Train Your Brain For Success
Page 7
Got your favorite finger pull technique? Great, now compare it to what we call the pace card. The pace card technique is far and away the most popular technique in our live workshops. To use it, all you need is a 3 by 5 index card, or even a blank piece of paper folded in half. Even a business card could work, though it might be a little small. The only rule on what to use as a pace card is that you need to be able to hold it easily with one hand.
Where you put your pace card in relation to what you're reading is the entire key. Take your pace card and place it above the line you're reading. That's right, I said above the line. “But wait a minute!” you say, “I can't see what I just read!” Exactly. The main reason this technique immediately boosts speed and focus in over 90 percent of our students is that it eliminates the possibility of regression, and your brain knows it. You've cut off your escape route, so your subconscious knows that it needs to pay attention, because it only has one chance. So as you're reading, just start moving the card down the page at a nice, comfortable, steady rate that keeps your eyes moving forward. Ideally the card doesn't stop, and it definitely doesn't go back up. Try the pace card technique on any page of this book for a minute or two and see how you like it.
Which one do you prefer? Finger or card? You're not locked in forever, but decide which one to try out, because you're going to do another quick test. Same as before: Time yourself reading the following article, this time using the hand/card technique you've chosen.
Ready, set, go!
Find Your Smile
I was listening to a guy named Andy Andrews speak, and he said something that hit me right between the eyes. Mr. Andrews said that if he only got one minute on stage and one thing to say that would change someone's life, it would be easy. He said his advice would be to:
Smile while you talk.
That's it—crazy, huh? So simple, but so true. In coaching our clients on communications, I see so many places where someone is succeeding, and you can hear them smiling while they're talking. In person or on the phone, you really can hear it! On the other hand, I've listened to people struggling, and you can usually hear them frowning while talking. Smile while you talk—if there's a magical sales bullet, that's it.
So I always get asked “How do you do this?” Fair question. My initial answer was “use a mirror,” which is a good physical step, especially on the phone. My friend Eric Plantenberg's answer was deeper: He said “live a life of gratitude.” A forced smile is sometimes better than no smile, but clearly the all-time winner is a sincere smile that comes from within. Brian Tracy says that “the most powerful thing a salesperson can do is to walk into a meeting with a smile just leaving their lips.”
Sometimes finding that true smile is harder to do than others—okay. My core value of joy is exemplified by the ability to find our smile even when the poop hits the fan. Two methods that seem to work every time are:
Honest communication with a coach. Really letting someone know what's going on inside is incredibly liberating. I've had hundreds of these pressure-valve type of talks where both of us felt lighter after the talk, and both of us saw better results immediately. I'm not talking about just bitching to anyone who'll listen (one of the unhealthiest things you can do), but a proper airing of the soul with someone who can help.
The gratitude list—done as a part of everyday living. Practicing gratitude is helpful even done once, but it's amazing when we make it a habit. By really appreciating yourself, your life, and the people you interact with daily, you find your smile so fast and so strong it makes your head spin.
Find your smile and good things will find you.
Time to read: _____ min, _____ sec.
That article was exactly 400 words. Check the chart in Figure 5.1 for the WPM that corresponds with your time.
Figure 5.1
Faster this time? About 90 percent of our clients see at least some improvement even the first time they try a hand or card technique; for many, the improvement is dramatic. We've seen droves of people triple, even quadruple their reading speed with just the white card technique, practiced over a few weeks.
It is possible that your speed stayed the same, or possibly even decreased. That would be due to the fact that it was your first time doing this. Due to that newness, sometimes the mind focuses on “Am I doing this right?” versus just doing it. If that was you, try it again and relax—you don't need to be perfect. Keep experimenting until you find what works for you.
Whether you improved a little, a lot, or not at all, it bears repeating that this was only your first time. A little practice with any of these techniques can do wonders, especially when you combine them with the strategies for comprehension and retention found in Chapter 6.
Keep using the Discipline Your Eyes exercise regularly, and practice your hand or card technique with everything you read for the next couple of weeks, and you'll blow your mind at how much faster you'll get. Your comprehension will, in many cases, go up as your speed increases.
Reinforcement and Bonuses: This chapter has been Memory Optimized™ for your benefit. For your brief lesson and some great bonuses, visit www.planetfreedom.com/trainyourbrain with the access code in the About the Author section. Enjoy!
Chapter 6
Your Smart Reading Tools for Enhanced Comprehension and Retention
Just reading faster is not the end all be all. If you don't understand what you're reading, you can whip your eyes along at a million miles an hour and it won't do you much good. In this chapter, you'll learn one concept, three questions, and one awesome technique for prepping your brain to combine speed with comprehension. You'll also learn how to actively process what you read so that you retain it at the highest level possible.
