How to Read a 700 Page Book Quickly

In this article I interview Howard Berg the world'southward fastest reader who earned a place in the 1990 Guinness Volume of World Records (a tape which however has non been cleaved) and can read 25, 000+ words a infinitesimal/80 pages a infinitesimal.

Howard has read over thirty, 000 books and in this commodity y'all are going to learn not only how to reader faster, but too how to learn and retain more from the books y'all read.

Y'all will learn:

How to read a book
The 5 things yous need to learn and master any subject
How to build upwardly your vocabulary
What to look for when you are reading a book
Questions to ask when reading a book
How to increment your reading speed
How to take notes

Let's begin:

How Howard Berg became the globe'southward fastest reader

Michael Frank: How did yous become on this path? How did y'all become from being a reader to a speed reader to the world'south fastest reader?

Howard Berg: That'south a great question. Well, it started back when I was young. I lived in the projects in Brooklyn, which was non a peachy place to live. There were a lot of gangs and it was very, very violent. However I plant one safe place: The library. Gang kids would obviously rather be caught dead than in a library with books. I think that's still true today.

So I spent a lot of time reading and I chose well. I was reading the theory of relativity when I was eight, by the time I was xi I had higher reading, and and so I went to higher at seventeen to study biology at the New York State University, Binghamton.

In my inferior year, I got interested in the brain and how it works, so I said to the dean, I want to practice 2 majors, biology and psychology. They said, yous're a junior, if you haven't even done one psychology course, you lot'll have to practise the whole four year program in one year and have six science courses at the same fourth dimension, and bluntly yous're not smart enough.

And that'southward when it hit me: They don't teach learning in school. They tell you lot what to learn, and why to acquire, and what volition happen if you don't learn, simply they don't teach you: How to learn

I thought at that place has to exist a way to larn things faster and easier and it turns out there was. Every bit I started learning nearly the brain, I got my reading speed up to eighty pages a minute and I retained it. I finished the psych programme in one twelvemonth, and I took the graduate record exam in biological science, which is like an Saturday for graduate schoolhouse, and I read forty-viii books on biochemistry, genetics, prison cell physiology and embryology in three nights, and I only got iii questions incorrect which put me in the 99th percentile in the world, I got an viii hundred.

And so I was like, gee, is it me? Or is this a learnable skill? And there's a big difference between I can exercise it and you can do it. And the expert news is that I can teach you lot how to do it. I've taught children every bit young as 8 and xi how to do this, and as erstwhile every bit 80 4, so to me it'due south more than heady that I tin teach information technology, than I can do it.

Howard Berg speed reading speed

Michael Frank: What is your world record speed? How many words or pages per minute can you read?

Howard Berg: 25,000 to 35,000 words a minute. I know that's a big difference only it depends on the size of the page and the font. If you have a actually small font on a really big page it has more words then you can read it faster.

The average developed reading speed

Michael Frank: The average adult reading speed, as I understand it, is about 200 words per minute. That's about one-half a page a minute, or two minutes to read one page, with threescore per centum comprehension, I'1000 not sure the percentage of retention

Howard Berg: I can answer that. The average person, you're right, they read about 200 words a infinitesimal which is about how fast near people speak. The way is 200 words per minute. The range is 150 to 400 words a minute. The fashion beingness the virtually commonly seen number is 200. Studies have shown that the average person reading retains ten pct of what they read. And that's non long term. That's only the next day. It goes down from there. However I remember things I read 40, 50 years ago, really, really well.

Howard's comprehension and retention

Michael Frank: What is your boilerplate reading speed, comprehension, and retention?

Howard Berg: I can only requite you stats from the standardized tests, but I got a 99th percentile in biology in the world on the GRE, I did a 5 month graduate course in educational psychology in 7 hours. I read the book four times and in that location was an AP test that was six hours long. I finished information technology in 15 minutes and got a B+. I didn't get an A, but I finished a five calendar month course including the examination in a little nether viii hours with a B+ and so I was happy with that.

