it has increased, but how we learn it, read it, remember it, focus on it is exactly the same. That's the challenge, right? So, reeducation. The second obstacle to effective reading, this is a big one because you asked me to cover this, lack of focus. How many people, you read a page in a book, get to the end, and forget what you just read? And people, you'll go back and reread it and you still don't know what you just read, right? So focus. Now, let me tell you where some of the focus issues come from, in my opinion, because we test tens of thousands of people like every single year. You know, we have online programs in 140 countries. This is what happens. People think that if I ask you to read faster, what's gonna happen to your comprehension? It's gonna go down. It's gonna go down, right? You think like it's gonna go down. In actuality, the fastest readers tend to have the best comprehension. Because they have the best focus. And here's what I mean. When you're reading something, you have this unbelievable supercomputer of a brain, right? But when you read, you feed this supercomputer one word at a time. Metaphorically starving our— no, I can't. I'm from New York. I can't even talk that slow. If you don't give your brain the stimulus it needs, it'll seek entertainment elsewhere in the form of distraction. And that's why a lot of people lack their focus. Does that make sense?

Yes.

It's because you're reading so slow and your brain can handle so much more information, it starts to think about other things to entertain it, and that's a big challenge, right? Third obstacle to effective reading, this is the big one, subvocalization. What's subvocalization? Quick, what is it? Reading inside your mind. Reading inside your mind. How many people notice that— how many people notice when you're reading something, you hear that inner voice reading along with you? Hopefully, it's your own voice. It's not like somebody else's voice in there, right? Subvocalization. Vocal is speech, sub, like a submarine, under, inner, inner speech. Now, why is it an obstacle to your reading? It's if you have to say all the words, Then you can only read as fast as you could speak. Does that make sense? The average reading speed is about 200 words a minute. Just like, you know, it's like they've measured in words per minute, like typing speed. But if you have to say all the words, that means— let me say another way. If you have to say all the words, that means your reading speed is limited to your talking speed and not your thinking speed. Is there a difference?

Yes.

Yes. 95% of the words that you read on a regular basis, all your emails, all your texts, All your magazines, all your newspapers, all your books, 95% of those words are what they call sight words, words you know by sight that you don't have to pronounce by sound. And the fastest readers, they don't subvocalize, or they subvocalize very little. Leaders are readers, right? I did a program for Bill Gates here. I asked him, if you could have any one superpower, what would it be? And he says, Jim, the ability to read faster. And like that, because they know, right? Because leaders are readers. The more you can learn, the more you could earn, right? Because we live in this knowledge economy, right? Where if knowledge is power, learning is your superpower. If knowledge is power, learning is your superpower. So, reading faster so you don't have to subvocalize. And then finally, 4 is regression. Regression is what?

Rereading.

Regression is just like going back and rereading words. How many people notice you'll reread and backskip and whole lines? Right? That's a waste of time, and then that's a focus issue. And then 5th obstacle is what they call belief. What's a belief? Because if you believe you can or believe you can't, either way, what?

You're right.

You're right. First of all, children naturally use their finger to help them focus, right? So, they say that people who use what they call a visual pacer, a visual pacer is like your finger, a highlighter, a pen, a pencil, a mouse on a computer, will boost their reading speed 25% to 50% across the board. Right? Is that a little bit or a lot? A lot.

Right?

50%, that's a lot. That's like 20 minutes on every single hour. And people's like, well, that doesn't make sense. I'm like, yeah. So here's why. I'll tell you actually exactly why. By the way, reading takes time, right? The average person has to read about 4 hours a day to keep current. How many people feel that? How many emails that you have and all the books, everything you need to do to be amazing at what you do? 4 hours a day. That means like half of your day or your workday could be spent just reading. And what if you could double your reading speed and save 2 hours a day? What's 2 hours a day over the course of a year? Some math, right? 2 hours a day over the course of a year. 4,000 more days. Sorry. Let's say you save 1 hour a day. 1 hour a day over the course of a year, how many hours is that?

365.

365 hours. That's a really big— how many people would like to have an extra 365 hours a year? Now, let me make that tangible for you. How many 40-hour work weeks is that about? Because we need to be thinking work weeks. 9. Can you imagine getting 9 weeks of productivity back just saving an hour a day? Saving an hour a day on the most time-consuming thing that you do, which is reading, 1 hour a day would save you 9 work weeks. How many people would love to have an extra 9 weeks a year, right? Think about what you could do, right? So reading.

I'm going to be your coach. My name is Jim Kwik. Now, one of the things that people come to us in our community about is they say, Jim, I really need my hand held through this process. I'm looking for a coach to guide me every step of the way and to make this very easy for people who are asking for that level of attention— advanced, more personalized. Tip is something that gives you an idea to make a marginal increase, but this is very different than the tips in our podcast or in the tips in these videos. This is the difference between a tip and a training. A training is where a coach takes you and really levels up your capabilities and your And it's not gonna be just me coaching you. You're gonna have our whole community, so you're in this together. And here's the thing, I want to make this an absolute no-brainer. I've been teaching this for 25 years. I believe in you, and I believe in this program. So I invite you to go through the first 30 days of the program. If you're not absolutely blown away by your new ability, just shoot me a message and you get your full refund, no questions asked. Ask. That means you go through the first 30 days of the program, and if you're not blown away by your new abilities, then you get your money back because your success is our success. So if you'd like to join right now, it's a one-time opportunity to do so. All the information's on this page. I'll see you on the inside.