Forums IMPORTANT: PLEASE READ PhotoReading, Memory Optimizer Super Reading

MatiasT:

Skittering is very useful for academic material or material that is instructional in nature. Skittering involves a wild, dancing about movement like that of a waterbug on the surface of a pond. This movement of the eyes gives the brain an opportunity to look at all the words of a paragraph that supports its main premise.

To do skittering read the first sentence(topic sentence) of the paragraph you are going to begin skittering on. Move your eyes in a rapid pattern over all the words in the paragraph, except those in the first & last sentence,noticing those words that seem to carry meaningful support to the premise in the first sentence. The movement of your eyes can follow a zigzag pattern from top to bottom or bottom to top.It can follow circular pattern clockwise or counterclockwise and move from the center out or from the edges to the center. There is no set pattern, but you will discover a preference for one of them. Play with them all to find what works best for you. This movement gives your brain a chance to spot ideas that augment or add to the main concept in a paragraph. If the meaning of the paragraph remains unclear, read the last sentence. Continue this process through each succeeding paragraph until you near the end of the reading selection.
Review and reflect. Make a mindmap in your own words. Sure you have an open book but do not copy the words word for word put it into your own words.

Photoreading a book everyday is fine. It is especially helpful with a complex book.

Skittering is on page 64 & 65 of the Photoreading book 3rd edition.Five day plan (highly recommended) is on page 76 & 77 of the Photoreading book 3rd edition. If you do not have a photoreading book do a search on skittering and five day plan.

Photoread4me

Hi Photoread4me,

I would like some advice on this strategy regarding super-reading please:

I am reading a book called C# 2005. My purpose for this book is to be able to develop my programming and problem solving skills in C# to a professional level so that I can improve my career prospects. This means that It is very technical in nature so I am not skimming the book to get to the meat as I need to know most of the stuff.

The strategy that I have used:

I have created my pupose, as above, used the ideal state and impact statments and I have photoread the book a couple of times now. I left the book overnight before activation.

As for activation, I work on a chapter at a time. These are the steps
1. I first flip through the chapter to get the headings and start creating a mind map of the chapter name at the centre and each branch as a chapter sub topic.
2.I then mind probe the subsections and ask myself questions to build my curiosity.
3.I then superread the section, as I do so, I am getting no comprehension at all! By superreading I am scanning my eyes down the top to bottom in a zig zag motion.
4. After 1st pass of superreading, I then try and add to the branch for that section on my mindmap, but because of very little comprehension, I usually just pick up a key word.

I feel that super-reading for me is not helping me understand the material. Because is is technical in nature and because it is teaching programming concepts and principles with examples, the only way to learn this and understand it is to do traditional or rapid reading to get the comprehension I need.
What I am unsure of is if I am going about this too slowly because I have to go into traditional reading to get the comprehension? Most of the material in the section is pretty important to understand their programming examples so I take time to understand and absorb the logic.
Should I therefore forget the superreading stage? Or am I not doing the superreading stage correctly?

What do you think I should do?

much appreciated
dmlocke

dmlocke: I have heard it said before that sometimes superreading does not work well with technical material and that skittering works better.

Skittering is very useful for academic material or material that is instructional in nature. Skittering involves a wild, dancing about movement like that of a waterbug on the surface of a pond. This movement of the eyes gives the brain an opportunity to look at all the words of a paragraph that supports its main premise.

To do skittering read the first sentence(topic sentence) of the paragraph you are going to begin skittering on. Move your eyes in a rapid pattern over all the words in the paragraph, except those in the first & last sentence,noticing those words that seem to carry meaningful support to the premise in the first sentence. The movement of your eyes can follow a zigzag pattern from top to bottom or bottom to top.It can follow circular pattern clockwise or counterclockwise and move from the center out or from the edges to the center. There is no set pattern, but you will discover a preference for one of them. Play with them all to find what works best for you. This movement gives your brain a chance to spot ideas that augment or add to the main concept in a paragraph. If the meaning of the paragraph remains unclear, read the last sentence. Continue this process through each succeeding paragraph until you near the end of the reading selection.
Review and reflect. Make a mindmap in your own words. Sure you have an open book but do not copy the words word for word put it into your own words.

