How do I read a PDF faster?

Import it into Redline, which strips the headers, footers and page numbers. Do a first pass at 500 to 700 words a minute to find where the substance is, then a second pass at 300 on those sections only.

Can I speed read a contract?

Use speed to find the clauses that matter, then read those at normal pace, every word. Speed is for locating. Anything you will sign gets a slow read of the operative parts.

How do I keep up with reports and long emails at work?

Give each one a first pass at 5× the pace of speech. Nine in ten need nothing more. The tenth gets a slow second read. You stop spending full attention on documents that never needed it.

What file types can Redline read?

PDFs, Word files and plain text, plus web articles from a link and audio or video, which is transcribed into text. Your own books and documents go into your library.

Speed Reading PDFs and Work Documents Without Missing It

You speed read a PDF or a work document in two passes. First pass at 500 to 700 words a minute to find where the substance is. Second pass at 300 on those sections alone. Most work documents are padding around a few sentences that matter, and Redline gets you to those sentences in a fraction of the time.

Why do work documents take so long?

Because you read all of them at the same pace, and most of the words in them do not deserve it.

A forty-page report has a summary, a background section that restates the summary, three pages of method, findings, a discussion that restates the findings, and appendices. The part that changes what you do on Monday is perhaps two pages.

But you read it front to back at the speed of the voice in your head. Speech runs at 150 words a minute. A forty-page report is around 16,000 words, so that is close to two hours. For two pages of substance.

Multiply that by every report, policy, proposal and long email in a week. This is where the reading hours of a working life go.

What is the two-pass method?

It separates finding from reading. They are different jobs and they need different speeds.

Pass one: find. Run the whole document at 500 to 700 words a minute. You are not trying to keep every detail. You are building a map: what this is about, what it concludes, and which sections carry the weight. At 600 words a minute, those 16,000 words take under half an hour.

Pass two: read. Go back to the sections that matter and read them at 300. This is where you slow down, take in the numbers, and check the reasoning.

Total time: well under an hour, against two. And you understand the two pages that count better than you did the old way, because you read them fresh instead of at the end of a two-hour slog.

How do you do it in Redline?

Import the file. PDF or Word. Running headers, footers and page numbers are stripped out, so they do not interrupt every page.
Set the first pass. 500 to 700 words a minute. Eyes on the red letter.
Take the quiz. It shows you whether you caught the main points. A miss tells you which section to go back to.
Second pass. The key sections at 300.

Figures and tables are kept as still images, and the reading stops on them. You do not want a table flashed at you a cell at a time.

If you do not know what 600 words a minute looks like, the 600 wpm test shows you in half a minute. Start by getting your own number on the reading speed test.

What about documents with consequences?

Slow down for those, on purpose. Speed is for finding. It is not a substitute for reading the thing you are about to sign.

For a contract, a lease or a policy you will be held to:

Use the fast pass to locate the operative clauses: what you must do, what you must pay, what happens if it goes wrong, how it ends.
Read those clauses at normal pace. Every word.
If a clause is unclear, it is unclear at any speed. Ask.

The fast pass still earns its place here. It gets you to page fourteen, where the clause that matters is, while you are still fresh enough to read it properly.

Which pace for which document?

The baseline is 150 words a minute, the pace of speech. Against that:

Reports and white papers: first pass at 600, which is 4×. Second pass at 300.
Long emails and updates: 450 to 600. One pass is usually enough.
Policies and manuals: 400 to find the section, 250 to read it.
Contracts: 500 to locate, normal pace to read.
Slide decks exported as PDF: 700. There is rarely much text.

Redline trains you toward 750, which is 5×, in steps of 25 with a quiz at each one. The paces above are where that training pays off at work. There is a fuller guide at speed read PDFs and work documents.

What changes in a working week?

Take ten documents of twenty pages each. At the pace of speech that is around nine hours of reading. With a fast first pass and a slow second pass on what matters, it is closer to three.

You did not skim. You did not skip. You stopped giving your slowest, most careful attention to boilerplate.

Start with one document you have been putting off. Import it, run it at 500, take the quiz, then read the part that matters. The method for building your pace is in how to read faster.

The pile on your desk is mostly padding. Read the padding at speed and keep your attention for the two pages that count.