Kwik Brain Episode 12: THREE Hacks for Rapid Reading

Welcome to Kwik Brain, bite-sized brain hacks for busy people who want to learn faster and achieve more. I'm your coach, Jim Kwik. Free your mind. Let's imagine if we could access 100% of our brain's capacity. I wasn't high, wasn't wired, just clear. I knew what I needed to do and how to do it. I know kung fu. Show me. How do you mentally hack your brain for rapid reading? That's what this episode is all about. We got so many comments from the How to Read Faster episode, episode number 7, and so many comments in our private Facebook group about, wow, I already improved my reading speed 25%, 50%. Some people doubled their reading speed after going through that episode. They were saying, Jim, what's the next level? And this episode is how to improve your reading speed and focus by reducing a supervillain called subvocalization. Now, what is subvocalization? Have you ever noticed when you're reading something to yourself, you hear that inner voice inside your mind reading along with you? Hopefully it's your own voice. It's not like somebody else's voice in there, or it's not 2 or 3 voices inside. Now, why is that a challenge when it comes to your reading speed? If you have to say the words inside your mind in order to understand what you're reading, you can only read as fast as you could speak. Let me say that another way. If you have to say all the words to yourself inside your mind, Your reading speed is limited to your talking speed, but not your thinking speed. Here's the thing. Most people read, they read approximately 150 to 250 words per minute. And that also happens to be the average speaking speed. And so here's the question you want to ask yourself. Do you need to pronounce words like university or computer to understand what those words mean? And the answer is no. Much like when you're driving and you happen to see signs on the side of the road and you happen to see a stop sign, for example, I guarantee most of you do not say to yourself, stop, every single time you see that. But do you comprehend exactly what it means? Of course you do. And that's the difference. And so when you're reading something, most of the words that you're actually going through and reading, you don't have to pronounce to understand. When you see a date like 2017, most of you don't say 2,017. You see the date and you recognize what it is, much like a stop sign, much like if you're reading something and it says Los Angeles or New York City, even if it was abbreviated NYC, you would get it. You don't have to pronounce it in order to understand it. And we find that some of the fastest readers out there that read in excess of 300, 400, 600 words per minute, they can't possibly say all the words. For example, we know leaders are readers, right? Tony Robbins, very fast reader. Brendon Burchard, he reads a book a week for the past almost 18 years. I mean, Bill Gates, very fast reader. Oprah Winfrey, very strong reader, right? And so leaders are readers. And so if you want to be able to read a book that somebody spent decades writing, then you could download decades in just days. And that's the advantage that you have. So how do you do it? Here's the thing. I'm gonna give you 3 tips, brain hacks, to be able to reduce this habit. And so we know leaders are readers. John F. Kennedy, for example, a very fast reader. He also has a very strong speech, obviously, in terms of his speaking rate. And he was said to have spoken at about 300 words a minute. But when he was reading, he was said to have read anywhere from 600, 800, some people say 1,000 words per minute. But if he could speak at 300 words a minute, and read at 1,000 words a minute, you know, his 6 newspapers every morning with 1 cup of coffee, that means there are approximately 700 words per minute he's not pronouncing. And so that's the goal. So how do you reduce this habit called subvocalization? Well, I'll give you 3 tips. Number 1, the first idea is to be able to stretch yourself. Stretch yourself. That means to read faster than you normally do because the goal is, When you're reading faster, what'll happen when you stretch yourself is your mind is always looking for shortcuts. And it's going to spend less time filling in the filler words, like saying the filler words like and, there, because, that is, all these words that are there that don't have any inherent meaning because you're not reading for the words, you're reading for the ideas. Right? So you're not spending the time doing that. So you want to be able to stretch yourself doing some of these drills. The second thing I would recommend is to listen to music. Listen to music, and I would listen to music. You would have to find music that really agrees with you. That I would avoid ones that have lyrics to it. Classical music has always worked well for myself and a lot of our students. I am partial to Baroque music because we'll do a whole episode on getting to mindfulness training and how to get into flow states. And this alpha state, which is a great state to be able to learn in, where you could learn languages and vocabulary a lot stronger, is by playing. Classical music, specifically Baroque music, because it has about 60 beats per minute. And so having that, listening to the sound of the music sometimes will help drown out the sound of our internal voice, potentially, if with practice. And the 3rd tip I will give you right now that you could use right away is a pattern interrupt. A pattern interrupt. So you need to distract yourself. For some, basically what it's doing is when people are reading, you'll see them moving their lips. Or they're talking to themselves under their breath. And what you have to do is you have to give your mouth something else to do while you read. And so it could disengage from that speak mechanism in the brain. So there are a number of ways of doing this. So what can you do? Number 1, in no particular order, some people could hum. You could hum while you're reading because that resonance, that sound there will prevent— you can't be humming and also be talking to yourself at the same time. Some people, what they'll do is they'll need to break it physically, that habit, And what they'll do is