Topic said it all, how long would you think it is the ideal time if not include the dip time just move finger down at the middle of page?
Thanks

16 seconds per page.

Alex

So that's mean if I active the 500 pages of book by super read, I need to use at least 133 mins of one layer of activation?
I think that is quite a lot of time or I misunderstand something?
Thanks

iamthefox,

Photoreading is selective reading, you dont need everything of a book. And only 4-11% words carry meaning that will satisfy your purpose. so, in one activation layer, you will cover those 11% words once, wherever they are located. that is why you also dont need to super read every page. super read the page you feel where your questions can most likely be answered. listen to your hunches. after photoreading you will feel where to go and search for your answer. spend 20 minutes max for one activation layer.

i am activating my textbooks now and they take a long time than other books. for other books, i find them very easy after photoreading. it is as if i know this information from very long and i am just re discovering it. it is fun. sometimes i dont even super read for activation. i start mindmaps and the informations comes automatically with well organized manner! amazing.
so, dont worry about how long you super read, you may get very nice results even if you rapid read through the books. you have to try for many many times to know what is working for you and what is not working for you. after learning photoreading, i may have discarded hundreads of books just after preview than what i activated so far...

Thanks for your suggestion Cosmo

I am just newbie who try to find what work for me like you told me to do but I just testing the system for now.

I think super read is the scanning technique that will find the 11% or it's not?

If I not use super read to scan the book, how should I know where is important or where I will dip it? Normally, I just super read until some words catch my attention(important due to my purpose) so I dip in.

Am I do it wrong?

Thanks

No, hardly anyone could go wrong doing any technique in photoreading unless they alter the sequence.

Newbies often get confused over super reading because it is not explained in the course nicely. You have to use it for many materials or alter its pattern to get it to work. technically, super reading is purposeful skimming. it is as simple as that. now, if you super read every page, then it will take you 2-3 hours to get through a book. but that is not required because the system wants you to be selective for a text you are exploring and be questioning about it.
it is like, your friend is holding a book in his hand and you want to know what is there in the book. but he is not allowing you to read it. so what will you do? you will ask him questions. the same approach is with activation.

And yes, dont think activation is just about finding answers to your questions. many unusual things happen when you start activating. You may feel new information flooded in your memory out of nowhere! this is amazing experience. Like, you activating for the description of a pizza and you suddenly getting all in depth knowledge about pizza given in the book. This is activation! Look for such flooding of information when you activate. Otherwise we feel we have activated a book when we get some structure about the book. This is not the actual benefit. you can get the structure by just previewing!

JUST keep on doing it, you will never be worried about where to dip. initially you will feel to dip every paragraph. dip into it. no problem. but see if you get all the information you are looking for. if not, then dip again. what is essential is, to keep on doing it. after a few days, when you will start activating, you will feel as if you have read the book word for word thrice! it feels so easy to activate books! just keep on doing it.

But how can I dip if I am not super read, or just flip through page and dip in?

see, this is where your purpose would play a role. when you preview and postview, you get an idea of 1. what you are interested in and 2. where you can find it.
so when you activate, you jump to that portion and super read. when you see something that addresses your question, you dip in. once you are done, you move to another question. this is how you locate where to dip in.
and when you dip, your eye consciously recognize the link in your subconscious and a stream of information comes alive. and so, to record that, you will start making a mindmap. and when you start making a mindmap, you will see new associative information jumps in... you may even remember some instances in the past that are some or the other way associated to the information you are mindmaping.

So I still need to super read every page right?

If your purpose needs it, then yes. When you have purpose to know all of the book in depth, then you need to explore every page. If your purpose is to find out two techniques for better handwriting, then you will not have to superread every page.

Activate in Layers work in 20 minute blocks (some will go 30 and I recommend no longer) So while a book of 500 pages might take "14" minutes, if you only spent 16 second superreading each page. Your purpose and amount of dipping will actually

Superreading is running your eye down the center of the page, it's not even skimming. You're looking for places to dip. 16 seconds I the fastest a beginner can handle running their eyes down the centre of the page.

You choose where you start activating depending on your purpose.

Superread to find where to dip. While dipping you'll rhythmically peruse a few words and then go back to superreading. In a textbook you might find a larger section to peruse use skittering for that.

See the playbook for more tips on superreading and dipping and skittering.

Never sit activating more than 30 minutes without taking a 5 minute break to regroup, refresh and check your purpose.

iamthefox, I think you're confusing Rapid Reading with Superreading. No you don't superread every page. You superread the pages you want to activate, there is a difference.

