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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KL Activation – Getting Comprehension


Jun 08

Posted: under Persistence, PhotoRead, Photoreading, comprehension, reading.
Tags: , ,

Been busy the last couple of weeks developing an activation technique which I believe will help those who have trouble with comprehension. I’ve been working on this because so many students who participate in my class complain most of all of not being able to comprehend what they are reading.  They struggle with this with traditional reading and hope that PhotoReading will help them.

It seems to me that many who look for ways to read faster with techniques like PhotoReading  are hoping speed will help them comprehend what they are reading faster. Comprehension isn’t about reading it’s a way of thinking.

PhotoReading can and does help with comprehension however we still have the initial hurdle of activating enough. Too many give up before they are done. Those who have difficulty with comprehension stop the activation process way too soon. Usually on the first activation.

Since comprehension is a way of thinking, I’ve been working on a way to teach that way of thinking. I’ll hope to present it at my next PhotoReading class. I’ve been devising an activation process that I believe will help leverage comprehension. For now I simply refer to it as KL Activation.  I am hoping that it will be the switch that gets them activating.

© Alex K Viefhaus June 2009

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Is your e-mail inbox getting you down?


Mar 20

Posted: under Personal development, motivation, reading, success.
Tags: , , ,

 170309mush If your e-mail inbox is anything like mine right now it probably is and  more than you know. With the talk of a recession, in most of all Western countries in the medi. Many accuse the news agencies of fear mongering.  The truth is it isn’t that bad. Unemployment at 10% means there is still 90% of the population who are the had employed. I’m not sure of any western country with unemployment at 10% that wasn’t already in dire need of a solution before the "recession". It  hasn’t reached 10% and the US isn’t predicted to reach 10% unemployed until August 2009 (source: http://forecasts.org/unemploy.htm)

True, that is not good news for those who wind up unemployed and maybe, many of those still in employment have to budget more closely. Finding other ways to nurture themselves than with spending excess on waste in our throw away society.

What has this got to do with my inbox?

The inordinate number of fear mongering, e-mails. They  push the mindset that guarantees that those who could never win the lucky door prize fall into the 10%

who will win the unemployment ticket. Come on! 90% of the population will make it. Maybe not with spending excesses is like we’re doing now. Do you really them to pollute your mindset.

So why is suddenly important to start your own home based business because you might lose your job? With that mindset, many people would fail at the new challenge because they are working from fear not love. Thus wasting their time and money on the venture. Whatever happened to be your own boss, take control of your life and do what you enjoy doing? Why must people be coerced by fear to buy?

It’s not only those selling bow to build your own business online. Probably the worst culprits  are those in the self-help industry. Selling courses  and seminars based on fear. What ever happened to the positive aspect of self-help? Doesn’t the industry realise that this kind of salesmanship is keeping the same people they want to help in mediocrity at best? And don’t these industries realise that they too are falling into mediocrity when they use these tactics. They are seeding their customers with a fear mindset. Fear will make them doubt they will succeed even at the material that is supposed to help them. If you’ve been in the industry a while you know a success mindset breeds success and a fear mindset breeds fear.

I’m unsubscribing from many of my formerly favourite accounts. I don’t like being told that I have something to fear. I don’t like being knocked into fear and helplessness, trying to make choices as to which course, seminar or learn to build your own business package  I need to buy. I choose to read, what empowers me and 10 to 50 e-mails a day, affirming that I’m heading toward disaster, don’t serve me.

So if you ask me why I am subscribed. Here is my answer.

The secret of success is to hold the belief that you are successful even before that success shows up. Allowing the mind to be filled with fear leaves no room for success.

© AlexK Viefhaus

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Reading a computer screen


Jul 11

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.writing-thumb18

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

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Confused? Could You Just for Now - Let Go?


Oct 14

Posted: under Change, Photoreading, Purpose, confusion, learning, learning curve, reading.

One of the interesting things I learned from the PhotoReading 2007 Retreat and  during one of the meetings with Paul Scheele, is the true value of confusion and the need to go with the flow.

It’s easy to become frustrated and angry when you think you don’t know what is going on. Yet I was fascinated by it during the retreat. Since I have no doubt that PhotoReading works it became a fascinating exploration to see how others cope with the confusion.

frustrationOne of the greatest problems we face when we are learning something new is our apprehension about doing it right. We can get so stuck on wanting to be sure we understood the instructions and what we are supposed to be doing that we stop ourselves from doing anything. And even when we are in a situation were we have no choice and must do our best we hold ourselves back and avoid giving too much. We hold on when we must let go.

Through some of the exercises we learned through play and yet even then  it was difficult to let go and play for fear  of doing it wrong. The purpose of the games were simply to help us change our state, release and laugh and challenge our brain and body to do something new or differently. Again holding onto our fear of not performing up to an unknown goal or outcome.

We didn’t know what the outcome of many of the exercises would be there was a lot of apprehension. Would we look the fool, would we get it wrong? It was a matter of just playing and seeing what happens when we just do it. There is never a wrong experience at the Learning Strategies Retreat. It’s all just a learning experience.

We think if we know what the outcome is going to be we can control the actions to do it right. Yet you cannot control your actions if you have never done it before and the fun is if you follow the directions as best you can, you will get some sort of results. You’ve got no experience to work with until you just do it. And it’s much easier to do if you let go and just be playful in your approach.  With experience you can experiment and play at it again. And you will always get results. Results are neither good or bad. They are a foundation experience that you can work with. With results  you start adjusting as you play and notice a shift in the outcome.

Play is how we learned as a child to do many things. It was the excitement of not knowing what the outcome would be that we just went ahead and did it.

The PhotoReading Retreat was  an opportunity to enhance  PhotoReading skill and  it was also a great opportunity to learn about learning. Waking up your mind to shift your thinking.

Paul Scheele and other authors have taught me that when you’re feeling confused you need to let go, be in the experience and to wait and see what unfolds. It’s a bit like opening Christmas presents when you don’t know what’s inside. Paul deliberately didn’t tell his team leaders too much of what he was planning to do. So we too, had the opportunity to experience confusion.

It was amazing to become aware of how often people wanted to jump ahead and get out of the uncomfortable present moment were new learning experiences are taking place and new neural pathways are being formed. This anxiety to move on blocks our ability to recognise what we learned from the experience.

We think if we can understand the outcome of what the experience means we  can  understand the current challenge better.  Yet the purpose of the current challenge is to build a bridge to the goal. The mind can understand logical explanations however experience is something deeper and more personal. That’s why just sitting in an audience listening to a speaker does little to change you.

Another thing I noticed at the Retreat was the learner thought it would help them understand  had no relationship to the current problem. That is they were off in the wrong direction and didn’t know it. And for all the talking we couldn’t convince them to let go of that idea and just play. They were so focused on understanding something irrelevant and thought if they didn’t understand this they would not get it. Of course they wouldn’t get it. It’s like trying to put a square peg in a round hole.

What we think we know interferes with learning to do so something different. If you want to check out this theory for yourself try this challenge

The solution is simple and one we used a lot at the Retreat. Let Go.

True success is not achieved through analysis. It is achieved by learning through experience. Being in the moment and to let go and be in that experience. Then after fully participating in that experience can you notice what happened, what you got, what you learned.

© AlexK Viefhaus

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