Forums IMPORTANT: PLEASE READ PhotoReading, Memory Optimizer Isn't this just skimming? I'm skeptical...

Ok, I'm sorry to sound like a skeptic here, but I guess I am one. I read about this method in Jack Canfield's new book on Monday and I ordered the package and cleared my desk yesterday and spent the day on the course. I photo read my first book, waited until today to "activate" and I took the quiz. I can tell you, I got a lot of questions right because I listened to the tapes, but come on, nothing from the book stuck in my brain, conscious or ununconscious. In fact, I went back and "dipped" into the book today and was reading things that I had no idea about. (Like our author took a flight lesson or something? I don't know what that was all about, I'm not actually supposed to read the whole page to find out, it is supposed to be something I already photo-read...) My point is:
Isn't this just old fashioned skimming?
I need to make a decision before I take advantage of the no-risk guarantee before I return this deal, because right now I feel like a rube at the county fair who just bought some snake oil...
Tomorrow, I will try to activate the book I reead, I am trying to stay positive, but I am "owning" the feeling that this is all something that I should have known better than to have gotten involved with. I'd love for it to work, but gee whiz...
Thanks, I'd appreciate any comments,
Rick DiBiasio Orlando

Hi.

I know why you are having problems.

Did you even read the photoreading book? Your post says nothing about purpose. Purpose is practically everything in photoreading. Without a purpose the system will not work. You are just wasting your time when you photoread a book but you do not have a purpose, a reason, a goal or a expectation of what you want from a book.

You photoread a book with no purpose & then you say you want to activate & your mind says huh? You have not establish a purpose or a goal you need to establish that first before photoreading. You need to have some sense of what you want to get from the book.

Next of what is missing from your post that tells me why you are having problems is your post says nothing about questions. Mind probing questions.If you read the photoreading book you would have read that besides establishing a purpose of what you want to get from the book you would go through the book & pull out trigger words from the book. That is another thing your post does not mention or say anything about. Your post does not say i went through the book pulled out my trigger words and then created mind-probing questions from my trigger words.

So then if you had pulled the trigger words & created mind-probing questions for them then you would superread and dip to find answers to your questions.By superreading you are scanning through the book very quickly about 4 to 15 seconds a page until you find something related to your purpose then you dip or read the information & continue superreading until you find something else that is related to your purpose and mind-probing questions.

If you had read the book you would have learned that with photoreading you are involving the other than conscious mind. Now you have the information from the book working on 2 levels, the conscious level & the other than conscious level. This is where Photoreading is different from just skimming because you are involving the other than conscious mind as well as the conscious mind. The other than conscious mind is much more powerful than the conscious mind. I once heard it said that the conscious mind can only attend to 6 to 9 bits of information at the same time where as the other than conscious mind can attend to 20,000 things at the same time.

One thing that stood out on your post is that you listened to the tapes. You are not going to learn photoreading by listening to tapes. You have to do the exercises. That is how you will learn photoreading. Don't expect to do the course in 8 hours or one day. Realistically you will probably need 3 days to complete the course & when i say complete that means doing all the exercises not just listening to tapes.

Some skepticism is healthy & fine. Just be open & go through the course with the attitude i'll give this a try & see what happens.

Photoread4me

Ok, this is why I hate message boards. You ask for help and you get personal attacks. Look jocko, I paid the money. I did the drills. I then asked a few questions... The course doesn't say to read the book first. In fact, part of the course is to Photo Read the book. My questions pertain to doing the course, which is on tape (well, OK, DVD's). Not long ago, when I was stuck on an elevator, the voice on the intercom asked me if I had "pushed the buttons>" Wow, what an idea, you have to push the buttons! Yes, I DID THE DRILLS!
This thing sounds more like Jedi mastery to me than anything and I am trying to be true to the force. Ok, is it all right to ask a few questions? Your post has convinced me to return this thing on Monday.

Hey Rickdb,

I think Photoread4me was trying his best to be helpful. It's just that we get a lot of hecklers in this forum that try to bash the whole PR concept and have a negative attitude from the start, which ultimately dooms them to fail.

I would agree that LSC's advertising claims for PR is a bit on the sensational side, and that seems to appeal to the mentaility of a certain proportion of the population. (Consider some of LSC's other products ... talk about requiring a healthy dose of skepticism!) I've been a long-time customer of LSC, and I've returned my share of their products. I've kept PR, though, because it does seem unique in many respects. Yes, on the surface, PR teaches you what any good reading improvement course would. But it did teach me something about the "other-than-conscious" and its importance in reading which is unique to the product.

Once I got past all the advertising hype, I could appreciate the more subtle message of PR, and overall, it has greatly augmented to my attitude toward reading and my ability to read. Sometimes, benefits go beyond a words-per-minute boost, but come by way of subtle shifts in awareness and appreciation of one's self and abilities. Indeed, the latter may be much more difficult to learn, and it took a course like PR and a company like LSC for me to learn that about myself.

Well, I'm not sure whether that helps or hurts, but either way, I wish you the best in your continued journey of discovery.

HF

Rickdb:

No one & i include myself when i say no one is doing a personal attack on you. The course has been designed to be completed in 3 days & you can correct me if i am mistaken but it does not sound like you spent 3 days doing the course.

