Boost Your Reading Efficiency
Science-backed strategies
Set a goal
The first step is to set a goal for reading.
Science-based benefits/goals of reading
Knowledge: Exposure to new ideas, perspectives, and approaches, can help to expand your knowledge and understanding of the world.
Communication Skills: Expansion of vocabulary and communication skills, as you encounter new words, and perspectives and learn how to express your own thoughts more clearly. (Duff, Tomblin, Catts, 2015)
Understanding of Others: Enhancement of empathy and understanding of others, as you are exposed to different perspectives and experiences. (Kidd, Castano, 2013), (Bal, Veltkamp, 2013)
Creativity: Boosting creativity and imagination. It can help you come up with new ideas & think outside the box. (Bal, Veltkamp, 2013)
Stress relief: You can always read for fun, it is a great way to unwind and reduce stress. (Adler, 2021)
Select a book
When the goal is set select a book accordingly:
Knowledge & Communication Skills: Specialized books in the domains that you want to understand better.
Understanding of Others & Creativity: Fiction books where you can get maximal emotional involvement in a narrative.
Reducing Stress: Anything that brings you joy.
Advice
Audiobooks vs Reading vs Reading with Listening
Despite the strong belief of many people that reading or reading with listening should provide more benefits like better understanding and information retention compared to listening to audiobooks research does not support it. (Rogowsky, Calhoun, Tallal, 2016)
Of course, if you are distracted (multitasking) during listening you will get fewer benefits but provided usage of the same environment there is no difference in the outcome between listening, reading, or listening with reading.
Speed reading
There is a trade-off between the speed with which you encounter words and understanding and retention of the material.
In some cases, it is a good idea to decrease comprehension and increase speed - to check if you want to read/listen to the book, get a general understanding, or find specific information.
Bear in mind that a normal pace for most readers is 200 to 400 wpm (words per minute). This is faster than we normally gain information through listening, and pretty good for most purposes. (Rayner, 2016)
Lighting
Research demonstrates no significant differences in reading rates between males and females under different illuminations. However visual performance under LED (light emitting diode) is poor; it is uncomfortable for prolonged reading and causes early symptoms of fatigue.
Interestingly that males preferred CFL (compact fluorescent light) and females preferred FLUO (fluorescent tube light) for faster reading and visual comfort. (Ram, Optom, Bhardwaj, 2018)
Spacing, and Contrast
Line-spacing
Line spacing of 1.5 is a safe choice to ensure consistent readability and comprehension on a variety of fonts. (Paterson, Tinker, 2008) and (Rello, Pielot, Marcos, 2016)
Contrast
Strong contrast improves reading performance. The majority of people prefer a pure black font using pure white in the background or white font with a pure black background. (Näsänen, Ojanpää, Kojo, 2001)
Fonts, Font-sizes
Despite popular recommendations for particular fonts and font sizes for more conformable and speedy reading research shows that such recommendations can not be made for the general population.
Fonts
Different fonts are effective for different people so custom reading experience can help people read more effectively.
Preference ≠≠ effectiveness. People do not know what is good for them in terms of font choice for reading.
Familiarity with a font should not drive preference as it has a small effect on reading speed. A font should not be chosen just because people are used to seeing it.
Font-size
A single size does not fit all fonts. If an application has a few font options for the same piece of text, then each font needs to be adjusted in size according to the font's characteristics.
The Readability Consortium conducting research on digital readability using individuated typography to improve reading speed and comprehension created a site where people can take the five-minute Virtual Readability Lab tests to discover the font and spacing that will help them read better.