"Read at least one work of non-fiction week for life." Alex Lightman
On Wednesday, April 4, 2012, Alex Lightman, FI mentor and rabid speed reader, graciously met with a group of Founders from FI's Spring session at True Food in Los Angeles to share tips on speed reading. Here are the notes from the session.
The purpose of speed reading is for thought leadership and confidence.
Traditional Speed Reading Methods (Evelyn Wood, anyone?)
<Saba> http://english.glendale.cc.ca.us/methods.html
* Move the pen or knife from sentence to sentence looking at major thoughts and concepts (look for nouns, verbs). Pull finger constant rate down (not left to right)
* Or, read a line at a time, a page at a time, or read a page diagonally.
* Read the whole table of contents first. Then read the entire index. This gives you a sense of which topics are of interest to you. Read those topics first.
Lightman's Enlightened Tips:
* Recommended for Non-fiction -- Business, Science, Technology
* Always carry a book with you. You never know when you will be able to sneak some time to read it.
* Put yourself in a positive frame of mind. A lot of speed reading is proactive.
* Read at least one work of non-fiction a week for the rest of your life.
* Schedule your practice. Use a timer. Time how long it takes you to get through a section of a book. Then calculate how many pages per minute. Continue reading and keep track of the rate of time it takes you to read. You will be able to follow your progress.
* Tell yourself you can read faster.
* Central governor hypothesis, you are limited to only what your brain says you can do.
* Deductive vs Inductive vs. Abductive reasoning (we are abductive reasoning)
http://butte.edu/departments/cas/tipsheets/thinking/reasoning.html
* Cooperatition with friends and colleagues to increase reading speed
**Lightman's recommended reading "Business, the Ultimate Reference," by Jonathan Law. 1760 pages. "Not only will this be a wonderful exercise for you to improve your speed reading, it's also an invaluable guide for any entrepreneur." (Session Notes contributor's info: Lightman has also written a few books: "Brave New Unwired World: The Digital Big Bang and the Infinite Internet," 2002, and "Reconciliation: 78 Reasons to End the U.S. Embargo of Cuba," 2010, a 384-page book he wrote in 3 days.)
* Four Stages of Competence (Unconscious Incompetence, Conscious Incompetence, Conscious Competence, and Unconscious Competence)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_competence
**In regard to speed reading and comprehension: "Remember way back when AOL was dialup? Downloading .jpgs and .gifs took forever. First they were blurry, but eventually they got clearer."
*Meditate. Meditation keeps you aware of w hat mental state you're in.
*Get sleep. The body needs sleep to function and the brain needs sleep to thought process. Get the "Lark" device or something similar to track your sleep patterns. Consider an AM/PM cortisol test. Stress is bad for the brain. Increased stress equals increased levels of cortisol. If you've not slept or wait til the last minute to complete FI homework assignments, you will be more stressed. Determine how many hours you need to get a good night's sleep. Also, there should be 12 hours between the last bite of food you eat at night and the first bite in the morning. The room should be dark, quiet and cool for the best sleep.
* Related to stress and work - There are four different types of tasks (Steven Covey): Urgent/Important, Urgent/Not important, Not urgent/Important, and Not urgent/Not important. The sweet spot or the tasks you should be working on are the Not urgent/Important tasks. This is because urgent/important task increase your stress levels (and cortisol levels as said above) and degrades your brain cells and ability to perform. This requires us to be disciplined and practice effective time management through the use of various techniques such as the Pomodoro techniques discussed below.
*Incentivize. Set the goal of writing a book. Achieve thought leadership. To be the expert at something, you need to read a lot about it. You need a purpose to read a lot.
**In regard to this, Lightman reminded us of something he shared in our FI session on Monday night. "Once a week, I put this on my Facebook: 'Ask me any question.' Do the same thing. It will make you read more, and then you will have topical expertise in anything."
*Have someone summarize a book for you.
*Use executive book summaries. Get gold memberships so you can download a certain number of them a day. Get into the habit of speed reading with the executive summary. Then, when you go to speed read the book, you'll do it even faster, as you'll already be familiar with the material. (Lightman did not suggest any particular summary service, but Mitchell Harper, Co-founder of BigCommerce.com recommended this on Quora.com:
"iPhone -> App Store -> GetAbstract for summaries of the best business, self help and leadership books."
*Pick a speed reading program online or get an app for it. Again, Lightman did not recommend specifics, but here are a few I just found online:
EyeQAdvantage.com http://www.eyeqadvantage.com
ReadFaster.com http://www.readfaster.com
7SpeedReading.com http://www.7speedreading.com, a software solution.
*For time management, Lightman believes that multi-tasking is a myth! He suggests using something like the Pomodoro Technique. http://www.pomodorotechnique.com
This is explained as follows from the website:
The basic unit of work in the Pomodoro Technique®
can be split in five simple steps:
1) Choose a task to be accomplished
2) Set the Pomodoro to 25 minutes (the Pomodoro is the timer)
3) Work on the task until the Pomodoro rings, then put a check on your sheet of paper
4) Take a short break (5 minutes is OK)
5) Every 4 Pomodoros take a longer break
*Per Lightman in regard to Pomodoro, make a list of goals. Break it into working packages. Put those into categories: A, B, C, etc. One day focus on your "A's." Another day on the "B's." After each Pomodoro, do some exercise. (Lightman does a set of 100 squats with his eyes closed, breathing through his nose. "Afterward, I am very refreshed.") He also recommends using the "Shake Weight." Make sure you create a 2-hour block where you are telephone call free, email free, social free. No TV. No radio. No iPod. Just do four pomodoros.
* Do not self-vocalize when reading
* If use audio books, consider 3x speed
* Test and compare reading speed ereader vs book
*He also suggested the Lumisoty app.
*Go to a bookstore a few times a week and speed read a few books right there.
*In regard to the workload for FI, he recommended schedule time for home work each week, and schedule it out for the next 4 months. This way, you will have that block scheduled, will do the homework and not be stressed about doing it last minute.
*If you're too tired to read at night, do it in the morning.
*Abandon reading strategies you may have learned as a child. Don't "hear the words in your head." Be visual when you read. Don't say the words.
*More on material retention:
-- Consider mind mapping for note taking. Here's an article on how to do it.http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newISS_01.htm
Here's some software to help you do it (There is a free trial)
http://www.thinkbuzan.com/us/
-- RSV videos. They take a book and speed it up in the video.
-- Teach the book. Speed read it. Explain it to someone. Make a video of you teaching the book.
Thank you so much to Mr. Lightman for sharing his expertise on speed reading.
PS - Alex also noted that one that speed reading can help make someone a better writer and that writing is also an important skill for improving one's confidence, whether writing a book or a business plan, he recommends both!
Session notes contributed by Linda Marshall-Smith with Andrew Tsai, David Schlosberg, Thomas Pham (please add your name if you contribute additional material here. To edit, simply click the "edit" button in the footer. The password is either founders, or founder. When the page opens, click anywhere on the content and it will become editable. Thank you.)
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