In this article, I will be talking to you about how you can read anything faster. And when I say faster, it can be up to three times your usual reading speed.
I have finished books in just one day with this technique, but that happens when I have nothing else to do. It usually takes me a week if I give it one hour a day before I go to sleep and go for a walk.
It doesn’t matter what type of reading material it is; if it is in text form, you will be able to read it, be it an article or a book.
Watch the Video (at 3x :p)
How to read any articles faster
First, let’s talk about articles you come across on the web. You can use text to speech feature to read articles.
Text-to-Spech Chrome Extensions
If you want to read articles on your computer, then you can use chrome extensions like Wavelet for Chrome, an extension from google itself. It’s free to use, and the speech it produces from the text is quite human-like.
But here is an even better technique that will also save you time. Instead of reading the article the right way on your computer.
You can save it for later using the Pocket for Chrome, which Google Chrome extension for the Pocket app available for both iOS and Android.
I have been a user of the Pocket app for the last ten years, and it has saved me a lot of time, not because I can read the articles later on my mobile phone when I am free but also because I use the text-to-speech feature of the pocket app and read the article at 1.5x speed.
I also tried going 2x, but it was too fast for me to understand. You can try it to determine what speech rate is good for you.
My net speed of reading text is even slower than the regular speech rate of the text-to-speech software, it would be around 0.5x, so when I read the articles at 1.5 x, it is 3x of my actual reading speed.
The Pocket app works flawlessly for me for reading articles I discover on my computer and mobile phone. I spend 8 to 10 hours in front of a computer, so it also saves me from putting extra strain on my eyes as I listen to the articles instead of looking and reading at them.
However, suppose the article contains graphs in data. In that case, I have to look at the article as well, but listening to the article and looking at the article at the same time is still faster than just reading the article and looking at the data.
How to read any book faster.
I am already a big fan of ebooks because I can take as many books as I can in my pocket without having to carry the actual books that would limit me to carry one or two books at a time.
Let’s avoid getting into the argument of physical books vs. digital books. If you love reading physical books or the smell of the pages, then good for you, but if you want to craft knowledge written on those pages, you have the flexibility of accessing it anywhere you want, digital books, hands down, at the best options.
It would have been a kindle app for android and iphone if it had a text-to-speech feature, but sadly it doesn’t. So my recommendation is an app that is only available for android.
It’s called Wavelet for Chrome, a fantastic app I have been using for the last decade. It has so many unique features that it deserves a dedicated article talking about it, but let’s focus on the text-to-speech feature in this article.
Another reason I prefer the MoonReader Pro app is that you can import the epub files. Mostly the ebooks you find on the internet are in .epub formats, so if you like a book and want to read, you can do a google search for its people, and within a few minutes, you will be able to find 99% of the titles were looking for.
Once you have the title with you, you can import the file into the moon reader app and use the text-to-speech feature to listen to the book instead of reading it. Again I prefer listening to the article at 1.5x speed.
Suppose you are having trouble finding the epub file for the title you are looking for. In that case, dedicated Audiobook apps such as Audible from Amazon are available, a monthly subscription-based service.
Still, it is worth it if you find the book is read by professionals and the sound is much better than the sound you get on text-to-speech services.
