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Thank you very much for your sharing hartreefoch, very helpful to me. I guess i am just expecting too much. but I wonder what have you done during the such long 4 years of time of studying PR? and is there anything that might really move you forward to the success? the last question is, what's ur current way of PR? how effect it is? any quantative data?




Hi Tom,

Thanks for asking. I'm happy to share more. (I wish this forum had
existed when I was still learning PR. Actually, I was one of LSC's first
generation of customers, waaay back when, before the whole Internet
craze.)

Before PR, I was a very poor reader. I hated to read, not because I hated
learning, but because reading was SO slow and difficult for me. I dreaded even
opening up a book, because of all the negative, psychological resistance I
had built up against reading. But at the same time, I was naturally a
very curious person, and I knew I had to overcome my reading blockages to
achieve my goals in life. That was what attracted me to PR'ing.

Now, my expectations for PR were initially too high. Part of the blame
was the nature and wording of the advertisements for PR. I hope they've
toned those claims down by now, but at the time, the ads were making the
system sound "too good to be true." Unfortunately, that ultimately hurt
me more than helped, because I was expecting to achieve astounding reading
speeds in a matter of days. (There use to be some debate at this forum
regarding such claims, and the general justification by LSC is that they
are talking about "PHOTOREADING" speeds, not "READING" speeds. That is,
they're drawing a distinction between the rate at which the
"other-than-conscious-mind" can absorb information as opposed to the
"conscious-mind." It is a very fine detail to draw such distinction, but
that's ok ... every product needs a "gimmick" to draw attention.)

So, during the 4 years I was struggling with the method, I oscillated back
and forth between being a mediocre reader (my old habits) and a
photo-reader. I could not objectively say PR was really helping, but a
lot of the things I had learned in the class made sense, stuck with me,
and I just wanted it to work. That's why I kept re-attending the
live-classes. I felt I was missing something, and so I felt that if I
attended the classes with a different teacher, I would gain something I
had missed with the last instructor. In the end, I realized that I was my
best instructor all along, and the reason why I never really "got" PR was
because I was trying too rigidly to follow the "Photo-reading recipe"
layed out for me. The "recipe" is ok for the beginner ... but it is like
training wheels when you are learning to ride a bicycle. Once you learn
how to ride a bicycle, it's time to get rid of the training wheels! So to
make PR really work for me, I had to personalize PR, and that meant doing
some things my own way, different from the "recipe."

Perhaps the greatest two lessons I've gained from PR'ing are: 1) Your
other-than-conscious mind is involved in reading and it "speaks" to you
via intuitions, feelings, hunches ... ways which are
"other-than-conscious", and 2) Let go of perfectionist attitudes about
reading ... it's ok to get 50%-75% (or even less) of the material
"consciously" ... allow your other-than-conscious to fill in the blanks.
Usually, what you really need is only 10% of the material anyway, and the
rest is just interesting filler.

With these two attitude adjustments, reading became a joy, not a burden.
I could tear through huge volumes of material very quickly and isolate
exactly what I needed. I've had experiences that seemed almost "magical"
to me, where I was able to pinpoint exactly what I needed at the right
time, what some might describe as "synchronicitous" experiences. And such
experiences could not have happened before, because before, I would've
been too scared to open the volume in the first place. So, overall, I'm a
big fan of PR'ing, because it opened up a whole new dimension in reading.

How do I photo-read today? Very naturally. I don't even think about it
anymore. When I pick up reading material, I simply let my eyes glance
through the pages, half conscious, half not-so-conscious. I think some
call this "skittering." But to me, I've combined the "photo-vision" and
"skittering" phases into one. Personally, I don't bother with the
"relaxed vision and flipping-through-the-pages" routine. That just doesn't
work for me, but that could be just me. I simply acknowledge that my
other-than-conscious is taking in the information that it needs, even
while my conscious mind is skittering through the material. And at the
end of one pass, I allow my intuition to tell me whether or I need to go
back. Or, it may guide me to one part of the material, a part that I
need. And I may read that part very slowly, word-for-word, if necessary,
to really activate that part of the material consciously. Yes, sometimes
I feel the need to read something very, very, very slowly, but it is only
after I've gotten the big, overall picture, and have properly prepared my
mind to recognize that this is some information I really need to digest
slowly. The rest, I simply release as unimportant to me at the time.

So, that's my process today, and I do it very naturally, very smoothly.
(I read a LOT of material every day ... and I also write a lot, too.) Now,
I'm not saying it should be the way PR'ing should be done by everyone, and
perhaps it is not the way PR'ing is intended to be at all. But it is more than
sufficient for me, and it has really helped me become a better reader than
I ever thought possible.

Well, ha ha ... you probably had to photo-read all of the above to get
through it all ... but I hope there was something helpful to you in it
all. Perhaps the most helpful suggestion being just to relax with the
whole process, enjoy it, take what you find most helpful at the time, and
allow yourself to personalize and integrate the whole system to suit you.
You've already taken the first step of DESIRING to be a better reader, and
in time, you will be. It is only natural. It cannot NOT happen. In some
sense, learning to read well is a journey, not a destination, and we are
always improving throughout our lives. Let us know how it goes, and I'd
be happy to answer any other questions you may have (but I'll leave the
tough ones for Alex

Best,

HF

PS - Reading really is just like any other skill ... the more you do it,
the better you become at doing it. One benefit of PR'ing is that it helps to motivate you
to WANT to do it, and this in itself is perhaps more important than any claims
for reading speed, etc.