This isn't "how fast can I go through this" but "what is a comfortable pace"?
So I bump the speed up, though usually fairly modestly: 1.25x - 1.5x is generally enough.
I've noticed that preferred speeds vary tremendously with the quality of the work and speaker -- high-density information and an exceedingly good speaker, and I'll slow down. Slapdash redundant content and poor speaker, I'll speed up.
The degree of polish in the production matters tremendously. I've listened to CPG Grey's YouTube videos (highly polished) and podcasts (a lot of chit-chat with his co-host). The videos work well at normal speed, or perhaps slighly sped up. The podcasts I find nearly unlistenable, though they improve at much higher speeds (1.75x - 2x).
It undoubtedly has a relatively low density of information however I wouldn't speed it up, I would slow it down!
Tip there are 10s of chrome extentios that allow you to change all html videos to 2x speed or even higher (including most ads on sites like YouTube and Hulu)
It is like the infromation doesn't have the time to settle in my memory, despite me understanding it.
It's maybe because when things are slow, I can use the dead time to think about the implication/corner cases of what's being said.
For some reason I do not yet understand, the motion of physically putting pen(cil) to paper helps ingrain that information into your brain, in a way that typing it into a computer does not.
My personal guess is that, with fast typing speeds, it's too easy to just copy things word for word. With writing, you have to at least rephrase it and reorganize it to fit the notes reasonably on the page, which forces some processing to occur. I take notes solely by typing, but I only have retention if I do it slowly and reflectively.
In other words, we can "store" knowledge more efficiently when written in our own handwriting than when typed into a neutral/generic text editor.
Although, anecdotally, I find that writing notes by hand is better for recall than typing.
I'm not sure if this is because writing activates different parts of the brain, or simply because writing is slower and forces me to therefore think harder and comprehend better because I need to be 2x as selective about what makes it into my notes.
My money's on the latter, but who knows?
I can roughly keep up in real time with speaking on the keyboard. Even though speaking is a bit faster than my max rate around 90 wpm, by dropping filler words and gaps I can mostly avoid summarizing and quote verbatim. When transposing at full speed like that, I feel like a conduit at times, very little sticks deeply in memory.
Contrast with writing notes, where I'll only write down things I find particularly important. Most of the time I'm just trying to actively listen.
Purely anecdotally, I feel like when I am typing and summarizing to the same compression ratio as writing, my retention with typing is better, because I can do it without looking, it's faster, and I can tune back in to the speaker.
On the other other hand, with a laptop open, I'm much more likely to get distracted with emails/tasks.
Bottom line, I think we need to study more axes of this problem, if only because it gives neat insights into cognition.
Just spending time in the moment with an enjoyable story is not wasting it.
I think I have a similar thing visually, where above a certain text size, I have a very hard time reading. The optimal text size for me is pretty small, even on a standard resolution display.
While I could get my comprehension percentage quite high with a bit of training, I lost all connection to the characters and story, stopped imagining the scenes and felt like the reading the book was a waste of time.
Novels should be read at a natural pace to give room to your imagination and dive into the story. You can still quickly scan over boring/repetitive filler text, but I did that without caring about WPM already.
With other things like textbooks / articles / reports cranking up your WPM and applying your attention more selectively by focusing on or re-reading critical parts is a very helpful skill though.
I 'read' your comment using TTS at 3x. What does that say about the information density of your comment?
(Little to nothing. TTS at that speed is still marginally slower that I normally read with my eyes. Human speech is generally much slower than is necessary to be understood.)
What doesn't make sense to me is consuming things that have a _set_ speed, such as video/TV or lectures, at a dramatically faster speed.
You could just read the plot synopsis or watch the highlights, but sometimes those don't convey build-up, suspense, or other data that are hard to losslessly compress.
Being comfortable with the "boilerplate" of a given medium or genre usually lets you skim or skip it to jump right into the good stuff.
"That's just, like, your opinion, man."
Obviously the people who are getting something out of it, otherwise they wouldn't do it?
"Don't yuck my yum."
I do the same, but with Hacker News comments :)
I just don't get the point. If you can process content much faster than it was meant to be played, it doesn't mean you're learning much faster than you could, it means the novel information density is low. Any content that can be sped up that much without loss is not worth listening to in the first place. You're just skipping the trite cliches, filler, and obvious facts.
I can read fast, and I typically go through fluffy NYT bestseller nonfiction at 600 WPM. But when I do this I constantly have a sneaking suspicion that I'm just wasting my time. When I read a good book full of new ideas, I barely go at 150 WPM, but the time always feels well-spent.