Fundamentals To Finish Your Work Faster
November 24, 2009
INTRODUCTION
One of the most exciting aspects of living is gathering information. Information for your personal decision making, to work more effectively, get better grades on homework, all require the ability to cut through the garbage and target what you need to know.
More information is published each week than in all of human history through the year 1800; yet, the average person’s reading speed is only 200 wpm with a mere 10% of the material read typically retained into long term memory.
In the time it takes you to read this sentence, I can read this entire page…and another as well. Recognized as the world’s fastest reader, I want to help you learn to read faster, understand more and how to use advanced study skills to improve recall of your reading.
When you have the skills and strategy you need to finish your work faster, you have more time to spend on the things you want to enjoy in life!
THE ROOTS OF SLOW READING
You already possess the ability to rapidly read essential information. It is an innate ability. Let me prove this to you. Think about how much information your brain must process while driving an automobile on a highway. It must view and analyze the motions of the surrounding cars, road conditions, weather conditions, read signs, and at the same time avoid hitting animals or people who might cross the road. Instead of being overwhelmed by all this information you become so bored that you might turn on the radio, talk to other passengers, or make cell phone calls. If your brilliant brain is so adept at swiftly reading a road during a drive, then why can’t it read text just as quickly and easily? The answer is simple. Instead of seeing a book during reading, your brain hears a voice that pronounces the word sounds printed on the page. Quite simply, you don’t see a book—your hear it. Yet, vision is faster and more powerful than hearing. By becoming a more visual reader you will instantly increase your reading speed. Let’s begin this process together.
BECOMING A MORE VISUAL READER
Watch a young child read and what do you see? You see them reading words one letter at a time, such as D O G spells dog. As an adult, your brain barely notices the letters appearing on the page. Instead you see entire words like dog, or even entire phrases like “hot dog”, “ice cream”, or “United States of America”. “United States of America” contains four distinct words, almost the width of an entire column in a textbook or newspaper.
If you can see four words then why can’t you see entire lines, sentences, paragraphs, or even an entire page at a glance? You can! You just need a simple system that improves your brain’s visual reading efficiency.
The first step is understanding how your magnificent brain is decoding text on the unconscious level. Once you become conscious of this unconscious activity you will be able to speed it up to a higher reading speed still being able to comprehend, store, and recall essential information.
As a student, I trained to become a Psychobiologist at the State University of New York at Binghamton. During my studies I learned how our brain uses schema, or more simply our map of the world, whilst decoding text. Each of us has a lifetime of experiences stored in our memory map. Stored experiences that writers expect us to possess and use while reading.
Let’s use an example to learn how you can use schema to interpret text. Imagine I wrote a story and told you, “the woman wore a red dress.” I would expect you to know what I meant by the word woman. As a reader you don’t expect me to explain to you that a woman is a female. You already know this information. You are using your schema or life database to read this text.
Probably the best way to demonstrate schema’s important role in making text meaningful is by giving you a paragraph to read that is completely lacking any schematic clues. Although the words in this passage taken from my Maximum Power Speed Reading Program are simple and familiar you will find them almost impossible to read:
“This is an easy thing to do. If possible you will do it at home, but you can always go somewhere else if it is necessary. Beware of overdoing it. This is a major mistake and may cost you quite a bit of money. It is far better to do too little than attempt to do too much. Make sure everything is properly placed. Now you are ready to proceed. The next step is to put things into another convenient arrangement. Once done you’ll probably have to start again real soon. Most likely, you’ll be doing this for the rest of your life.”
It’s pretty tough decoding this text since it lacks any schematic clues. Did you guess that this paragraph is discussing doing a load of laundry? Picture the word laundry printed right above this text as a single word title, and read this passage once again. Isn’t it amazing how much clearer this passage becomes simply by adding a single schematically significant word? Even a single schematic clue can make text understandable. From this example it is clear that schema plays a major role in making text meaningful, but how do you know where to look for schematic clues while reading?
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Maximum Power Speed Reading isn’t just reading, it’s speed learning.
How to Retain & Recall Information For Increased Memory
August 14, 2009
Only four hours after studying you will forget over 40% of what you learn. Over 40%!
As the worlds fastest reader, I have learned the importance of accelerated memory skills for retaining information. The same memory skills that enable me to retain details at even 80 pages per minute, will also help you retain essential school information. Let us see what makes things more memorable.
Centuries ago the Greeks discovered one of the major secrets of memory. They found that powerful emotions glue information into the permanent memory. Just how do powerful emotions glue information into permanent memory? Information already stored in your permanent memory is similar to hangers in a closet. In the same way that hangers enable the storage of clothing in a closet, mental hangers in your permanent memory empower your brain to store new information. An emotional glue instantly links your new information with stored information already in your brain. Your ability to remember is directly proportional to the powerful emotional responses the image elicits. In short, effective linking requires you to create a unique image that produces extremely powerful emotions. Let us see exactly how this works with the following simple drill.
Using your traditional memory technique, memorize the following 5 items in less than one minute: (1) screw, (2) two by four, (3) sneakers, (4) tomato soup, and (5) window cleaner.
