Quote:

e.g.: I read a book about persuasion and one of the trigger words I noted was "first impression".
So I asked: "How can I make an excellent first impression?"
In a conversation with a person I would await a more or less vast explanation.



Lets move away from an assumption that you need to know how first... wouldn't it make sense to ask is first impression important? Why does the author think yes or not? What creates a good first impression and perhaps what creates a bad one. Does the author offer any suggestions useful to me as to how I might create a good first impression and are there any limits where the suggestion might not work?

As you can see when I form a question it doesn't fit a limiting mould. If I phrase it it's something like what has the author got to say about first impressions. I keep it fluid to see what the author can tell me. It's like having a conversation. What can you tell me about .... that is useful to me... for my purpose of... (so that I can). If it doesn't suit my purpose it's already redundant for the use of my time. It's still in the book and my head for later if it becomes relevant then so. I move on. To see what the author has to say.

Like any lecturer they are just going to say it their way. You will be thinking well why is this important, how is it relevant, how can I use it, do I even want to use it and if not do I need to spend the time bringing it to conscious awareness right now?

It's not easy to overcome passive reading and then one can overcome it quickly by deliberately being proactive by mind mapping. I always think it's a great idea to mind map the first 12 or so books you use PhotoReading on. Whether for pleasure or studying. It moves the mind to actively thinking about what you want from the book so you can use the information in your life.

Drawing the mind map after each activation layer also helps you to plot your progress. You can acknowledge your results better. It's easy to dismiss the first couple of activation however in reality in the first 20 minutes with passive reading you'd still be in the first to 3rd chapter of the book. How much do you know at that point? Next to nothing and yet you don't go booting yourself as a failure because you still have 17 to 28 chapters to go.

So record what you get on your mind map. Check with your purpose change it if you discover the author has interesting information on a topic you didn't think of but is important to your overall purpose that's a bonus isn't it?

Just keep working with the book until it gels. I calculate for most average readers working with a 200 to 300 page book need to do no less than 4 20-minute activation layers and possibly as many as 6 or even 8 to get the book to fully gel in the beginning. Work it out, that's about 2 hours 40 minutes. The same book would normally take them 6 to 12 hours. So often the beginning PhotoReader short changes themselves by quitting too soon. Yep the first layers don't feel like you're getting much if anything.

If you search the forum you'll find my experiment where I gave a detailed report of my experience with a number of activation layers. My user name was AlexK

AlexK