PhotoReading Discount (Blog)

[Steve Pavlina]

Use this thread to discuss the following entry from Steve Pavlina's blog:

PhotoReading Discount

[Zukin]

I really liked your reading tips. It's too bad I didn't read this a few years ago, since I ended up learning most of it by trial and error.

One thing that I do when I read is to skip over most of the stories of people changing their lives (in personal development books) or case studies (in business books). I know some people like those types of stories, but I usually think of them as filler and would rather get right to principles that I can experiment with right away and see if they work.

[JeremyW]

Could PhotoReading be applied to learning new languages?

[Hyperchiller]

Thanks for that Steve.
I got a lot out of that one.

I also use the analogy that PRing is like having a broadband connection and slow reading is to 56k modem speed - it connects with your search engine analogy too.

[Steve Pavlina]

Originally Posted by JeremyW

Could PhotoReading be applied to learning new languages?

I've never tried it, but I imagine so. I know people have used it to help learn new programming languages. In one of the PR books there's also a story about a programmer who found more bugs after PhotoReading the computer code he wrote.

When PhotoReading you first get a general overview of a book and then dive into the details. So first you build the context; then you learn the content. I think this model could work well for learning a foreign language -- build a high-level overview of the language constructs and grammar; then begin acquiring the vocabulary and nuances of the language. So instead of learning the language linearly (like I did with 3 years of French in high school, most of which is long forgotten), you would learn it in a more top-down manner.

It seems to me this is how children learn a language through immersion. First, they pick up the gross constructs and a few words. As they age they continue to refine the lower level details and add vocabulary.

One advantage you'd have with learning a language is that it would be relatively easy to define a clear goal, such as being able to watch a movie in that language and understand the plot and dialog.

[Andrew Brunelle]

Funny you should mention that book The Comedy Bible. Now that I am a decent stand-up comedian, I still refer back to that book and look at some of the ideas. Stand-up comedy is a blast to do as long as you go in expecting nothing and to grow from there. Good luck.

When I finally really engrossed myself in comedy, I experienced the same prediction phenomenon that you described. In a way it kind of ruins the surprise, but I believe knowing the surprise in advance is more rewarding. Another example is some of the jokes I've thought of (but not performed) were used on Family Guy, independent of their knowledge of me thinking of it. I suppose I should take that as a green light towards becoming a comedy writer.

It's funny how you're offering this discount again because I was really thinking about buying it and now that you mentioned the Comedy Bible among other things, I really feel like I should give it a shot and splurge on it. We shall see. If I buy the non-deluxe package, I can probably afford it.

Edit: Just bought it. The fact that they offer a money-back guarantee makes it all worthwhile.

[qed]

When I buy a book, I have a rough idea about what it is going to be about. Can I set an intention to simply "absorb the new concepts the book has different than what I already know" or is that too vague?

[Steve Pavlina]

Originally Posted by qed

When I buy a book, I have a rough idea about what it is going to be about. Can I set an intention to simply "absorb the new concepts the book has different than what I already know" or is that too vague?

I've tried that and rarely found it to be effective, both with PhotoReading and regular reading. It's just too vague, and it gives my mind nothing to latch onto. I may understand the concepts to a certain degree as I go through the book, but it's a safe bet I'll forget nearly all the detail within a week or so.

I've learned that when my intention for a book is so vague, even after doing a 5-minute preview of the book, I simply don't need to read it. It's a signal to go read something else.

What works for me is to define how I expect a book to change my behavior or lead to new actions. If a book is likely to have no effect on my behavior, then it's safe to say it will have no long-term effect on my thinking either, which means it's of little value to me.

When I PhotoRead The Comedy Bible, I focused on how it could alter my behavior. It could allow me to incorporate better humor into my speeches, generate more laughter, etc. Two weeks from now I'll be competing in a humorous speech contest using ideas from that book. That's very actionable information, and knowing what I want from the book is what allows me to extract that value quickly.

Even if you're just reading a biography, look for ideas you can apply to your own life. How will reading this biography help you grow? How will it change you? If no answer to these questions is forthcoming, switch to a different book that gives you clear answers. There are so many books that will change you that there's no need to waste time on books that won't.

