Can one give detailed answers about a book after only spending 30-minutes with that book?
Sep 04
Posted: under Activation, Goals, PhotoRead, Photoreading, comprehension, expectation.
Many people feel if they could get everything they wanted out of a book in thirty minutes they wouldn’t keep putting it off until they had the time. Reading wouldn’t be such a chore.
In 2004 Learning Strategies had a PhotoReading Retreat. There were about 120 participants. The retreat was about taking PhotoReading skills to the next level. They recorded the and is available on DVD. The Results Supercharger. These DVDs can be an inspiration to those who have learned PhotoReading and a hurdle to those who haven’t because they are about pushing your PhotoReading skills.
One of the features of the recording is the 30-minute challenge.
In the days before the challenge we PhotoRead many books. On the Power reading day alone everyone PhotoRead at least 20 books and managed as many as 30 or more. We did some manual activation on four books. During manual activation we looked for what we wanted to know and we didn’t expect to know everything from the book. We were looking for answers to our most pressing question toward our life goals.
Most of the people in the room were anxious about whether they could activate a book in 30-minutes. But that’s all the time they had so they put it to use and activated as much as they could in those 30-minutes.
When it came to the 30-minute challenge someone picked a book for us. We PhotoRead and activated it in that 30-minutes (no incubation time). At the end of the 30-minute we told the person who gave us the book what it was about. When we stopped talking, they asked questions and encouraged us to keep talking. All managed brilliantly.
What is important to notice is, [b]somebody is asking [i]questions[/i].[/b] After PhotoReading we let the mind answer. If you want to experience instantaneous activation, get someone to ask you questions about the book. For me instantaneous activation is PhotoReading a book and asking is there anything in this book new or useful to me to activate it some more. Then yes or no. Yes, take another look, no put it back on the shelf. But I ask myself some questions. When yes, I find something useful, when no, I never have, so I no longer spend more time with the book. I’ve PhotoRead it anyway so the information is still available to me. And if there is anything useful in the book in the future I know where to find it.
Activation takes questions. Whether manual (you ask the questions, mind map, link with what you know ask more questions to activate some more.) Or someone else ask a question and we give the answer without a second thought. What amuses me about spontaneous activation is, [i] it’s spontaneous; [/i]you don’t know you’re activating and as soon as you know you are activating it isn’t spontaneous any more. You start second-guessing making it manual (laboured if you like)
The point of the 30-minute Challenge was
1. To give ourselves a comparison of how much we [b]can[/b] get out of a book when we spend 30 minutes, [b]with a purpose.[/b]
When we remember what it was like to spend 30-minutes on the first two chapters and compare how much we can get from a whole book in 30-minutes. The quality and quantity of information we have that is useful to us from that time is the whole point of accessing the book.
2. Need to know. How much do you, [i]really[/i], need to know and what do you need to know right now? People read a book with the misguided belief that by reading it word for word they have a 100% comprehension.
Often they spend so much time reading that when finished they cannot tell you what the information was in the first 6 chapters. A novel is easier but even there they cannot remember exactly where the story began. And do we, really, understand it that well that we could say we have 100% comprehension, ever?
Remember research on memory shows that you forget as much as 60% of what you learn within the first 24 hours and that you have to review or use it to remember. So the more time between the beginning and the end without a review the more comprehension declines. When applying PhotoReading you review pages as you see them again.
So if you’re studying for a test. Build your knowledge in smaller chunks over many day. Reviewing each day is easier and what you already learned becomes an anchor point for more knowledge on the subject.
Here I pose a couple of questions. What’s the point of knowing it consciously right now if it is of no use to you right now? Doesn’t it make more sense to be able to spend 30-minutes with a book to get the information that is most important to you right now?
That’s what we did in the 30-minute Challenge. We looked for information that we needed right now. Right now we needed to be able to explain what the book was about. What the author had to say of importance. Most of all find the information we thought the other person wanted or needed to know about the topic. Since they gave us the book.
If we pick up the book for personal information our purpose is different. Some of us had a personal interested in the book and after 30-minutes focusing on getting the information for the other person we still had questions of our own. We would have liked to spend another couple of minutes with the book after we talked about it to the other person to satisfy our curiosity about some points. We discovered a personal purpose.
I had such an experience before PhotoReading Retreat. I was in the States and came across a book and spent about 10-minutes with one of the books. The time wasn’t there for me to activate the book for my own purpose. A year later I had the opportunity to spend another 10-minutes with the book and I looked forward to it because I still had the purpose of understanding some information in the book. I finished in 3-minutes. Seeing the pages I realised I already understood.
Check you purpose for reading and then decide how much time you have available. If you only have 10-minutes get what is most important to you now.
What do you need right now? The book is still there and so are other sources. So if in the future you need more you’ll find it. And if in the future it only takes you 5 minutes to pull out of a book the exact information that is relevant to you in that moment. Why would you spend 12 hours, 8 hours, 3 hours or even 30-minutes with a book right now?
For exams build in 20-minute blocks over a number of days. Trying to learn everything in one day is like eating all your meals for the week in one day. It creates discomfort and later in the week you still have to eat again. Even if you learn it all in one day, You have to review the whole lot during the week.
© Alex K Viefhaus 2005
