I’ve been reading about Tim Ferriss’ new book The 4-Hour Workweek after seeing it mentioned on Scoble’s blog. There are definitely some elements of Don Lapre in the presentation but I did find his outsourcing life idea interesting and oddly humorous.

Despite my skepticism, I looked through Tim’s site¹ in a little more detail and stumbled upon his amazingly simple explanation of speed reading that actually works for me. I was so surprised with the discovery I wanted to keep it to myself–fortunately for patrons of the ModernBizzle the feeling eventually wore off.

This is an excerpt from the Low-Information Diet “manifesto” on changethis.com:

Reading isn’t a linear process but a series of jumps (saccades) and independent snapshots (fixations). To feel both, put the tip of your index finger on one closed eye and slowly trace a straight horizontal line on a wall with the other.

Reading speed increases to the extent that you reduce the number and duration of fixations per line. That is the verifiable science of speed reading in one sentence.

The process is simple. First, draw a vertical line down the center of five text pages, then draw two additional vertical lines to either side of each center line. Practice fixating only at the points where these vertical lines intersect the horizontal lines of text, then progress to unmarked pages of text. By training peripheral vision and consolidating eye movement, you will be reading at least three-times faster than before.

Download the pdf and go to page 13 to see an example of the “lines” he is talking about.

1. Tim’s site regularly refreshes the page for some reason. To increase pageview count? ↩