ReadingVelocity

For thirty years, I've taught in the humanities... Homer and Greek tragedy, Joyce and Woolf. Over that span, something has unmistakably deteriorated.

I used to teach Greek tragedy at a play a day. Now it's a play a week. In high school, the AP exam has reduced literature to decontextualized "chunks." In college, I can no longer imagine assigning Moby-Dick and expecting students to survive the voyage... or even sign up for the class.

The dominant response has been elegiac. We mourn attention spans, blame screens, and romanticize slow reading as resistance.

But slow reading isn't resistance. It's capitulation.

Big books require velocity: not haste, but sustained forward motion. They require readers trained to remain inside complexity without fatigue.

We devote enormous pedagogical energy to teaching students how to critique, argue, and write. After elementary school, we largely stop teaching them how to read.

Attention is treated as a fixed resource rather than a trainable one. Call it cognitive VO₂ max. Ours has collapsed.

Most people read a book once and remember very little. ReadingVelocity structures each session to simulate the depth of three separate readings.

By allocating time this way, the session functions as a system of structured redundancy. Readers achieve deeper comprehension and stronger memory than a single-pass read could ever deliver.

Outside the classroom, I am an ultramarathon runner. I have completed more than fifty trail ultras. Endurance sports teach a simple truth: stamina is not a personality trait. It is a physiological capacity built through training. Intervals. Recovery. Adaptation.

Reading works the same way.

Attentional VO₂ Max

Just as aerobic capacity can be measured and improved, so can attentional endurance. We call this your cognitive VO₂ max... the ability to sustain deep focus over longer durations without fatigue.

Structured Redundancy

The Pre/Active/Post reading method gives users the benefit of three readings in one. Users approach the retention and comprehension they would otherwise only achieve on a third reading, building genuine expertise in a single session.

Why Priming Works

The Prime phase aligns with the "Survey" and "Question" steps of the SQ3R method. Research shows that identifying main points through headings and organizational clues creates cognitive "hooks" to hang information on during active reading.

Why Timed Immersion Works

The Cornell Rapid Reading strategy recommends using a timer for 15-minute bursts of reading at an "uncomfortable rate" to break slow, plodding habits. The Push phase applies this principle at scale.

Through specialized drills, we retrain your eyes and brain to take in more information with less fatigue.

We track your Focus Score and Peak WPM because what gets measured gets managed.

The Pacer Method (Beginner)

Use your finger or a pen to guide your eyes across the line. This prevents regression (re-reading) and maintains forward momentum. Simple, effective, and the foundation for all speed reading.

Peripheral Vision Expansion (Intermediate)

Read phrase-by-phrase instead of word-by-word. Start each line a few words in, end a few words early, letting peripheral vision capture the edges. Reduces fixations per line from 6-8 to 2-3.

Rapid Serial Visual Presentation / RSVP (Advanced)

A digital technique where words flash one at a time at a fixed speed. Eliminates saccades entirely. Effective for training, though less practical for complex texts requiring re-reading.

Scanning & Skimming (Situational)

Strategic reading for information retrieval. Not a replacement for deep reading, but a complementary skill for surveying material, finding specific information, and deciding what deserves full attention.

This is pedagogy, not product.

The protocols I developed over decades to help my students read faster and remember more should be available to anyone willing to train. We're building a community of readers who refuse to surrender their attention to the algorithm.

As texting and tweeting flatten our world and AI obviates the need for sustained reading, we must retrain readers in the modes of attention and imaginative investment necessary to unlock the novel as a vital form.

The big books aren't going anywhere. It's time we finished them.

— Professor of Literary Studies, The New School. Former Yale. 50+ ultramarathons.