[Chinese Dragon]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

there's also a story about a programmer who found more bugs after PhotoReading the computer code he wrote.

Thanks for mentioning that, I just photoread the source code for my game engine and improved it. I was surprised because whenever I felt the urge to stop staring at the letters scroll by I looked closer and found that there was a mistake where I wanted to stop. After doing that for each source file I improved the frames per second, fixed up areas of unsatisfactory coding style, and eliminated over 100 lines of unnecessary code from my 3.8k line project. (It's so small because it's in a very succinct language)

[qed]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

I've tried that and rarely found it to be effective, both with PhotoReading and regular reading. It's just too vague, and it gives my mind nothing to latch onto. I may understand the concepts to a certain degree as I go through the book, but it's a safe bet I'll forget nearly all the detail within a week or so.

Well I guess it just depends on the current state of my mind about the given subject. Some things I know exactly what I want. Other things, I don't even know what it is I am missing, let alone formulate a specific question. If I already know a lot about a subject, I can pinpoint what I want to get out of any book. On the other hand, if I am new to a subject, my questions will be rather general. Perhaps this is what you are talking about when you suggest "going from context (the outer limits?) to content (the specific details)".

The other thing I do is grab a whole bunch of books on a topic of interest and read through them to get the main concepts and then read more for specifics. I choose the authors carefully (not just at random). I pick ones with bestsellers, with the most amount of research time in their fields, most recommended etc.. This works well too but takes a while if I know nothing about the particular subject.

I would imagine Photoreading would take a while as well for a subject you know absolutely nothing about. After all, it takes a baby a few years to talk. Photoreading can't be magic.

[smartile]

Steve,

I have to admit that I was a little skeptical about the photo reading discount. I've heard of other similar speed reading programs that guaranteed faster reading and thought, "What is so special about photo reading?" It sounded like a new term to me that was just being thrown around to create a marketing buzz.

I've been patient and have noted that many different other credible sources have been recommending this product from learningstrategies.com. People like Jack Canfield from the Chicken Soup Series and T. Harv Eker, the founder of Peak Potentials.

I'll give it a shot!

Stephen Martile — Personal Development with NLP

[SamBeaven]

That's awesome, Steve. Does this mean the Paraliminals discount might be coming back as well? I unfortunately missed it the first time around.

[Steve Pavlina]

Originally Posted by SamBeaven

That's awesome, Steve. Does this mean the Paraliminals discount might be coming back as well? I unfortunately missed it the first time around.

That's up to Learning Strategies of course, but it's a definite possibility. Nothing is set in stone as of this moment though.

[wolverine]

Steve, you mentioned in the post the problem with finding a reason to read textbooks. I love to understand new things (or old things in new ways, or better ways), but that's also a very vague intention. Clearly, most of what I'm learning about won't be used in my life or career after this -- unless I become a nuclear physics researcher or a practising chemist or anything like that. So I can't see any specific reasons that I want/need to read textbooks such as improving my behaviours or having new knowledge to apply directly to my life. The actual information isn't important, it's the learning itself that's important.

Can you, or anyone else, offer some suggestions? I'm a keen learner, but I just find it hard to learn from reading dry textbooks. I love classroom-tutorial-dicussion-argument based learning, and it's been quite a shock to come to uni and find that part of the learning has basically vanished.

Oh, and I've ordered the Photoreading course. I could just afford the Classic one with the discount. Thanks for bringing the discount back, Steve!

Thanks everyone,


Wolverine.

[Steve Pavlina]

If you just want to learn new ideas, do you also want to retain them? Or is reading merely a throw-away entertainment experience?

How much of the knowledge that you've learned has been retained? Why did you retain some parts and not others? What about the parts you retained was important to you? Why were those parts important?

These questions will help you get more clear about your purpose for reading.

It's perfectly valid to read a book for entertainment or general interest purposes, fully expecting that you won't retain most of it. I tend to find, however, that PhotoReading doesn't work so well in such cases.

YMMV.

[Akashic_Librarian]

What does YMMV mean?

