Most adults read the way they were taught at six or seven years old, and according to brain coach Jim Kwik, that is exactly why reading feels slow and tiring. In this clip from his 2019 London Real interview, he explains the habit that holds most readers back, and why getting past it can make you two or three times faster.
The conversation starts with the inner critic and ends with regret, but at its centre is a simple, practical idea about the voice in your head.
▶ Watch the full episode: Jim Kwik – How to Master Your Memory
Fighting for your limitations
Kwik begins with the beliefs we build to protect ourselves. We are born a blank slate, he says, and as we try to avoid pain we form general rules about ourselves: I have a bad memory, I’m too old, I’m not smart enough. His standard reply to people who say this at his events is blunt: “if you fight for your limitations, you get to keep them.”
That is why he values journaling and meditation. Both make you more aware of your inner talk, and that inner talk, he says, is also the reason most of us read so slowly.
Decades into days
The case for reading faster is simple. If an author has put decades of experience into a book and you can read it in a few days, you can, in his phrase, download decades into days. That saves time and mistakes, and builds expertise. In his view, the gap in society is not only between those who have money and those who don’t, but between those who know and those who don’t.
Yet most people have never been taught to read beyond school age. He asks Brian when he last took a class actually called reading. Probably at six years old, they agree, even though what we have to read has grown hugely since then.
The voice in your head
Brian admits he struggles with reading and asks whether an inner voice is the problem. It is, says Kwik, and it has a name: subvocalisation. If you have to say each word in your head to understand it, you can only read as fast as you can speak. Your reading speed is capped at your talking speed, not your thinking speed.
His point is that around 95% of the words we read are words we have seen thousands of times. You don’t need to pronounce “New York City” to know what it means. Trained readers, he explains, reduce subvocalisation and read by sight. Most of us never learned that, because we were taught to read aloud in class and then told to read quietly to ourselves, so we simply internalised the voice.
Learning like a child
The same inner voice, Kwik says, is also our critic and doubter. Children are the fastest learners partly because of neuroplasticity, but also because they play and are not afraid of mistakes. A toddler falls hundreds of times and never quits to avoid looking bad. Adults often try something once or twice and stop.
He ends on purpose and regret. We can go broke, he says, buying into other people’s opinions. And when we reach the end, there is “not a lot of room in there for regret.”
What to take from it
The practical step is to notice the voice when you read, and to trust your eyes with familiar words. The wider lesson is that many limits, from reading speed to fear of failure, are habits we learned, not facts about who we are.
Who is Jim Kwik?
Jim Kwik is a brain coach and expert in speed-reading, memory and accelerated learning. After a childhood brain injury left him struggling at school, he developed his own techniques to learn faster, and has since coached business leaders, athletes and actors. He is the author of the bestselling book Limitless.
This clip comes from his 2019 London Real interview, How to Master Your Memory. He first appeared on the show in 2018 with Unleash The Genius Within You.
See everything Jim Kwik has done with London Real on his guest page: Jim Kwik on London Real.
More on London Real
Transcript
Transcript: Jim Kwik – The Simple Trick To Triple Your Reading Speed
0:00 Jim Kwik: When we’re first born, we’re a blank slate. There’s nothing there until we have an experience, and we try to avoid the pain. And so we come up with these global, general beliefs about things that protect us. That’s why I think practices of mindfulness are so important, because they bring us into the moment. Know that our thoughts aren’t necessarily who we are. You’ve heard me say this: people come to me all the time at events, and they say things like, “Jim, I have a horrible memory,” or “I’m getting too old,” or “I’m not smart enough.” And I always tell people: if you fight for your limitations, you get to keep them.
0:38 Jim Kwik: You have to be careful and mindful of these thoughts. That’s why I think journaling is an important tool, and meditation is an important tool, because it sensitises you to this inner talk, this critic, if you will. Which, incidentally, on a total tangent, that inner talk is why we read so slowly. I know I’m going very tangential, but one of the things I teach companies and individuals is to read two or three times faster.