The Balance
First off, let's clear up a myth: reading faster does not hurt your comprehension. Many of our students struggle with the misconception that if they read faster, they won't understand what they're reading. I understand how it feels this way, and there are times when you do want to be methodical in your approach. Remember the concept of gears? In specific instances where you are reading material that is very heavy, perhaps very technical, or about something that you have little background knowledge of, then a slower pace can be very helpful. But the blanket assumption that faster always means less gets in is false. In fact, the opposite is true: Comprehension increases with speed.
That may seem counterintuitive, but it makes sense if you just think about it for a moment. Most of your sixth-grade lack of speed is due to the three habits we discussed in Chapter 4:
Mind Wandering
Regression
Subvocalization
Reducing these three is proven to improve speed, and a lot of that increase comes from the dramatic increase in focus required to counteract those habits. You cannot use eye discipline or any hand or card technique mindlessly; you must be conscious.
Doesn't it stand to reason that the same increased focus that boosted your speed should also help your comprehension? This is borne out in our workshops, where it's very common for our students to see comprehension and speed rise together, up to a point. True, sometimes comprehension dips a little at first. This is because the new technique is a little uncomfortable at first, so sometimes your brain gets a little thrown off.
Notice, however, that I said speed and comprehension rise together up to a point. Wherever you are in your progress, there is that line between reading and just looking. Your job is to find where that line is for you, and keep pushing it up. What we know is true, however, is that the increase in speed always precedes the increase in comprehension. So in improving your overall effectiveness as a reader, you'll be well served to temporarily let go of comprehension. Focus on speed first, let your comprehension catch up, and settle in at a higher level; then repeat that cycle.
To set yourself up for success, here are three smart questions to ask yourself before you read anything.
1. Why am I reading this?
2. What do I need
this information for?
3. How much time do I have?
Asking these three questions before you read anything is powerful. The answers are nothing to get hung up on—it's the questions themselves that will supercharge your overall effectiveness. By asking these questions, you just engage your brain in a way that it's ready to go—it's warmed up! These questions also add focus and context to what you're reading. When you add focus and context to anything, you will definitely perform better. Most importantly, they will prime your reticular activating system (RAS). Remember that part of your brain that makes you see the car you decided to buy? Asking yourself these questions is actually asking your brain, “What am I looking for here?” As we know from the introduction to this book, you will see what you look for, even on a level as micro as reading material.
If the only thing you did differently with reading was to ask these questions before diving into what you read, you would have a major impact on your reading effectiveness. The real beauty is that it takes about 10 seconds to ask the questions—10 seconds really well invested.
Why and How to “Smart Read”
The single biggest thing that will quantum leap your reading speed and comprehension is background knowledge. If you have a lot of background knowledge of what you're reading, your brain will naturally predict what's going to be said next. This allows you to fill in the gaps accurately even when moving at a high rate of speed. Background knowledge also allows you to instinctively know when you can just skim over a section or when you should really dig in, maybe even take some notes. Background knowledge is the nuclear bomb for boosting comprehension and speed together. Nothing is more powerful.
So how do you gain background knowledge about a new piece of reading material if you don't already have it? Learn to Smart Read!
Smart Reading (formerly known as “cheat reading”) is a simple process of deliberately overviewing a piece of reading material before reading it. You can Smart Read any piece of nonfiction—a book like this one, a newspaper, a magazine—anything that is not a story or a work of fiction. Here's why:
Every work of nonfiction is started with a writer's outline. The writer's outline is essentially the skeleton of the work. The writer creates the outline of main ideas first, then fleshes it out to make it interesting. The main ideas of any work of nonfiction are found in the outline. If you could read the writer's outline before you read the whole chapter/article/whatever, you'd develop a ton of background knowledge about that work. You'd literally find the road map, and you'd do it in very short order.
The good news is that you can read the outline first—it's just a little hidden! To overview a chapter or article, try this three-step process:
Step 1. Read the first paragraph. This is where you'll learn the overarching theme or purpose of the piece.
Step 2. Read the last paragraph. This usually ties the piece together or moves you on to what's next.
Step 3. Read the first sentence or two of each paragraph in between. This is where the main idea of that paragraph will be found. If you really want to be sure, you can also read the last sentence of the paragraph as a tie-down.
