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#54188 08/26/00 09:37 AM
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balmon Offline OP
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Hi again. Just being a beginner at this all, I have got a few more questions to ask - hope you don't mind.

1) When reading books with large page areas (especially WIDE books) do you need to 'stand back' or is the peripheral vision good enough to get the whole page at about 30cm (1 foot)?

2) And when you super-read these books, should you still scan your eyes down the one column (very wide column!) or let your eyes roam across, then down?

3) My ultimate goal is to photoread very detailed textbooks (medical pathology, biochemistry, anatomy, pharmacology, etc). In the manual, it says that 4-11% of text is salient, but I reckon in many of my readings(especially review articles in medical journals) EVERY SENTENCE contains vital information. May be closer to >60% of words with important meaning (only words like "the, and, or, etc" have no meaning!). Is photoreading system going to be effective in achieving >90% of these very technical readings? If so, will it mean that more super-reading/dipping will be required to get the full understanding?

4) Finally, are there any people out there who have been successful at reading very detailed books. I would particularly like to hear about any medical success stories.

Thanks again all

balmon


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1) Wide books should be okay sitting down. Newspapers, however, stand up.

2) Play with it. On wide books I follow an "S" pattern.

3) If you want to memorize text, you must still spend time to memorize the text, but it will take less time with the PhotoReading system. One reason is that it is easier to understand the information, whether fluff or highly technical, and information that is understood is always easier to memorize.

4) PhotoReading was originally developed for the dataprocessing unit of IDS Financial Services, now part of American Express. Our largest corporate clients are those who have highly technical reading needs. So yes, it can be effective in processing highly technical material. And, medical students have repeatedly praised PhotoReading.


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I have the same problem as balmon: I have to read 1000 pp technical science books (biochemistry, cell biology, virology), and it seems that everything that is in the book, is important, or else why would it be in there?

I know that you can photoread at hundreds of thousands wpm, but that gets to be irrelevant, because it's so fast as to not be a limiting factor anymore. The thing that takes up the time is bringing the material into concsious understanding. How quickly can that be done, once photoreading is mastered? How long, approximately would it take you or Paul Scheele to completely master a 1000 pp. textbook on biochemistry, complete with chemical pathways, equations, structures, etc?

Also some photoreading materials state that photoreading can be used for all materials intended for public consumption. Public consumption? Why the qualifier? What is that supposed to mean?


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Hello?

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If it takes you a hundred hours to read your technical material to get xx% comprehension, you can achieve the same comprehension in about 33 hours with the PhotoReading whole mind system.

You must still spend the time activating the material.

Plus, if you have problems to do while reading, you will still have to do the problems.

PhotoReading is not magic. It is not something for nothing.

The PhotoReading whole mind system can be used on all types of materials.

--

When you master PhotoReading, you can drop the time down. How far? It depends on many factors.

--

How long it would take me to master a 1000 page science book? A heck of a long time. But considerably less time than another person who has the same base understanding as I but who does not know PhotoReading.


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"When you master PhotoReading, you can drop the time down. How far? It depends on many factors."

Like what factors? How far can it [potentially] be dropped down? I know that you are probably hesitant to make hard and fast generalizations but I just would like to have an idea of what can be done with the system once you have invested a lot of time and energy (and $).

Also have you photoread a book like a biochem book in the past? How long did it take?


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Factors include: how well you have mastered PhotoReading, what is your purpose, what level of familiarity do you have with the material, how confident are you with your skills or the subject, how do you feel today, what's the weather like, how relaxed are you...

I can go through most nonfiction books on the bestsellers list in thirty minutes. I'd do quite well on a comprehension test.

I've demonstrated on television going through bestsellers and immediately answering questions. I use the questions as the activation. I'm not fond of that much pressure. I prefer other forms of activation.

When a book is written for someone who has substantial background in a subject, I syntopically read 3-5 books on that subject. This helps me get a base understanding more quickly, generally, then just the first book. (This is described in the PhotoReading book.)

I haven't done a biochem book since college.

My advice: play with it. See what results you get with the system. See how you can improve your performance. Be willing to fail. Just like a kid. That's when you will shine.