In less than a minute, using your traditional memory tool this list can be difficult to permanently remember. Using the emotional anchors discovered by the Greeks you will remember this list in a flash. Furthermore, you will be able to remember it backwards, forwards, or perfectly in any other sequence. Additionally, you will effortlessly be able to accomplish this more difficult task. Hard to believe? Let’s do it together.
The first step is to use a list of objects already familiar to you. Objects previously stored in your permanent memory. These objects will become your memory hangers.
The parts of your body meet all the necessary criteria. Your body parts are highly familiar to you, and are already stored in your permanent memory. Let us use the feet, shin, knees, thighs, and stomach which are in a convenient order for remembering new information.
Our next step is to create a highly emotional image that links the objects in your list to your familiar body parts. The first object is a screw, and the first body part is your feet. Imagine a sharp, rusty screw, going through your foot and out the top. Ouch! This is certainly a powerful emotional image. When you think of your feet what object immediately is recalled? The screw. Congratulations, you have just memorized the first object on your list.
A two by four is the second object on your list, and it must be linked to your shins. Picture your shins being shattered by a two by four. Thinking about your shins, instantly makes you remember the two by four.
Next you need to link sneakers to your knees. To create this emotional image requires a bit of imagination. Picture Dirty Harry wearing a pair of sneakers, kicking and shattering your knees. Imagining your knees instantly helps you remember a pair of sneakers.
The fourth object in your list is tomato soup, and your next familiar object is your lap. This is an easy image. Think about a boiling pot of tomato soup spilling onto your lap. Contemplating your lap you instantly remember tomato soup.
Your last object is window cleaner, and it must be linked to your stomach. Think about drinking a bottle of window cleaner and having it drain into your stomach. Pondering your stomach immediately makes you think about window cleaner.
Now you are ready to instantly remember the five objects on your list by recalling the emotional images linking them to your five body parts. I will give you the name of a body part and you picture the object linked to it. Ready? Begin:
(1) feet, (2) shins, (3) knees, (4) lap, and (5) stomach. See how easy it is to remember items when using emotional anchors. You can use this same technique for memorizing information for school?
Incidentally, I used painful images because every agrees on what is painful, while our concept of pleasure can vary. Nevertheless strong positive emotions are also effective in anchoring information into memory.
“Excellent & potentially life-changing information and tools” – Bill, a coach in Covington on Maximum Power Reading
How Schema Makes Text Comprehensible For Speed Reading
August 2, 2009
When people observe me speed reading eighty to ninety pages per minute, they are quick to ask me if I am reading every word? I always tell them, “of course not”, but neither do you. The difference is you don’t realize your brain is not reading every word, and read much slower than I do. Let me prove to you that your brain does not read each word. Read the following passage:
Olny srmat poelpe can read this.
I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearer at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat latter be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! If you cn raed tihs psas it on !!”
Notice what happened? Your brain can read this entire passage even though all the words are scrambled. Research at Cambridge University proved that your brain doesn’t read every letter by itself, and all that matters is that the first and last letter of a word be in the correct place. This is because your brain reads words as a whole and not one letter at a time.
When I read at top speed I see several sentences at a time and understand their content just like you do when reading a sign on the highway while driving at high speed. It is your brain’s ability to process large chunks of information at a time that makes speed reading so easy to learn.
An average person using one of my brain friendly speed reading programs can increase their reading speed by 100% or more in just a few hours. It really is amazing what our brains are capable of when we learn the skills and techniques to “speak” its language.
Judging A Book By Its Cover
July 30, 2009
How many times have you heard, “don’t judge a book by its cover?”
Actually one of the first steps for improving your reading comprehension is to analyze the book’s cover as I found out during a television interview with Denis Leary on Comedy Central quite a few years ago.
Denis wanted me to read, “Lady Boss”, a new Jackie Collins novel at that time. The book was several hundred pages, and I needed to complete the entire book in under five minutes. I was told that Jackie Collins would be coming to test my retention and recall of her book when I was done.
Before the show began, the camera man asked me to go onto the set, and demonstrate how I read a book quickly so he could get a good shot of my hands moving during the interview. He didn’t want me to actually read the book, just scan the jacket cover.
The jacket of the book listed many of the key characters and their names: Mike, Moe, Murray, and Mel. At 80 pages per minute the names Moe, and Mel don’t really appear that differently. Instead I created a mental photograph of what each individual looked like. One looked like Tony Soprano, while another looked more like Brad Pitt.
When the time arrived for me to complete the entire book in five minutes, my brain was able to see pictures of each character at very high speed making it easy for me to get a perfect score on Jackie Collin’s comprehension test.
The lesson in this for you is simple. Before you begin reading a text, review the information on the cover and jacket making a mental photo of as much data as possible. This will prepare you to learn the entire text with far less effort. Your brain learns more efficiently when it has a map of the territory it is about to enter. Scanning your text’s cover is the first step in this process.
I hope you enjoyed this article. Be sure to share it with your friends and family so they can also learn the advantages of learning with Mr. Reader.
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