That's Smart Reading in a nutshell. You'll be blown away by how much you can prime your mind for what you read by doing a Smart Read first. Here are the three best ways to use Smart Reading:
1. As a weeding tool. Often the overview will teach you everything you want or need to know. Maybe you actually know more than the author does, maybe you just don't need the information right now; maybe you don't need it ever. In that case you can just skip the whole thing before you even get started. What a relief!
2. As an overview. Assuming that you do want to continue after your Smart Read overview, you now know all the main ideas you'll be learning. You've jacked up your background knowledge and gotten your brain ready to absorb at a very high level.
3. As a review. Even after you've read something, you may want to go back to it and review or refresh your memory. Maybe you're prepping for a test, maybe you want to fold the material into a presentation, and so on. A quick overview is just the ticket to bring it back to your mind.
So when you add up what you've learned in this section, you've got a very powerful way of both priming your brain to see what you need it to see and then giving it the road map for what you're about to read. When you combine the three Reading Smart questions with a Smart Read overview of your reading material, you'll be amazed at just how quickly you can digest information, with the highest levels of comprehension.
If you haven't done so already, I'd recommend that before each subsequent chapter in Train Your Brain For Success you ask the questions and then Smart Read it before diving in. You'll absorb more and internalize more quickly.
The Key to Retention: Interactive Processing
The final issue we're going to work on in this section is the issue of retention. Have you ever read a book, thought “that was awesome,” and then by a day or two later you couldn't remember what the book actually said? That's very natural, it happens to everyone, especially if you're reading unconsciously. There's a fairly well known chart called the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve. You can find numerous versions of it, but it looks like the graph in Figure 6.1.
Figure 6.1 The Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve
It basically shows how without review, recall of anything fades over time. This is why the spaced repetition concept (one hour, one day, one week) is so important for long-term retention.
As it applies to reading material, retention tends to fade even faster than life events or things learned more interactively. With unconscious reading (passive, word by word, no eye discipline, and no hand/card technique), you'll only retain about 10 percent of what you read after three days. Not the desired result. Fortunately, there are some fairly easy things you can do while reading to boost your retention to over 50 percent, even 75 percent. The key to all of them is that they make reading more interactive and involving. The more centers of your brain you can involve in processing what you read, the more you will retain.
Retention Booster #1—Tuned-Up Reading
Simply doing what you've been learning to do in these last few chapters clearly makes the reading process more active and engaging. Using eye discipline, engaging your hands, using the three questions, and Smart Reading do so much to ramp up your focus that they have a powerful impact on your retention. Simply tuning up your reading in these ways can boost three-day retention to around 50 percent. That's significant.
Retention Booster #2—Effective Highlighting
Effective highlighting while you read is another terrific strategy for retaining more. What's effective highlighting? If you've ever been reading and highlighted a whole page, that isn't it. That's not bad (it does help you pick out where you might want to spend more time the second time reading something), but it doesn't really do much for retention. Effective highlighting looks like what you see in this paragraph. You may be noticing that if you read a paragraph that looks like this, the writer's outline discussed earlier pops right out. Effective highlighting is selective, it requires conscious thought, and most of it will be in the beginning and end of a paragraph. This is another strategy that can boost your three-day retention to around 50 percent.
Retention Booster #3—Margin Notes
Margin notes is a simple concept that you may already employ. This is when you read with a pen in your hand and make notes to yourself in the margin of the reading material itself. This is the next level of engagement, as it requires you to think, make connections, and process through your brain and then out your hand. Making margin notes is yet another technique that can take your retention to over 50 percent.
Retention Blaster—Full Notes
If you want heavy-duty, armor-clad, lockdown hardcore retention, you want to go with full notes. “Full notes” is where you literally read with notetaking materials next to your reading material. As you read, you take short breaks to paraphrase what you're reading. You let the reading
into your mind, process it, then explain it to yourself on paper in your own words. You can write down key words, mental connections to other works, bullet points, whole sentences—whatever works for you. The key to full notes is that you are totally making the material your own, with your mind, your eyes, your hands, and a pen. For a highly structured way of doing this, you can get or create a Cornell Notes notebook, with specially ruled pages and instructions in that method (worth checking out). Even with just regular notebooks, however, taking full notes skyrockets retention to around 75 percent.
Way to go! You've got some great tools and strategies for not only reading faster, but with better comprehension, focus, and retention of what you read. You're well-armed for the next leg of the Train Your Brain journey: creating your record-breaking performance!
Reinforcement and Bonuses: This chapter has been Memory Optimized™ for your benefit. For your brief lesson and some great bonuses, visit www.planetfreedom.com/trainyourbrain with the access code in the About the Author section. Enjoy!