Why I Gave Up Speedreading
It’s not that speedreading doesn’t work. It works well once you gain the skill. The problem is with diminishing marginal utility. Meaning, the more you do something the less value it has. Reading is no different.
Also, even if speedreading reading Charles Dickens meant I got through his books, it didn’t mean I gained any pleasure from them. Dickens is only good reading when I go through his stuff as slow as possible. Same with many other authors. You can’t expect to gain anything by speedreading Henry James.
If I speedread other books, like milquetoast self-help books, it’s not any better. I get information faster, but nothing sticks. I’ve never found a way to get what I speedread to stick. I’ve tried doing things like “I’ll speed read this 10 news articles so I can get a good handle on this story,” or “I’ll speed read this persons tweet history or social media history to gain perspective on who they are.” Speed reading does that to you, you think you can go through the works of someone, as if there’s value in that. As if you can speedrun someone’s life and gain all their life lessons.
I stopped speedreading because I didn’t learn any life lessons by plowing through stacks of books. The only life lesson was the realization of how much time I was wasting. I actually spent more time reading books when I was reading fast than when I read slow. Reading became about growing a big number of books read, it became about getting to the next book.
You also develop a book-lust when you speedread. Suddenly you want to devour as much as you can. Book greed and book hoarding become a thing. Why does he need all of those books?
I am reminded of a time I read about Vanderbilt, a wealthy American, and saw a blurb about how he read loads of books in his huge personal library. Good for him! That’s all one can take from that. Did Vanderbilt write anything as a result of all that reading? No, he didn’t. No one gained a thing from his mass reading. It’s kind of like when a wealthy person or company sits on a pile of cash and does nothing with it. They have a lot of wealth, yes, but who cares if it isn’t being used to do anything, like start up a company and provide jobs, or be spent on things that create jobs for others or spent on luxuries or art or patronage that leaves something behind everyone can enjoy. That sort of thing.
Hoarding reading to yourself isn’t impressive. You could straight up lie about reading 3000 books and no one would care. They might even run away from you or think you’re a weirdo, not a savant or genius. The real genius does stuff with their intelligence. They solve problems other people can’t solve, they produce works of art, not consume them.
Speedreading encourages too much consumption. It’s like buying more and more junk food and never learning to cook. It never ends well and you feel torn about what the point of it is.
I still believe in strategic speedreading, like say you need to learn about something quickly and it isn’t particularly difficult to learn. Notice though how I used the word about. When you want to learn About something, not learn something. To learn something requires a lot more time and diligence than learning about something, which can be nothing more than finding out something exists and noting it for later.
However, I found myself hardly ever speedreading in a strategic manner. Nowadays I read slowly but I have a lot more books on the run then when I speedread. When I speedread I ran through one book after the other. Right now I have seven books I’m plodding through, reading whichever one I’m in the mood for.
Go ahead and speedread if you have to get it out of your system. I used to tell myself it’s better to speedread Anna Karenina then never to have read it at all, but now I’m not so sure. Now I think it’d be better to not read something than read it badly.
Ultimately, speedreading didn’t sit with me well. I felt I was wasting time, not gaining it back. It also led to impatience and you cannot be impatient if you are trying to learn. You also can’t be impatient if you’re trying to enjoy something. When is impatience a virtue? If your brain can fully process a book at 1800 words per minute, then good for you, but you are probably also someone who people would be more interested in seeing what you produce as opposed to what you consume. I used to be interested in what smart people were reading and I’d try to read the same.
In the long run I always remember best what I’ve read slowly and with pleasure. If I ever find myself speedreading it’s a sign I don’t like the book and a clue I should drop it. Good luck out there.
About Me
All you need to know when it comes to me writing about books is that I’ve read 1200+ of them.
Check out my Goodreads if you want to know what I’ve read: Adam’s books on Goodreads (1,288 books)
