Hey guys,

I see people rapid read a novel after PRing it! but how I activate a novel by superreading with same purpose as pleasure reading?? I have less time but I have to read many novels. thanks!!

If you are reading novels for school. Literary review.
Activate first in layers as you would a non-fiction book.

PhotoRead, activate till it gels, then rapid read. rapid reading is an activation technique (optional activation technique).

During the activation layers your purpose would be to learn, theme, era, plot, characters, moral of the story.

In rapid reading (which consist of all activation techniques) you work from beginning to end. This is the equivalent of a final skim reading.

When reading literature normally you would read it first slowly, then a second time a bit faster and a 3rd time to skim through to help remember the key elements of the story. PhotoReading you do it in reverse. Time works out 6 hrs first read, 3 hrs 2nd read and 1 hour third read.

PhotoReading . About 6 minutes the first session, 2 to 3 hours the second and 30 minutes the 3rd.

Alex

Ok alex I understood it now.

But rapid reading for activationn is passive reading with a purpose thrown in right?
And this is the reason we do it last after superreading diping right?

Nope, rapid reading is same as activation, you consciously decide the speed at which you will take in the passages with prior knowledge, need to know, how often you've already seen it in the other activation layers.

The only thing rapid reading has in common with passive reading is you start at the beginning and end at the end.

As I mentioned, you will be looking for plot, moral of the story, Characters, era and stuff like that. When you read for literacy understanding.

Alex

Hey. So just so I'm clear we are taking 2-3hrs on the second pass and 30min on the 3rd to rapid read? I am not sure how we will spend less time on the material on the second and third pass. Do we just skip past the passages that are not related to my purpose?

Thank you for your support and suggestions.

The traditional approach requires that you slowly read the text the first time. For most that is 8 to 16 hours depending on reading speed and number of pages. If you're studying, who's got that time? Okay,

Then you are supposed to read it again. This time faster but still reading, that would take you half the time 4 to 8 hours ... right so now you're up to 12 to 24 hours with the book.

Then you're supposed to speed read it. That would take you about half the time again... (yeah, that's the time recommended,)

So now with the traditional approach to spend 14 to 28 hours with a novel. Who does that? Essentially only one or two masters of the subject.

With PhotoReading you spend
4 to 10 minute with the book (including the purpose and preview step).

Then you activate in layers not just one sitting layers with breaks in between. I recommend twenty minute activations. (reason is another topic)

So when you do 6 20 minute activation layers you total 2 hours with the book. You might need 9 or 12 so that's 3 or 4 hours with the book plus let's say 10 minutes 4 hours and 10 minutes for a book that would at this point have taken you 24 hours to read.

Okay so you're a PhotoReader and have honed your superreading, skittering and rhythmic perusal skills and now rapid read the book and instead of 2 or 4 hours like with traditional reading you zip through it in 40 to 90 minutes.

For simplicity sake it compares like this.

First pass.
Traditionally correct approach v PhotoReading
16 hours .......... V............. 10 minutes

Second pass

8 hours ........... V 4 hours (assuming 12 activation layers)

3rd pass
4 hours ............. V 2 hours (why make it difficult?)
------------------------------------------------
Total time
28 hours ...........v 6 hours 10 minutes.

As you can see you can easily add more activation layers and still spend significantly less time with the book.

And let's just compare that to the first single read that most apply.

16 hours ............. V 6 hours 10 minutes.

Yes it is worth the effort of asking mind probing questions and activating a novel in layers if you need to critique the book.

Of course you may just want to read a book for enjoyment.

Well PhotoRead the book and use rapid reading. It's likely to take longer than the last rapid read of a book that has been activated in layers. 1/3rd the time seems to be the average time so just reading the book you will probably spend 5.5 hours with it instead of 16.

The thing is to develop your superreading, dipping, skittering and rhythmic perusal skills with activation layers. That's were you focus on reading with a purpose. It then becomes naturally easy to use when your purpose is "just to enjoy this book."

PhotoReading has helped me dump some really badly written novels right at the start.

Alex

Thank you that response was extremely helpful.

Is the 6 hrs and 10 min the time it takes to study a book? I would assume so as a book takes me apprx 7hrs to complete with my traditional reading speed. I guess it depends on the length of the book. My expectation is to spend max 2hrs with each book and just grasp the main points.

That's for a novel and a figure estimated on average reading speeds with a novel that uses conventional language. Not Shakespeare Where we'd be looking at 30 or 100 hours just to understand the language if you've never read Shakespeare before. The numbers were comparison for when a novel is read for literary discussion.

I recommend change your expectation since each book.

It depends on
Prior knowledge,
Ability to understand the language of the author.
Knowledge of any technical language.
Curiosity
Interest.
Weather
Lighting,
Mood
Time available
Company
Health of someone close to you
How often you've PhotoRead the book
Technical language.
Writers writing skill.
Number of pages.
Layout formatting changes (e-reading device and the lack of location of the text since they can change with spacing... affects some people more than others,
How hot or cold your feet are.
What you ate,
Drank


The list goes on.

No two books are the same.

Why even this post took me longer to write than it normally would with normally fast tying speed. I was asked to serve up some ice cream and am now tying one handed.

Be flexible. The reason a lot of books take so long to read is because we didn't learn to be flexible with our reading.

Alex

I experienced this very sharply while activating novels, that I receive only chunks and fragmented information when activating a novel. a novel has a flow of plot/story. so dipping at specific places gives very unspecific information. This leads to frustration. Even after 4 th activation pass and still know nothing about the story!
Other books are easy to activate but novels are so tough. Why is that so?
thanks!!

That's why you do 6 to 9 activations. And then rapid read to conclude. One would only use this book as for literary discussion and school text. You don't do it for pleasure reading.

Alex

Okay. Thank you.

I find textbooks comparitively hard to activate. Do u advice rapid reading them directly without other activation methods, with a purpose in mind?

Textbooks with the "hard to read" style. No I wouldn't just go into rapid reading. When they are hard to read it means the stuff is new and if you want to understand, remember what you read it's better to give it more layers. So I would at least give it a couple of 10 to 20 minute activation layers before I rapid read. It is one text a rapid read serves to discover if you missed anything and check your understanding of what you activated previously.

Also if you're finding textbook difficult to activate, PhotoRead them again. Usually you can PhotoRead a textbook daily for 2 to 4 weeks and notice a difference in the activation.

Alex

hello Alex,

While activating novels for literary review, I usually finish my questions and find plot, characters, timeline etc within first 3-4 activation layers. But the book remains to gel.

So, what do I make it to 'gel' when I am done with my mind probing questions but want the book to gel?

Thanks!

Decide if you need another activation layer or two then do a rapid read activation layer.

Alex