Generating markers slowly is not good enough for speedreading. Generating markers fast requires certain level of skill. Our beginner-level student do not know how to overcome the controlled visualization speed limitations. When the students are ready, we teach them to reduce the level of control and enjoy free associations. Below are some discussions from our udemy course.
Question:
How do you make markers on the fly while speed reading? I’m just wondering, cause it takes a lot of time to make the markers but speed reading goes so fast… Do you just need enough to-go markers that you can actually assign them at this speed?
It is like free associations. Once your mind is sufficiently trained, the first association you get is your marker. Free associations are extremely fast, but you need some practice to make good associations.
Everything is slow at first, but if it does not improve with training, you need to change something. After some training mental markers should appear very fast [~100msec per marker]. It is like looking at clouds and saying “this cloud looks like a dog” or looking at a person and think “with this prolonged face and low personal hygiene he looks like a rat”. There are people who cannot generate visual association and need to use different methods. Usually this is quite rare, less than 1% of the students. If this is your case, you will need to schedule a Skype meeting with Anna to hand-pick the methodology [email to [email protected]].
You kind of need to generate markers as fast as you get free associations. We do not measure the speed or the time it takes you to get there as long as you can generate markers FAST. In our private one-on-one course we often ask students to remember 20 objects within 60 seconds, which includes analyzing 20 objects, building 20 mental markers and building 20 links between markers and running the full end-to-end loop at least once or twice – all of that within 60 seconds.
Dr Lev, I have a couple questions.
I am into my second/third week of becoming a super learner. Ive recently learnt about markers. The schedule suggests to stop where I am and practice making markers. My question is over the next few weeks when i read a text or book do I make a marker for EVERY single word I come across ? So sacrificing some speed atm, for gains latter on?
I guess the answer is yes, and that by doing this I build up a marker library. Then after a couple weeks this library is very large and I won’t have to mentally spend time making markers, so that my reading speed will increase? Then to make it even faster I only use one to two makers per sentence?
If you could provide some clarity that would be great!
Thanks
When we read, we can use our spontaneous visual associations to remember things.
If we do not get a spontaneous association we use some sort of visual dictionary we build to memorize stuff.
The quality of the visual associations you get can be improved by deliberately making complex and memorable visualizations.
Then, with time, the spontaneous associations become clearer and more memorable.
Thank you, this is an excellent clarification. It would be great if this was mentioned in the course.