AlexK’s Blog


Activation Step Rapid Reading


Nov 10

Posted: under Activation, Goals, PhotoRead, Photoreading, learning, reading.

Is it a good Idea to go straight to rapid reading experiencing difficulty with manual Activation?

Rapid Reading

Rapid reading is the closest thing to traditional reading. Unlike speed reading where one speed fits all you move through the pages from beginning to end and different speeds. For areas that you have covered by manual activation you’ll probably use speeds close to Superread and dip. For areas that are new or you haven’t covered yet you might find yourself slowing down to the average reading speed of 190 words a minute. Then picking up speed again.

Rapid Reading a short cut when having trouble with activation?

No. If you are having problems with manual activation there are a couple of other reasons you need to consider.

The danger of going straight to rapid Reading as an activation method is that Rapid Reading it closest to traditional reading. The risk for a beginner is they will just continue to use the passive reading method. With rapid reading it is too easy to become or remain a passive reader.

If You have trouble with manual activation have a look at your purpose. Ask yourself how do you plan to use this information in the long run. Once you answered that, consider what you need to know to reach that goal. Your purpose then becomes the reason you are reading the book and it helps you to stay focused on the information you need from this particular text.

Purpose is a large topic of it’s own I’ll probably write an article about that in the future.

For now know that if you haven’t established a purpose it won’t do to go straight into rapid reading

Exceptions, When it is acceptable to go into rapid reading in the early stages of activation.

There will be times when you find a book so interesting after an initial activation that it makes perfect sense to start rapid reading. It’s a perfect approach for reading for pleasure.

On the whole I recommend that beginners do manual activation first on non-fiction text. Reserve Rapid reading for novels while you work towards proficiency with the PhotoReading system.

How many manual activation passes before rapid reading?

I strongly recommend that for a book of 200 pages the beginner allow at least six 20-minute activation passes. That means you’re spending 2 hours in activation. This isn’t much time for a book that takes many readers 8 to 12 hours.

Only after doing the six activation passes allow yourself to go into rapid reading. Often rapid reading is unnecessary after multiple activation passes. However for a beginner it is good experience to help them see what they missed if anything.

If the beginner finds they missed important information it pays to spend a few minutes looking at the questions and what your original purpose was. And mentally note that this is the information you seek when activating. It provides training.

For longer books you would apply more activation passes. To work out how many passes you would apply consider how many hours the book would take using your traditional reading approach and divide that figure by three. That’s how many hours your activation passes would total. Divide by three again if you are planning 20-minute activation layers. This will give you the total number of activation passes that would be ideal before you resort to Rapid Reading.

Textbooks, treat each chapter as a book on it’s own. Textbooks are often needed for courses, so you might need to apply at least 3 activation passes to the chapter. Each pass might just be 7 to 10 minutes. Follow that with a rapid read if necessary.

Believe me that is a lot better than the approach recommended in a speed reading article I found yesterday. It said after learning to speed read don’t read three books in the time you’ve read one. Read the same book three times. If you know maths you’ll notice you haven’t gained anything by speed reading if you still need to read the text three times. However most universities do recommend going over the text 3 times. Do it three times with manual activation and once with a rapid read if necessary. You’ll be satisfying the university recommendation and still get your reading done in 1/3rd the time.

The Benefit of Manual Activation

Developing the skill of manual activation helps you to become an active reader. It will make it possible for you to finish a book in 20 to 30 minutes rather than 2 or 3 hours.

To get to that point you do need to invest more time in manual activation in the early stages of learning. It means making more activation passes until the information starts making sense.

Looking at it realistically when you start reading a book at chapter one and the book consists of 18 chapters you ain’t got nothing yet. When you spend 10-minutes on first chapter you accept the knowledge isn’t there until you’ve reached the end of the book. So why short-change yourself when you use activation?

When activating set realistic goals and stick with it. Form mind probing questions. Begin activating when you have one question in mind. If you don’t know where to start look at the table of content and turn the chapter heading into questions. Do any of those questions sound like questions you need answers to, to reach your purpose?

Once you find an answer, form another question. Something in the text might have sparked your curiosity. Much like having a conversation or interview with someone (the Author is a person) learning something new sparked another question or raised a point that needs clarification. There you have found another question something you want more information on.

Build it in layers. Manual activation works best when you keep it short. 5 to 20-minute passes.

This is where rapid reading will set you back. Once you begin rapid reading often you will go longer than 20 minutes. The disadvantage of that is the longer you read the slower you get. Even with rapid reading breaks are important.

