PhotoReading - How to read at 25,000 words per minute

Published by neil on October 21st, 2006

I’m serious - sounds incredible, but apparently, it is possible. jEN and I both picked this up from Steve Pavlina’s blog roughly the same time: PhotoReading - How to Triple Your Reading Speed.

Steve’s blog is focused around self development and where we also earned about Polyphasic Sleep - an experiment we considered but did not attempt due to that totally inconvenient need to integrate with the rest of the planet. Actually, now that I think of it, with the nature of the work with Podshow - time difference here and San Fancisco and all - staying up all day and night with just brief, regular naps might be a possibility!

The PhotoReading training/tutorial/course material is not cheap… unless of course someone happens to be selling the complete thing on ebay. jEN’s awesome search power enabled us to go from a potential £300 (i.e. this will have to wait a while) to around £60 (i.e. snap it up!). So, CDs, manual and books now on the coffee table, what’s it all about?

First, it’s not reading. Well, it is, and it isn’t. Obviously you need to look at the book you want to read, but you don’t, in the generally accepted term, read it. It is a multi-stage process, only part of which involves physical interaction with the actual book. First you look through the book and get a feel for its structure, chapter headers, any areas that are highlighted, etc. Then comes some relaxation (don’t cringe, a relaxed but alert mind is more able to assimilate information), followed by glancing without allowing your eyes to actually focus on the words, at each page one by one - never pausing from end to end. Next, after a period of doing nothing (anything from 30 minutes to a day), it’s time to ‘activate’ by making notes about the book’s contents, mind maps, diagrams, whatever. Lastly, you return to the book and rapid read through the entire thing, pausing to read in detail only parts which seem to instinctively stand out. Rapid Reading is like skimming through looking for key words.

One of the most important and interesting elements of the process is to clearly define the intent of your reading. This needs to be far mmore focused than “I want to read this book”. The intent should define the exact purpose of this reading session, and I suppose you could approach a book more than once with a different purpose. The intent focuses your activity to achieve an measurable goal and helps the PhotoReading technique filter out anything which is irrelevant to your current intent.

Although the course suggests this technique is suitable for any reading, I feel that at least initially, non-fiction, technical and structured books are going to be the most approachable. This is because they have a defined structure and a logical flow of associated information. The pre-reading stage of building a picture of the book’s structure will be much more rewarding in this case.

It’s early days, so no reports on results as yet - we’re still reading the introductions and the initial audio tutorials. But expect some progress updates in the coming days. If you have as many unread books as we do and the thought of fully comprehending one book’s contents through just a couple of hours total effort doesn’t appeal, then I think you have far too much time on your hands!

[tags]photo reading, steve pavlina[/tags]

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