I've gone through many speed reading programs with absolutely no success. I even think it made my reading speed slower! I went from 400 wpm down to 200 wpm. Isn't that crazy?
I am a unsuccessful graduate of Mega Speed Reading by Howard Berg/Kevin Trudeau and Reading Genius by Ed Strachar. Neither of them worked.
My biggest contempt is for Mega Speed Reading because the techniques are so stupid like following your finger and also the impossible claim that you can read backwards (i.e. Hebrew is backwards). In fact there was a lawsuit against Howard Berg and Kevin Trudeau for making false claims and got fined about half a million dollars. Hence you don't see their informercials anymore.
Reading Genius was a different approach because you had to relax the mind before you read. He tells you to do "no thinking" and that if you're frustrated, it means you're thinking. BUT he makes you flip through the pages and sometimes you can't flip it well because your finger gets caught or you can't flip one page but instead 10 pages instead. He then he tells you to go faster and FASTER!! You try to go faster but because it's really hard to flip pages really fast one by one, you become unbelievably FRUSTRATED! How contradictory! I was flipping at a normal rate and he's like "go faster" and I try to flip faster but I mess up and then he's like "go EVEN faster" and I try to go faster and I'm flipping 40 pages at a time which caused me total frustration and anger. I wanted to jump into the tape and punch him out!
On a lighter note, that program does come with music that supposedly helps you calm down and read faster but I haven't seen any results. Also it's definitely worth the $300 to do this visual imagery technique where you can rotate your upper body almost 360 degrees around your waist.
I haven't gone through the Evelyn Wood system but I heard it doesn't work because it makes you run your finger down the middle of the page because supposedly the most important information is in the middle of the page but somehow I don't think there's any truth to that.
I ordered the Photoreading book the other day as my last resort to possibly reading faster and I'm going to see if whether this can work for me or not. I realize I have a ton of negative thought going in which is really bad.
I know if I fail, the people at Photoreading are going to attribute it to the frustration, skepticism, and a poor efficacy rating of my ability to succeed with Photoreading.
I certainly hope Paul Schleele's techniques isn't just a rehash of the other speed reading techniques out there. For example, this "tangerine technique" is also found in Reading Genius. I have found that technique is useless because it's a unusual concept of putting all your focus behind your head.
If Photoreading doesn't work for me, I won't be disappointed because it will just reinforce the idea that certain claims are just too good to be true and I will NEVER buy anything from an informercial again.
I'll write back in a month or two depending on how fast I can get through the Photoreading book. I'll then compare Photoreading to the other reading programs in terms of pros and cons (because I truly think Reading Genius is the BEST reading program out on the market now) and we'll see if Paul Scheele can improve my reading speed.
-CK
