Jim Kwik’s Super Reading Review (2023): Is it Worth It?

(This review contains affiliate links which means we earn a commission if you sign up⁠ — at no extra cost to you. However, it’s an honest review about my personal experience with Super Reading by Jim Kwik)

I’m a pretty speedy reader. I have to be. I’m an editor who has to get through a lot of words each day.

But sometimes I have a hard time keeping up with all the things I want to read.

This happened to you? Ever think “there’s got to be a way to read faster?”

What if I told you there was.

It’s called Super Reading by Jim Kwik. It’s a class on Mindvalley that promises to boost your reading comprehension by at least double in only 21 days.

Double?! It sounded almost too good to be true. I had to check it out for myself.

Was it worth it? Read on to find out!

Who is Jim Kwik?

Jim Kwik is a frontrunner in Brain Training.

At the age of five, he suffered a traumatic brain injury that threatened to leave him permanently intellectually disabled.

He was undeterred, however, and decided to take matters into his own hands and teach himself how to learn more efficiently.

In short, he taught himself to work around his injury.

Now, decades later, he’s a leader in teaching anyone how to unlock their mind’s true potential. He’s worked with Elon Musk, Richard Branson, and students at some of the top Universities in the world like NYU and Yale.

He’s now the CEO of Kwik Learning, serves as a Motivational Speaker, and has many seminars that you can take through different programs like Mindvalley.

This course, Super Reading, is available exclusively through Mindvalley.

What is the class?

It’s Super Reading by Jim Kwik, and it’s available exclusively through the learning platform Mindvalley.

This is a class dedicated to Speed Reading. The class first determines your reading comprehension and reading speed. From there, it uses proven techniques to help you improve your memory, speed, and reading comprehension so that you can more than double your reading speed by the end of the program.

The course is divided into 3 weeks, totaling 21 lessons. Each week tackles a different element of speed reading.

I’ll look at them in detail later on in this review, but at a high level the weeks focus on:

• Foundationals
• Scientific principles behind speed reading
• Advanced speed reading techniques.

Each lesson has a video (which clocks in around 10-20 minutes) along with some required tasks. Tasks can be as simple as “download week one’s workbook” or as in-depth as “read for 20 minutes with a pacer.”

The tasks aren’t too difficult, but they are engaging enough to make you want to come back for more.

You could, in theory, binge through this content, but Mindvalley classes function most effectively when you do one lesson per day. That way you can fully internalize the lessons that you’re learning.

Jim Kwik’s Super Reading is no different.

(Wondering what other Mindvalley courses you should take? With 50+ courses to choose from, Ideapod’s new Mindvalley quiz will help you decide which ones are right for you. Take the quiz here).

How much does Jim Kwik’s Super Reading cost?

There are two ways to purchase Jim Kwik’s Super Reading. You can purchase the class individually or you can buy the an annual membership to Mindvalley.

Let me break down the pros and cons of each.

If you buy the individual class, it’ll run you $349 — on sale from $999. So it’s currently 66% off!

When you purchase the class individually, you get:

• Lifetime access to the Super Reading Class — including any updates that Jim Kwik might add
• 21 video lessons by Jim Kwik on speed reading
• Multiple downloadable workbooks that help you along your Super Reading journey
• Access to the Super Reading community (Mindvalley calls this The Tribe)
• Access through your laptop, tablet, and mobile device
• Four group coaching calls with Jim Kwik (a new bonus feature!)

That’s the individual class. You can also take Super Reading by purchasing the Mindvalley Quest All Access Pass.

This pass is $599. What does it get you?

• A year’s access to most programs that Mindvalley offers (full disclosure: the popular Lifebook course is not one of them).
• Access to all the Mindvalley communities

When you buy the pass, you can take any of Mindvalley’s current classes. The only (small) downside is that you cannot access the video classes if your subscription runs you. You can keep your downloadable workbooks however!

So, for the price of less than two courses, you get a year’s access to over 30 courses. That’s a pretty great deal.

Check out the Mind Valley All Access pass here.

What it’s like taking Super Reading by Jim Kwik

I want to walk you through each week of Super Reading by Jim Kwik. This way, you get a clear overview of what you can expect as you work to boost your reading comprehension over 21 days.

Let’s get started with week 1.