[Calculusaurus]

your mileage may vary

[Sam988]

I hope you guys can get something out of this PR course, because i barely couldn't (only the skimming techniques were found useful by me).

Really, they have some nice skimming techniques, but after a lot of experiment i found the PhotoReading step (at least IMO) to be a big scam.
The worst is that it's impossible to prove otherwise or to prove it to be true, just like religions, if you practice it you believe it, if you don't, you don't believe it, and none of both can prove it to the other that they're right.




Follows a study done by NASA itself to see if the PR course really did yeld benefits to reading, because they wanted to implement it so their engineers, scientists, and the rest of the staff could be more effective.

Not surprisingly (to me), NASA came to the conclusion that the PR technique doesn't work. A person using PR actually takes more time to reading in order to comprehend as much as someone reading normally (we're not talking about skimming techniques here, which are the only useful thing i found in Paul Scheele's PR course).

NASA Technical Reports Server

[Andrew Brunelle]

I just started with Photoreading. I got it a couple of days ago and it seems to be pretty interesting, but I am not sure whether it will actually increase my reading speed, but it will definitely allow me to determine right away whether I want to try and get information out of the book. It is a large time commitment to learn it and I am not even halfway done yet, but so far it looks like an intelligent way to go about seeing which ideas in a book are useful and which are just wasteful. With practice, I'm sure it works well, but it may take some time to get the full extent. The question is, "How patient will I be with it?"

[Hyperchiller]

Originally Posted by Sam988

Follows a study done by NASA itself to see if the PR course really did yeld benefits to reading, because they wanted to implement it so their engineers, scientists, and the rest of the staff could be more effective.

Not surprisingly (to me), NASA came to the conclusion that the PR technique doesn't work. A person using PR actually takes more time to reading in order to comprehend as much as someone reading normally (we're not talking about skimming techniques here, which are the only useful thing i found in Paul Scheele's PR course).

NASA Technical Reports Server

That experiment was a crock. The researcher documenting the experiment was a research trainee and didn't even know how photoreading worked. Do you know what that person was testing for? The person was testing if the people could read at 25,000 pm! What an idiot. The photoreading expert supervising the trainee didn't even supervise certain experiments because they were ridiculous.

I've got this information from AlexK from LSC. She recommends experiment with the photoreading system yourself to see if it works or not.

[Sam988]

Originally Posted by Hyperchiller

That experiment was a crock. The researcher documenting the experiment was a research trainee and didn't even know how photoreading worked. Do you know what that person was testing for? The person was testing if the people could read at 25,000 pm! What an idiot. The photoreading expert supervising the trainee didn't even supervise certain experiments because they were ridiculous.

I've got this information from AlexK from LSC. She recommends experiment with the photoreading system yourself to see if it works or not.

Of course AlexK will try to discredit the research, because it goes directly against his interests, which are the success in selling as many PhotoReading products he can.

But AlexK's answer is flawed. The PhotoReading expert wasn't supervisioning the trainee, the PhotoReading expert was part of the experiment! The reading test was given to the PhotoReading expert and to another person using the normal reading techniques, and the results were that PhotoReading doesn't hold any advantage watsoever in comparison to normal reading. Just read the research report carefully instead of just listening to AlexK's words and you'll see.

NASA Technical Reports Server


Taken from the research report: "Parallel versions of two standardized and three experimenter-created reading comprehension tests were administered to the trainee and an expert user of the PhotoReading technique to compare the use of normal reading strategies and the PhotoReading technique by both readers. The results for all measures yielded no benefits of using the PhotoReading technique."





By the way, i did try PhotoReading by myself. Exhaustively, actually. I even got to the point where i thought i was getting as much information from a book as when i used normal reading, and was really, really excited. But after a while i realized that even though i had the impression that i was getting as much from the book as when i used to normal read, it wasn't true; i was actually getting just the general concepts of it. The deepest yet important informations, i didn't get. So, little by little, i kept getting dilusioned by it, until i dropped it for good.

[The David]

Is the photoreading discount still in effect? I heard it was supposed to expire today.

[The David]

Well, I just bought it.