Brain upgrading: increasing the rate at which you think!
/By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.
Reading time:
Summary = 2 mins
Entire blog post = 10 mins
Summary: You can train your brain to read faster. This increases the pace at which you think. This has many benefits:
eg 1. As you can think faster you no longer need to devote 100% of your mental bandwidth to keeping up with conversations, making conversations ‘calmer’ / more engaging / less stressful.
eg 2. You can get more done each hour.
Overview:
Just like your body, you can train your mind.
The average person reads at 200 words per minute with 60% comprehension. A top 1% reader does 1,000 words per minute at 85% comprehension. Yes, more words AND more comprehension. This is not skipping words.
No one is born able to speak, let alone read, let alone read at 1,000 words per minute!
IMO anyone can get to read at 1,000 words per minute, it just requires training.
I constantly train my brain to comprehend information faster.
My fav methods of training are speeding up Youtube, Netflix, Podcasts & Audiobooks. Details on how to do this below.
I started off at 1.25x speed and thought this was fast. Slowly I’ve increased the speeds, it’s so much fun!
Learning to read faster increases the speed at which you can think. This has many benefits:
I spend ~2 hours a day listening at 5x+ speed (at a frenetic pace). The rest of the day I spend speaking with people at 1x speed. Being able to think faster allows the rest of the day at 1x speed to be much calmer. Eg instead of having to spend all of my mental bandwidth to just keep up with what someone is saying at 1x speed, I can listen to what they are saying AND think about what they are saying. While they are speaking I can think:
‘Do I understand what they are saying?’
‘Should I ask a clarifying question?’
‘Ok, I think I understand what they are saying, how should I respond?’
Etc etc.
Jingle 1: So listening to podcasts at a frenetic pace doesn’t make life more stressful, it makes life calmer!
It allows you to think faster so when by yourself you can get more done = more improvement to the world, more value added, all else equal more pay.
So training the mind to think faster = 1. Calmer in discussion with others + 2. More done when by yourself = better life :)
Jingle 2: You upgrade your phone, why not upgrade your mind too?
++++++++++++++
Details
Delectable data (for Duncan):
The average person speaks at 120 words a minute (2 words per second) - link.
The Guinness world record holder speaks at 637 words per minute - link.
The average person reads at 200 words per minute with 60% comprehension - link.
A top 1% read does 1000 words per minute at 85% comprehension - link.
Yes 5x the reading speed AND higher comprehension. This is not ‘skipping words’.
1000 words per minute is 8.3x as fast as the average person speaking. Wowsers, that’s a big wack of words!
There are reports of people reading at 1900 words per minute… and even up to 4000 words per minute - link.
People watch the olympics and world’s strongest man competitions, well I want to want speaking and reading competitions :). The Olympics stokes nationalism? Speaking and reading competitions foster self improvement ;P!
Just like your body, you can train your mind.
If you have never been running before you won’t run very fast. But train every day for a marathon and you’ll get much much faster at running.
If you have never lifted weights before you are not going to be very strong. But if you go to the gym each day you’ll be able to get much stronger.
Imagine if you had only ever ‘walked’ between 2 points before... but then you found out that you could run between two points and get there in 20% of the time.
IMO your brain acclimates to what is around it. Ie 1x average speaking speed (ie ~120 words per minute).
However IMO, just like your body, your mind can ‘run’ too. You can make your mind fitter (ie increase words per minute).
IMO doing so:
1. Increases how much you can help the world be better (ie all else equal the more you know the more you can help)
2. Makes life calmer.
What is a comfortable speed?
You know how if you have been driving on a freeway at 100 km/hour and then you go back to driving at 60 km/hour and it feels really slow.
If you have ever been a runner, do you remember when 10 km/hour was maximum exertion and really tiring. Then you got fitter and your max was 15 hm/hour, and now running at 10 km/hour feels pedestrian!
Well I’ve found the same to be true for listening to content and reading.
How do I train my brain to increase words per minute?
I use text to audio programs and slowly crack up the speed.
Programs I use:
Podcasts: I have helped create a podcast app that goes up to 32x speed (that is not a typo). It’s called OwlTail - link. If a person speaks at 120 words per minute 32x is 3,840 words per minute :)!
Text to audio on iPhone:
iPhone has accessibility functions that will read the text on any screen aloud to you. IT. IS. GENIUS! (... pity about the bars at Apple stores)
How to turn this on and use here.
Unfortunately it caps out at 800 words per minute. That used to be way above what I could handle, not it’s below :(. Please Apple increase the maximum to 2000 :). Does anyone know the Apple engineer in charge of this? I’d love to talk to them about increasing the speed!
I really love the computer voices as the faster you go the more important the pronunciation is. Computers never mispronounce. Humans never pronounce 100% correctly. Initially I hated the computer voices… now I love them. Perfect pronunciation is particularly pretty.
Audiobooks:
I used to use Audible but this caps out at 3.5x.
I now use the iPhone text-to-audio function in the previous bullet point to read Kindle books aloud. 1. It goes faster. 2. It’s easier to understand at speed. 3. Kindle books typically cost less than audio books. 4. When you hear a sentence you really like stop the audio and copy the words. You can’t copy the words out of an audiobook easily.