Photoreading a book everyday is fine. It is especially helpful with a complex book.

Skittering is on page 64 & 65 of the Photoreading book 3rd edition.Five day plan (highly recommended) is on page 76 & 77 of the Photoreading book 3rd edition. If you do not have a photoreading book do a search on skittering and five day plan.

When you are superreading or skittering you should not be working on your mindmap at that time. It would slow you down way too much. You work on the mindmap when you have completed superreading or skittering.

Are you pulling your trigger words and formulating questions for them? Are you writing these questions down?


Your activation session for the chapter should be 20 minutes for superread and dip or skittering (your choice) and 10 minutes for your mindmap.The total maximum time for the activation session should be 30 minutes. 5 minute breaks at the end of the activation session are crucial.

Skittering is much faster that speed reading or rapid reading. Rapid reading is the slowest. While superreading is faster than skittering skittering gives you more which would be ideal in a technical book.

With a technical book you may need to make numerous multiple passes but you will still come out ahead then if you did elementary reading reading word for word line by line.

Can you give me the title of the chapter you were activating, the purpose you set for the chapter and the trigger words for the chapter and the questions you wrote down for the chapter.

Photoread4me

Hello dmlocke

Just adding a little to what Photoread4me has said in the post above.

I would like to know is this your first book that you are trying to PhotoRead? If yes then learning PhotoReading with a technical book, IMHO, makes the task a lot more difficult. As per my opinion, you should learn PhotoReading with one or two light, non-fiction books. Depending upon your interest you can pick up any books. However, if you are sitting on the fence, then my suggestions are :-

1.Blink : The Power of Thinking without Thinking by Malcom Gladwell
2.The Speed of Trust by Stephen M.R. Covey

This will help you practice, understand, and appreciate the process better.

Further, how did you learn PhotoReading? I mean did you just pick up the PhotoReading Whole Mind System book or you purchased the Self-Study course? In case you purchased the self study course what was your experience through the two books which Paul guides you to PhotoRead?

Further, as Photoread4me mentioned above, it will be a good idea to activate a chapter or two at a time. Ask yourself following mind probing questions:-

1. What would you like to know in these chapter(s)?
2. What do you think is important in these chapter(s)?
3. What it is in these chapter(s) that will help you develop your skills?

I hope I have been of some help here.

Photoread4me : As usual, excellent post!!

God bless you.

Kind regards
Vaibhav Sharma

Hi there photoread4me,

Again thank you for the time and advice you have given me.

The way the book is structured is that each section within a chapter is in 'paired pages' format, that is, the detailed description of the section is on the left hand page and this gives the concepts and ideas for that section. On the right side, this gives a synopsis of the details and a various coding examples in C# that support the description section.
An example of a Section is "Working with Data". The trigger words I have pulled out are: Convert Data Type, String to Decimal, Boolean, Assignment and Operators.
I then ask myself questions about what these concepts mean and how do you apply this to writing programmes in C#. My sub-goal for each section is to really understand and be able to apply the knowledge I have gained and be able to use this to write a C# program for the exercise section at the end of a chapter.

The book is organised into chapters with subtopics for each chapter. For example there are 8 ‘paired page’ sections within a chapter. So going by your advice:

“Your activation session for the chapter should be 20 minutes for superread and dip or skittering (your choice) and 10 minutes for your mindmap.The total maximum time for the activation session should be 30 minutes. 5 minute breaks at the end of the activation session are crucial.”

I should not be working on a section at a time; I should be working on a chapter at a time?

Once again, thank you for your fantastic insight and advice.