Week 1

Week 1 is all about foundationals. Here are the topics:

• Finding Your Starting Speed
• Clearing The Obstacles
• How To Use A Visual Pacer
• Why A Visual Pacer Works
• Indentation Reading/Q&A
• Introducing The Infinity Technique
• Read A Book A Week

As noted, the class starts out by simply finding your starting speed. Jim has some neat exercises that you can easily perform in order to get a solid understanding of your current reading level.

From there, he introduces a visual pacer. Visual pacers are physical objects (like your finger or a pen) that you place on the page to help your eyes stay focused while you’re reading. It’s a technique used in the beginning of speed reading to help you get into the speed reading mindset.

Week one’s most intriguing lesson was The Infinity Technique.

In this lesson, Jim Kwik teaches a visual learning technique to help boost communication between both hemispheres of the brain. In short, you trace an infinite sign in the air, and follow its progress with your eyes without moving your head. This training increases your eye strength and encourages cross-hemisphere communication.

According to Kwik, most reading only uses the left-hemisphere of the brain. By activating both hemispheres before you start reading, you can increase your comprehension in tandem.

Week 2

Week two dives into the scientific principles behind speed reading.

Up first is “overcoming subvocalization.”

What’s that?

In reading, there are several discrete processes at work. The first is fixation (where your eyes fixate on a word or group of words and you comprehend what you read). The second is saccade (where your eyes move to the next word).

Improving fixation is a key component for speed reading. One of the techniques that Jim teaches you is to stop “subvocalization.” Subvocalization is the process where you internally sound out a word.

According to Jim Kwik, this process is not necessary for reading comprehension. You can understand a word without sounding it out in your mind.

This (and other technical processes) is the foundation of week 2: using innovative techniques to increase your comprehension. It’s pretty much the heart of speedreading.

Week 3

The final week is dedicated to advanced speed reading techniques. By now, you’ll have already gained a strong speed reading foundation. Now, it’s time to push your speed reading to the limit.

Jim starts week 3 by introducing another lesson for increasing reading comprehension. Crazy enough, we typically only comprehend 70% of what we read. If you can boost that by even an additional 10%, you can save a tremendous amount of time lost by re-reading.

The rest of the week is dedicated to reading different styles of books (technical vs fiction), and introducing brain breaks.

I’d say that, as a whole, week 3 felt a little more additional and bonus-like than week 2, but both were still chock-full of information.

The whole course ends with a 32-minute class called Building a Reading Habit that finishes with a pre-recorded Q&A. It’s a nice capstone to the three-week course.

Who is Super Reading for?

This class is for people who want to learn how to read faster and enjoy the daily learning format that Mindvalley encourages.

Jim Kwik’s class has great, easily digestible lessons that are accompanied by effective learning exercises. It’s a high-quality class that aspiring speed readers will enjoy.

Anybody interested in brain training or self-growth will also be very pleased by Super Reading. The class is filled with technical lessons that are very applicable to a task we all do — reading.

Plenty of Mindvalley classes veer into the esoteric (Chakra healings, energy work), which makes Super Reading a breath of fresh air. Like Money EQ by Ken Honda and Becoming Focused and Indistractable, Super Reading is a grounded, highly applicable course that gives you a skill you can immediately implement.

Anybody looking for concrete, quantifiable self-improvement will enjoy this class.

Who is it not for?

Super Reading is not for people who aren’t interested in boosting their reading speed. If you feel that your reading doesn’t need improvement, you’re not going to get much out of it.

It’s also not for learners who prefer binge learning. This is a course built around commitment. You need to commit to three weeks of speed drills, learning, and improvement.

If you’re more of a “give it to me all at once” learner or someone who prefers edutainment (such as MasterClass), you’re probably not going to enjoy this course as much.

Is Super Reading effective?

So, does it work? Can Super Reading boost your reading speed and comprehension?

A bunch of us tried it out. One of our editors increased her speed by over 3 times (from 249 to 804). Another of us got to over 950 wpm.

All of us saw an improvement by at least 3 times over our base reading rate.

So, I’d say that yes, Super Reading is definitely effective for increasing your reading speed and comprehension. It guarantees that you’ll double your reading speed, and all of us tripled our reading speed.

Underpromise and overdeliver!