It Gets easier

Activation has the benefit of increasing the speed at which you rapid read. If you applied three activation passes to a chapter of a text or 6 activation passes with a book. Answering mind probing questions. You have already have an understanding most of the information in the book. Then speed at which you can rapid read the text is greater than when you give up on activation too soon or used rapid reading as a first phase of activation. With the sections you haven’t activated chances are you already Superread it at least once if not more.

I know activation can seem daunting. I have been there myself. Where it felt like I was getting nothing from the book for the first three 20-minute passes only to see it start to come together on the fourth. The interesting thing is when it starts to come together you’re almost done. One or two passes more passes and you’re done. So don’t fret if it doesn’t make sense in the first two or three. Persist with mind probing questions and it has to come together.

If you have a nagging doubt that you want to know more but are not sure what it is you want to know after you’ve done a reasonable number of activation passes. Then use rapid reading.

Remember your purpose. Is the time you’re planning to invest in Rapid Reading worth it? Consider the 80/20 rule.

© Alex Viefhaus originally published December 2005

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Notice Small Changes and Gain Success


May 29

Posted: under Goals, Persistence, Personal development, Photoreading, expectation, frustration, learning, success.

right-moves-thumb181 After their initial success with learning PhotoReading many students fall back into their old reading habits. There are a number of reasons for this. One the reason I’m going to cover right now is learning to accept the results you get.

New PhotoReaders often excited to apply what they learned and then it doesn’t happen. It’s a problems for any newly learned skill or attempt to change not just PhotoReading. Many have left a self-improvement seminar excited to use these brilliant ideas, only to realise two or three weeks later nothing has changed. What is going wrong?

The unrealistic expectation

“Now that I know it I will automatically apply what I know.” Sorry it doesn’t work that way.

Sadly no matter how much time we can save or how much easier the new approach may be, old habits die hard. The old habits are like well worn, familiar tracks, through the jungle of out neural networks. They are the first one we take when we are on automatic pilot.

Change takes a conscious approach and it takes 21 to 30 days to develop a new habit. We need to make a conscious effort and when we notice we missed an opportunity to use our newly acquired skill to acknowledge it. To first become aware that we have choices.

The other thing we can do is schedule specific activities for the next 30-days in our planner that make use of the new skill. The time need only be 15 to 20 minutes. It’s important to remember it takes 30 consecutive days. If you are not one to use a planner Get a calendar and aim to put a cross through each day that you have successfully applied the new skill.

If you want to succeed with PhotoReading look for opportunities to use your skill. Select one book for the week to work with over 6 days at 15 to 20 minutes each day. Play with the steps of the system and see what happens.

Be aware

It’s important to remember when we learn something smallsuccess-thumb341new we often fall short of our expectation. This means the result we got might have been less than what we hoped for. You may have done really well in the PhotoReading seminar and now on your own you fall short of your expectation. If you followed what you learned as best you can you did get a result. And any result that takes you in the direction you want to go is a good result.

New PhotoReaders they are often uber critical of their minor successes and throw the baby out with the bath water.

Why do we do that?

The problem probably stems from our education system where there is a top grade wins awards and accolades and a passing grade which is considered just barely acceptable and in many cases not quite good enough or even poo pooed. Just passing or not passing left us feeling inferior and to avoid that feeling we procrastinate in doing what we know we need to work on.

We develop an ’All or Nothing’ approach and result to developing new skills. It becomes a stop sign, anything to avoid feeling inferior. It leaves us stuck with the old habit even when we know the new skill we learned would serve us better. If we could just develop it some more.

The biggest problem is we never learned to celebrate small improvements. We ignored poor results instead of using them as a guide post to push ahead. We scratch it and start over instead of keeping going until we’ve given it all we have.

That too is the biggest problem for those who are learning PhotoReading on their own. They do one activation and say it doesn’t work instead of using that activation layer and building on it with another and then another. For the beginner to finish a book in 1/3rd the time it takes them to read it in the traditional way you need to do a few activation layers.

Be kind to yourself and learn to celebrate minor successes. If you only managed 10 minutes of your new exercise routine although you planned to do 30. Give yourself credit. Celebrate. It’s 10 minutes more than nothing. And it makes it easier to add more minutes next time.

Ignoring it or berating yourself about it isn’t going to motivate you. Your mind will think what if I only manage 9 minutes next time that’s worse I better not start because I feel bad about myself then. Only because you threw out the results you got as not good enough. Don’t make yourself start over. Build on it and see if you can do a bit more than that next time.