Rapid Reading is the only technique that is similar to traditional reading. You start at the beginning end at the end. And use any and your choice of activation techniques between those two points.

Alex

And how do I choose the page that I want to superread if I don't know where is the information that is relate to my purpose is? Or I just let the feeling lead me?
If I already know where is the information why don't just dip in it after I know where it is?
Why we need to moving the finger at the middle of the page eventhough we already found that information?
I am confusing, please clarify it.
Thanks

iamthefox, as per my understanding goes, if you know where your information is, then you just dip in it.. it is not necessary to superread when you know where the answer to your question lies.
Why are you moving the finger down the page? just use eyes only.
see, its not a rule. you can even go zigzag. you dont get conscious comprehension with super reading alone anyway. you need to read consciously when you find the section that you have found
attractive.
if you already found the location of your information, then just read it. simple! you are done with activation. make a mindmap if you feel.

Question for Alex-

Alex, you said above that rapid reading is using supereading- diping and skittering from page one to end, and not read start to finish word for word right?

So, what I dont understand is, after we have photoread the book, the information is processed and new neural pathways are built, so it should give us comprehension even when we read the book word for word after photoreading. Isnt it?
still it is not recommended. why?

Cosmo,
What if I don't know where the information is?

No problem, super read each page then.

Because if you have PhotoRead the book it is in your memory and thus you're wasting time reading everything from beginning to end. You don't need everything in a book. Most of it you probably already know superread over that during activation and focus on what you need.

If you want to waste your time reading from beginning to end, go for it. Only, students I know prefer to be doing other stuff than sitting reading books from cover to cover just to pass exams. Get what you need to pass exams and go and have a life while you're young. It's one of the reasons many students don't even open books.

Alex

Remember to use all the step of the system.

1. prepare (purpose and ideal state)

Then to decide where to activate, there are two amazing tools already incorporated into a book. Table of Content and Index. Or just open a book to random pages and superread.

Incredibly I've managed to demonstrate in front of a class how having a clear purpose, a question in mind, open the book, on the page that has the answers (on of the reasons I love printed book since that is harder to do with e-books.)

If you're still not sure, PhotoRead the book again, you'll probably see the pages with the answers and can super read and dip as necessary. I wouldn't bother superreading every page unless it comes to a final activation and I'm rapid reading, even then some pages are flipped at superreading speed.

Alex

I am relatively new to photoreading but I am now sort of very confused. Well, to start with, your post stated-"regular reading is not recommended because it will be a waste of time!!? But what about comprehension? Okay if I have relatively lot of time to explore books, then!?
I finished 29th novel yesterday all I read word for word after photoreading them. Never at any moment I felt any familiarity with any of the novel. If they have been in my memory, then why dont they showing any sign of recognition!?
This is my confusion than a question.

I had also been trying to activate novels the way I activated other self help books and found I am getting almost no comprehension whatsoever and nothing was making any sense unless I start from the beginning and read linearly till the end.

Passing exams need a lot of study Alex. I am not a very sharp guy at studies. I respect your posts but they also confuse me at times. At one post you said one doesnt need to know everything. Well, what if when we dont know what will we be served in the question paper?
My class teacher doesnt know photoreading. She starts from the page one of chapter one and teaches all the way till the end of the book till the end of the semester. She has a reason for doing so. She does it because she knows everything is important in the books. There are questions asked from every part of the book, be it first line or the last line of the book. Not everything can be asked in one question papers, but what if there are multiple question papers on the same subject? Thats why we need to study everything.

And I also remember Paul mensions somewhere that rapid reading is a activation techniquw. It may seem like the regular reading but the comprehension it gives you is beyond the regular reading without photoreading. I swear I read this somewhere! May be that I did not understand what he meant by rapid reading, but I must mension that it doesnt work. Atleast hasnt started working in my case.

I am writing this because I am very confused. My reading needs are huge and my textbooks are really dense. I am looking for an edge over studies so that I get into a good university. I have friends that study by regular reading and they manage to study for 10 hours each day. I can not do that, but I was willing to invest in smarter reading techniques to get over my inability to study for very long hours.
But now I am not seeing very good results. When you suggested, I also increased number of activation passes, but I still am not getting much... the book piles are really big, I wonder how I am going to deal with all that with this current pace of activation.

Seriously speaking I have not found very convincing results with novels and textbooks. The books I got nice results are actually easy on brains. With novels and textbooks I photoread them daily, affirm my purpose daily and activate in many many passes till my daily quota of study doesnt get complete. But you know, information I gather doesnt make any sense.


Photoreading worked very nice on books that were not hard. But now I have tougher books, it doesnt seem to be working... it feels like your best friend leaves you when you need him the most.
I am very nervous.
Sorry for very long post Alex.

