Academic IELTS Reading gives you 60 minutes for three passages and 40 questions, and no extra time to transfer your answers. That is about 20 minutes per passage, including reading the questions and writing the answers. A student who reads each passage properly first has spent their whole budget before answering anything.
So do not read the passage. Work the other way round.
One. Skim the passage for 60–90 seconds to learn its shape, not its content: what is each paragraph broadly about, where does the argument turn, where are the numbers, where are the names. You are building a map so you can come back fast.
Two. Read the first question and decide what you are hunting for: a date, a name, a definition, a cause. Hunt for it in the passage. Read closely only when you are in the right neighbourhood — that is where careful reading belongs, and it is a few sentences, not a page.
Three. Answer and move. If a question has taken more than 90 seconds, mark it, guess something, and go on. There are no bonus marks for the hard one, and the easy question you never reached is worth exactly the same.
Two format facts worth internalising. Most question types follow the order of the passage — matching headings and matching information do not, so expect those to cost more time and budget for it. And you write answers straight onto the answer sheet as you go; unlike Listening there is no transfer time at the end.
Students resist this method because it feels like cheating. It is not: the test is a reading test, not a reading-for-pleasure test, and the skill it measures is locating and evaluating information under time pressure.