If you find yourself disappointed after applying yourself to do something, Stop! Reconsider. You did something and you got a result. Can you champion yourself to use that as something to build on? Something to get better than rather than starting over?

Celebrate your successes. No matter how small.

© Alex K Viefhaus May 2008

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How do you know when you have a purpose?


Apr 16

Posted: under Goals, Purpose.

Did you know that to succeed at anything you need to have a purpose?

 

One thing when people come to PhotoReading they often have the goal of reading even more. Great as that is it doesn’t provide a purpose for learning PhotoReading.

When one sets out to learn PhotoReading they often have the magical image of themselves zooming through book, being great scholars, getting straight A , top of the class, on the ball, best employee and similar images. The problem is those images don’t sustain the motivation. They do create impatience, frustration, self criticism and self doubt. Because the minds first reaction is, ’if you could do that, why haven’t you done it already?’

The image is a goal not a purpose.

But why is a purpose important?

The way the mind works. You now have expectations that instantly you’re going to “know exactly what to do” and you’ll be a PhotoReading “master” by the end of the day. And when it doesn’t work ’exactly’ as you pictured it the master of negative self talk (the conscious mind) steps in and negates everything and throws the baby out with the bathwater (cliché I know). You stay on the merry-go-round until someone or something helps you clarify what you want, what your purpose is and that helps you step off on the right platform.

What is purpose really?

In brief, it’s an explanation of why you are doing something. I’m doing this so that I can XZY. It explains your motivation. If you lack motivation you need to find a purpose for action.

Lets look at purpose another way

 

mappLets use a map. You are here. ( a big dot next to an arrow) Your destination (goal) is the X that marks the spot. Before you can reach that X you must collect certain items along the way. You look at a map and considering the many options and variable decide on a path that suits your need and allows you to obtain what you need at your destination. The path you chose serves a purpose. And if you had to explain it to anyone you would say, “I am taking this path so that I can collect that.” There may be more items to collect along the way to your destination (goal). So your journey may have many paths but each path has a purpose.

Purpose for PhotoReading.

I’m reading this book so that I can ….. which is part of my journey to my ultimate goal.

Purpose helps you to define what you want and the next step is to let go and just do it and see what happens.

Just try it and see and if it doesn’t work check what was your purpose. Do you need to refine that? Was it a purpose or just a fancy statement?

Purpose is the essence of motivation. If you don’t know where you’re going how will you know when you get there? And if you don’t know where you are going why even bother starting?

© Alex K Viefhaus

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The truth? You can’t handle the change. Why Goals don’t manifest.


Jan 14

Posted: under Goals.

Time is required to manifest goals because of the time it takes us to make changes in our behaviour, thinking or habits. The reason our goals haven’t manifested is because our actions and habits are mismatched. Our habit and actions match our current reality perfectly. They don’t match the goal.

What’s more we don’t like change.

To change means moving out of our comfort zone. Even if we successfully stretched that comfort zone for one day. We snap back to what we know.

An example would overnight success. Suddenly we are a success and the next thought we have is, “how am I going to stay here?” Thrown out of the comfort zone. So we do everything we can go get back into our comfort zone. Which isn’t much. We just go back to our habitual behaviours and responses. If we want to keep that success we have to make changes.

But I suffer from anxiety. Who wants to be anxious when they can be confident? Wouldn’t the experience of overnight success be enough to make the change permanent? Why can’t I just get rid of it overnight?

Being a person with anxiety and being a person without anxiety requires a different way of thinking. It’s easier to accept thinking the way we know than it is to adopted a changed way of thinking. It is what we know. We are comfortable with what we know and fall back into the habitual thinking pattern.

We have habits to help us stay in the status quo.

It is a habit. The other way of thinking is what is unknown and the unknown is dangerous because we don’t know how it affects everything else in our lives. Habits are designed to keep us in a safe routine. Even an anxious person has methods and techniques for coping.The uncertainty of how this new mindset affects other areas and our coping techniques makes it easier to stay with the original behaviour than to change it.

Without a change in thinking everything comes back to what you know. No matter how successfully you were at convincing yourself that you are going to do it once and for all. If you had to adopt the changed way of thinking overnight it would terrify you and habits wouldn’t let you stop your old way of thinking that quickly.

If you want to change, do it with intention and expect it slowly.

Lasting change is a gradual process. It’s not once and for all. It’s once, again and again and again and again… till it becomes a habit and you’re still doing it again and again..

