Imagine this: you pick up a book in the morning, and by the end of the day, you've finished it. Sounds impossible, right? But what if I told you that the only reason people take weeks or even months to finish a book is because they're stuck in an outdated way of reading? They're unknowingly making mistakes that slow them down, limit their understanding, and worst of all, make them forget everything they just read.
Most people believe reading is about going from the first page to the last, word by word, at the same slow pace they've been reading since childhood. But the truth is, the way you're reading right now is holding you back. If you don't fix this, you'll spend your whole life struggling to get through books, feeling frustrated, and never truly absorbing what matters.
I get it. I'm Ujjwal Nova, and I was in the same place. As a med student, I've had to read hundreds of books—at med school and during my bachelor's and master's degrees. I never wanted to spend hours reading every day like most people did because I wanted to spend time doing things I actually cared about. I didn't have the luxury of spending hours reading every single day. I needed a system, a way to read faster, smarter, and better without sacrificing comprehension. So over the years, I found the three best strategies you need to massively increase your reading speed, and after years of trial and error, I found it. A system that tripled my reading speed, helped me absorb knowledge effortlessly, and let me finish books in a fraction of the time it takes most people. I call it the Triforce Reading Method.
Today, I'm going to teach you how to use it to skyrocket your reading speed, understand books on a deeper level, and retain information like never before. This isn't just about reading faster; it's about reading with purpose, getting the maximum value from every book, and actually remembering what you read so you can apply it to your life. And if you follow this method, you will never struggle with reading again. So let's get started.
Step 1: Eliminate the Silent Enemy & Improve Your Baseline Reading Speed
The first strategy of this method is to improve your Baseline reading speed. The biggest mistake stopping you from reading faster is subvocalization—that little voice in your head reading every word out loud. The first part to this is removing your internal monologue.
Why Your Internal Monologue Limits You
Here's the problem: if you read every word in your head, you're stuck at speaking speed, about 200 to 250 words per minute. Your internal monologue, that voice in your head when you read, limits you to read one word at a time, and that obviously caps how fast you can actually go. But your brain can process words way faster than that, at least 500 to 700 words per minute. So to read faster, you need to just see the words instead of hear them in your head.
How to Stop the Silent Enemy
You might think, "How?" But you already do this. Like when you're at a stop sign, you don't read or mouth S-T-O-P; you just visually process it. That's the level of reading we need to reach.
One way is to use a word flasher tool. I use a free website, Speeder, to help me do this. There are free tools like Spritz or Speeder that flash words on your screen in chunks instead of a full page. Websites like Speeder let you change how many words come up or let you group words together so that you don't even give time for that voice in your head or time for you to read it out loud. When words appear rapidly, you don't have time to hear them in your head; you just see and process them instantly. Because your eyes are fast, you'll still process and understand what you read.
It might feel a bit weird at first, but I can guarantee it'll feel normal after a day, and you'll read at least 50% faster. Like, I started at 250 words per minute, and I can do over 500 now pretty easily, even without Speeder and straight from a book.
Another technique is to train your brain to see groups of words. Instead of reading one word at a time, try to read three to four words at once. This is how skilled readers compress time; they don't read line by line, they scan in chunks. A simple way to train this is by drawing two vertical lines down the middle of a page and forcing yourself to only focus on those three sections. This forces your brain to take in more words at once, increasing your reading speed instantly.
The Finger Trick: Fixing Eye Movements with a Visual Tracker
Now, the last part of this first strategy might sound stupid, but what you need is a visual tracker, and I'll help you see why it's good. Try this experiment: first, look straight at the screen and keep your head still. Now, move your eyes across it as smoothly as you can. It's a bit jittery and not smooth, right?
Now, put a finger or a pen in front of you and track that. There you go, it's better just like that. That's because when you just read with your eyes, it's not that smooth because there are these micro-adjustments. Your eyes make tiny, uncontrolled movements, forcing you to reread words without realizing it. You end up double-backing on sentences, and if you're trying to read at 600 words per minute, that time obviously adds up.
But using your finger or a pen as a guide—a tracker—keeps your eyes stable and moving forward at a consistent rate where you don't let yourself go back. Start slow, then increase the speed that you use your tracker over time. If you do this every day, you'll automatically train yourself to read at higher speeds. You'll see your reading easily go up by another 100 words per minute.
Step 2: Read Smarter, Not Just Faster with a Reading Strategy
Now, the second strategy of the Triforce method is making sure to have a reading strategy because knowing when or how to use the techniques is just as important as the techniques themselves. Speed reading without comprehension is pointless. If you don't absorb anything, you might as well not read at all. That's why you need a reading strategy to separate the important from the irrelevant.
The 80/20 Rule of Books
And 80% of this strategy is knowing that 80/20 rule, where 80% of the knowledge comes from 20% of the book. Here's a secret: 80% of a book's value comes from just 20% of its content. This is what saved me a lot of time for non-fiction books.