Ie Kindle text-to-audio is better in every way for me and Audiobooks.
Video on a computer:
With this bookmark you can speed up videos (eg like Youtube, Netflix) to 16x before it breaks.
Add the following as a bookmark in Chrome:
“javascript: function changeSpeed(){var newSpeed=prompt("Enter playback rate:","4.0");if(newSpeed!==null){var videos=document.getElementsByTagName('video');if (videos.length>0){for(var i=0;i<videos.length;++i){videos[i].playbackRate=newSpeed;};}else {alert("No videos found");}}}changeSpeed();void 0”
I find it quite entertaining watching people moving around at silly speeds on YouTube :).
Text to audio on a computer:
GhostReader is my weapon of choice here.
Annoyingly they only go up to 800 words per minute here too.
Turning any article on the web into an audio file that you can listen to as a podcast episode
Ever had a 10k word article online you don’t get the time to read? Or even a 500 word article?
I use a program called Narro to turn this article into an audiofile that I can listen to in any podcast client.
This is also GENIUS. FYI I do my listening on my commute to work and also while exercising.
I think of three different models for listening to / reading content:
The modes:
1. Growing your maximum
2. Comfortable listening (typically 80% of max)
3. Normal speaking speed
I’ve slowly been increasing the words per minute I can handle for years. I’m up to about 1000 words per minute.
What do I do?
Each morning I listen to 1.5-2 hours of audio as I do exercise and commute to work.
Phase 1: increasing max comprehension speed.
I normally start with something a bit lighter and that I don’t care if I get 100% of.
I’ll listen to this at a new maximum speed, eg 6x speed.
I don’t get 100% of what is being talked about, this is about growing my maximum and it takes physical exertion to try and understand. Eg close your eyes and concentrate!
I normally do this for about 30 mins of 1x speed content (this is 5 mins of time at 6x speed).
Phase 2: comfortable listening where I want to take in as much of the content as much as possible
After ‘Phase 1’ I then wind back the speed to 80-90% of maximum.
Just like after driving at 100 km/hour and then coming back to 60 km/hour where things feel slow. I find the same for podcasts, after running at max everything seems comprehensible, calm and relaxed…. At something like 5x speed! Ha!
Using this technique I’ve slowly been able to crank up max speed. I’ve hit the max in every podcast player I used after a while. With OwlTail we pushed to create a really fast speed up algorithm, and now we have 32x :)! Don’t know if I’ll ever get there!
Personal story:
I started speeding up content in 2011. I remember at the time I was proud that I could listen at 1.25x for podcasts.
Then I heard about a person doing 2x and was like ‘WTF, how could anyone listen that fast?’
Now I’m annoyed that Apple’s build in text-to-audio on iPhone maxes out at 800 words per minute (6.6x average person speaking speed).
I’m no different to you, I’ve just been training myself for 8 years. The difference is that 8 years ago the max speed you could get was 2x. So I hit the ceiling really quickly and had to wait until the technology improved.
*aside: I have been finding ‘3rd party’ stress signals to let me know if I’m stressed or not. One of my 3rd party stress signals is how good I am at paying attention to podcasts in the morning?
Eg If I have to cut speed back to 50% of max then I’m normally very stressed. This is a signal to stop listening to podcasts at all and just chill while at the gym; and to make sure I’m very gentle to myself that day.
It’s funny, when I’m not stressed listening to podcasts gives me energy.
When I am stressed not listening to podcasts gives me energy!
Phase 3: the rest of the day when speaking to people at 1x is way calmer as my mind is capable of going much faster than 1x speed because of the upgrades I’ve done.
It’s funny, I go to the gym to be good to my body and to train my body.
But I’m also at the gym being good to my mind (making time on average calmer) through training my brain to comprehend faster.
So the gym is for my body and my mind :)!
“Life is not about time management, it is about energy management.”
Is listening to content at a frenetic pace going to be more than offset by the calmness it gives during the day? I made a quick model for y’all :)!
Comment:
The time I spend pushing a new max is less than 10 mins a day.
The time spent at work is WAY longer than this. Even if I did ‘only’ 1 hour of talking to people at work a day this is still a positive energy exercise for me. And I normally do much more than 1 hour of speaking to people at work.
The model above suggests that the time spent listening faster is net positive for your energy.
But more than this, listening faster means you think faster.
All else equal, thinking faster means you get more done.
I think one of the best hacks to a good job is to ‘help make the world better’. If you think faster => should get more done to help improve the world => enjoy job more => this is energising :)!
So listening faster for me each day:
1. Makes the time I talk with others at work more energising and
2. Makes the time I don’t talk with others are work more energising (because of getting more done through thinking faster).
Wins all around people :).
Selfish lens: if you think faster => get more done => add more value => all else equal get paid more.
To be healthy you need to have good physical health and good mental health. So go to the gym for your body and your mind… at the same time :)!
The more you know about something the more interesting it is.
I’ve talked about this in blogs such as this one.
If you take in knowledge per hour => all else equal you know more about the world per hour => the world becomes more interesting more quickly => you like consuming information more :).