Book Summary10 Days to Faster Reading, by The Princeton Language Institute and Abby Marks Beale

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of 10 Days to Faster Reading

Do you have a pile of reading material you’ve been meaning to read for ages? Do you feel you could learn more if only you could read faster? In 10 Days to Faster Reading, Abby Marks Beale and the Princeton Language Institute offer a variety of strategies to help you reach your reading goals. By practicing their speed-reading techniques, you can learn new information more efficiently, rid yourself of unhelpful reading habits, and understand the things you read on a deeper level. (Their techniques particularly apply to reading non-fiction books.)

(Shortform note: Speed-reading is a technique that focuses on quickly discerning and comprehending whole phrases and sentences at once. It contrasts with the methods students are typically taught when they’re first...

10 Days to Faster Reading Summary Why It’s Helpful to Practice Speed-Reading Skills

Before diving into the authors’ speed-reading strategies, let’s take a look at four benefits of reading faster.

Benefit #1: Improve Your Focus, Comprehension, and Memory of What You Read

According to the authors, when you employ the skills associated with speed-reading, you concentrate more closely on what you’re reading. This leads to better comprehension—if you’re paying close attention to the text, you’re more likely to understand the information within it. Finally, a higher level of focus and comprehension helps you to form stronger memories of what you read.

The Relationship Between Speed-Reading, Focus, and Comprehension

According to some experts, speed-reading improves focus because it forces our brains to absorb a lot of information in a limited time window. With so much to process, we’re far less likely to get distracted, as our brains have to concentrate to complete the task. Additionally, practicing speed-reading techniques frequently is like exercise for the brain, continually improving its performance. This leads to improved information processing and...

10 Days to Faster Reading Summary Strategies for Reading More Efficiently and Effectively

Now that we’ve explored why speed-reading is beneficial, we’ll discuss a selection of the authors’ practical strategies for improving your reading rate, reading more, and getting more out of your reading. Specifically, we’ll discuss:

1. Carefully selecting your reading material to make the most of your time
2. Familiarizing yourself with the content before you start reading
3. Reducing common unhelpful reading behaviors
4. Increasing the amount of information your eyes take in
5. Reading only essential words in a text

(Shortform note: The authors say you can practice and incorporate their strategies into your reading toolkit over 10 days, to show that you can improve your speed-reading skills in a short time. However, they note that many of the strategies can be learned and practiced in any order. To boost clarity, we’ve reorganized the strategies chronologically, starting with the techniques you’d use before reading and ending with the techniques you’d use while reading the body of a text.)

Strategy #1: Be Selective When Choosing Your Reading Material

The authors note that you can get more out of your reading by being selective about what you read. Before...

Shortform Exercise: Try a Speed-Reading Strategy

The authors offer a variety of strategies to increase your reading speed. Consider how you might apply some of these strategies to get more out of your reading time.

Describe one way increasing your reading speed could benefit you. (For example, maybe you feel out of the loop with new developments in your industry, and reading faster will make advancing your professional knowledge seem less daunting. Or, maybe you want to read articles and books for your university courses more quickly so you can spend less time studying and more time with your family.)