I gave you all the information that i did on my post because i saw all the things that you were not doing or if you did them you did not mention them on your post. You did not mention anything about purpose or pulling out trigger words & asking mind-probing questions from the trigger words, & you also did not mention anything about preview, postview, & mindmaps.My intention was & is to give you information that will put you in the best position to succeed or have success with photoreading.

Regarding your decision whether to terminate the course or not that is obvious a personal decision. Photoreading offers hugh benefits & i can tell you stories about the guy who was studying quatum mechanics, physics, & calculus & after learning photoreading the guy is not studying until 100am in the morning like he used to before he learned about photoreading.He used photoreading to excell & get his degrees & he no longer had to stay up until 100am in the morning to complete his studies. Or i could tell you about the guy who used photoreading to help him excell with complex mathematical forums & get his degree in economics. I could also tell you about the guy who used photoreading to get his engineering degrees. But i am not here to convince you. I knew why photoreading was not working for you & i gave you the information so that it would work for you. If you view that as a personal attack after i have taken time out of my busy schedule to help you perhaps you might want to think about that. Here you have a person who is having problems getting photoreading to work for him i take my time to assist this person so he can get photoreading to work for him & he says it is a personal attack. Interesting.

In closing & let me be real clear here i am not saying you are one of those people but many times in the past we have gotten plenty of people post on this forum who do not want to expend any effort or do any studying at all & are looking for some magic formula where they don't have to do anything. Just put it in the microwave for 10 seconds. Zap! They do not have to study or expend any effort at all. These people think they can just photoread a book & that is all they have to do. It doesn't work that way.We also get our share of people who bash photoreading because it does not comply or fit within their box. It is kind of like this if someone during the era when columbus was sailing around the world had said one day men will built a machine & that machine will leave the earth & fly to the moon people would have thought that person is crazy or absoutely nuts. Photoreading is not about developing a photographic memory & it is not magic.

Photoread4me

Thanks, I assure you, my intentions are honorable. Do you actually find that this is beneficial? Can you actually feel as though you have the same benefit of reading a book after you photo read it?
It seems to me, after just 12 hours or so of taking the course, that if I took a book, read the table of contents, the first and last paragraphs, thumbed through it stopping at passages that looked interesting, I will I get the same results as I have experienced so far... Is the magic page flipping actually going to help me? I'm not trying to bash, I'm looking for a reason to keep trying this, that's all. A sucess story or two would be nice...
Sorry to bother those of you who have busy schedules, I understand, I have one too and I'm trying to decide if this is a valuable use of my time and money...
rd

The benefit comes in the activation. That's where you get your reading done three times faster than traditional reading.

I've had some unusual experiences with PhotoReading. Many which I shared back in 2002 - 2003.

Three months or so after I learned PhotoReading and did indeed discover I can get my reading done in 1/3 to 1/10 the time I began to wonder if the PhotoReading step itself was a placebo. The universe came to my aid and set me a challenge. It's on the forums but to save searching I'll tell the story again.

A friend of mine was studying for his high school certificate (year 11 for any Aussies.) He had an assignment and like a good student left it till Sunday to start and to have it to hand in on Monday.

He scanned the assignment sheet for me and asked me if I could help him. I read the assignment and my brain rain screaming out the door. No way I thought.It had something to do with business studies. I was lucky I had a dinner to go to so I said to him tell you what I do. My friend left some books on business I'll find one and PhotoRead it and we'll work on the assignment when I get back.

I went to dinner selected one book and PhotoRead it. Put it down next to me with the intention of activating it when my friend started working on the assignment. He was busy with another one also due on Monday. So I waited PhotoRead the book 8pm and midnight he says. Phew just finished that assignment. I asked what about the other one. He said I'm going to forfeit It's too late to start. now. So he asked me what I was up to I said just surfing the web waiting to till you were ready to start the assignment.

Next he asked so how would you approach it. I told him. he asked a question I gave answers, I explained reasoning told him to consider insurance for this hypothetical business as it can make or break whether it works. In 45 minutes he had the 1000 word essay.. I never opened that book. Following morning I thought where did all that insurance stuff come from? Found the book and opened it to the page with the insurance information. As important and as correctly explained as in the book.

I don't think I would have noticed except the dramatic way my mind responded to the question before I PhotoRead the book and then when asked the question again after I PhotoRead the book (he got 70% on the assignment he lost the 30% because he didn't follow the correct formatting of the essay. )

The other experience was doing a course. I finished the assignment 10 days early in a six week intensive course and I did spend a lot of time just doodling about. When it came to doing the assignment the information just flowed. More interesting stuff happened.

I'm always reluctant to share my experiences because of the yeah right but Alex works for Learning Strategies .

I came across PhotoReading by accident. What hooked me was the idea of reading 3 books in the time I could read one. I did the course and it worked. I came to the forum and found people needed help so I helped where I could.

Someone on the forum said Alex why don't you become an instructor. So I did. In 2004 Learning Strategies asked me to look after some email accounts for them and become the moderator of the forum.

I live in Australia. I am now self employed (where I was unemployed when I first learned PhotoReading) I'm a Certified PhotoReading instructor who holds classes in Australia.

Unfortunately I cannot give you PhotoReading but with patience I can teach you PhotoReading. I've had people come to my class not sure about this PhotoReading stuff and leave going wow, what's next.

Alex

Thanks Alex, that's what I was looking for, I just needed to hear that this was not as crazy as my conscious brain is trying to tell me it is. My soul really wants to come out and play with this, I just have to get off its back...