The pros

Like every course I’ve reviewed, there are many things I loved and a few things I wish were different. Here is what I liked most:

The class is effective

This was the biggest pro for me: the lessons are effective. Jim Kwik doesn’t bother with esoteric or confusing philosophy when presenting his class.

No, he promises to teach you how to speed read. Then, he follows through on that promise.

He uses effective techniques to help you gauge your current reading ability, and then shows you innovative ways to improve your comprehension.

There’s nothing mystic about it. It’s grounded and highly effective.

The classes build upon each other

Each lesson builds upon the previous lessons. Jim Kwik does a great job of organizing the class from the basic to the advanced. Each day feels like an improvement upon the last, and each week feels like a major improvement from the previous.

The third week does feel slightly disjointed compared to the previous, but it still has a lot of advanced reading techniques to make it worth your time.

There isn’t any fluff

One of my complaints with Mindvalley courses is that they’re often padded with lessons that feel scientific, but are actually filled with a lot of mystic stuff that doesn’t mean much.

A lot of their classes will say “this is grounded in science,” and leave it at that, expecting that to somehow be enough proof that what they’re saying is real.

This class, I’m happy to say, is not at all like that. Instead, Jim Kwik presents practical, no-nonsense lessons that have their foundation in tried-and-true speedreading techniques.

The best part? You can measure your own success. You can see how what he teaches you makes an impact.

It’s gratifying.

The cons

Like every Mindvalley class, there were a few cons. I’ll tackle them here.

Jim doesn’t have a monopoly on speedreading

Jim Kwik’s class is presented very well. The lessons are engaging and the homework is helpful.

Having said that, you can learn to speedread without Jim Kwik. There is tons of literature online about speedreading, as well as YouTube videos on the subject.

What Jim is teaching is very exciting, but it’s not like Jim is the only speedreading master. You can get these practical lessons from other sources.

The course loses a little steam

Week 3 isn’t as engaging as weeks 1 and 2. I think that week 3 was actually recently added on (previously the course was just 2 weeks), so this makes sense. Week 3 still has great techniques, but it almost feels like a bonus week.

Super Reading alternatives

So are there any alternatives to Super Reading?

If you’re looking to learn how to speed read, then there are tons of books available that will teach you this. You can pick one up at your local library for free.

YouTube also has a great amount of free lessons on speed reading. The downside is that you’ll have to sort through a lot of garbage to find gold.

What Jim Kwik’s Super Reading has that others don’t have is the Mindvalley platform behind it. This platform ensures that the videos are high quality, the lessons have ample resources behind them, and comes with a built in community to help support your learning. None of the alternatives are as robust as Super Reading.

Jim Kwik himself has an additional class on Mindvalley, Superbrain, which touches on speed readng, but also focuses on different brain training techniques such as memorization. It’s a neat alternative if you’re curious about speed reading, but not sure if you want to commit to an entire speed reading class.

And, if you choose to enroll in the Mindvalley Quest All Access Pass, you can take both (and many more) for only $599.

It is true that Mindvalley is significantly more expensive than alternatives like YouTube. Again, the single class is $349 and the All Access Pass is $599.

It’s a good deal if you’re looking to take several Mindvalley courses, but you need to decide for yourself if the $599 yearly fee is right for you.

Is there a money back guarantee?

Yes. You can initiate a refund within 10 days of starting the Super Reading Quest if you purchase the course by itself.

If you decide to purchase the Mindvalley Quest All Access Pass, then you have 15 days from the date of purchase to request a complete refund.

Another website, Ideapod, has noted that a few of its readers have had difficulty getting the refund processed. Others have reported no issue with getting a refund, but I figured that I’d let you know.

Conclusion: Is Super Reading worth it?

After going through the entire 21-day course, I’d say that Super Reading by Jim Kwik is a great way to increase your reading speed. If you’re looking to learn how to boost your reading speed and comprehension, then Super Reading is definitely worth it.

The class isn’t cheap, but it can become more affordable by signing up for the Mindvalley Quest All Access pass, which gives you access to all 30+ Mindvalley courses. Compared to purchasing each course individually, this is quite cost-effective.

As far as Mindvalley courses go, I’d say that Super Reading by Jim Kwik has to be one of the most grounded and effective courses they have to offer. If you’re looking to improve your reading, then look no further.

This is the course for you.