Everyone on this forum always seems to add 'and be sure to Mind Map' as an afternote to students' posts While I now LOVE MindMapping and find it to be a most valuable and effective skill, it is not something that would have helped me at first. It has taken me a few months to really begin to learn/get into the habit of using the technique well enough that the process is automatic and doesen't create extra anxiety or break the flow of what I'm trying to accomplish.
Mind Mapping is a skill like any other, and therefore it may come very quickly for you, or it may require some persistence and lots of practice until you get to a point where it's a helpful study/learning tool. The PhotoReading book does not cover the technique in anywhere near enough detail for my tastes, nor do the combination of websites I've seen; Tony Buzan's [u]The Mind Map Book[/u] has been the resource from which I've been able to learn it.
Mind Mapping is great, but just like PhotoReading, only some people are ready/able to learn it over a single weekend! I certainly wasn't even though I have always been motivated, open, (but obviously not open enough!) and persistent.
Good luck to you, brp, but be careful. It is a fine line indeed between using a powerful new skill and trying to use a skill that you haven't fully learned yet. PhotoReading's steps are simple -- so are Mind Mapping's, but it requires a whole paradigm shift that may not happen overnight. To change your whole way of reading and thinking from passive to active is a big change! Go easy on yourself.
In hindsight, if I were you, I would PhotoRead the books and then study the old way, but select carefully which are the most important passages first. In that way you can use the PhotoReading philosophy of layering. But if you're one of those people who has been able to Superread and Dip effectively from the very beginning, the more power to you :-)
That just wouldn't have worked for me at the beginning!
-Cameron
