READ FASTER,

LEARN ANYTHING.
Speed Reading and Learning
Productivity Tips with SwiftRead

By Troy, Developer of SwiftRead

[email protected]
 Table of
Contents
Z

pg1 Introduction

pg2 Speed and comprehension

pg3 Color and typography influence your reading productivity

pg6 Visual reading to improve comprehension

pg7 Take notes and practice recall to improve comprehension

pg8 How to use SwiftRead to read PDFs and ePUBs

pg9 Faster reading, better learning

Introduction
SwiftRead (called Spreed back then) was born one cold, winter day. It was the week before Christmas
and all the other students had finished their first semester finals and had gone home. But not me. I was
still on campus, stressing about the mountain of news articles, blog posts, and webpages I had to read
before the snow would melt.

Why did I have to do so much online reading so quickly? Because I would be interviewing for internships
in the financial services industry in a few short months. And I was expected to read and know
everything about the recent economic news, major mergers and acquisitions, monetary policy moves,
and even fluctuations of the stock market. I wasn’t a particularly fast reader—on paper or in the browser
—so I decided to whip up a Chrome extension that could super-charge my reading speed while reading
things in the browser (I’d later develop another Chrome extension to help me improve my “on-paper”
reading speed).

What SwiftRead used to look like and what it looks like today. You’ll learn later why pure white text on
a black background isn’t the best color contrast for reading. 

Fast-forward to today, where I can read and learn a lot faster, thanks to tools like SwiftRead (and yes, I
got the internship!). I developed the advanced features of SwiftRead PRO to help me and my users read
faster and learn more in a more comfortable and productive environment than in the free version. In the
following pages I’m going to share the most effective speed reading and learning productivity tips I’ve
learned over the years while using SwiftRead / SwiftRead PRO.

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Speed & Comprehension
We all want to be faster learners and faster readers. But “reading” fast doesn’t help if you don’t
understand any of what you’re reading (can it even be called “reading” in the first place?). So speed
reading isn’t only about reading faster, but also about making sure that you still understand what you
read, and that you can remember it later. Let’s call these two dimensions of speed reading “speed” and
“comprehension”.

Reading faster does not necessarily mean worse comprehension. Of course, if you suddenly force
yourself to read 10 times faster than you can currently read, you won’t understand anything you read.
But the reality is that most people can quite easily read 2-3x faster without much of a hit, if any, to
comprehension and understanding. In other words, because of distractions or poor reading habits, we
often read 2-3 times slower than what we’d otherwise be capable of.

If your current reading speed and

comprehension level is at the green triangle,
SwiftRead can help you get to the purple
circle: a reading speed that’s 2-3 times higher
without much of change in comprehension.
With practice and optimizing your speed
reading experience, you can “shift the curve”
and reach the orange circle, increasing your
reading speed even more without much of a
decrease—if any—in comprehension.

SwiftRead helps you achieve these early but meaningful gains in reading speed by providing a distraction-
free reading environment and having you focus on one word, or a single group of words, at one time,
which eliminates unnecessary re-reading the slower process of subvocalization—the habit of “sounding
out” the words. SwiftRead PRO helps you increase your speed and comprehension limits even further
with color schemes, fonts, and customizable options that enhance both reading focus and comfort.

Now that we’re on the same page about how both speed and comprehension matter for speed reading,
let’s dive into some of the specific speed reading productivity tips that I’ve found most impactful.

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 PRO TIP #1

Color and typography influence

your reading productivity.

There are several surveys and guidelines out there on how color and typography affect the readability of
text, both in terms of how legible the text is but also how comfortable it is to read it. This matters
because if we aren’t comfortable while reading, we read less and thus learn less. While far from
randomized clinical trials, surveys and guidelines are still better than no data, and we can use this data
along with our own “data” and observations from our own experiences to see how color and typography
influence how we read.

Constrast
Before even considering color, we must talk about contrast. The contrast between the color of the text
and the color of the background can enhance or detract from the text’s readability and your ability to
focus on it for long periods of time.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) state that large text should have a contrast ratio of at
least 4.5:1 so that the text can be read by people with moderately low vision.1 But we also don’t want a
contrast ratio that’s too high: a study showed that a contrast ratio that’s too high—like pure black text on
a pure white background, which has a contrast ratio of 21:1—was associated with slower reaction times,
even though it is considered highly legible.2 A high contrast between the text and background can cause
more eye strain as well over long reading times.