1:05 Jim Kwik: Imagine if you could go online and pick up 30 books and read them in 30 or 60 days. What kind of advantage would you have? A lot of your guests are authors, and they have decades of experience. If they can put it into a book and you can sit down and read that book in a few days, then you can download decades into days. That’s the biggest advantage there is, because it saves you time and mistakes and errors. And it gives you this level of expertise, where experts are some of the most valued people in our society. Yes, there’s a gap in wealth, but there’s also a gap between those who know and those who don’t know.
1:51 Jim Kwik: I’m not a great golfer. I don’t play golf very well, so I don’t play it very much. It’s this confidence loop in psychology: if I played golf better, I’d probably play it more, and I’d get better at it. Same thing with any kind of skill. When it comes to reading, most people say they’re not a really great reader. And it’s not their fault, because, going back to that blank slate, you’re not born with the ability to read. You were taught in school, but when’s the last time you took a class called reading? Brian, how old were you the last time you took not a college lit class, but a class called reading? Six years old or something?
2:38 Brian Rose: Right.
2:39 Jim Kwik: And that’s the thing. Most of us are still reading like we’re six or seven years old. The difficulty and the demand have increased exponentially, but our skills haven’t updated to that level. So that growing gap creates that stress.
2:53 Brian Rose: Yeah, I struggle with reading. Is it because you think there’s an inner voice going along?
2:58 Jim Kwik: Yeah. That inner voice is called subvocalisation. You ever notice when you’re reading something, you hear that inner voice inside your head reading along with you? Hopefully it’s your own voice, not somebody else’s voice in there. The reason it’s an obstacle to your reading is that if you have to say the words inside your mind in order to understand them, then you can only read as fast as you can speak. That’s why most people are slow readers: they’re saying the words. So their reading speed is limited to their talking speed, not their thinking speed. That’s why you can listen to an audiobook or a podcast at a higher speed, because you can understand that pace, but you can’t speak at that pace.
3:40 Brian Rose: Gotcha.
3:41 Jim Kwik: And here’s the thing. When you’re reading, 95% of the words you see are words you’ve seen many times, thousands of times, countless times. So you don’t have to pronounce a word or a series of words like “New York City” in order to understand what New York City is. The best readers, the trained readers, reduce that subvocalisation and read by sight. That’s a huge advantage, but we weren’t taught that, because subvocalisation has been there ever since we were children. They’d pass around that book and you’d have to read it out loud. And then later on, teachers said: read silently to yourself, read quietly to yourself. And we internalised that voice.
4:23 Jim Kwik: But going back, that voice is also the critic, the doubter, the squelcher: we don’t want to make mistakes. And we know, in terms of accelerated learning, the fastest learners are children. How fast can a child learn a musical instrument? How fast can they learn another language? They have this sense of wonder. Part of it is their neuroplasticity. But science is showing now that no matter what your age, you can create new brain cells to the day you die. You can create new connections using the power of novelty and nutrition. It’s amazing.
5:02 Jim Kwik: But I think also children play. They’re very playful. They’re not afraid of making mistakes. A child learning how to walk could fall four, five, six times, or four, five, six hundred times. But they never, after 12 times, say: OK, I’m quitting, I’m not going to do this because I don’t want to look bad. But adults, we do that. If we’re honest, most adults will try something once or twice, and then they stop, because they have that fear of looking bad. I feel like that’s what keeps us from being the person we’re supposed to be: that inner critic, the fear of looking bad to others.
5:39 Jim Kwik: And you and I have talked about this: you can go broke buying into the opinions and expectations of those around you. For those people who are trying to find their passion and their purpose, and I know a lot of your viewers ask about that, I feel like sometimes we know it, but it’s buried underneath all that other stuff, and we’re always scared about what other people are going to think. But going back to “begin with the end in mind”: when we’re in that coffin, there’s not a lot of room in there for possessions. I’m all for people having all the toys, everything, but there’s also not a lot of room in there for regret. So we want to live each day coming from that place.