I'll explain with an example how this works. Think about books like Atomic Habits. It has great advice, but most of the pages are just stories and examples for a relatively small bit of useful advice. The actual useful information is just a few pages scattered throughout the book. So when I went through the book, I applied the 80/20 rule.
How to Apply the 80/20 Rule
When reading non-fiction books, you don't need to read every word. Instead:
- Skim through the fluff: Use the tracker method and your ability to read without subvocalization to scan quickly through unnecessary parts like examples and long anecdotes. I sped through most of the pages by getting rid of my internal monologue and by having that visual tracker.
- Slow down only for key takeaways: When I noticed that small golden nugget of advice—like bolded sentences, summaries, and action steps—I slowed down the visual tracker to let myself think and absorb that key information better.
This way, you absorb the real knowledge while spending half the time most people waste on filler content. Because obviously, reading at over 700 words per minute is going to give me lower comprehension than if I slowed down and read at 500 words per minute. So adapting the techniques depending on what you're reading is a big part of actually reading what's relevant instead of trying to absorb details that just don't matter. Because that's effectively the same as highlighting every single sentence; it's not going to help you in any way.
Adapting Speed: Fiction vs. Non-Fiction
But here's the catch: speed reading works differently for fiction versus non-fiction books. For fiction, you often need to slow down and immerse yourself in the story. For non-fiction, you need to speed through the obvious stuff and focus on practical takeaways. Speed isn't about reading everything faster; it's about reading the right things at the right speed.
Step 3: Lock the Knowledge Into Your Brain Through Summarizing and Consolidating
Okay, so now your reading speed's up, and you have an idea of when to use those techniques. But none of this actually matters if you don't remember what you read. Now let me ask you a simple question: what was the last book you read? Or even the last chapter you've read from a book? Can you summarize that to me in a sentence or two? Most people can't.
That's because reading without retention is like pouring water into a leaky bucket; it just disappears. I know so many people that say, "Oh yeah, I read a book last week," but they haven't actually learned anything from it. And if you feel attacked by me saying this, then that means what I'm saying is true. But you're here because you want to improve, and that's good. So you need to work on the third and final strategy of the Triforce method, and that's about summarizing and consolidating.
Summarize Every Page in One Line
The idea is there's no point reading a lot if you don't understand what you're reading; you should have a good level of comprehension. So, here's how you actually remember what you read: summarize every page in one line. After every page, write down the main idea in one sentence. Even if the page had nothing important, write "nothing important on this page." Nothing important counts as a summary. This forces your brain to stay engaged and process what you're reading. As you do this, your brain's going to naturally engage more with the text, and you'll retain information a lot better.
This is what I did back when I applied to med school and did my admissions exams. I had to get quick at getting relevant information from paragraphs of text, and because I did these things, I scored in the top 1%.
Use the Feynman Technique (Optional but Recommended)
Another powerful technique is the Feynman Technique. Once you finish a chapter, explain it out loud in your own words like you're teaching a 12-year-old. If you struggle to explain something clearly, you don't fully understand it. This method instantly highlights weak spots in your learning.
Take Action Immediately (Consolidate)
On top of summarizing, I said you have to consolidate. This is more for non-fiction books where you should take some form of action. Like when I read Atomic Habits, it mentioned keeping track of every habit you have. So naturally, it only makes sense that I actually do that and not just forget about it a day later. If you read Atomic Habits and learn that tracking your habits improves consistency, don't just nod your head and move on. Stop reading and actually do it. Write down your habits right now.
I'd actually just stop reading until I've taken action for at least a whole day. Because the point to this is learning is about changing your behavior after you've been exposed to something. So if you don't change anything, you haven't actually learned anything. If you don't take action, you haven't really learned anything. Books are meant to change your life, not just give you more information.
And yeah, I do get the difference between reading for a need of learning something versus reading purely for the enjoyment of it, like reading poetry or fiction books. You adapt the techniques.
Putting It All Together
Alright, so now you know the Triforce Reading Method—a simple way to read faster, smarter, and better. You've learned how to stop the bad reading habits that slow you down, how to find the most important information in a book using the 80/20 principle, and how to actually remember what you read instead of forgetting it a week later through summarizing and consolidating.
But here's the truth: just knowing this method won't help you if you don't actually use it. You'll keep struggling with books, wasting time, and feeling frustrated. So here's what I want you to do: test it out today. Pick up any book and do three things:
- Stop reading every word in your head. Let your eyes move faster without saying the words. Use a tool like Speeder if it helps initially.
- Use your finger or a pen to guide your eyes. It'll keep you from slowing down or going back.
- Summarize what you read—one or two sentences per page—to make sure you actually get it.
That's it. If you do just these three things, you'll be reading way faster in no time. And once you see the results, you'll never want to go back to reading the old way again.
And here's something important: reading fast is great, but one thing where you'd always want to use techniques to be faster and better is for typing. If you can't type fast, you're still going to waste time taking notes and writing things down, slowing down the consolidation process. Making learning even faster involves optimizing all parts of the information intake and output process.
