Many people are told that the first thing they need to do in order to increase reading speed is to focus on the number of words per minute they’re able to scan, and learn the ways to make that number higher. While it’s true that there are valuable techniques that you can learn to widen your focus, train your eyes to group words, and teach your mind to target key words (all of which will raise your overall speed), if you’re ignoring comprehension, then you’re not really speed reading. After all, anyone can quickly scan through a few pages or chapters of a book, moving their eyes down the page and flipping those pages over, but if they get to the end of the text and have no idea what they’ve read, it’s just a show. Rather than making speed your primary focus, we recommend that you keep comprehension at the core of your speed reading practice.

That having been said, there are different levels of comprehension, and that’s something you also need to keep in mind. For example, if you’re an employee who has been given the task of reading a departmental procedure guide in order to do a new job, you’ll want to make sure you read it slowly enough that you get all of the details, so that you can do your job correctly. On the other hand, if you’re the head of the department and you’re reviewing the procedure guide for accuracy, a quick skim through will likely give you all the information you need about whether the author included the necessary steps. Obviously, as the employee in this example, you’re responsible for understanding and remembering the full text, as well as being able to apply what you’ve learned to your job. As the department head, you should be able to trust the author to have included all the details (which you would already know, we hope) and therefore would only have to scan for key words, headings, and categories to make sure they had covered all of the aspects of the procedure.

In other words, you need to think about why you’re reading something before you start to read it, and that will help you determine the appropriate reading speed to use. Think about questions you have that you’d expect the text to answer, and keep those in mind as you read. Don’t worry about your speed, but concentrate on comprehension instead. You’ll find that as you get more efficient as a reader, and better able to judge the rate you need as well as the answers you’re looking for, your speed will naturally increase.