I like to remember that'southward the real gift. It's the ability to acquire things. I don't really intendance about the reading office. I care almost the data I can get and use and I think that's what people really desire today. They don't want speed. They want understanding in less time and then that they can actually use it when they need it. I don't like reading. I like learning skills. Not in months, but in hours.

Nobody wants to only read faster because reading isn't learning. If it was everyone reading the book would get an A or ace the meeting, but they don't. So it's not just reading, information technology'southward comprehension, it's understanding, its awarding, it's remembering it when you lot need to apply information technology, and beingness in the correct country to utilise information technology properly. At that place are a lot of things that go into success and learning.

Howard Berg Speed Reading

Michael Frank: When I watch y'all read a volume information technology looks funny to me considering it looks like how I would imagine a blind person reading a picture if information technology were in braille. Y'all run your hands down the folio from left to correct. Where a regular person would read a line at a time, y'all seem to exist devouring 3 paragraphs at a time.

Howard Berg: Yes, that's correct. I can explicate that. When yous're in a auto, you read the road in all iv directions front, back, left, and correct and you're going about 70 miles an hour and y'all're bored. You turn on the radio, you lot talk on the phone, you talk to your friends, you watch the gauges, y'all watch your GPS, and you're bored.

However, yous read a volume about 200 words a minute in 1 direction and you're lucky if the next day you remember 10 percent.

Why is it that riding in a automobile at 70 miles an hour and processing in all four directions is easier than reading a book in ane direction?

The reason is when you're driving in the car, you're processing the information like a movie and you lot're remembering what you lot seeing very efficiently. Whereas when y'all're reading a book, information technology seems like someone'southward talking in the back of your head.

Word.

At.

Time.

You're literally hearing or listening to the book with your optics. It's very inefficient. So I plant a way to brand reading a much more than visual experience. Not ane hundred percent, you still have some sound, but a lot less. And as a event, when I'thou done reading, I don't remember the words, simply I recall the pictures, and I play the moving picture dorsum. And as I'g playing the picture show back, I see all the details in my picture that I can convert back to words.

So I'm really using my optics the way they were designed, to see instead of hear, and the good news is that this is a very easy skill for a normal person to learn. A normal person can hands learn these skills in four hours and go one hundred per centum faster or more.

How to read a volume

Michael Frank: What advice practise you have about reading a book?

Howard Berg: If my purpose is to learn, I read in three steps:

I pre-read the volume super fast. I'll read a 400-500 page volume in 4-5 minutes to notice out what's in it, and if information technology's annihilation I need to know. I desire to be able to determine in 5 minutes: Should I even read this? Is this the correct book?
If it is the correct book, then I'll look for what I know, and what I don't know, and need to learn. I don't waste product fourth dimension learning what I know, I look for what I don't know and need to acquire. I await for what I don't sympathize and what is relevant to me. I don't need to know everything. I just demand to what I need to know. Too many people spend also much time trying to learn everything and then they don't remember anything. And to me what'southward important is knowing the answers to the exam questions if yous're in school, or knowing what your supervisors and clients want to know if you're in business organisation
Then the final stride, I wait for meaning and significance in what confused me, then now I sympathise information technology, and then I apply memory skills to lock it in

The v things yous demand to learn any subject

Michael Frank: You say that reading is about speed, comprehension and retention, and when I think nigh comprehension, my mind immediately goes to vocabulary, considering if you don't accept a good vocabulary then you're constantly needing to intermission, think, and look up the words. Is vocabulary very important when it comes to speed reading and is it a large part of what you teach?

