AlexK’s Blog
Jul 11
Someone asked me a terrific question today.
There is a theory that we do not absorb as well when we read from a screen as we do when reading from a book. Thought you would have some input re this.
And here is my reply.
Absolutely true we don’t absorb as well when we read from a computer [...] [...more]
Posted: under Photoreading, comprehension, reading.
Someone asked me a terrific question today.
- There is a theory that we do not absorb as well when we read from a screen as we do when reading from a book. Thought you would have some input re this.
And here is my reply.
Absolutely true we don’t absorb as well when we read from a computer screen.. Not really a theory either Jacob Nielsen has been testing it since the mid 1990. He originally found that we read 25% slower and in 2005 readability improved by 5%. Most readers only skim and marketers can take advantage of reading hot spots. That is where people actually read. If you want to know more about this I suggest you check out the useit website.
I’ve noticed that it has a significant impact on print reading too. When I first got seriously involved with reading in 2002 the statistics floating around was an average speed of 230 words a minute. Now I keep coming across papers that say the average speed is 190 word per minute average. These statistics have been reported for England, USA, Canada and in my class I find that most people read 1.25 pages in three minutes which is consistent with 190 words a minute.
I believe this drop in reading speed is caused by the fact that we spend so much time computer reading. The poor comprehension of what we read from a monitor carries over to paper reading.
The reason why comprehension is so poor is skimming is not reading and is not an effective technique for picking up all the important information. This is where most people find speed reading systems let them down. As speed reading is an attempt to push the eyeballs faster across a page it still works with the primary working memory as one would with elementary reading.
So one is handicapped by the conscious minds limited ability to handle more than 7 plus or minus 2 bits of information a second. You need to be able to cluster ideas to use that limited capacity.
The second problem with skimming and speed reading because you are working with the primary working memory, is you don’t have enough time to put the information into long term memory. In my view at best it lands in mid term memory. Some believe it is only in the short term memory yet to me it does last a bit longer than that. It never satisfied me because it seemed inaccurate because I believed speed readers must get a bit more out of it than that otherwise it wouldn’t make sense to speed read at all. A mid term memory has recently been identified and that is about 24 hours after that the mind dumps the information as unimportant. To my understanding this is more the speed readers experience.
The lament I hear is just about everything gained from speed reading is quickly forgotten. All speed readers I have spoken with have told me that they often have to re-read what they had previously speed read because they forgot the information. The problem is it happens again when they speed read it again.
We did hope that the faster computers would eliminate the eye fatigue that come from looking at a computer screen However this has not yet been the case. That’s why many people prefer to print out what they read and why we should take comments on a forum, email, chatrooms, forum and the like with a grain of salt. In the effort to read from the monitor the person my simply have skimmed over a message and missed a significant point and misunderstood the communication.
Coming onto the market are e-book readers These will be a significant reduction in paper waste once they gain acceptance. The screen is more like printed paper and since the screen doesn’t have to constantly refresh it is a lot easier on the eyes. I recently bought one and found I was able to read 3 books in the hour and I find it difficult to read that many on a computer.
One of the main problems with skimming is the comprehension suffers and as that is what speed reading is, skimming, we often miss significant cues and miss the meaning of the text we read. This also causes confusion and costs in other ways. Anything faster than 800 wpm is skimming and not reading and no one who teaches reading will advertise that they can teach you to read at 1000 to 25,000 words a minute because you cannot read faster than 800 words a minute.
With PhotoReading we teach people to PhotoRead at 25,000 words a minute (it’s actually a lot faster on computer screen). PhotoReading is not reading. PhotoReading is different to speed reading because we aim to absorb all the information by placing the information into the long term memory first. Through activation we gain the conscious comprehension in 1/3rd the time of traditional reading.
PhotoReading is a system. A system that uses the whole mind for reading. The system allows a beginner to get their reading done in 1/3 the time. Experienced PhotoReaders manage it in 1/5th or even 1/10th the time.
If you’re in Australia and would like to learn PhotoReading see my schedule.
© Alex Viefhaus July 2008
Jun 19
I learned how to PhotoRead but I suck at activation
Lets check your activation technique and discuss some of the experiences you might have had.
Begin your activation by revisiting step one of the system. This is probably more important than most people realise and often overlooked. Check in with your purpose regularly make sure you are [...] [...more]
Posted: under Activation, PhotoRead, Photoreading, Purpose, comprehension, confusion, expectation, frustration, motivation.
I learned how to PhotoRead but I suck at activation
Lets check your activation technique and discuss some of the experiences you might have had.