SwiftRead PRO has a pure black text on pure white background color scheme for maximum
legibility but also “softer” contrast color schemes for better reading comfort, which still pass
WCAG’s minimums for contrast ratio.

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The “direction” of the contrast matters too. Another study showed that dark text on a light background
is more legible than light text on a dark background: sometimes, light text on a dark background can
create a “glowing" effect around the letters which hurts readability.3 It’s for this reason that more of the
predefined color schemes in SwiftRead PRO have dark text on a light background. But in dark
environments, light text on a dark background, especially when a contrast ratio isn’t too high, may offer
better reading comfort.

Dark text on a light background is considered more legible. But, readability may suffer if you’re
reading in a dark environment, where light text on a dark background is more comfortable.

Color
In addition to contrast, the actual color of the text and background can also influence your reading
productivity. In one of the same studies as before, the researchers found that people rated any color
combination that included black as highly readable. The two least readable color combinations were red
on green and fuchsia on blue. White on blue was also ranked highly.4

Additionally, we all have emotional associations when we see different colors. For example, blue tends
to be seen as a calming and can stimulate clear thought and aid concentration.5 Yellow is thought of as
exciting or sunny, which can help as well when reading and learning. When we engage emotionally with
what we’re learning, we remember it better.6

This is one of the predefined SwiftRead PRO color

schemes that uses the positive associations with
the colors blue and yellow to help enhance focus
and memory, while using dark text on a light
background at a medium contrast ratio to
maximize reading legibility and comfort.

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Typography
The type of font a text is written in can also influence how readable it is. For example, when reading
alphabetic characters, most people prefer serif fonts (like Times New Roman) to sans-serif fonts (like
Arial), but either kind of font can seem more readable to different people. For example, maybe older
readers tend to be more familiar with reading serif fonts because they grew up reading serif fonts from
print books and newspapers, and so can recognize those characters faster. Younger readers may prefer
sans-serif fonts more because higher resolutions screens have allowed sans-serif fonts to be more
legible.

Fonts can be specifically designed to be more legible when read for over long periods of time. For
example, Amazon designed a serif font called Bookerly for the Kindle, which it claims helps the user
“read faster with less eyestrain”.7 Dyslexie is a sans-serif font that was designed to minimize issues
dyslexics face when reading.8 SwiftRead PRO includes both of these fonts and several others so that you
can pick and choose which font you feel most comfortable reading.

From contrast to color and typography, there’s a lot we can change about how text is presented to us
that can help us read faster, longer, and with better retention.

These are the fonts that you can pick in SwiftRead

PRO. They were highly rated for readability.
Experiment with them to find which one you feel
the most comfortable reading in!

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 PRO TIP #2

Visual reading habits can improve

comprehension.
Aside from changing our reading environment to maximize reading productivity, we can also develop
reading and learning habits that help us read faster and remember more. One such habit for reading
faster while maintaining comprehension is what’s known as “visual reading”. Visual reading is when you
visualize the content of your reading, as you read it. For example, if you see the words “the quick brown
fox jumped over the lazy dog”, with visual reading you would actively visualize a brown fox quickly
jumping over a lazy, perhaps sleeping, dog.

When you are visual reading, you’re not necessarily reading each word one by one, even though you see
each word. Instead you are “reading” the ideas. You’re also not moving your mouth or throat or silently
saying the words to yourself when you read, called subvocalization, which slows you down.

Also, when you read visually you engage the visual portions of the brain and create more mental
associations for your brain to “hook” memories onto. This concept is similar to how color (or even non-
distracting music) can create mental associations while you read and help you learn more productively.
The more senses we engage when we’re learning, the better we learn.9

A tool like SwiftRead helps you read more visually because it presents you the words at a constant pace
so that you don’t have time to subvocalize or even focus too much on every single word. This allows you
to “read” and visualize the ideas that the text talks about, which increases your reading speed and can
help you remember what you read even better than before.

Give visual reading a try to speed up your reading while maintaining, or even improving,
comprehension. Assuming you are already proficient in the language you’re reading, try to actively focus
on visualizing the ideas you’re reading about, instead of focusing on the words themselves.

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 PRO TIP #3

Take notes and practice recall to

improve comprehension.
Another important learning habit to use when you’re reading is to take notes and try remembering what
you read. Taking notes while you read (or afterwards) forces your brain to engage with the material,
which helps you remember what you learn.

