a youn gstudent sitting on a desk reaching out to a floating phone screen with chatgpt enabled for reading purposes.

#66 | Read faster with ChatGPT. How?

ByMark Updated:

TL;DR: AI tools now summarize articles before you decide to read them. This edition covers two ChatGPT prompts that change how you move through non-fiction, and what separates using AI to skip reading from using it to read better.

👋 Happy Friday, Readers,

A friend of mine reads every morning. Non-fiction books, novels she picked up on a whim, and articles or long reports she wants to think through properly.

Late last year, she switched to the Brave browser, mostly for the ad blocker. Then she found Leo, the AI assistant, sitting quietly in the sidebar.

One click and the article was summarized. She said it felt almost like cheating.

“I still open the articles,” she said. “I just don’t really read them anymore.”

She said it with a small laugh. Unsure whether to feel relieved or quietly unsettled. Both at once, probably.

Well, she is certainly not the only one feeling that way right now (looking at you, Mark).

It’s because AI assistants like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity now live inside our browsers through tools like Brave Leo, Perplexity Comet, and extensions like Merlin and Glasp.

AI summarization has become so frictionless that the reading itself can disappear entirely from the process. And nobody has really decided to let it happen. (Did you?)

Thus, today’s edition focuses on two specific moments where ChatGPT genuinely changes how you read.

My full guide on using ​ChatGPT for speed reading​ covers the entire system.

Including what to do while you read, how to address bad habits, and where the tool stops being useful.

But start here for now👇. And go deeper in the tutorial.

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When AI handles the article, and nothing sticks

There’s a point to honestly examining this summarize-and-move-on pattern.

Reading is how ideas enter your thinking.

A summary outlines an argument. Reading delivers the argument itself. With all the friction and texture that make ideas settle somewhere useful.

That friction is not the problem. It is actually the mechanism.

People who need to form opinions and make decisions cannot afford to read less carefully. But they can afford to read more efficiently.

That distinction may sound small, but it turns out to matter quite a lot.

In terms of efficiency, ChatGPT works alongside your reading rather than replacing it.

It prepares the ground before you start and locks in what you gained when you finish. The reading stays yours. The cognitive work around it gets supported.

That is a modest yet accurate claim about what AI reading tools can actually do.

What the ChatGPT reading approach actually looks like

Before getting into the two prompts, it helps to see the bigger picture honestly.

The approach in my ​full ChatGPT reading guide​ works across three reading phases.

  • Before you read, ChatGPT maps the structure and surfaces the main argument, so you enter the text already oriented.
  • While you read, it clarifies confusing passages and simplifies dense vocabulary without breaking your flow.
  • After you finish, it tests whether what mattered actually stayed with you.

The guide also covers how ChatGPT quietly reduces habits like passive drifting and regression.

Regression is that reflexive re-reading of lines you already covered. It feels like focus. It is usually anxiety about moving forward dressed up as diligence.

There is an honest section on limits, too. Long PDFs, context window failures, and the quiet risk of gradually outsourcing your thinking without noticing.

The whole thing is organized around a principle so simple it sounds obvious until you see how many AI reading tools violate it.

ChatGPT may handle the friction around reading. But you should handle the reading itself. The moment that the balance tips, the tool stops serving you.

The prompt that solves the problem before it starts

Reading problems rarely start while you are reading. They start before.

You open a long article with no clear sense of what it argues. You hit page three of a research paper and realize the background is missing.

By the time confusion arrives, momentum is already gone, and you are re-reading the introduction, wondering why you bothered.

One prompt handles this cleanly.

“Read the following text and tell me: what is the central argument, how is it structured, and what should I already know to follow it well? [paste text]“

Think of it as a floor plan for the text. You still walk every floor yourself.

The map just means you stop losing time in the wrong corridor.

Readers who start reading a text with prior orientation understand and retain significantly more than those who go in cold.

FYI, you can run this prompt in any AI tool already open. ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, or the sidebar assistant in your browser all receive it the same way.

Tools worth building into your reading routine

The friend from the opening above also uses ​Spreeder​ to train her reading pace. She built the stamina that makes longer texts feel less draining before she even begins.

ChatGPT handles the comprehension work. ​Spreeder​ builds the mechanical reading foundation under it. Both matter because they address different aspects of the reading problem.

For audio reading, she uses ​Speechify​*. It keeps her moving through material when sitting down is not an option.

She finished three books last month, listening at 1.5x on her commute, which is either impressive or a sign that her commute is very long.

​AI summarizers, ​speed-reading apps, and text-to-speech tools all sit alongside ChatGPT in a broader reading toolkit.

And, the full guide maps where each one actually belongs and when to reach for it instead.

How to stop what you read from evaporating

Reading evaporates faster than you expect.

Close a tab twenty minutes after finishing (or is it five?), and a large part of what passed through your eyes is already gone.

This is not a memory failure, but more of a processing gap. The reading happened while the thinking around it never had a chance to take root.

People close the tab and immediately move to the next thing. That space between finishing an article and actually reflecting on it is where retention collapses quietly, every time.

AND, this is where ChatGPT earns its place most clearly in the reading workflow.

“Quiz me on the key ideas from this text. Ask me five questions: three factual, one inferential, and one that asks me to apply the idea to a real situation. Do not give me the answers until I respond: [paste text].“

The instruction to withhold answers matters more than it sounds.

Once the answer is visible, the retrieval effort collapses, and the effort is exactly what builds retention over time.

Testing yourself after reading is not just a student habit. It is how memory works, at any age, with any material. Whether you are studying for an exam or just trying to have something useful to say about the article you read this morning.

But, honestly, who’s got time for this these days? But if you squeeze it out, you realize how much you can gain with one structured pause before closing the tab.

Why the order of these two prompts matters

The pre-reading map orients you before the text begins. The recall quiz cements what you took from it after.

Between those two moments, the reading itself does what it was always supposed to do.

My friend from the opening still uses Brave Leo for quick scans. ​Speechify​* still handles her commute. And for the reading that actually matters, she now runs both prompts.

What she noticed after a few weeks was not some dramatic transformation. She noticed she had more to say when discussing what she had read.

Ideas showed up in her thinking later in the day rather than disappearing the moment she closed the tab.

She still uses Brave Leo, too. But is simply more deliberate now about which articles deserve more than a summary.

That is a reasonable outcome for two prompts and about ninety seconds of total setup.

But the full system is worth the time, too.

Cheers,

Mark
The AI Learning Guy
👋⚡😎

Interesting Sources

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