@AtiLa-24,
Thanks for your advise. I will do my best to keep everything in one post.
To answer your question - it simply takes discipline and effort. Anyone can do it.
The Problem is, alot of people give up half way and they don’t have a strategy.
Here are the steps to increase your speed.
Step 1: complete Peter Kump’s book :Breakthrough Rapid Reading.
Read it with a highlighter or a pencil. If you are reading in PDF, you can highlight it in PDF. Do your best to follow his instruction. Remind yourself that you are a little child following the instructions of a teacher.
Do all the drills obediently, without coming up with your own ideas. Do the drills from this book everyday. I set aside 1 hour to do the drills. Even when I did not feel like it, I would do it. The key to speed reading, is in doing the drills religiously, everyday, without giving up. Do the drills until you get the results.
Do the drills without encouragement.
When you do the drills, imagine and visualize that you are already reading thousands of words a minute…soon…after a few months, this will be your reality.
Step 2: Everyday, I would make certain statements continually with my mouth. I would actually say it out.
I would say continually with my mouth :”I can read 25,000 words a minute with comprehension and retention”. I would set aside about 30minutes to say this statement everyday.
Yes, it sounds crazy. But I do it.
The other thing I say continually with my mouth is this: “Mind, stop vocalizing. “
Now why do I do that? That’s because the part of your brain that controls your speech, is connected to every nerve of your body. Which means, what you say, will affect your brain and your body. So this is a scientific process. Your words will affect your biology. This is neuro science.
So I say these words almost everyday. The first time I instructed my mind to stop vocalizing, my mind drastically reduce the sub vocalizing. Everytime I begin to subvocalize in my reading time, I would simply say these words. And almost immediate, my mind would begin to quiet itself down drastically.
If the results are not so forthcoming, you simply need to say it over and over again everyday…You are using your speech to educate your nervous system. Your nervous system will in turn educate your brain. This is simply science.
When I first begin to practice reading, I also did something else. I would use my fingers as a pacer and go over each line really fast. When I do that, I would say with my mouth continually: “Just look..just look…just look”
What I am doing is to tell my mind to just look at the words without subvocalizing. When I say that with my mouth, my mind doesn’t have a chance to subvocalize because my mouth saying out these words will not give my mind any opportunity to read those words in my mind.
Step 3: Increase your peripheral vision.
I would watch these videos on youtube almost everyday, to increase my peripheral vision. Bear in mind, these video has some kind of religious muslim chant in the background. This video is not uploaded by me but by someone else.
So what I do is, I shut down the volume completely, and I play some instrumental music background in another youtube channel.
I would double the speed of the video, so I can complete watching the video in less time.
The key to watching this video is: allow your eyeballs to follow the shapes. It can get tiring in the beginning. Simply look side ways and blink your eyes. Then look back at the screen.
These are simple eye exercises to increase your peripheral vision.
Step 4: Get into the right mental state.
This is important. I noticed when I first began to learn speed reading, that I was tensed at times. When I was tense in my emotions, I had a hard time speeding up. So I struggled for sometime.
Then I also discovered when I am relaxed, my speed would go up tremendously. So the key is to get into a relaxed alpha state or a simply stress free state.
You can do the following the get into this state.
Go to youtube and look for music that help you.
Here is an example
Step 5: Another method to get into right state and increase your peripheral vision:
Tangerine Technique
Prepare: (30s)
Overall Aim: Laid the foundation for the system and to read with power
A clear sense of purpose
Aim: To make your body strong, alert and increase conscious-subconscious connection
Place reading materials in front of you
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Relax by closing your eyes, aware yourself from head to toe, spine is erect, posture is
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comfortable and breathing is relaxed
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What is my ultimate application of the material?
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How important is the material?
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What level of detail do I want?
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How much time am I willing to commit right now?
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Enter the ideal state for reading
Aim: Increase comprehension, retention and recall / increase visual intake
Use the tangerine technique to fix one unit of attention on a single point
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Hold an imaginary tangerine in your hand
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Experience its weight, colour, texture and smell
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Toss it into other hand and catch it
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Toss the tangerine back and forth between hands
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Catch it in your dominant hand and bring to top back part of your head
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Touch that area gently with your hand
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Imagine it resting there while you bring your arm down and relax your shoulders
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Close your eyes and let it balance on the back of your head
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With your eyes closed, imagine your visual field opening up
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Maintain the relax feeling of alertness as you open your eyes and begin reading at
a rate comfortable for you
OR
Snap your fingers behind your head
OR
Imagine a bird sitting on top of your head
OR
Imagine standing outside of your body and looking over the top of your head
After that, you can start to read.
Step 6: Another method to get into right state and increase your peripheral vision
Another method to increase your peripheral vision is to soften your gaze.
Do you recall there was a period where the world was crazy about “Magic eye”? we would look into some pattern on screen or on paper and soften our gaze, or look into the screen in a relaxed manner, and we would be able to see a 3D object on screen?
Well, that is the way I look at the words in the book, this enables me to sweep the book really fast.
Here is an example of Magic Eye:
Step: 7
I would read a book in 30min without writing notes. Then I would read it a 2nd round, this time, I would underline or make little Asterix to take note of anything I want to remember. Then I would write down the relevant page no. on the blank page cover inside the book.
Some of us would do a mindmap…which really helps
So there you have it…all the steps
All these steps are actions which you can take, to condition yourself daily..
Here are the entire steps to photoreading: a detailed summary for you. these are the action steps:
Hope this helps everyone.
Adrian Hanz