No I said if you want to waste your time go for it.

You do not really need to read every page of a book.

You still gain as much or better comprehension by activating in layers. Going into the book and pulling out the information in short blocks of time rather than reading from beginning to end.

As for complete comprehension from reading from beginning to end. That is usually an illusion. Just because you heard the words in your head while you were reading and understood the meaning, that does not mean you actually remember or understand the information in the book. To understand you have to test your knowledge against what you know and build on that.



If you PhotoRead the book and just read it, you're using traditional reading. Beginners do not rapid read. Nor will you notice any familiarity because your approach is still passive. The only way you actually develop rapid reading skills is by doing activation layers. It's also where you start noticing you're guessing what comes next in the text.

Yes Rapid Reading is an activation technique. And I feel I've been repeating myself and saying this in almost every post lately so I'm going to bold it.


Rapid Reading is reading from the beginning and ending at the end. It uses any and all the reading the activation techniques. It is the LAST activation approach one would consider once they have done enough activation layers and feel that they just want to check if they missed something.

The only thing that Rapid Reading (the only activation technique)has in common with traditional reading Is that this is the only time we start at the beginning of the book chapter or article and end at the end of the book chapter or article


Which is why you don't want to waste time on trivial information that you already know.



You ask your instructor. You be surprised how informative they are in telling you what you need to study. It's usually described in the course curriculum and if you're smart you get hold of previous year exams. Good teachers usually teach what you need to know and will guide you to learn what you need to pass the exams.

Also ask the students a grade above you.



Brilliant. That means you can PhotoRead the book. And PhotoRead the chapters again before the class and allow the class to help you activate it.



Nope because you haven't actually learned rapid reading if you're skipping the other activation layers.



Confusion is good it means your mind is working on it. Now be more playful and see what happens if...

If you want to study smarter, PURPOSE. Define and know your purpose. Do what you can to bring it to the front of your mind. If your purpose is in the next 30 minutes to "learn this chapter so that I can pass the test on this." You become focused and mind map the information you'll need from that chapter and have it ready for review.

At the end of the activation you'll look over your mind map perhaps write a summary and walk away. Take drink get some exercise whatever. Then you come back to study some more you spend reviewing your mind map(3 min), checking in (Prepare) Taking a moment to peruse the next chapter or subject you plan to study and activate, some more.



My guess is your old strategies haven't worked as well either because you haven't incorporated PhotoReading into those big piles of books. How often have you PhotoRead each of those books already?



How are you approaching those books? Tell me how do you activate novels. And how do you activate textbook. Lets start a new thread on this topic. Because from what you're telling me I pick up that your approach lacks strategy. We can probably do something about that.



When your best friend leaves you when you think you need him most often you're challenged to move out of your comfort zone. This is actually a good thing.

When books are tougher, because the information is new. You going to have to invest more activation layers or more PhotoReading. They are tougher with traditional reading as well and more overwhelming because with traditional reading you have no end in sight. With PhotoReading you decide how much time you're going to spend to get what you can in that time.

I've found myself reading much more technical books since learning PhotoReading. I do spend more time with them than books on subjects I'm familiar with. The newness makes creates a sense of tougher. It isn't really.

The missing link is you haven't yet created any memory threads to hook this information onto. And when you look at piles of books you start freaking a little. And thinking "it's hard for me." And that self talk creates the barrier that makes it seem harder and you experience it as harder.

This is where it is important to chunk it. Like eating an elephant, one bite at a time. That's why you activate in layers.

As I already said, I suspect your strategy is not working for you start a new thread and tell me how you're activating textbooks. Activating Novels.

Alex

Thank you Alex for your support and suggestions. I will make a new thread with novels and textbook activation.

I keep writing my activation experience in a diary and this is what my observation is-
most of the times the information is sequentially linked. How in this case increasing activation layers will increase comprehension? because the sequence matters a lot. this makes novels and textbooks different than other books.
Thanks!

The sequence is one created by you in relation to your experience and memory. Yes you might find the authors sequence useful if you have no knowledge of the subject. Still if you're activating with a purpose in mind you will fly over the information so that you pull up the information in a meaningful sequence to your purpose.

So if you are activating a novel to discover the mood of the story, you would fly through the pages dipping where it's meaningful and that way build an understanding of the overall mood. Same with Plot, location, theme and moral.

Purpose helps decide the sequence in order of importance to you.

