my reading effectiveness was total recall and critical analysis of meaning.

I did not question my definition of reading. I felt stuck at slow speeds. I knew that the faster I read, the worse my comprehension became. After seven years of professional life as a human resource development consultant, I had made no improvement in my reading skills.

 In 1984, the logical solution meant enrolling in a speed reading course. After five weeks of training, my speed reading scores averaged 5,000 words per minute at 70 percent comprehension.

During one of the class sessions, a young woman sitting next to me lamented being stuck at 1,300 words per minute through ten weeks of classes. I suggested to her, "Imagine what it would be like if you could break through to higher speeds now." On her next book, her speed reading reached over 6,000 words per minute with higher comprehension test scores than ever before.

As great as that sounds, speed reading did not appeal to me. Pushing my eyeballs down the page soon became unrewarding drudgery. Three months after leaving the course, I rarely used the techniques but remained intrigued about the mind’s potential for processing written words.

I began realizing my problem—I felt trapped between two opposing belief systems. One belief came from the elementary education model of reading. An opposing belief came from knowing that the human mind can achieve far more magnificent results. The same trapped and confusing feeling grabbed me once during private pilot’s training.

I remember when my instructor took me up to eight thousand feet and told me to fly at a minimum airspeed just as I would when landing. To do so, I slowed down the engine and pulled back on the control yoke to maintain my altitude.

Soon, the nose of my plane pointed almost straight up. The wind flowing over my wings no longer created enough lift to hold up the airplane. It could not fly so it dropped out of the sky like a rock, diving straight down toward the ground.

Terrified, I immediately began pulling back on the control yoke, trying desperately to get the nose up and fly the plane.

Next Page

Home | PhotoReading website | PhotoReading Discussion Forum
Order PhotoReading book | PhotoReading Self-Study Course
PhotoReading Seminars