Training takes time and requires a lot of patience, especially if you want to read 10,000 words per minute. If somebody tells you that this can be done in a brief, do not trust that person. It takes years. I wrote a large book about it, The Four Phases of Speedreading. Here I will not capture the book, but instead generalize the approach so that it can be applied to anything you want to learn.
Stage 1: Novice
The most important part of novice training is establishing an effective training routine. This is relatively easy for a novice, as achievements are frequent. The learning curve is built so that in the beginning we usually celebrate a lot of improvement, but with time improvement gets harder. So what do you need as a novice?
- Practice at least 90 min at least 3 times per week. For accelerated learning, the practice includes reading with specific guidelines.
- Try computer tools, but do not get too dependent on them. It is not clear if computer aids help or introduce bad habits. For example, using Spreader with speedreading can generate several bad practices that hinder the process with regular reading. E.g. people get so used to the software that do not read well without it.
- Acquire the fundamental skillset. Visualization is a basic skill for accelerated learning. It is critical for memory skills, motivation training etc. Memorizations should not be abstract and should have personal meaning, yet they should be highly simplified for speed and convenience. Train your mind to generate the right images and then go with the first image that surfaces.
- Understand the basic disciplines. You can train memory with peg method, train reading with metaguiding, train speedwriting with a reading diary. None of these methods is effective, but they show you the areas that can be improved by further practice.
- Get the desired result and move on. Improving reading speed to 600wpm is relatively easy within a couple of months. If you do not do anything stupid, you should be able to do it even without subvocalization suppression.
Clearly, in the book dedicated to speedreading I provide more methods, and each method is better described. Yet the concept is always the same, no matter what we train.
Stage 2: Intermediate
It takes longer to acquire new skills as an intermediate than it takes for a novice, possibly x3 longer. And the achievements are not very glorious. Yet an intermediate practitioner gets to complete the most important part of the training: perform each aspect of the activity correctly.
- Progress to the proper techniques in each skillset. If we are talking about memory, this probably means a combo of PAO, and mindmaps. and mental palaces. For speedreading this means visual angle work, subvocalization suppression, and some work with eidetic memory. In speedwriting this means utilization of keywords and logical markers. Simply learning to apply the proper techniques is very hard.
- Delay satisfaction. Cutting corners is something very compelling at an intermediate level. People work harder and do not see any reward, simply moving from easily applicable methods to harder methods that promise improvement way down the road. For example, if you try to speed up your reading before you speed up your memorization you will read a lot but remember nothing. Patience is hard, but it usually pays off…
- Technical training. Intermediate practitioners practice a lot doing very technical things. This is boring. Visual angle exercises are very boring and hard on one’s eyes. Subvocalization suppression is confusing and it takes time till the reading gets to the level it was before the suppression.
- You should better get a coach. The most frustrating thing as an intermediate is acquiring bad habits. You should probably get a coach to avoid bad habits to begin with. I typically recommend 1:1 with Anna as the most effective coaching format, but 1:1 with Leeron will also work. This is the stage where coaching is critical. If you need to prioritize, put everything here.
- You need to apply the skills correctly before you see improvement. Once you acquire the right skills you move on to advanced training.
Stage 3: Advanced
Advanced training optimizes return on investment. There is a lot of practice, and it is clear to see the result of the practice. The aggregate investment shows, and practitioners feel a sort of superpower. In our course, we prefer that students do advanced training on their own without further guidance.
- Practice proficiency. Once your technique is correct, you still need a lot of practice to really benefit from the new technique. The more complex skillsets require more practice: in each specific skill, and in a way the skills are combined. With the right technique, numerical indicators of progress finally start to work, and the progress becomes predictable.
- When proficient everything is easy. Innovation is always hard, but rarely need to learn something entirely new. Usually, we have a limited set of skills and hobbies, and with time our activities get repetitive. You know that you practice enough when the skill becomes your second nature and you can perform it effortlessly. If you have to invest effort in what you do, either you do something new or you do something wrong.
- Be strategic. Typically there is more than one way to do something correctly, yet for each situation, some approaches are better than others. Train multiple techniques and select the best technique in each case. Should I use Memory Palace, or a mindmap, or maybe a hybrid? Is skimming or scanning better for reading this particular text? Should I rely on spaced repetition or create my own content based on the processing of what I read? Some solutions simply work better in specific scenarios.
- Acquire some strange techniques. Advanced students are different, and often acquire strange skills to gain differentiation. How about acquired synaesthesia or lucid dreaming skillset? These techniques are optional, but they can help and really differentiate.
An advanced student should probably read at least 1200 wpm with 80% retention, but this can also be 3000 wpm at 40% retention.
Stage 4: Mastery
Usually, masters perform better. I can read 10,000 wpm and create memory structures with 2,000,000 details. I almost never do either. I do however analyze ~1000 articles if not every weekend, then at least once a month. I am honestly more interested in creating my own content than reading the content of others or practicing the methods. And here is another issue specific to mastery:
Masters transcend their media. We do not learn accelerated learning to read faster. We want to read faster so that we can acquire new skills or collect some pieces of knowledge, or do something as useless as learn a foreign language.
Guy, the first 3 languages are kind of a big deal. After the 6th it feels like a waste of time. I have known a handful of people who knew 12 languages well enough to read classical literature in those languages – and they were almost embarrassed of spending their life to acquire this particular skillset.
Create new experiences. This is another way of transcending media. For example use learning skills to improve storytelling, or mentor a new generation of practitioners, or simply create a more zen-like form of practice.
Deal with the filter bubble. In accelerated learning, there are additional very specific challenges. One of the challenges is getting sufficiently balanced quality information. This is not easy, as even some of the most respected experts have a strong incentive to cheat and publish bad data – as long as it gets a cool title.
Be motivated and avoid depression. Masters need to be focused, creative, and innovative. It is hard. Learning bad things is also hard. Life is balanced, with bad things as common as good things. If the focus is wrong, learning can become very depressing. Burnout is also a real threat. Avoiding these pitfalls is one of the challenges of mastery. Depressed and disillusioned masters are common in every discipline.
Summary
As I promised: I did not disclose anything from the book, and I think the ideas can apply to everything you learn. If you are interested in speedreading, please purchase the book. It is as very cheap, especially the Kindle version.
