It took me a really long time to understand the activation stage as well sherifelabd. The thing that caused me to be able to finally activate a book was a complete transformation in the way that I looked at the process of photoreading. I used to have purposes that were vague or unexciting to me like "learning how to photoread" and it never worked for me. What finally changed was when I realized that I wasn't reading at all. Not in the traditional sense. If you want to read a book then sit down and read it. You'll get some information from it, it'll feel good right away, and you'll be able to talk about it a lot. And then a month from now, a year from now, or three years from now, you'll forget what was in the book. Sure, you read it, but if someone asks you about it you probably wouldn't have all that much recall of the book. But, you would still have the important parts of it ingrained in who you are.
Lets just look at an example. A little while back I read, not photoread but just read, 'Good to Great' by Jim Collins. Can I quote anything from the book? No. Can I converse with someone about the ideas in the book, can I formulate creative answers to problems using some of the strategies from the book, can I analyze a company with the mindset laid out in the book? Yes. So what really does it mean to read a book? How much of the information in the book do we really have access to?
I realized that the whole photoreading process is just a conversation with the author. It's not about getting information out of a book, it's about getting the information you need out of a book. When you're creating 'mind probing questions' don't think about the book. Think about the author or the subject of the book. For example, I just photoread a biography of John Jacob Astor so all of my mind probing questions were directed to him. They were the questions I'd ask him if he were sitting right in front of me. The book was just my way of communicating with him.
Just give that a shot. Before you photoread a book, start formulating questions you'd ask the author if he was sitting in front of you. Formulate them all the time. Sit down and maybe your first question is "Who are you?" and then answer it. Previewing is like being introduced to someone. Photoreading is like having someone tell you their whole life story, but so fast you can't really understand it. And activating is like being able to sit on the other side of the table and say "ok ok, thanks for all of that but all I really wanted to know was about the time you... tell me more about that."
One final thought. The other thing that helped me a lot with activating has been to create an ultimate purpose for my life. Now that I know what I'm trying to do with my life, my purpose statement is always related to my life. Right away, I know whether the book is going to help me towards being the person I want to be or if it's not and, because I have the master plan if you will, I can write a purpose statement that has real meaning. Information that we gather from books has to be applied to something or it's useless and our minds wont hold the information. If your purpose is to learn to photoread, why is that important? What will it help you do? Read books faster? Ok, but what will that help you do? If you had all the information out of all the books in the entire world, then what? Why do you need the information that you need, what will it help you do and why does that matter?