Regards
dmlocke

Hi there Vaibhav,

I learned photoreading with the book not the self study course. This is also not the first book I have photoread. I have photoread many books and I understand the all the parts of the system pretty well but I am stuck with doing activation effectively and seem to regress to slow reading to ‘get it’. I feel that I can only get the comprehension of C# I need with traditional reading. If I try to do it with skittering etc I don’t seem to take anything in?

Thank you also for your kind advice.

Regards
dmlocke

Hi Dmlocke:

I have some more information for you that i hope will help. Yes you activate one chapter at a time. You treat the chapter as if it were a small book. Prepare purpose for the chapter preview pulling out trigger words and write questions for the trigger words. Activate superread or skittering to find answers to your questions.Mindmap after superreading or skittering.

So you definitely do not want to do your mindmap while activating the chapter as i said earlier it would slow you down way too much. You do the mindmap after you have superread or skittering for 20 minutes.

I want to give you an example of skittering so you have an idea of what it looks like.

Here is an example of skittering.

If a book has this paragraph:

The digital backbone of the PSTN uses time-division multiplexing, or the variation described below, to move bits throughout the network. The smallest backbone pipe is the PSTN is the T1, which has a total capacity of 1.54 Mbps (24 voice channels), and the largest is the OC-192, with a capacity of nearly 10 billion bits per second (129,024 voice channels). The only difference between the two is the rate at which the bits are pulsed on the line. The capacity, or bandwidth of the pipe increases as the bit rate is speeded up. It is nothing short of amazing that the PSTN backbone equipment can both generate and keep track of bit pulses transmitting at a rate of 10 Gbps.

So this is how you would skitter the above paragraph.

Read the first sentence. Then skitter the paragraph. Any pattern can be.

The digital backbone of the PSTN uses time-division multiplexing, or the variation described below, to move the bits throughout the network.

capacity of 1.54 Mbps
difference between the two
rate
pulsed
capacity...increase...speeded up
amazing
generate...track pulses...rate 10 gbps

smallest T1,
largest OC-192

No set rules how you see or put the puzzle of the paragraph together.

You can go over it forward, backward. zigzag curved, circular anyway you want.

Remember you want to do multiple activations on the chapter since it is a complex, technical book. So you know you are going to spend 20 minutes superreading or skittering and in my own opinion dmlocke (it is just my own personal opinion) you are better off skittering due to the academic nature of this book and the need to get more information than what you are getting from superreading.

So 20 minutes skittering finding the answers to your questions. 10 minutes working on the mindmap after the skittering and a 5 minute break.

You might need to do 6, 10, 15 activation passes over this chapter. You will know when the chapter comes together or gels and that you have gotten what you wanted from the chapter.

Photoread4me

Hi Dmlocke:

I have some more information for you that i hope will help. Yes you activate one chapter at a time. You treat the chapter as if it were a small book. Prepare purpose for the chapter preview pulling out trigger words and write questions for the trigger words. Activate superread or skittering to find answers to your questions.Mindmap after superreading or skittering.

So you definitely do not want to do your mindmap while activating the chapter as i said earlier it would slow you down way too much. You do the mindmap after you have superread or skittering for 20 minutes.

I want to give you an example of skittering so you have an idea of what it looks like.

Here is an example of skittering.

If a book has this paragraph:

The digital backbone of the PSTN uses time-division multiplexing, or the variation described below, to move bits throughout the network. The smallest backbone pipe is the PSTN is the T1, which has a total capacity of 1.54 Mbps (24 voice channels), and the largest is the OC-192, with a capacity of nearly 10 billion bits per second (129,024 voice channels). The only difference between the two is the rate at which the bits are pulsed on the line. The capacity, or bandwidth of the pipe increases as the bit rate is speeded up. It is nothing short of amazing that the PSTN backbone equipment can both generate and keep track of bit pulses transmitting at a rate of 10 Gbps.

So this is how you would skitter the above paragraph.

Read the first sentence. Then skitter the paragraph. Any pattern can be.

