End of this blog

This blog was for a class, and I will no longer be blogging here. I'm currently obsessed with researching free online learning environments (wikiversity, wikieducator, etc.). If I start a new blog on this subject, I'll post a link to it here.

Mind Mapping

Years ago, Tony Buzan took the time to study the notes of notable minds (DaVinci for example), and came up with a system of note-taking that is highly effective. It's called mind mapping, and is a very simple concept that mirrors the connection building process of your brain.

Watch this youtube clip on Tony Buzan explaining and illustrating mind mapping: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlabrWv25qQ

I use comapping.com as a virtual mind mapping tool that is also very useful for collaboration, but many people use freemind (http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page).

Try mind mapping out and let me know what you think.

Speed Reading Game! (coming soon)

There is a lot of material on speed reading, and if you want to become an effective speed reader, you are going to need to practice. Too many people get lost along the path of learning how to read faster, and more give up after only a few practice sessions. Thus, I have decided to design an educational game devoted to increasing your reading speed. I will give you more details soon and ask for help brainstorming ideas to make the game addicting. Think how cool it would be to have access to an enjoyable game that made you read faster!

Recommended Resources

Here's a list of recommended resources, which will be updated frequently:

Hardware:

• Kindle ($260): The best device to read ebooks on, period.
• Timer ($10): A nifty little gadget for timing your reading/break sessions

Software:

• The Reader's Edge ($80 for Basic): The top rated, desktop speed reading software
• Ababasoft: A bunch of unpolished, speed read training applications (and articles)
• Spreeder: One of the best ways to practice speed reading on e-content (ebooks, email, online news, etc.)
• Comapping (Less than $3 a month): Online application for creating and sharing mind maps
• Freemind: Desktop software for making killer mind maps
• Lumosity: A site exploding with addicting brain training games
• Free Reading Test: Evaluate your effective reading speed here
• Quickreader (iPhone): Best iPhone speed reading application thus far

Books:

• Speed-Reading for Professionals by Wechsler and Bell ($3 used): A very practical book filled with techniques and exercises devoted to dramatically increasing your reading speed and retention.
• The Mind Map Book ($7 used): This book will introduce yourself to mind-mapping, a revolutionary way to take notes, brainstorm, and organize your thoughts.

Articles:

• Scott H Young on Speed Reading: Extensive blog post which does a great job of summarizing many speed reading techniques.
• Scott's Follow Up: Scott delves deeper into kicking the subvocalization habit.
• Pianoer on Speed Reading: Good blog post that summarizes speed reading and comprehension techniques.
• Mind Tools on Speed Reading: A great productivity site with a great article on speed reading.

Services:

• Project Gutenberg: Project Gutenberg provides the world with free access to thousands of books, most of which are in the public domain. Go nuts downloading ebooks from this site.

Review It or Lose It

Think about the classes you took in high school, how well do you remember any of the information you learned in them? Most likely you have lost much of the knowledge you temporarily owned, forcing you to take essentially the same class years later in college. Imagine how far ahead you would be if you had kept all of that knowledge securely locked in your brain? Review it, regularly, or lose it.

Hooking

You have been amassing experiences your entire life, transforming them into pieces of knowledge, and then cementing these pieces together to build a knowledge base. When you read, you pick up pieces of knowledge and store them in your short-term memory. In order for these pieces to transition into your long-term knowledge base, you need to build durable connections between these new pieces of knowledge and the knowledge structures you have already built. Think about how the new knowledge relates to your existing knowledge, how they are similar or different. This technique is called "hooking" and is something you should be doing throughout the entire reading process, but most importantly in the review stage.

Transforming Your Knowledge Base Into a Castle

A useful hooking technique is to visualize your memory and knowledge base as a castle, where each object within the castle is a piece of knowledge. When you want to add a piece of knowledge to your knowledge base, just pick a symbolic structure that you will remember and visualize adding it to a spot in your castle.

Schedule Breaks

Your brain is an amazing machine. It holds a gigantic database of the information gathered by your senses, interprets meaning from this information, and then constructs complex neural networks from this meaning. It is the most valuable piece of hardware in our body, but in order for it to fire on all cylinders, it needs to be constantly supplied with large amounts of oxygen and nutrients.

The burden of this crucial refueling task resides upon your circulatory system (your nutrient enriching, blood pumping system). You need this system to stay running at its peek performance level if you want to process information at your optimal rate. Maintaining a high blood flow rate is key to keeping the brain in ample supply of everything it needs. This is the primary reason you should take breaks while reading.

Here's how you are going to break:

1. When the timer beeps on you, finish the thought you were digesting and stand up.
2. Drink water, it is crucial for too many bodily operations to be neglected.
3. Do some sort of exercise to get your blood flowing. You could stretch, walk around, tense your entire body, do push ups, you get the picture.
4. After the alloted break time has expired, remember to clear your mind and to consciously refocus on your purpose.