Alex

Hi Alex, based on what you said in an earlier post (quoted above), it seems that:

- the ONLY similarity between Rapid Reading and Traditional Reading is that both start at the beginning of a book chapter/article and end at the end of the book chapter/article. So you are essentially reading everything word for word (no skipping of sentences or paragraphs from the chapter or article). Both are conscious reading and there will be sub vocalizations in both methods: Is this right?

Then how is Rapid Reading different from Traditional Reading? I supposed Rapid Reading is much faster than Traditional Reading but how do we Rapid Read correctly? I tried Rapid Reading but when I go too fast, it feels like Super Reading in the sense that nothing seems to get registered. But if I slow down, I'm pretty much back to my Traditional Reading speed.

In addition, I still don't quite get how 1. Super Read + Dip and 2. Skittering are supposed to work:

When I Super Read and Dip, it seems like I'm just scanning the page for the trigger words that I identified (Super Read) and then dipping in to read the sentences before and after the trigger word I located. So, from my understanding about Super Reading, it seems that my mind is just focused on finding the trigger words in my list and other details (aka the rest of the paragraph are not consciously registered. The only time information is consciously registered is when I DIP IN and consciously READ those sentences around my trigger words. However, sometimes a concept is explained over a few paragraphs or a few pages. By Super Reading + Dipping, I find myself not understanding the concept at all. ESPECIALLY when there are many technical terms or phrases.

This is an example of how I do it: [img]https://imgur.com/dvRW6CF[/img]

Is this because I'm doing this whole Super Reading and Dipping thing wrongly?

Next, I tried Skittering. Again, I'm not sure if I'm doing correctly or not because I don't seemed to understand much at the end of the activation. When I test my comprehension, the results were less than ideal. Here's how I do it:
1. From the index or table of contents, I will locate the sections to read
2. I use Traditional Reading to read the first and last sentences in each paragraph of my selected reading section
3. I Skitter the sentences in between in a rapid zig-zag fashion but the words do not register consciously in my mind (please see attached picture)
[img]https://imgur.com/kQcOTiM[/img]

Again, what am I doing wrongly?

Also, I see that you have mentioned about activating in layers several times. Can you please elaborate further? Do you have a protocol to guide me through this process? This is because I'm quite confused and do not quite grasp the concept of activating in layers.

Does that mean I Super Read + Dip once (selected sections of book), rest, Skitter once (selected sections of book), rest, Rapid Read once (the entire book)? Is that what is meant?

Yes. The ONLY with emphasis on only.

No. The difference between traditional reading and rapid reading: With Rapid reading you use any and all reading techniques as needed. All activation techniques and all traditional reading techniques are available to you as you rapid read. I recommend reading the subject in the PhotoReading book to get a better understanding.

Superread Run your eyes down the page look for areas that pull you in to dip. Don't waste time in dipping, Decide quickly if the information you are looking at is answering your question or not and move on. You'll see more than trigger words if you have formulated questions. Pretend you're superman searching for Lois lane and there are decoys. You think you see her, you dip, decoy? Get a move on Lois needs rescuin'. Yep, dip is when your slow poke conscious mind feels like its getting something.

Skittering, read first sentence of the paragraph then look for words that add to the meaning. Think of an ant looking for water, it starts on the usual trail then they scatter to find new paths.

Let go of Trigger words after you start activating, trigger words are just 'triggers' to build your curiosity and get you to read the book 'your way'.

If you don't 'understand much' after activation it means you started activating without a purpose and questions for the author. Look to get answers to your questions by forming questions to ask the author.

https://forums.learningstrategies.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=30000

That's an old old post. It might help you.

Alex

Quote
Activate in Layers work in 20 minute blocks (some will go 30 and I recommend no longer) [/quote]




See the PhotoReading book and read and do the 5 day test from the book.

hello，I have a question, can you help me？
During Activate , can you get the information from the material that you didn't super read or dip？
If you are able to do that, can you tell how to do that？
In my opinion, the book, after reach my purpose, it still have much information that didn't related to my purpose.

Yes!

The experience is called "spontaneous activation" which tends to occur more and more often as you PhotoRead and fully activate more and more books.\

Dana

Hello,
In my opinion , the skills for Activation is just used to Stimulus neural network that builed during the third step .
Once the stimulus is enough , Activation will operate and bring more information.
Am I right?

chenxian

You're on the right track.

Keep questioning, keep your curiosity to find out everything the book has to offer, and how it can positively impact your life, and satisfy your goal for reading.

Stimulate your curiosity at the beginning of each Activation pass, by reviewing your Postviewing Questions, and creating new questions. That's the stimulus that turns on your inner mind to intuitively guide you to the answers to those questions during SuperReading & Dipping/ Skittering & Dipping.