Subsections
More free time may be the biggest reward speed reading will bring you. Reading faster means less time spent reading things you don't like. Freeing time to read the books you haven't had time for is probably the second biggest reward of this method. These rewards are fairly obvious, but this final chapter offers other rewards you might have overlooked. Most of the rewards for speed reading are the same things that make reading fun in the first place.
Reading is physically relaxing. Reading mode is much like meditation, which is why many people read themselves to sleep; it is easier to let sleep take over from the middle of reading than it is from worrying about your daughter's college fund. Speed reading enhances relaxation, because concentration enhances relaxation. You have to relax to read well, and reading helps you relax.
Sometimes you want to get away from it all. Reading is a great way to do this. When you are reading you aren't mulling over the day's problems. Putting everything else on a back burner can even help some problems. Reading doesn't fix your problems directly, but it can take the pressure off of you, letting you return later, fresh and better equipped for problem solving. Setting our problems down lets us start with a fresh perspective. Often solutions pop out after taking this kind of break. Much like having a word on the tip of your tongue, sometimes trying to solve a problem or figure out some question only makes things worse. The harder you try, the farther you seem to be from the answer. Sometimes your brain does better at problem solving with the work going on in the back of the mind. The front part of the mind gets to follow a story or learn about something while in the back of the mind the problem is being solved. Reading is a great way to do this.
The other part of escape is that some things are worth escaping from. People in hospitals, people stuck in boring jobs or other unhappy circumstances can read as a way of getting away from it all. A person can also learn how to get out of a bad situation while they are using reading to escape from it on a short term basis, thus killing two birds with one stone. Unlike other types of escape, reading can numb our pain and teach us long term solutions as well.
Reading is a way to go places. Reading takes us to different lands, different times, even different planets. Reading lets you see things you would never otherwise see. This is one of the reasons historical novels and science fiction are so popular. Both genres let people go places and do things they normally couldn't. With books you can go anywhere you like. Most people don't have time or money to travel as much as they might like. Reading can make up for this. From travel diaries to fiction in exotic settings, reading can take you all over the world.
The same way reading can take you places where you might never otherwise go, it can also introduce you to people you wish you could know better. You can read about your favorite sports hero, or movie star, or scientist, or politician. Reading is a great way to ``meet'' people that you can't otherwise get to know. Reading about your favorite celebrity will bring you much closer to them than a quick introduction at a party. A backstage handshake is a thrill, but it doesn't really stand up to knowing the experiences that made your favorite celebrity who and what they are. An autograph in a book doesn't make a celebrity a friend. Reading a celebrity's biography leaves you feeling you know them, lets you understand who they are and how they got there.
Which is more true for you: ``Learning is cool'' or ``Learning was forced down my throat by my teachers''? This is similar to the questions about reading in the first chapter of this book, but there is an important difference. Not every one enjoys reading, but everyone enjoys learning, even if they don't know it.
Humans learn more effectively and efficiently than any computer. Everybody who speaks and walks has learned. Spending time around infants will show you the most effective learning machine ever created. For instance, you may have heard that children learn languages more easily than adults, but there are important differences between the child's situation and that of the adult. Adults learning a second language have a huge head start: years of experience with their first language. When an adult tries to learn a second language they are also trying to keep their job, pay the bills, and do a thousand other things children don't have to do. When a child learns it's first language it doesn't work on much of anything else. If you had the free time an infant has, you could learn each new language faster than a child, because of your prior knowledge. By contrast, a child learns a language from scratch. A child doesn't have words in a first language to relate to words in the new language. Only our first language is learned from scratch, from a million little clues, without any systematic methods.
Not only are children incredible learning machines, they enjoy learning. Learning gets them more of what they want, true, but they enjoy the process of learning just as much as they do the results. Only when babies turn into toddlers and preschoolers do they learn terrible things such as, ``School is hard,'' ``Reading is boring,'' ``Learning is a drag.'' These messages come from their parents, relatives, TV, and friends. Enough of these anti-learning messages can brainwash anyone into not enjoying learning. Attitudes about learning and reading don't just spring up out of nowhere. They are taught by methods much more effective than those used by many teachers. Children hear a million jokes and stories about how bad school is. They hear grown-ups talk about how glad they are to be out of school. They hear older friends talk about getting in trouble at school. What attitudes would you expect a person to have about school and learning in a situation like this? The number and emotional impact of messages supporting school and learning can't compete with the number and emotional impact of the constant messages against school and learning.
Our attitudes don't always match our experiences. The story of ``The New Coke'' is famous example where attitudes proved more powerful than experience. The Coca-Cola company held blind taste tests that showed people preferred a new formula to Coke's original formula. These tests were based on sensory experience: when asked which of two samples tasted better, the majority of people chose the new formula. Despite these test results, when the new Coke ws intrduced in 1985 it bombed. Coke buyers had attitudes about the advertising and the change in the formula. Those attitudes were more powerful than the taste of the beverage. The same thing happens to many people with their attitudes about learning: attitudes are subtly ingrained by others and gain power over the actual experience of learning.