Howard Berg: Good question. I'll put information technology in a bigger context, in that location are only five things you need to larn and chief in any new subject:

The vocabulary. About eighty percent of learning a new subject is learning the words, and if you're reading a non-fiction volume, the writer will draw your attending to those words. They'll put them in Italics or bold, they might have a glossary or a give-and-take list at the end of the chapter, which makes these words exceptionally important, so you're completely correct, vocabulary is i of the five things you absolutely need to larn to chief any subject. If you have a practiced vocabulary that makes reading faster and easier because you recognize more than words.
Names. Who'due south in your volume and what did they exercise?
Any number, date, statistic or formula. What is it and how do you use it?
In any not-fiction book with headers and sub-headers, what are the five most important ideas in each department, the big takeaways?
What are the questions and answers? If you know every give-and-take and what it ways, every person and what they did, every number, engagement, statistic and formula and how it's used, if you lot know every main idea and the answers to every question, you're going to get an A. That's what we taught our students to do and it's how they were able to do college classes when they were eleven.

How to build up your vocabulary

Michael Frank: Coming dorsum to vocabulary, there are two approaches I can think of that one could take to build upward their vocabulary. You could wait up the words every fourth dimension y'all come across a word you don't know, and build your vocabulary up that style. Or you could but choose to learn a new word each mean solar day. Practice yous have a recommended strategy?

Howard Berg: Yeah I exercise. I like to use iv by six, or iii by v index cards. On one side I write the word, and on the other side I write the pregnant. Let me give you an example with a biological term, Agelaius phoeniceus, information technology's a ruby-winged blackbird.

So I write down these words I want to larn on these index cards. Every twenty-four hours I go through the cards, if I get it right, I don't demand to acquire information technology because I know it, simply if you get it wrong, if you make a mistake, get a pad and I write it out correctly 25 times while saying it aloud:

Agelaius phoeniceus, red-wing blackbird

Agelaius phoeniceus, cherry-wing blackbird

Agelaius phoeniceus, scarlet-wing blackbird

Now you're saying it with your oral fissure, you lot're hearing it with your ears, you're seeing information technology with your eyes, and you're writing it with your pen. Those are all different types of retention. In that location'due south muscle retentivity from writing, there'south another memory from speaking, there's an auditory memory from hearing, so there'southward the visual memory.

Most people only use the visual memory when they larn and that's not enough.

Whenever you get a card incorrect, put it on a practise over pile, and when you're done accept all of the wrong words, shuffle them and do them over and over and over and over and over and over until every one of them is correct.

Don't waste matter time on cards you lot already know. You should simply spend time focusing on what you don't know and need to learn and not on what y'all know already.

Don't waste material time on what yous already know

Howard Berg: I of the biggest mistakes people make when they're learning is they spend too much time on what they already know, instead of what they need to know. For example, if you lot're reading a chemistry book and y'all become a chapter that'due south like shooting fish in a barrel and understandable, are yous in a hurry to go to the next boring chapter you don't know anything about? Or do you spend a lilliputian more time in the comfort zone?

Yous don't have the luxury when yous're learning to spend time in your comfort zone. I tell people to get out of their comfort zone. What you know isn't what you're at that place to learn.

Information technology'due south what you don't know that's challenging that yous need to spend fourth dimension learning. If you do that, yous'll know more, and the more yous know, the more than you'll recognize when y'all reading, the more you lot recognize, the more y'all'll speed up, the more you speed up, the more you lot'll know, and so information technology'southward like a snowball going down a mount.

What to await for when reading a book

Michael Frank: What should we exist looking for when we're reading a book and covering new fabric that we're completely unfamiliar with?

Howard Berg: I like to look for the nouns and verbs. The people, places, things and their actions. I also put a lot of focus on the first and final sentence in a paragraph. Usually the first sentence tells you what'southward coming, and the last judgement tells you what came.

Michael Frank: What other things should nosotros be looking for? Affiliate titles, chapter summaries, any kind of graphs, diagrams, or images…

Howard Berg: Yep! All of those things. I call it the bread trail. A lot of times people volition say, this is such a big book, what am I supposed to acquire? I ask them: What did the writer do to make things stand up out? Did they assuming? Did they utilise colors? Do they have tables, charts, diagrams, sidebars? Are there questions? Is there contents, an index, a glossary? What did they do that looks special or different to draw your attention?

Questions to enquire when reading a book

Michael Frank: What kind of questions should we be asking ourselves when we're reading a book to excerpt the maximum value from it?

