Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0299: Reprise: What about speed reading?

Episode Date: April 30, 2015

Today Timothy revisits the question about speed reading, with some extra comments on how he would change his answer today. What do you want to learn? Leave your question at http://MasterOfMemory.com/. Music credit: Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet, 2nd movement, performed by the US Army Band.

Today we're doing a reprise episode. When we release this episode, it's going to be during my sabbatical for some extended overseas travel. So basically we're re-presenting an old Master of Memory episode that I think is worth a refresher, but also with some new commentary from me based on my more experienced perspective. Today we're re-releasing episode 24 about speed reading. I think that this episode was a good breakdown of speed reading into the two areas of focus and motor skill. So if you're focused and if you're using the motor skill of moving your eyes forward, then that's really what speed reading is. But some things that I would change about this episode are, first, I would perhaps add even more emphasis to the importance of focus. So focus is really definitely my shortcoming as far as reading goes, because even if I move

through the text really quickly, it's just really hard for me to be able to focus. So I'm still not as fast a reader as I would like to be. And then another thing I might change is the exercise that I described in episode 253 about practicing your focus by actually looking for specific information as you're reading. So maybe looking for very specific words like plural nouns or particular facts, even while you're practicing the motor skill of having your eyes move forward at a constant rate. But here's how the episode was originally delivered last April. Welcome to Master of Memory. I'm Timothy, and I'm here to answer your accelerated learning questions every day and to inspire and empower you to learn anything you want to learn faster than ever.

Vigaro asked on Facebook, Is there a connection between memory techniques and speed reading, or is it all in the eyes? Well, Vigaro, I think that the biggest connection between memorization and speed reading is that the same people like to cover both of them. People who are interested in accelerated learning like mnemonic techniques, and they also like reading fast because they can absorb more information really quickly. Now, in a nutshell, what speed reading is, is basically what you're saying. It's largely in the eyes. There are really two aspects to reading quickly. One of them is focus, and the other is just the motor skill of being able to look at one word at a time or a group of words in sequence without going back and, you know, retracing what you've looked at on the page already. So as far as all in the eyes goes,

speed reading is a matter of just focusing linearly and absorbing the words one at a time or in groups in a specific order so that you're not wasting any time. And then focus comes in where you have to be absorbing those words because you're looking at the information really quickly. The motor skill gives you the information, but focus is what's going to let you absorb that information and actually keep it and stay with it. Speed reading isn't something I talk about a whole lot because I think that it is largely a motor skill, and then there are also tools out there that are being developed to help us speed read faster. So, for example, there's something out there called Spritz that is,

I think, still under development, but it looks really cool. You can go out there and search for S-P-R-I-T-Z, and you can see how that works. But there's another free tool called Spreeder, S-P-R-E-E-D-E-R, and you can use that to copy and paste a block of text in there, and the words will flash in front of your eyes at a speed that you determine with the font size you determine and everything like that. It's pretty cool. And you can actually read really quickly because what it does is it does the motor skill for you. It flashes the words at you in groups or one at a time

so that you can't glance around the page because you can only see what you're reading. So the information is coming at you in the right order, you know, in sequence and a little bit at a time. So all that you have to bring to the table there is your focus. There's an exercise that I actually go through fairly frequently. I just, once in a while, I try to do it once a week. I'll, you know, practice using Spreeder to help me practice focusing on what I'm reading. I did that today, in fact. But how do you apply memorization techniques to speed reading? Well, if the two aspects of speed reading, as I said, are just the motor skill of absorbing the information in a linear fashion, and then focus and engaged concentration, I think the biggest thing that we can really help with memorization techniques

is number two. Your focus in reading and your engagement in the text is going to be a lot better if you are able to relate to what's being said better. So, for example, I'm reading a Russian book right now. I'm reading Dostoevsky. I mean, I'm reading it in English. But, you know, the fact is, in these Russian books, often characters' names will change a whole lot because the same character will have a whole bunch of different names. So, in The Brothers Karamazov, Dmitry goes by Mitya, Mitka, Mitenka, and Mitry Fyodorovich.

And then Ivan goes by Vanya, Vanka, and Vanechka. And then Alexei goes by Alyosha, Alyoshka, Alyoshenka, Alyosheika, Aleksejcik, Lyosha, and Lyoshenka. How in the world do you keep track of all those? Because any of those could come up in the text and you're supposed to know which character is being referred to. Well, actually, it was fairly intuitive for me. In the first place, there's this handy table of names in the front of the book, which I was just reading off of. So it does give you the variations on these names. But one of the first things I noticed is in Dimitri's name, all of the stressed syllables are the same. Sure, you have everything from Dimitri to Mitinka, but in each case, the stressed syllable has the word meet in it, M-I-T.

So it's easy for me to remember if I relate his name somehow to meet or the character to meet, which isn't really hard to do when you think about this character in this book. It becomes easy to remember that all these names just refer to the same character, whose name is Dimitri. And then with Alex Yeh, all you have to do is remember the two stressed syllables, Yeh and Yosh, and then all of the other names are derived from that. And actually, I'm probably butchering the pronunciation in general, but I do know that these are the stressed syllables because I looked them up. So that's what's really important for that. So being able to keep track of names and places and concepts, the key things on getting through the text in a linear fashion

and, you know, speeding up the rate at which you absorb the information because, again, you have the information, you have the key facts. And that's one of the things that I really like about studying and reading is just going ahead and front-loading the work by memorizing names and facts ahead of time and then reading and not, you know not worrying too much, just absorbing the information, not thinking about facts and places and names and stuff, because I already have them in my head. Now, another subject that might interest some of you is the idea of memorizing as you go.

So remembering the whole story of a book as you go along. And there are some pretty good ways to do that. You can use a memory palace with a different room for each chapter, for example, and then you just have to read the book one time, and you'll remember the general layout and most of the concepts afterwards. I'm not really going to go into detail. I think that's outside of the scope of this particular episode, but if anybody wants to

know about that, you know, feel free to ask that question and I'll go more into that. All right, I hope you've enjoyed this reprise episode. For anyone who has any questions about learning or memorizing anything faster than ever, feel free still to leave a message at masterofmemory.com slash question, and I'll be able to respond quickly to your message from wherever I am. I just won't be able to record an episode on that topic until I'm back in the Thank you. you can do that at timothymoser.com.