Your fairy godmother can’t wave a magic wand and manifest your goals for you because something in your behaviour needs to change so you may keep that gift. The longest it will be in your reality without a change on your part is the length of time you give thought or daydream about the wish. So you need to change, the way you think, behave or certain habits if you want to manifest your goals.

Visualisation isn’t enough without a change in behaviour. The reason you visualise daily is to slowly make changes without arguing with your current habits. To let them change unnoticed.

To reach your goals it means you actually have to do something different. For for example, if you want to improve your PhotoReading skills. You cannot just look at book and try it once, then say it doesn’t work. PhotoReading is a skill and it takes time to develop the skill. So even if you learn it in a day you need to use it daily to make it a habit. Just knowing you could get your reading done faster if you applied the PhotoReading skill doesn’t automatically mean that you will do it. We are creatures of habit so while we know PhotoReading is faster we still go back to slow poke reading because we need to change

If you haven’t manifested your goal then you need to make a change somewhere. If you want to master PhotoReading, If you want to lose weight, If you want increase your wealth. You need to adopt behaviours have what you desire. If you want to be a proficient PhotoReader you need to make PhotoReading a daily habit like successful PhotoReaders do. If you want to lose weight you have to change your lifestyle to match that of a slim person. If you want wealth, you need to make changes in the way you handle money.

If you keep doing exactly what you are doing now you’ll continue to get exactly the same results. Something has to change in your behaviour if you want to see your goals manifest. Behaviour cannot be changed once and then be considered set. So it stands to reasons your goals will also take more than a day to manifest.

To manifest your goal you must change. It takes 21 to 60 days to change a habit. Adopting a new habit means stretching the bounds of your comfort zone. Is your goal worth it?

What if manifesting your goal meant that the change you have to make is spend less time reading blogs and more time acting like the person who has manifested the goal?

It’s your choice.
© Alex K Viefhaus

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Does your goal have a hidden agenda?


Jan 09

Posted: under Goals.

What is the hidden agenda? In a few words it’s the goal behind the goal.It is often the reason why, you chose that specific goal. But somewhere along the line forgot.

An example goal with a hidden agenda

I think easiest way for me to explain this to have given an example from my own life experience. where the hidden agenda was staring me right in the face.

I met someone who had big business ideas for my business. To grow my business so that I have financial freedom, and all the free time that I want to The structure required me to work, virtually 24-hour this a day, seven days a week just to pay an employee to do telesales and pay the cost of advertising. He warned me that it would take 2 or 3 years before I start making any money to live off for myself. I’d be working just to break even for a few years.

The goal could have made sense, but didn’t

This for many would seem like a brilliant business plan. Yet I couldn’t understand why I should work my guts out to employ someone else. Right my business and growing at a steady pace, and it is keeping me comfortable. I can my free time now, with the way I am working now. Sure my business isn’t making me rich. But it is giving me the freedom I seek. It would be so easy to lose my purpose for going into business for myself and make it a purpose in itself.

Over the two or three years time, my business will continue to grow and I can pace myself and enjoy my leisure time now. Naturally I want my business to be successful, so that I can enjoy my leisure time, and afford it. It is very easy for growing my business to become my primary goal, and allow the primary reason I went into business to become the hidden agenda. I can avoid this by remembering why I went into business.

It’s not only me who has goals with hidden agendas

I see a similar vein when people tell me they are working to have free time so that they can be with their children and attend their graduation without financial worry. Yet they are working longer hours to try and achieve this. Meanwhile, the kids are missing out on this parents attention. By the time the money might be in the bank, the kids could have left home or you missed some very significant years. The reason why they were working so hard, is forgotten. The hidden agenda is that they really want to have freedom so that they can enjoy being with their children. But they are so focused on the goal of building their business that their reason for wanting a healthy income is their hidden agenda.

So what is a hidden agenda?

The hidden agenda is a real goal but so wrapped up in another goal you miss it. So when you review your goals or are not making progress towards them, have a closer look to see if you can find a hidden agenda. The real reason why you put that goal into action in the first place. That hidden agenda needs to become a goal too. Perhaps you need to schedule that time with the kids or to pursue that hobby.

Why is it important to make sure that hidden agenda is an open goal as well? Because you can undermine yourself, acting as if you are working at and at the same time, goofing or sabotaging your progress. A part of you may recognise that if you succeed you’ll lose what you are striving for. You may find yourself feeling stressed, getting angry or even wondering why you even bother. They are signs that your original goal had a different purpose and an important goal has been hidden. So with all the goals you have written down for this year, check to see if there was a hidden agenda or two. Ignored it can sabotage that goal.

© Alex K Viefhaus

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