Howard Berg: Very practiced question. It depends on the subject, but I'm always asking myself:

How will I use this?

Why is this important?

What applications does information technology have for the trouble I'g trying to solve?

And then I endeavour to visualize myself in the future using what I'm learning and being very successful as a consequence. And because I'thousand enjoying that successful image, my encephalon wants to retain what I've just learned because information technology sees the benefit and the reward. Learning and motivation are very closely linked in psychology, so it's not plenty to but want to read, you take to have a feeling for why it's important, how information technology will benefit y'all, and what rewards you will get every bit a issue, and when your brain sees that, now information technology'southward on fire.

How to increment your reading speed

Michael Frank: How does one increase their reading speed?

Howard Berg: Okay I'll show you how to read faster to correct now. I want you to find a not-fiction book. Preferably ane you lot've read already. I want to make sure that the only affair that could confuse you is how quickly you're reading, not what you're reading.

And so if it'southward a book you've read and understood, at that place'southward just i reason you don't know what yous're reading, you're going too fast, and that's how y'all know you're going too fast, because it's not making sense and information technology should.

So go to the first page of the beginning chapter of that non-fiction book you understand and read with a timer for 1 minute. When the timer goes off, take a pencil and put a little tick mark in the margin. And so you know that's how far I read right at present in a infinitesimal, nothing special. This is just how fast I read.

Now hither's the secret sauce: Become to the second affiliate in your volume, using your left hand get from the left to the correct margin one line at a time with your optics following your hand.

Go as rapidly as you lot tin can comprehend. Equally long as you lot know what you lot're reading, go quicker until you don't. And that's when you lot find out your ceiling. And then slow downwards only enough so your comprehension returns. And then for five minutes, become one line at a time with your optics post-obit your paw as quickly equally you can comprehend. If yous don't know what y'all're reading, you lot're going too fast. Just go equally quickly equally you tin can comprehend.

When you're done, go dorsum to the start affiliate where you tested yourself. Now fourth dimension yourself for a infinitesimal using your left mitt go from the left to the right margin one line at a time with your eyes following your hand, go as chop-chop every bit yous can comprehend, and you're going to blow past that tick mark by xx, thirty, maybe fifty-fifty forty percent, merely by doing that one single change using your hand. It's that simple to begin to read faster. That is the first step that I teach. It takes about 2 and a half hours to do all the steps to speed up, and the rest of the program is focusing on learning and retention and comprehension and things like that.

How to have notes

Michael Frank: Any recommendations in regards to note taking?

Howard Berg: Yes. My favorite way to take notes is in a table with 3 or four columns.

The get-go cavalcade is where you write what you're learning.

The second cavalcade is where you write your insights. What'due south the significance of what you simply heard?

The tertiary column is where you write how you will use what y'all've just learned. When you see how it will do good you, then you'll learn it.

And then at that place'south a forth column if you lot're a teacher or a writer like we are. The fourth column is where you write down what the presenter or author did to take hold of your attention and excite you. Was it a story? Was information technology a joke? Was it an anecdote? You tin at present use that strategy as a speaker or a writer yourself to catch people's attending and involvement. So now instead of simply just writing what you're learning, you lot're besides getting the insights, the application and what made it intriguing.

Howard'south favorite books out of the 30, 000 he'due south read

Michael Frank: Out of interest: How many books have you read? Do you know?

Howard Berg: I'd say information technology'south close to xxx,000 books/magazines/journals/articles. I often similar to tell people when I'm speaking that I've read thirty,000 books, so if even if I was a total idiot, I'd similar to think that I'm at to the lowest degree well informed!

Michael Frank: Out of the 30, 000 books you've read, what are some of your favorites?

Howard Berg: It depends on the topic, but in business concern: Unlimited Selling Power by Donald Moine, it's a volume about Neuro Linguistic Programming applications in marketing and sales, which is an outstanding book in that discipline.