Begin your activation by revisiting step one of the system. This is probably more important than most people realise and often overlooked. Check in with your purpose regularly make sure you are on track. Then select one of your questions and review your trigger word list. From there you want to select the first question you want answered.
Remembering that the book was written by a human who wanted to pass on information imagine that you are entering into a conversation with that author. You are about to ask them a question. As look for the answers to your questions you will also find other questions coming to mind. If your question hasn’t been answered write the new question down.
As you find answers you may want to mind map them. Its very easy to dismiss the results of your first activations. You may feel like you’re not really getting anything and get ready to quit for the old fashioned way of reading. Before you do that lets consider this.
When you begin reading you just read. You hope information build as you follow word for word what the author has written. In 10 minutes you may have finished the first chapter. How much do you really know? Is that even important information in relation to your purpose or studying?
The purpose of activation is to build trust in your body mind connection. How often have you set out to learn something only to realise you already knew most of what is being taught? An interesting experience my students often have. “I discovered something else I want to know more about and my original question turned out not important.
It saddens me when beginners negate this experience. I think its brilliant and yet they think no, no its not right. I should be able to form the perfect question in the first place. In my mind it was the perfect question. It got them started and lead them to the next question that they wanted answered even more. Isn’t the next question always more important than the one that was before it? Its brilliant it got the ball rolling. You started a conversation with the author. The more you do use the PhotoReading system the better you get at it naturally and you learn to recognise you already know the answers.
It’s the same when they say to me. I did badly. I ran out of questions but felt I was missing something so I rapid read to check and sure enough that I found that very important piece of information that I missed. I am no good at activation.
What? No good at activation?
What you did was activation. It was listening to that feeling, thinking, knowing, small voice within that told you, you were missing something. It didn’t help you form a question and yet guided you to rapid read to find the answer. That’s how you activate, you follow your gut and strengthen your body mind connection. That something “wasn’t right” is a powerful activation signal that your body mind has given you and you write it off?
My suggestion is make note of it and mentally tell yourself that in future you expect to pull that information during your activation layers. Your body and mind has done everything right. It might have taken longer this time and will always take longer if you write off this very special communication you just had from your body and mind.
If you want to perfect your PhotoReading skills take every experience as just that an experience. Its neither good nor bad. An experience is something to build on. The better you leave behind the judgment and negative self talk the sooner you will be able to recognise yourself as a proficient PhotoReader. See my post on Noticing even small gains.
© Alex K Viefhaus
May 29
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. [...] [...more]
Posted: under Goals, Persistence, Personal development, Photoreading, expectation, frustration, learning, success.
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 
new 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
Apr 23
When people first learn about PhotoReading they fear that satisfactory conscious understanding is elusive.That’s an interesting fear because information that eludes you is everything that your non-conscious mind is processing bar 2000 bits per second which your conscious mind has access to.
What the mind is capable of
It is known that the 300 million nerve impulses [...] [...more]
Posted: under Photoreading, learning.
When people first learn about PhotoReading they fear that satisfactory conscious understanding is elusive.That’s an interesting fear because information that eludes you is everything that your non-conscious mind is processing bar 2000 bits per second which your conscious mind has access to.
What the mind is capable of
It is known that the 300 million nerve impulses of the corpus collosum are capable of receiving 400 billion bits of information a second. The eye is capable of seeing 1 trillion bits. The mind lives in a sea of 400 billion bits of information a second and your mind only responds to 2000. If you had to deal with all that information consciously we wouldn’t be able to function.
Nothing really eludes you. You are just selective of what you are consciously aware of. Your conscious awareness is affected by a number of things. When it comes to learning, your self-image, self-talk and beliefs. These become perceptual defences. They act as barriers to what the mind decides to process. Even on the processed information before then can become conscious we have to have an expectation and need to know.
PhotoReading
PhotoReading allows you to have the same or better comprehension of what you read in 1/3rd 1/5th or even 1/10th the time of traditional reading. So for starters nothing more would elude you than already eluded you with traditional reading.
Your ability to understand what you are reading with traditional reading techniques is inhibited by the same defences.
What I learned
I’ve noticed in my own experience that with traditional reading my perceptual defences hindered me more because I didn’t know what I needed to know and it eluded me while reading the book the traditional way. My censor was at work as I read. Setting barriers to understanding the next part I read.
Before PhotoReading I was an avid reader but I never got anything useful from my books. I’m not referring to rote learning for passing exams. I’m referring to books that I read just to learn what could be useful to me based on the interest the book aroused in me when I picked it up. Often I would finish the book and feel like I missed something.
