The thing that most people forget to do when they start getting involved in speed reading is to test their initial reading level. To measure how far you can go, and what you have done within a week’s time, the best idea is to keep a regular log, and to test reading speed often. If you don’t do this, how will you know that it’s working?
Most people try to test reading speed based on production, i.e. how many books have you read this month as compared to last, or how many pages you can read in an hour. This is a terrible method of testing reading speed because the size of books, the size of pages, the size of the type, and the density and subject matter of the material are going to vary greatly from book to book. A much better method, and the standard for all speed reading tests out there is to measure your reading based on a words per minute level.
Depending on your age, you should be reading anywhere between 400 and 1,000 words per minute as a baseline, and you should be looking to increase your ability to around 3,000 words per minute as an absolute maximum. Reading any quicker than that means that you’re either cheating yourself, or you’ve missed a significant amount of the text.
Younger readers will read faster than older readers, and you should expect that your reading speed will decrease naturally as you start to hit 30. Around this time, your natural energy level and metabolic rate start to decrease, and it should come as no surprise to you that this means that the frequency of your electrical impulses in your brain start to decrease a little bit as well. This doesn’t mean that you can’t learn how to speed read at all as you age, certainly, but it does mean that you must temper your expectations. As a long-time speed reader myself, I now know that my top reading speed with full comprehension is somewhere around 2,200 words per minute, which is exceptional for someone of my age (34). I go down about 100 words per minute every two years, or so it seems.
The most important thing to do in order to keep up your reading speed is to practice often. Engage your mind, and always test yourself to see how high you can rise. I treat it as a game, always trying to surpass my highest score. What’s really nice about speed reading software like Speed Reader X is that they have a built-in feature that remembers your speed reading test scores, so you can track your progress over time. It’s a fantastic feature of the program, and one of the major reasons why we recommend it so highly here.