If you let yourself, you will remember things you enjoyed learning and the times you learned them. Maybe you memorized batting averages of your favorite baseball teams, or rushing statistics for your favorite football teams. Maybe you knew the names of all the members of your favorite band and all the words to all their songs. It doesn't matter what you learned, as long as you can recall some time when you enjoyed the act of learning. One of the greatest things about reading is learning more about things that interest you. In school and at work you learn what other people tell you to learn. When you read on your own, you learn about things that interest you. This can make reading loads of fun! Of course speed reading makes it that much more fun, by giving you more learning with less time and effort.
Reading gives us something to talk about, as do movies and sports and television. Reading gives people something to share when they come together. Even people who disagree can have a great time discussing their differing opinions about a book, just as they would about a movie or TV show or sports event.
If you ever enjoy movies or television shows, then you already enjoy reading--but it was someone else's reading. Movies and television shows are, in essence, book reports of other people's reading. When you wrote book reports in school you had to figure out what the teacher wanted to hear. Film and television directors and producers have to figure out what audiences will pay to see. Stories can be interpreted in different ways. A marvelous example can be found in different productions of Shakespeare's ``Romeo and Juliet.'' There are three well-known movie versions: one directed by Zeferelli from the mid-sixties, Baz Luhrmann's version from the mid-nineties, and Stephen Sondheim's ``West Side Story.'' All three of these films were commercial successes. Each film started with the same basic material, a play written four hundred years earlier. Despite sharing the same source these three movies look completely different and draw completely different audiences. In truth, no two people get exactly the same things out of any book, which makes reading a tremendous source of conversation.
In 1938 Orson Welles' Mercury Theater performed a Halloween radio broadcast of H.G. Wells' ``War of the Worlds.'' The radio broadcast was presented as a newscast, and thousands of people who tuned in thought they were hearing real news of a real invasion from mars. Reports of panicked citizens came from all over the country. What would happen if Welles tried his broadcast on television today? Few people would mistake the show for real news. Television viewers recognize actors' faces and can see through special effects. Why?
Radio doesn't provide pictures. Instead, radio guides the listener to a certain point then lets the listener decide what it all looks like. The radio listener makes their own movie to accompany the soundtrack from the radio. Since each listener makes up their own pictures, those pictures will always be an exact fit with each individual's expectations.
Similarly, writers use words to guide readers and readers fill in the gaps, so there is less chance for conflict with the reader's expectations. Some people think that a movie can't live up to the book that inspired it because too much will be omitted, but what gets added is just as important as what gets cut. Mood music, set decorations, costumes, extras, all get added to a movie and can detract from the overall effect of a story. These additions compete with the sights and sounds and feelings that came from reading the book first. As an example, 1978 saw the release of Ralph Bakshi's film version of ``The Lord of the Rings.'' Some thought Bakshi was the only animator good enough for the job. Despite this, many people were sorely disappointed with the film, because it looked wrong and sounded wrong based on readers' expectations. Bakshi added things that didn't work for many people.
So far, the rewards we've talked about are common to all types of reading. These last two rewards are unique to speed reading.
Speed reading is like the creative process in reverse. In writing or composing or painting there is an initial flash of an idea in the mind of the artist. Thoughts follow from this flash, often in wild order and with a sense of urgency. The artist must tame these flashes, must whip them into a shape that the audience can handle. If the artist does their job right, crafting words or sounds or images, the audience will get a sense of the flash that started it all. Speed reading brings people closer to this creative flash. Writing can be as slow as you can imagine. Days can go by with nothing worthwhile being produced. Reading is much faster than writing! Writing takes longer because the writer has to search for the words that will give the reader a sense of the creative flash. Speed readers don't read words; they read thoughts and ideas. That's because speed reading pays attention to concepts and larger patterns. Remember, that's what paragraphs and sentences are supposed to be, thoughts and ideas that stand apart. Sometimes the goal of reading is to answer questions for the boss or teacher. Other times the goal is to feel more deeply, to have your thoughts go farther into topics than they normally would, to get closer to that creative flash.
Here you are at the end of the book. Congratulations!! Either you have finished the main part of the book, or you are looking ahead, reading parts out of order. In the first case the congratulations are for sticking with it and achieving a goal. It is up to you to practice what you have learned, to make it tangible and real in your life. In the second case the congratulations are for being daring and recognizing that the book is here to serve you and that there's no reason not to skip around if you feel like it. I hope you enjoy the rest of the book!
Either way, keep in mind that speed reading is a skill. Like any skill, you have to practice to learn speed reading. Speed reading must be practiced to be maintained. Like any other skill, speed reading can pay great dividends for the time you invest in it, but only if you make the investment. Like any other skill, speed reading must fit your self image and self concept. If you find you aren't using the method as well as you think you could, go back to Chapter 5, The Obstacles. Review that chapter and discover what stands in your way.
Finally, you can always benefit from repeating the drills. Do the drills as often as you feel they help. Do them to keep your skills sharp, or to push beyond the limits of the progress you have already made. The true limits are really up to you.
Beau Hayes
2004-08-03