It wasn’t until I learned PhotoReading that I discovered just how much information was eluding me through traditional reading. Because I had a okay image of myself as a reader the information I PhotoRead gets processed and then based on my needs and expectation I have discovered many more useful and life changing suggestion from these authors. I get more out of my reading with PhotoReading.
Moreover I have discovered that a lot of information was eluded me through traditional reading. When searching my mind for information, even when I just obtain the gist of subject, I find it easier to locate the book and the page of the book, I had PhotoRead, to quickly clarify the details. Something I didn’t do well with traditional reading. With traditional reading it was rare for me to be able to explain the content of a book a week after I had finished reading it. Talk about information being elusive.
Often knowing where you learned something seems to be more important than what you know.
It’s interesting how someone can demonstrate what they know by talking about it and yet many are asked to prove it. Where did your information come from? The ability to quickly point to the book, books or research on the subject is highly regarded.
It’s paradox that this is true for people investigating PhotoReading. I can tell them about PhotoReading and they say prove it. I’ve taught many people how to PhotoRead yet it is only when they have written proof that can prove this information that some people are willing to allow me to teach them.
With that information I advise anyone reading or PhotoReading to know where they can find the information. It’s only elusive if you cannot find it.
© Alex K Viefhaus
Oct 22
Just as we can understand that it’s possible to identify Family history through DNA It’s not something that you can actually do for you until you actually learned to do it. So on one hand we have knowledge and on the other, we have knowledge with the ability to apply that knowledge.
To learn a new [...] [...more]
Posted: under Ideal State, Photoreading, learning curve.
Just as we can understand that it’s possible to identify Family history through DNA It’s not something that you can actually do for you until you actually learned to do it. So on one hand we have knowledge and on the other, we have knowledge with the ability to apply that knowledge.
To learn a new skill someone first had to figure out what they did and how they did it and then develop a way of instruction to show others how they can do it too. This is only part of the learning equation. There is still the part that relies on the learners ability to apply to the training.
The courses often have specific material used to demonstrate the method that ultimately, one must apply the method to learn through practice how it is done. The material selected is usually what has proven to be the most useful for the majority of learners. Some will require more and
others less.
There is one part of learning that is still being researched because all learning has a subjective element that cannot be explained or shown. No one can explain the shifts and levers that must be pulled in our brain before we “get it”. Those moments where we say ‘oh, now I get it’, are purely subjective. It’s an essence that no one else can touch or see.
Think about it. When you learned how to tie your shoelaces. You weren’t taught what to think, you are shown a sequence of tying shoelaces there are many parts that no one could explain, like how tight to tie them or how hard to pull. You only learned this through doing, and it’s still subjective because you too can only teach the sequence not the part that comes with experience. No one could tell you when you got it and at some point you did get it. Your shoelaces stayed tied. If you learned to ride a bike you might want to ponder, how do you keep your balance, how can you explain it? You just do it, don’t you? That’s because part of the knowledge is only learned through experience, and it is subjective.
One challenge to face is findings the subjective point where you can say, ‘I have learned this. I have accomplished my goal’. We never really do, we just know that we know.
Learning is not just memorising information. When you learn something, rather than just memorising it you develop a new skill. Riding a bike, learning to walk, trying laces, buttering bread, building computers and fixing cars. Training can be given, grades and tests set to measure your memory of these steps. However, only the learner knows when they have learned something so that it is a skill, something they can do, rather than a memory back and talk about. It’s something the own.
Ultimately, the subjective experience can only be achieved through doing. The theory of riding a bike can be explained. And skill can only be acquired through doing, so that the individual gains that subjective experience.
That is why if someone asked me to prove that PhotoReading works, I have to say, “Try it and see”. No-one can give you that subjective experience. It is earned through doing. Just like you learned to read and write in the first place. When you learned to read you repeated the action until you understood what you were reading. It was through your subjective training that reading became possible. Now, if you choose to learn PhotoReading you need to allow yourself to have that experience again. Learning by doing. Analysing the system can only take you so far.
The PhotoReading Course is designed to take you through the course in a step-by-step way. Ultimately, it will become a natural ability like tying shoe laces. It becomes something you know how to do, because you acquire the subjective knowledge through doing and gained a unexplainable understanding of what it is to be PhotoReader. You know it works because, implicitly, subjectively, you know how to what to do. This is true for anything that you have ever learned.
© A Alex Viefhaus 2007