But it’s important to not get so lost in the note-taking that you miss the big picture or the essential
questions in what you’re learning. Sometimes we may be so busy taking notes that our brain assumes
that because the information was written down, there’s no need to remember it.10 So instead of trying to
write every word down while you take notes, focus on the essential details and try to paraphrase or
synthesize what you’re learning. This idea is similar to visual reading and how we can improve our
reading productivity by not focusing too much on the words themselves and instead visualize the
messages and ideas we’re reading.

Another tip to increase how much you learn and remember from your reading notes is to come up with
questions that you can ask yourself, where the answers to those questions are in your notes. This is the
Cornell Notetaking system. Engaging with your notes in this way is another way to help your brain
synthesize the information it just learned, which increases the chances you’ll remember the
information.

You can even turn these questions and answers from your
notes into flashcards and input them into something like
Anki to take advantage of spaced repetition—the idea of
recalling information at increasing intervals of time—and
commit your learnings to long-term memory.11

These are handwritten notes taken in the format of “Cornell

Notes”, with the notes, questions, and summary all in one
page. While you read, you can take similar “question and
answer” notes on your computer or even “handwrite” similar
notes on a tablet.

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 PRO TIP #4

How to use SwiftRead to read PDFs

and ePUBs
We’ve now learned about how a speed reading tool like SwiftRead can work with good reading, note
taking, and recall habits to create an effective learning “system” of sorts.

And this sort of speed reading and learning “system” doesn’t have to just apply to reading websites. Did
you know that SwiftRead can be used to read books in Kindle Cloud Reader, PDFs, Google Docs, and
even ePUBs too? Here’s how:

SwiftRead and PDFs

It’s easy to use SwiftRead to speed read PDF documents:

1. Click on the SwiftRead icon next to the address bar,

then on “Open PDF Reader”
2. Follow the instructions on the screen to read your
PDF with SwiftRead

SwiftRead and ePUBs

ePUB is a common ebook file format. You can now read
ePUB files directly in SwiftRead:

1. Click on the SwiftRead icon next to the address bar,

then on “Open ePUB Reader”
2. Follow the instructions on the screen to read your
ePUB with SwiftRead

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Faster reading, better learning
Those are some of the reading and learning techniques that I’ve found to be most effective. You can
speed read more than just websites with SwiftRead. SwiftRead itself helps you eliminate
subvocalization and too much focus on the words themselves to read more visually, which means
faster reading while maintaining comprehension. SwiftRead PRO’s complete customizability allows
you to read in an environment that provides maximal focus, comfort, and productivity. Along with a
good note taking and flashcard system to further solidify and remember what you learn from reading,
you’re well on your way to faster reading and better learning.

Reading is a faster way to learn than listening to audio or watching a video, especially if you speed
read and use tools like SwiftRead to do so. And we all know that knowledge is power and that learning
and reading are the ultimate meta-skills. If you can read and learn well, you can achieve almost
anything. Think about how much our own lives and society would change if we could all read and
learn 10% faster, 10% more, every year. It’s my hope that I’m contributing to that vision by building
tools like SwiftRead and sharing effective reading and learning techniques through content like this.
I’m looking forward to the amazing contributions you’ll make to your own life and the lives of others
when you can read and learn faster.

“And we all know that knowledge is

power and that learning and reading
are the ultimate meta-skills. If you can
read and learn well, you can achieve
almost anything.”

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Thank you

Support my work
• Share this ebook or SwiftRead with your friends
& family!
• Upgrade to SwiftRead PRO if you haven’t already
• Leave a review on the Chrome Web Store
• Join the mailing list for updates
Footnotes
Z
01 https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/contrast-enhanced.html

02 https://www.laurenscharff.com/research/AHNCUR.html

03 https://www.laurenscharff.com/research/survreslts.html

04 https://www.laurenscharff.com/research/survreslts.html

05 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2158244014525423

06 http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/oct94/vol52/num02/How-Emotions-Affect-

Learning.aspx

07 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bookerly

08 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyslexie

09 https://faculty.ucr.edu/~aseitz/pubs/Shams_Seitz08.pdf

10 https://www.myguruedge.com/our-thinking/myguru-blog/note-taking-and-memory-put-down-the-pen

11 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition