Forums IMPORTANT: PLEASE READ PhotoReading, Memory Optimizer success stories?

By the way, what would be total mastery?

Would it be a state where you can activate the meterial as you photoread?

Tim,

You asked for some personal examples...and mine have only been small but I'm still encouraged. When I was first reading the PR book, I followed the recommended steps and after a few times through, I photoread it. Then I proceeded to read it in a normal way. When I got to page 86, they talked about setting the stage for reading by relaxing your mind, etc. At that point, I stopped to think - why hadn't they mentioned using relaxing music. So I looked up music in the index and found that they talked about it on page 87. My mind must have known that, even though I was not consciously aware of it.

Another example was a puzzle I had been working on for several months. It's a puzzle of nine square cards with pictures of cats on them that you have to match up. I tried to write a computer program to solve this puzzle, but since there are over a billion possibilities and I don't have a supercomputer, I figured the program would have taken several months to run. One day I got totally frustrated with the whole thing and shuffled the cards and jokingly asked the universe to help me. Then I laid down the cards, made one or two adjustments, and guess what? The puzzle was solved!! I was amazed. I think my subconscious brain had been working on the puzzle all along.

Ok, I still have a lot of work to do...I don't even come close with the dictionary game which I do about once a week. But I have gone through more books and magazines and been more relaxed about all the reading I have to do lately. When I'm reading a book the normal way, my eyes just naturally go into photofocus and sometimes I have to concentrate to keep them focused normally.

And I find that just photoreading a book relaxes me, so it's something that I really enjoy. I haven't quite figured that one out yet. I figure if this really does work, it's going to be great (!) so I've got to keep on trying.

Well, even though the photoreading course did not go as I expected (I found myself not doing the course, and it took me a few weeks to complete it!), I have had some success even though I haven't, I feel, gotten to that 'conscious competence' stage of Photoreading.

Otherwise, I have had some great success. Before an english exam, I photoread all the required text books (several times) and did a bit of scanning and dipping and mind mapping. This was a particularly difficult test since you needed to apply a literary theory to a book that we had previously studied. Anyway, on the phone to my friend the night before, many, many ideas started flowing into my mind -- so much so that on the day of the test I just wrote the things that I discussed (activated?). While I did not feel that anything that I wrote was good -- I thought after the test "oh no, I stuffed that up again...I didn't explain anything at all..etc." -- I received high marks (88% and 90%) for the two essays, which is equivalent to an A (and subsequently an A in the course).

There are other instances that I used for photoreading: I employed the syntopic reading strategy to many different types of essays; some dealing with philosophy, others english literature, and even a 'creative' one for sociology. I received A's for all of them, including a 100% for two of them. I even shocked myself with the good marks. I found that after photoreading some texts, I started writing in the same 'style' as the authors I had photoread. This only became more apparent as I re-read some of my essays AFTER I had handed them in (and each essay seems to betray a distinct style of its own).

This year, I am going to integrate PRing into my life. I bought the course last year, got a bit discouraged with the 'blip' page and activation, but decided to use it for the essays since it seemed the easiest way out. I'm glad I did, and just now wonder how much time and effort others need to put in to accomplish the same (or less) results. Also, remember that in the earlier part of the year, I was getting some B's, even a C in similar subjects. I had started using photoreading a little bit at the end of the first semester, but I don't think I got really working yet.

That's all. Back to those tapes.