You should experiment with times, but start with 30 minute reading sessions split by 5 minute breaks.

Another benefit of scheduling breaks is that they provide a powerful cue for your brain to switch between productive mode to recovery mode. When the 30 minute timer starts, your brain will know that it needs to be in 100% productive mode for 30 minutes, then it can switch to 100% recovery mode for 5.

Stay Attentive

You pay attention (hopefully) when your friend tells you a story, while you are on the phone getting directions, and during confrontations with your roommate(s), but you rarely stay this attentive while reading a book. The reason you stay alert in the previously mentioned circumstances is that you have established a personal connection with the party involved. This is why you find it easier to stay attentive while reading books with great characters, because you build up personal connections with these characters and are genuinely interested in what happens to them.

Sadly, most people fail to establish the same level of personal connection with the author of the book they are reading. The author is using the medium of written text to converse with you, to educate you, to entertain you. When you read, imagine the author becoming a real physical presence. Listen to an author's story like you would listen to a friend's. Speak to your book's author, ask him or her questions and jot down the answers. You can even debate the author, although try to stay civil and open-minded, as we would hate to see you slap, punch, or otherwise harm a book.

Change your assumptions about written text. Books are not inanimate objects, they are frozen interactions with the author. Thaw them and drink up the knowledge held within.

Accelerate to Visual Speed

In order for your reading speed to surpass the speed of speech, you will need to be able to transform the visual representation of text into meaning without hearing the sound of each word in your head. The habit of sounding words out in your head as you read is called subvocalization, and is probably the deepest engrained reading habit instilled in people. The habit started at the very beginning of our reading careers, when our first reading teachers had us pronounce written words so we could associate the audio representation with the visual and thus add the words to our speaking vocabulary. These teachers were (and probably still are) oblivious to the fact that they were instilling a very low reading speed limit in each of us by emphasizing the importance of learning the audio equivalents of written words and thus encouraging subvocalization.

When you subvocalize, your reading speed is limited to the rate at which you can hear the sound each word makes. After subvocalizing for years and years, your comprehension becomes dependent on hearing the audible versions of words. The reason long-time subvocalizer's usually backtrack is because they failed to sound out the previous passage in their heads and consequently failed to grasp the meaning of the passage.

Here are a couple strategies to overcome subvocalization:

• Overload your audio facilities -- Try humming a tune or counting, "1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3..." while reading. This will overload your audio facilities, preventing you from sounding out words in your head.
• Let go and speed up -- Temporarily let go of the need to comprehend every passage 100%, and instead focus on increasing the rate at which your eyes move across the page. Practice your pacer techniques at 150% of your normal speed. At first you will be catching only bits and pieces, but after a couple minutes your mind will begin to adapt to this faster pace, picking up more and more of the meaning residing in the text. Speed is the key to breaking the subvocalization habit. You can visually take in thousands of wpm, but only speak rates in the low hundreds (auctioneers speak around 250 wpm according to wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Words_per_minute).

Fly Higher

In the beginning, you read letter by letter, aggregating them to form words who's meaning you memorized. Then you began building your vocabulary, adding a word to it each time you could recognize a word, not by dissecting it into a sequence of letters, but by clumping the letters together into a meaningful structure. You probably stopped your reading development at this stage, thinking that was all you needed to learn to read well. You learned how to crawl and have settled for crawling through all of your books, when you could be experiencing the exhilaration of soaring.

Your focus was on individual letters, but moved higher until it was on individual words. It is time to start flying at higher and higher altitudes. Begin by reading in groups of two or three words. Visually focus on the middle of the word group, stretching your peripheral vision to grab the entire group. Train yourself to pick up more and more words per eye fixation and you will soon be reading in ideas.

Move Forward

If you want to read faster, you must give up the luxury of allowing yourself to frequently regress while reading. Regressing, in the context of reading, is the act of allowing your eyes to backtrack to what you just read. Regression is a crutch you have become dependent upon as a result of thinking it is inconsequential if your mind wanders while reading and causes you to glide over information-rich passages without even attempting to gather what is being said.

Think of reading a book as watching a movie in a theater; you better be paying attention because if you miss what a character says, you will be unable to rewind the movie. Your mind will stop wandering when you stop regressing, because you will focus very intently when you hold yourself to only one exposure of a particular passage (except for previewing and reviewing).

Kicking the Regression Habit with a Pacer:

The most effective way to kick the regression habit is to use a pen, notecard, cursor, or your finger as a pacer while reading. Using a pacer feels natural (try underlining the rest of this post with your finger) and will force you to become conscious of your regressions, providing you with the key to overcoming the regression habit.

There are numerous pacer techniques, which can viewed in an upcoming post titled "Pacer Techniques -- From Basic to Advanced," but you should begin with the basic underlining technique, which consists of simply underlining each line of text with your pacer's edge just above the reading surface at a smooth, consistent pace that is fast enough to provide an appropriate challenge.

