Most of what you read online about “speed reading” is cognitive pseudoscience. The techniques that actually work look almost nothing like the ones the gurus sell.
You have probably seen the gurus claiming they read a book a day by “absorbing” pages diagonally or using their peripheral vision to read whole paragraphs at once. That’s not reading; that’s aggressively flipping pages. The human eye’s fovea (the part of your retina responsible for sharp vision) is incredibly small. You physically cannot read words clearly in your deep periphery.
If you actually want to retain information while doubling your word count, you have to work with your brain’s neurological hardware, not against it.
The average adult reads at roughly 238 words per minute (WPM), though the figure varies meaningfully by age, format, and education level. If you have a stack of industry reports, textbooks, or a backlog of newsletters mocking you from your nightstand, that speed will not cut it. Here are five empirically backed techniques to increase your reading speed this week. No magic tricks, just mechanics.
Before you start: find your baseline
You cannot improve what you do not measure. Before applying any of the techniques below, you need to know exactly how fast you currently read.
- Pick your material. Find a non-fiction book you have not read yet (fiction pacing is too variable).
- Set a timer for 1 minute. Read normally for comprehension. Do not rush just because the timer is running.
- Count the lines. When the timer goes off, count exactly how many lines you read.
- Calculate your WPM. Count the words in three average lines, divide by three to get your average words per line, and multiply that by your total lines read.
1. Stop your eyes from backtracking (visual pacing)
If we hook your eyes up to a tracking monitor while you read, they don’t glide smoothly. They move in rapid, jerky jumps called saccades, followed by pauses called fixations.
Worse, your eyes routinely jump backward to re-read words you just looked at. Cognitive scientists call these “regressions,” and Rayner et al.’s 2016 review of the speed-reading literature found they eat up to 15% of your reading time, usually without you even noticing.
The fix: Use a visual pacer. Grab a pen (cap on) or use your index finger. Run it smoothly underneath the line you are reading, forcing your eyes to keep pace. Your eyes are evolutionarily wired to track motion. By giving them a moving target, you drastically reduce micro-regressions and smooth out your saccadic movements.
2. Word chunking (maximise your fixations)
Untrained readers fixate their eyes on almost every single word.
The. Quick. Brown. Fox. But the research is clear: your foveal vision can capture about 1.5 inches of text at standard reading distance (Rayner et al., 2016), roughly 3 to 4 words per fixation.
The fix: Stop reading word-by-word and start reading in chunks. Instead of looking at 10 individual words on a line, force your eyes to make only 3 or 4 stops (“fixations”) per line.
| Inefficient (10 fixations): | [The] [quick] [brown] [fox] [jumps] [over] [the] [lazy] [dog.] |
| Efficient (3 fixations): | [The quick brown] [fox jumps over] [the lazy dog.] |
You just saved seven micro-pauses per line. Multiply that by a 300-page book, and you have saved hours.
3. Tame (don’t kill) the voice in your head
When you read, do you hear the words spoken in your mind? That’s subvocalisation.
Speed reading gurus will tell you to eliminate this inner voice completely. Science says otherwise. Just and Carpenter’s 1980 work in Psychological Review established that subvocalisation is intimately tied to working memory and comprehension. If you suppress it entirely, your comprehension of complex text plummets.
However, your internal monologue speaks at about 250 WPM, while your visual processing centre can parse straightforward text much faster.
The fix: You don’t need to kill the inner voice; you need to minimise it. Stop mentally sounding out every syllable. Let your inner voice “mumble” the key nouns and verbs while your eyes glide over the filler words (the, and, of, to). Save full subvocalisation for dense, complex paragraphs that require deep parsing.
4. The meta-guide (strategic pre-reading)
Not all text is created equal, yet we treat every sentence like a legal contract. Technical writing and non-fiction are highly structured. Your brain is a predictive engine, and if it knows the structure of the argument beforehand, it processes the filler text much faster.
The fix: Before you read a chapter linearly, spend 60 seconds skimming the architecture:
- The title and subtitles.
- Bolded words and bullet points.
- The first and last sentence of every paragraph.
When you go back to read the text fully, your brain isn’t working as hard to figure out context, allowing your WPM to naturally increase without sacrificing retention.
5. Eliminate the mechanical friction (the RSVP method)
Even if you master visual pacing and word chunking, the physical act of moving your eyeballs left-to-right takes time.
What if you didn’t have to move your eyes at all?
This is called Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP). Instead of your eyes moving across the text, the text flashes in a single, stationary focal point. By keeping your eyes static, you bypass the physical friction of saccades entirely.
The scientific catch: Cognitive research shows that if you crank RSVP to 800 WPM on a complex physics paper, your working memory bottlenecks and comprehension drops. But for processing your daily diet of emails, newsletters, industry updates, and straightforward articles? It removes the friction entirely.
The fix: You can’t do this with a paperback, which is exactly why we built Accruva.
Look, you don’t need an app to read faster: techniques 1 through 4 will get you massive gains on sheer discipline alone. But discipline takes energy. If you value your time, you can copy-paste your PDFs, articles, or emails into the app, set your optimal WPM threshold, and let the engine flash the text at you in a perfectly paced stream.
It’s the difference between walking up ten flights of stairs and taking the elevator. You arrive at the same destination; one just doesn’t leave you exhausted.
Where this leaves you
Speed reading isn’t magic; it’s the systematic optimisation of how your brain and eyes process data. Stop re-reading, start chunking words, strategically preview your material, and let technology do the heavy lifting for your daily digital backlog.
Pick one technique above. Apply it to the next article you open today. Your reading list isn’t getting any smaller.
Want to practise these techniques right now?
Accruva’s Focus mode uses visual pacing automatically, no pen required. Paste any article, set your WPM, and start training.
Get Accruva freeFrequently asked questions
Is speed reading actually real, or just a myth?
How long does it take to learn speed reading?
Should I really stop subvocalising when I read?
Does using my finger to read look childish?
Can speed reading techniques help with ADHD or dyslexia?
What is the difference between speed reading and skimming?
Do speed reading apps actually work, or is it just gimmicks?
None of this requires a special brain. It requires practising the right techniques on the material you would be reading anyway. The hardest part is starting.
Ross Proudfoot, founder of Accruva
Reading modes built on the science you just read
Focus mode automates the RSVP technique. Chunking mode trains your eyes to read in groups. Plus Bold Flow, Scroll, and Teleprompter for different kinds of material. Free on every tier, no card required.