The digital backbone of the PSTN uses time-division multiplexing, or the variation described below, to move the bits throughout the network.

capacity of 1.54 Mbps
difference between the two
rate
pulsed
capacity...increase...speeded up
amazing
generate...track pulses...rate 10 gbps

smallest T1,
largest OC-192

No set rules how you see or put the puzzle of the paragraph together.

You can go over it forward, backward. zigzag curved, circular anyway you want.

Remember you want to do multiple activations on the chapter since it is a complex, technical book. So you know you are going to spend 20 minutes superreading or skittering and in my own opinion dmlocke (it is just my own personal opinion) you are better off skittering due to the academic nature of this book and the need to get more information than what you are getting from superreading.

So 20 minutes skittering finding the answers to your questions. 10 minutes working on the mindmap after the skittering and a 5 minute break.

You might need to do 6, 10, 15 activation passes over this chapter. You will know when the chapter comes together or gels and that you have gotten what you wanted from the chapter.

Photoread4me

Hi there photoread4me,

Thank you very much for taking the time to consider my photoreading issue. You have made a great effort to help me and that is much appreciated!!!

I have been reading over you reply and I am starting to get-it - at last!!! Only practice will improve the speed and efficiency of the process in other learning situations.

I have decided to put my understanding of the process of Learning the C# programming language from a book into a series of steps for other people who are in a similar situation. Hopefully they can benefit from the experience that I’ve had.


So Preliminaries......

• Main purpose for reading book – what I want to be able to do after reading the book – develop my C# skills to a professional standard and to improve my career prospects. To be able to have the skills to be marketable and be able to apply for jobs as a developer.
• Ideal state – including developing self belief in my ability to achieve the goal
• Preview to pull out trigger words that relate to my purpose – start developing a curiosity and a passion to learn. Also decide on my commitment to achieving the goal
• Impact statements and affirmations
• Accelerated learning state
• Photoread
• Incubation period.


Activation

• 1 Chapter at a time
• Pull out trigger words for chapter – section headings and subheadings
• Then formulate specific questions to create curiosity and a powerful purpose to search for answers.( maybe creating a mind map of the questions) …eg

- How do you convert a decimal to an integer value and create the code to do so?
- What does enumeration mean?
- How do you code an enumeration?
- I want to understand how the code for this application works!
- How does the logic behind the coding work?
- Do I understand the language constructs used in the code when I try to understand the programming logic behind it?

Etc etc etc

• Read first sentence of each paragraph of the first section in the chapter
• Then do skittering for each section in the chapter to let the brain find the answers to the questions you have created for that chapter – satisfying purpose for chapter from mind mapped questions
• Do this for 20 minutes tops
• 10 minute mind map (putting chapter heading in centre and each section as a main branch from centre)– this will be for the information you have discovered during skittering which answers your questions
• Break for 5 minutes
• Review Mind map created and reflect on whether the purpose and questions have been satisfied. Ask if I am able to demonstrate the skills and understanding?
• If questions and purpose for chapter not satisfied, do another pass repeating above steps
• Continue until needs for chapter and yourself have been satisfied.
• Move onto next chapter.
• Photoread the chapter first
• And start whole Activation process again for new chapter.


This is now my understanding of the whole process. I will now ‘play’ with this strategy and let you know what works best for me. Hope it helps others too!

Kindest Regards
Dmlocke

Hi dmlocke: You're welcome. I am glad i could be of some help to you.

The only other things i would add are:

Each time before activating photoread the 2 chapters before the chapter you are activating,photoread the chapter you are activating and photoread the 2 chapters after the chapter you are activating. Do this everytime before you start the activation session.

Your trigger words are not limited to headings and subheadings. A trigger word can be any word in the book.

On skittering you are probably looking at about 15 seconds a page.

Also on skittering you are reading the first sentence on every paragraph in the chapter unless you determine that the paragraph has absolutely no value to you or has nothing to do with your purpose at all.

Your purpose sounds on track. The two components of a purpose are the why of a purpose and the so i can do such and such. It seems to me that your purpose has those 2 components.

Photoread4me