i haven't been on the forum in a few months; busy living and photoreading. i wanted to share an experience i had this summer:
a stranger saw me doing a syntopic photoread at a park and challenged me to read a novel at the bookstore. we went to a nearby bookstore and i PR’ed a book of his choice. as soon as i completed it, he started asking me detailed questions right off the bat about it (he had a copy) such as 'finish this line: blahblahblahblah...' of course i told him that i'd have to activate the book to give him his answers. he seemed to take offense to this idea and i think he thinks i'm a fraud and PR is a bunch of bullsh#$.
i said all that to say this: photoreading is called photoreading for a reason. let me explain photography to you. a photographer wants to capture a visual image so they use their camera to do so. but once the image is captured, they still have to develop their film, which takes time. you can stare at a roll of film all day but you won't see any of the pictures until you develop your roll. similarly, once the pictures developed, you'll remember the details rather vividly but you won't memorize every little molecule of each picture. that's what photo albums and visual files are created for. every photographer has a portfolio of their previous work to refer to at any time. photoreading works the same. your camera is your brain. your developing room is your activation passwork. your pictures are your mindmaps, you keep your maps in binders which serve as portfolios to return to at any time.
now I’d like to stop right here and offer you a warning: if you think photoreading is going to be one of those Matrix-like devices that instantly downloads the world's data into your brain and that your PR course will enable you to memorize a book just by touching its cover or quickly flipping a couple of pages, YOU ARE WRONG. I hate to disappoint you but must tell you the truth. if you want the system to do its job, you are going to have to WORK. you are going to have to STUDY. that's where i run into problems like the one i had with that gentleman above. he thought that PR was an easy way to avoid working and/or would justify his habit of procrastination. i have found myself in hot water by putting forth the idea of study around people who actively sought to avoid it but i believe in my heart that nothing worth having is gained without some form of effort. PR takes effort and time; that's what turned the stranger who challenged me off. he thought that the selling point (read at 25,000 words per minute!!!) was all there was to the system and was disappointed in the drudgery of actual study.
personally i wish LSC's advertisers would change their pitch to include activation as a selling point; it brings a sense of realism and practicality to the photoreading sales pitch. but what do i know? i'm just a data entry operator. i do know this much: some people nowadays are far too impressed with the idea of effortless gain which insults those who reap rewards by diligently applying themselves to achieving their goals. you must apply yourself to achieve anything valuable and that includes learning.
having said that, i also don't believe in taking the long road when there is a short one available. there isn't enough time in the day to do everything the long way. photoreading is the difference between working hard and working smart. once you understand and apply the principles of activation and mindmapping, you develop your maps as little or as much as you want. this fine tuning is a written variation of the NLP concept of submodalities where you fine tune the information you want on different comprehension levels. once you've mapped your ideas, you'll find you easily recall the information in detail. however, the complications of life will absorb your conscious mind as days go by so the finest of the fine points may be lost over time if you don’t review (this happens in your normal way of study as well). if for whatever reason you need it, review your mindmaps instead of rereading the books (which a regular reader would do). the more you read your maps (which are one page simple), the more you understand the book. how cool is that? in addition, you can always add new levels of detail to your map if you reread the book and find detail levels you previously missed because mindmaps are expandable. you may even combine different maps into metamaps if you so wish because mindmaps are also highly flexible.
the PR system is so subtle that you don't realize how much it's worked for you until much later. at this point i have been PRing for 2 years and even though i don't feel as if i've maxed my potential, i recently noticed there were only 2 books i am currently reading, both of which i have heavily marked up and mindmapped. before i bought my PR course, my bedside would have easily had a good dozen books or more and none of them would have been read past the second chapter. furthermore, the biggest breakthroughs in my reading have happened with the stuff I DON’T read. here are times now when i read the cover blurb on a book and put it down because that book is a waste of my time. there are times when i start to PR a book and then go 'nah, don't need to finish this' and start activating a chapter or two. i've had times where i look at the table of contents, flip to one chapter, read one paragraph at normal speed, and i'm done with it. sometimes all it takes is an index scan to find the keywords. for novels and prose, my understanding of the essay form and layout has helped me quickly gain vital information in books that lack a table of contents or comprehensive index; in those cases i skim and dip the first/last sentences in each paragraph and usually rapidread the opening/closing chapters. in the past i'd start every book at the beginning and underline most of what i read because i'd try to memorize everything. i'd also end up slowing my reading to a snail's pace to glean more information because finding things i didn't know and putting it all into context was like pulling teeth for me, a long laborious process. now i know i don't have to do all of that. my purpose dictates how much time I spend with any book. i understand that if you are a student (i’m not) your purpose is dictated for you by the course outlines but if you take a little time before you study to do full previews of your course curriculum, you’ll find you can map a lot of your learning material’s basic concepts without reading anything more than the course outline in your coursebook and the table of contents in each of your textbooks. this especially applies to the ‘hard’ courses like math, computer sciences, science, logic, etc. because scientific texts tend to be very logically laid out in their contents sections.
but i digress. back to the point.
if you feel the activations you do aren't sufficient for your undestanding, or there is something in the text you need to gel, or if you want to read to let the text wash over you, there is rapidreading which is another adventure in and of itself 
for those of you who are already good photoreaders, you're probably like 'duh no sh!t sherlock. i already knew that.' yes you did. remember the other people in this world who are still new to this and don't understand its inner workings yet. pass over what i said and leave this to them.
for those of you still struggling with your photoreading, i'd suggest to spend much time on creating your reading purpose and also to spend much time activating. for students, i know the purpose of reading seems obvious but milton model questioning applies to this stage of photoreading. eg. your purpose might start out being ‘my teacher/parents want me to read this so i can pass the exam’ but your real purpose may be ‘i’d like to learn this material in order to better prepare myself to pursue a career in blahblahblah’ which you can then chunk up or down as you wish to find your ultimate purpose for being here and doing this. the PR step is the selling point of this course but carefully defining your purpose and proper activations are what make PR work for you.
if you still have further questions then check the archives of this forum or ask the knowledgeable posters such as youngprer and alexk. they have helped myself and many when we have found ourselves in stuck states. i can tell you that the solutions to your problems are usually very simple because i have been there myself and made it through, so persevere.
[This message has been edited by x (edited November 01, 2003).]