Ken

My name is Jorge I´m from Mexico; I consider myself a beginner PRer, because I´ve been using the system just few months ago. The main reason for which decided to learn how to use the system, was to prepare my certification exams as a ENT doctor; so I bought the book, then the personal learning course; took the semminar in Mexico and finally took the semminar with Paul Scheele last november as I recall. I´ve been practicing almost every day, repracticing listening the course cassettes and paraliminals also (dream play, memory supercharger, personal genius, etc.) and I can tell you I had some success after the last semminar, but only with spontaneus activation with non technical books, but self enhancement or nonfiction books. From there on my success with activation declined dramatically. Because I decided to question my mind about my medical book that I already PRed and did activation and rapid reading, I chalenge my self with some self assesment test (entering the accelerated learning state; and PR the test before start answering) on the topics of my professional boards and I flunked; when I repeated the boards without any preparation of the PR whole mind system (but different topics) my grades improved a little, and the correct answers were those that I recall been reading with the old fashion way (consciously).
I´m sure that the system works and I´m probably doing something wrong (very), but I don´t know what; at this very moment I´m feeling some sort of frustration, because my test it´s only 2 weeks from today, and all the effort it seems to have been gone to the garbage; and I wonder if had been better to work with the system of PR for a less risky occasion, and to have prepared my exam in the traditional way at this moment I don´t have the answer it´s just that I´m little bit desperado.
I would appreciate any comments, by the way I already read the subject "work on all kind of material", went through the DF about activation and well so far not good.
Jorge

[This message has been edited by sixtos (edited January 17, 2001).]

Jorge - Have you activated material until it gelled, as discussed in the article?

Hi Jorge,

I received an eMail yesterday from some beginning PhotoReader, asking for some advice - he too has a pressing exam to take.
I know that you are not a total beginner, but perhaps this will help you to spark your own solution (I leave out the name of the asker):

Hi,

first: thanks for your trust in my opinion.
second: PhotoReading is easy. Out there's a technique called SQ3R (Survey - Question - Rewiew - Read - Recite) which resembles a lot the PR-System. This technique has quite a tradition, is conventional and even taught at universities. So, even if you have a PR-block, the other steps should work, perhaps with a little modification.

1. Take a book (or a chapter of a book), Preview/Survey it for Key-Words, special graphics, tables, headlines etc. Take some notes on this, perhaps in a list, perhaps in a MindMap.

2. Ask Questions to the book: Ask for definitions, connections, whys, wheres, whos - whatever you think is important about the material. A list of official questions can help, but let your curiosity guide you.

3. PhotoRead. With your questions at hand, you should have no problem to state a specific goal for your PR.

4. Review the book (the chapter). Look for answers to your questions. You can do this by MindProbing, SuperReading & Dipping, any combination of this or something completely new. Part One of Activation.

5. Read the book (chapter) again for answers to still open questions. You can additionally use RapidReading or normal reading. Part Two of Activation.

6. Recite the answers. Are they satifying? Do you feel competent to answer your questions? Any new questions?

Repeat as long as you need to answer your questions - the initial ones and the new ones. You can include the PR-Step in your repition if you like. If you are working chapter for chapter, you will need the PR-Step.
If you want to do this chapter by chapter, you could first do one sequence on the whole book to get an overall feeling for the material and its location.
You do not need to cling to the sequence of the chapters. Well, it's your time, your book, your mind. Choose any sequence of chapters that feels right for you.

Well, as you see, I just included the PR-Step in this time-honored technique, so it should work, even if PR itself doesn't. And the few additional minutes do not hurt. Stick to this sequence and stop wondering about the PR-System. Just work, stay alert and be active in your way to learn your stuff.

For me, it was important to take notes: make lists and tables, scribble some graphics, mindmap, record any ideas on tape. Whatever works best for me and the material. Well, I even take my dictaphone out for a walk and after some time try to give a spoken summary for a specific topic or pretending to hold a lecture on it. In this way, I can let my thoughts and memories flow, revealing any gaps in my knowledge.
With my notes, I tried to develop a structure of all this material, a structure which made sense to me, whether it was in the books or not.

One other thing I used once to stay motivated: I pretended, I was a student in the year 2225, preparing for a homework on information archaeology. As a SF-fan, this worked fine with me. It helped to take the immediate pressure out of the task.

Regards,

Jens


P.S.: Paul Scheele posted something on the discussion board about a learning schedule/rhtythm. But as far as I can remember it was stuff out of the PR-book or the course.

Yes; I always use the sleep period to incubate and sometimes I do activate the chapters about one week apart, some of the books I PRed almost 5 times. I still go for the PR system, it has to work.

Thak you very much Jens, I will do what you suggested step by step, really thank you very much.
I´ll let you know what happened

I just photoread for the first time. I am so excited. It was a lot of fun.

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