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To train to read faster, you must first find your base rate. Your base rate is the speed that you can read a passage of text with full comprehension. We've defaulted to 300 wpm, showing one word at a time, which is about the average that works best for our users. Now, read that passage using spreeder at that base rate.

After you've finished, double that speed by going to the Settings and changing the Words Per Minute value. Reread the passage. You shouldn't expect to understand everything - in fact, more likely than not you'll only catch a couple words here and there. If you have high comprehension, that probably means that you need to set your base rate higher and rerun this test again. You should be straining to keep up with the speed of the words flashing by. This speed should be faster than your inner voice can "read".

The answer is "tidal friction." Back in the day (as they say), the moon spun with respect to the Earth, so people (if there had been people around) could see all sides of the moon, if they looked long enough. But the Moon is not totally solid. It is a mass of dust, sand and rocks that can change shape, just like a pile of dust, sand and rocks can change shape on the Earth. The Earth's gravitational pull on the Moon actually makes the Moon bulge towards the Earth very slightly. The bulge is called a "tidal bulge." The overall effect is to make the Moon a kind of oval, with the long axis pointing towards the Earth. But the Moon rotated with respect to the Earth (you have to say "with respect to the Earth, because the Moon is, even now, rotating with respect to the Sun; rotation, like all motion, is relative), so as a new part of the Moon's surface rotated around to face the Earth, it would bulge, then settle back down as it rotated away from the Earth, kind of like a "wave" in a sports stadium. The overall effect was to knead the Moon like it was a ball of play-doh, raising its internal temperature slightly. But there is a lot of friction when rocks and dust rub against each other, so that would tend to slow down the rotation. Further, the bulge actually lagged a little bit. The materials making up the Moon don't respond instantly to gravity. So the bulge actually wasn't quite in line with the Earth, but was kind of running to catch up with it. The Earth pulled on that bulge more than on the non-bulging parts, so that further slowed down the Moon's rotation.  This mechanism was significant only early in the Moon's history, since the effect becomes smaller as the Moon's rotation slows. So over millennia, the Moon's rotation slowed down and stopped. The bulge stopped moving around the Moon's surface and settled in one spot, incidentally locking that spot in line with the Earth.

2) Play to your cognitive strengths while wired. Caffeine may increase the speed with which you work, may decrease attentional lapses, and may even benefit recall – but is less likely to benefit more complex cognitive functions, and may even hurt others. Plan accordingly (and preferably prior to consuming caffeine!)

Recall from memory may be improved by caffeine (here and here), possibly due to enhancements in memory encoding rather than retrieval per se. Another study shows caffeine can actually impair estimates of “memory scanning” speed (in the Sternberg paradigm), so the failure of many studies to find recall-related effects of caffeine may reflect a speed-accuracy tradeoff at the time of retrieval.

3) Play to caffeine’s strengths. Caffeine’s effects can be maximized or minimized depending on what else is in your system at the time. The beneficial effects of caffeine may be most pronounced in conjunction with sugar. For example, one factor analytic study has shown caffeine-glucose cocktails provide benefits to cognition not seen with either alone.

Withdrawal symptoms can onset within 12 to 24 hours of caffeine consumption and last between 2 and 9 days.

some studies show grapefruit juice might keep caffeine levels in the bloodstream high for longer, though others have found no such effect

Similarly, nicotine may speed the metabolism of caffeine.

4) Know when to stop – and when to start again. Although you may not grow strongly tolerant to caffeine, you can become dependent on it and suffer withdrawal symptoms. Balance these concerns with the cognitive and health benefits associated with caffeine consumption – and appropriately timed resumption.

Long-term ingestion of large quantities of caffeine (by way of coffee) is associated with a variety of health benefits – not only cognitive enhancements but also reduction in risk for type 2 diabetes (c.f.), Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s . These beneficial effects may be related to the neuroprotective role of adenosine.

Caffeine’s effects might be masked by green tea extract, Kava Kava or St. John’s Wort – all of which contain theanine and are associated with subjective feelings of relaxation – but other preliminary evidence indicates the opposite effect: theanine might actually potentiate the benefits of caffeine on some tasks (reported in longer format here).

In addition, there are well-established cognitive effects where recall is best when it matches the context of encoding – so if you’re caffeinated when you study for the test, you better be caffeinated when you take it.

5) Finding good sources of caffeine Despite the huge variety of sources of caffeine – including caffeinated soap, candy, and of course chocolate – the optimal use of caffeine is likely to involve small, hourly doses along with some cardioprotective agent. Given the high solubility of caffeine, absorption time should not be an issue (but if for some reason it is, try gum). Otherwise, why not enjoy a cup of green tea (coffee-flavored, if you must), as the Chinese have for nearly 5000 years? It’s hard to come by a better longitudinal study than that.

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