PhotoReading is a different paradigm then regular reading, but it is effective.


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I have used PhotoReading on graduate level texts in electrodynamics (_Classical Electrodynamics_ by Jackson), mechanics (_Mechanics_ by Landau and Lif****z) and quantum mechanics (_Quantum Mechanics_ by Merzbacher) and I have found the system to be very useful in absorbing the material in these texts, and none of these texts is for the faint-hearted. That being said, remember that these are graduate level texts in a specific field, and that I already held an undergraduate degree in physics. I had some familiarity with the subject matter and was at a level where I was prepared to absorb the material contained therein. If I did not have the foundations in that area of study, I would have had to have started with more elementary texts.

In my opinion, the PhotoReading system does work on any and all kinds of material. It does not auto-magically endow the PhotoReader with instant understanding of what they have PhotoRead - if you are not intellectually prepared to absorb the material in a technical text via regular reading, I do not think that PhotoReading will make it happen for you. However, PhotoReading does dramatically increase the speed with which you CAN absorb information, allowing you to more readily master written material. I went from staying up until 1:00 or 2:00 A.M. studying and working problem sets to getting to bed by 10:00 P.M. while using the PhotoReading system for my graduate courses (and I maintained a high G.P.A.).

When working with technical material, I think that it is important to play with the material that you're trying to activate. If you get a chance, I'd recommend reading _Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman_, a set of anecdotes about the nobel prize winning physicist Richard Feynman. Some of the techniques that he had about visualizing physics, math and chemistry theories/theorems are very applicable to activation of technical material, I think (Feynman was a natural synesthete who learned to use his skill in application to physics).

I hope this helps.

Craig M. Parsons-Kerins
-The East Coast Omni-Heurist!

quote:
Originally posted by nate:
"When you master PhotoReading, you can drop the time down. How far? It depends on many factors."

Like what factors? How far can it [potentially] be dropped down? I know that you are probably hesitant to make hard and fast generalizations but I just would like to have an idea of what can be done with the system once you have invested a lot of time and energy (and $).

Also have you photoread a book like a biochem book in the past? How long did it take?



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One of my first experiences of spontaneous activation from 1985:

On Sunday morning I PhotoRead a book on how quantum physics relates to the brain. It was called Star Wave or Brain Wave or something like that. There was no activation (we hadn't developed it yet!)

That afternoon I was at the Metrodome watching a Vikings game. It was boring. I leaned back and stretched, and all of a sudden I knew knowledge. I could feel the concepts from the book. I saw a 3D graphs pivoting on its axis about four feet in front of me. Other things floated around me. I was in awe. Then I looked around to see if anyone was else was experiencing it, too, and poof, it disappeard.

On Thursday I met with two of my pre-Learning Strategies Corporation clients, and I told them of that experience. One had a degree in physics and asked if he could quiz me.

I tensed, turned red, and began to sweat. I said, "Sure why not."

He asked me questions, and I knew the answers--I simply described things I saw at the Vikings games. At one point I got stuck, and I asked him to instead ask true and false questions. I shut my eyes, took in a deep breath, and nodded for him to ask.

He asked two questions, and intuitively the answers came to me, and they were correct. It then triggered a recall of more information, much of which I wrote on a napkin (it was dinner time!) in the form of diagrams, etc.

I asked how I had done, and he said, which I remember so clearly, "Well you did not speak as a physics expert but as a lay person who knows a heck of a lot about physics."

So, while I did not spout the argot, I had processed and surprisingly understood the material. That experience is one of the many reasons I contend that PhotoReading will help you better understand anything you study.


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Its great to here about these experiences. I emailed all the people that gave the photreading book favorable reviews on Amazon.com before I decided to buy the course. I had many people reply including a graduate student that told me that photoreading has improved his grades and made his life easier.

My opinion is that the photofocus step is a bonus. It gives a person an exposure to the book. For a science book you may have to rapid read or skitter the whole book after you have let it incubate. The advantage to first doing the photofocus step is that it makes reading and learning the book much easier because it feels like you already have been exposed to the material. But the bottom line is that you will still have to spend some time with the book to get it conciously.


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