they'll bite on their knuckles or their fingers, not very sanitary, but they will do that because they use their lips and they're moving their mouth when they're reading, and that'll help to interrupt the pattern by distracting themselves. Other things that you could— we would recommend is chewing gum. Some people say that chewing gum is actually good for your brain. I would say that would be dependent on the quality of the gum that you're using, but chewing gum could help break the pattern that we've learned back again, back in school where we're talking out loud and saying the words to ourselves. And the other one I would recommend, so besides, you know, biting your knuckles, which I don't think is very sanitary, humming, chewing gum, would be to count. Counting. And what I mean by that is if you're saying internally, you're counting numbers, let's say 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, then you can't be also simultaneously subvocalizing saying the words to yourself. Now, in the beginning, a lot of these practices will be distracting because you don't normally do that while you read. But what your brain is also going to be doing is it's also very efficient. And after it starts to do this for a while, it'll start paying more attention to what's in front of you in terms of reading and boosting your reading comprehension. But counting as you're reading, you can't possibly be saying all the words to yourself while you're reading when you're counting 1, 2, 2, 3, 4. And if you want to go even more advanced on this, what I would recommend actually is when you're reading, there's this thing called fixations, and we'll cover that in a future episode. And basically it's your eye movements as it crosses over from one side of the page to another. And if you actually count 1, 2, 3, where 1 is the first part of the line, 2 is the second part of the line, and 3 is the third part of the line, you could build very strong proficiency because When you're looking at a fixation, when you're looking at a word, you're not looking at the letters in the word, right? You're seeing the whole word in one view. Stronger readers will actually see 2 or 3 of these words together because they're looking for ideas. So imagine going through the page, going left to right, and you're grouping them into groups of 3. And you're going 1 in group 1, 2, you're moving your eyes in group 2, and then 3, which would be on the other side of it. You're going from, for example, if you're reading, and now this technique works whether your language is going from left to right reading or right to left, because you're going in groups, 1, 2, 3, and get to the next line, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3. The 4th thing, I'll just add this as a bonus 'cause I said 3, is you could take a class, right? On our kwiklearning.com, we have the most complete program, online program for reading speed, reading comprehension, reading focus, reading retention, And reading enjoyment. And we don't focus just on reading speed, as you'll see. We focus on not just speed reading, but smart reading. So a big part of it is improving your comprehension, because when you can understand more of what you're reading, you're inherently gonna read it faster and retain more of it. Now, if you'd like a demo of this, you could take a free online interactive web class with me. Just go to kwikbrain.com/speedreading. Awesome. Kwikbrain.com/speed-reading. And you could, there you could register for free online interactive web class. You could bring a book along with you and I'll go through a 60-minute course with you where we actually do this in real time. And you should pick a book that you'd like to be able to read that's been sitting in your home for an embarrassingly long time being unread and you'll get so much out of it. So I hope you enjoyed this episode. Remember, leaders are readers. So play with this and have fun with these mental hacks for rapid reading. And also tag me with your results on social media so I could follow your progress in unleashing your Kwik Brain. Want to double your brain speed and memory power? If you'd like to learn rapidly and get ahead faster, I'd like to give you my brand new Kwik Brain Accelerator program. You will discover exactly what I teach my clients to learn, read, and remember anything in half the time. There is no charge. It's my gift to you for being one of our subscribers. That's kwikbrain.com, or simply text the word podcast to 916-822-7246, and we'll send you a direct link. That's 916-82-BRAIN. Growing up struggling with learning challenges from a childhood brain injury, it's been my life's mission to help you have your very best brain so you can win more every single day. Now, want more quick brain? Here are four ways to fast-track your results and lock in what you just learned into your long-term memory. Remember fast, F A S T. The F stands for Facebook. You're not alone on this journey. I invite you to join our free private online group. There you can connect with me, your fellow brain lovers, links to resources, and even submit your questions for me to answer in future episodes. Go to quickbrain.com. That's kwikbrain.com. The A stands for apply. Act on what you learned today. Remember, knowledge is not power, it's potential power. It only becomes power when you use it. So use what you just learned. The S stands for subscribe. Don't miss the next episode and other free brain training. And finally, the T stands for teach. You want to learn faster now? The key is to lock it in right away by teaching it to someone else. When you teach something, you get to learn it twice. Here's a simple way to do that: leave a review on iTunes. Leave a review with your biggest takeaway from this episode. You could also post and share this podcast on your social media. It helps us spread our mission of building better, brighter brains. And of course, tag us so our team can properly thank you. Hashtag Quick Brain. K W I K Brain. Mine is @JimQuick. @kwik on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. So what does FAST stand for? Facebook, Apply, Subscribe, Teach. I'll see you in our next episode of Kwik Brain. Until then, remember, you are faster and smarter than you think.