Preview

When you preview your book, you gain a basic understanding of the book and how it is structured. The familiarity you gain from the preview process will significantly increase your reading speed. Previewing will also increase your reading endurance (the duration you are able to read without having to consciously force yourself to focus), because you will be building curiosity about the book's content.

Previewing Non-Fiction:

If you are just starting the book, read the cover, preface, and table of contents. For a particular chapter, skim the entire chapter, focusing on headings and topic sentences (usually the first sentence in a paragraph). While previewing, you want to become genuinely enthralled by the information residing in your book, but be careful to resist the urge to stop and read entire pages, because we want to bottle up that curiosity and use it to keep you focused. Finish your preview by reading the chapter summary. You should be cruising during the preview. It should never take longer than 5 minutes to preview a chapter.

Previewing Fiction:

When you preview fiction, read the cover and table of contents. Then, skim the entire book very quickly. Your goal is to rapidly identify the main characters and gain a basic understanding of the plot. You may skip previewing for fiction if you wish to completely avoid the possibility of spoiling any part of the story. However, doing so will result in a slower reading speed.

Set a Timer

When you set a timer for a reading session, you are ordering your brain to stay focused on reading your book for the set duration.

Setting a timer will:

1. Increase your reading speed -- There's a magic to an imminent deadline. Setting a timer will create a time pressure that will force you to focus on reading. This heightened focus will complement your tendency to work harder and faster while being timed and result in you cruising through your reading.
2. Provide a means for tracking progress -- By timing yourself, you will be able to calculate your reading speed. We recommend calculating and writing down your reading speed (words per minute, or WPM) at least once a week.
3. Help you schedule breaks -- Taking breaks to rehydrate and get your blood flowing will increase your reading endurance and effectiveness. We suggest reading in blocks of 30 minutes with 5 minute breaks.

Define Your Purpose

Why are you reading?

You want to get something out of what you read, but what is it? Take a proactive approach and clearly define your purpose for reading before you begin. Clarity is the key to having a strong purpose. Your chosen purpose will be prodded for weaknesses as you read, and if your purpose is porous with vagueness, wandering thoughts will break through your focus and cause you to falter in your reading.

You will enjoy the following benefits by having a strong, clear purpose for reading:

1. You will stay focused for longer durations and consequently complete your reading much faster.
2. Your comprehension will increase because you know what you information you desire and you will be actively searching for it.
3. You will be more enthralled with your reading because you will be conscious of how reading will further your larger goals.

Clear Your Mind

You read something because you want to acquire information about a particular topic. If you want to be efficient in this endeavor, your brain will need to flip to a clean page so it can write everything down.

To clear your mind, you must:

Remove distractions

Find a reading hideout where you will not experience frequent interruptions. Each time you are interrupted, it will take you a while to get back into the optimal state of mind necessary to read at exceedingly rapid rates. People are the number one cause of external reading interruptions. Consider breaking away from human contact while reading (no phone, facebook, etc.), unless you can find a reading partner who excels at keeping on task.

Still your mind

You need to stop your brain from thinking about anything besides digging information out of your book. Stop stressing about what so-and-so said or thinks about you, and stop worrying about whether or not you are going to get everything done that needs doing. Take a moment to still your mind using either the heartbeat method or the inner flame method, you will love the benefits.

Heartbeat -- Become very still. Take calm, deep breathes, and sense your heartbeat. Stay positive, it might take a while to feel your pulse the first few times, but it will become easier each time. Once you have become still enough physically and mentally, you will find that you have a blank slate with which to imprint the contents of your book.

Inner Flame -- Hold the image of a flame in darkness in your mind. Feed everything on your mind into that flame. Annoyed that someone was a jackass and cut you off driving? Feed that feeling into your flame. Continue feeding things to your flame until only the flame remains. Now you are ready to consume the contents of your book.

The Routine in a Nutshell

From now on, your reading routine will be the following:

1. Clear your mind
2. Define your purpose
3. Set a timer
4. Preview
5. Move forward
6. Fly higher
7. Accelerate to visual speed
8. Stay attentive
9. Schedule breaks
10. Review it or lose it

I will be clearly defining each of these steps in consecutive posts. After we have discussed our reading routine, we will go over reading workouts.

The Speed Reader's Hideout

You have been searching the web for free resources to learn how to read faster. Search no further.

This blog will aggregate the information available on speed reading and condense it into an easily digestible form.

In addition to my own articles on speed reading, you will be provided with links to free speed reading exercises and lessons.

Before you go any further, take a free reading speed and comprehension test here. Repeat the test at least 3 times and write down your average speed and comprehension. Now, calculate your effective reading rate by multiplying your speed, say 150 words per minute, by your comprehension , say 80% (0.8). The effective reading rate of this example would be 150 x 0.8 or 120 words per minute. Keep track of your effective reading rate and regularly update it by retesting. By doing so, you will be able to clearly see your progression.