Probably ane of the virtually interesting books I've always read was Initiation Into Hermetics by Franz Bardon who was a mystic, and it kind of covers subjects that people have wondered about for ages. I can't tell you if it's correct or it's wrong. Only that it provides answers that were very lucid and very unusual and that I found very interesting.

If you lot've always watched The X-files and wondered if there was a real Mulder, there is, but he'due south in the armed services, non the FBI, and his proper noun is Colonel Tom Bearden and I had dinner with him in Huntsville and he gave me some insights that were amazing and he has a volume called Excalibur Briefing: Explaining Paranormal Phenomenawhich is mind numbing. Information technology makes The X-files wait tame.

I love things that are edgy and different and on the fringe because they expand your mind. Books on quantum physics, books on relativity theory, books on scientific discipline and math, because they force you to take to think and the brain is similar a muscle, you use it or you lot lose information technology.

Fiction vs non-fiction books

Michael Frank: Howard I tend to only read non-fiction. Information technology would be extremely rare for me to read fiction. I'm into personal development then with that in that location's a million dissimilar categories where you can learn a million unlike things. Whereas fiction is enjoyable and fun and it expands your imagination. Can you call back of any advantages or benefits of reading fiction apart from fun and expanding your imagination?

Howard Berg: The advantages of reading fiction is that information technology makes you a better writer. When you're reading, don't just read the book, merely expect at what the writer did to get your attention, to brand information technology exciting and interesting, to create atmosphere and apprehension and suspense and make the writing pop off the page and sizzle.

How do they brand yous forget you lot're reading a volume? Like when you readThe Lord of the Rings,you go so involved in the story, you forget you're reading a story. It's similar yous're living in experience.

Then I personally hold with you. I read mostly non-fiction, but when I'm reading fiction I'm actually looking non just for the feel but for the strategies and the techniques the author is using to engage and entertain me then I can utilise those in my books and my programs when I'm doing non-fiction.

Howard'southward speed reading program

Howard Berg: I would similar to remind people to become to berglearning.com and we guarantee y'all'll read 100 percent faster. We guarantee that and we can promise that y'all will. That's what will happen. I'one thousand hoping you do even improve, and if yous need my assist, you'll exist able to contact my support squad who will brand certain you lot really learn that then that you go the benefits that you're expecting and it's super easy.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Howard Berg

Howard Stephen Berg is recognized as the world's fastest reader. Respected internationally for his contribution to the learning process, he is listed in the 1990 Guinness Book of World Records for reading more than than 25,000 words a minute and writing more than 100 words a infinitesimal. Howard uses his talents to train you on how to stay on pinnacle of the information your success depends upon.

Howard is a graduate of S.U.Northward.Y., Binghamton where he majored in Biological science and and then completed a four-year Psychology programme in i year. His graduate studies at several New York City colleges focused on the Psychology of reading.

Howard is the spokesperson for the SONY E-Reader along with Justin Timberlake, Peyton Manning, and Amy Sedaris. He is likewise a featured guest on Play a joke on News, and Play tricks Business News with Neil Cavuto. He launched the 4G network for Optus, the second largest phone company in Australia.

Howard has appeared on over 1,100 radio and television set programs including Neil Cavuto, Jon Stewart, and Alive With Regis. His encephalon-based learning strategies have been hailed equally a major breakthrough in publications similar Forbe's FYI, Selling, Men'southward Health, Red Volume, and Bottom Line Mag, and accept been featured in dozens of newspaper interviews throughout North America.

Howard has created more than 14 other accelerated learning programs including speed math, and memory. Berg's Time-Warner volume, Super Reading Secrets is in its 28^thursday reprint, and Barrons books requested him to write a text for students. Howard's Nightingale-Conant program, "Mega Speed Reading," grossed over $65,000,000, and established him as a leader in encephalon-based learning. He is mentioned in a number of books as a leading expert on brain based learning, and has been honored past over 9 books that track outstanding professional person performance including, "Who's Who Amidst Emerging Leaders, and 2,000 Notable American Men".

How to Read a 700 Page Book Quickly

Source: https://lifelessons.co/personal-development/read/