It's been a week since I started a course on improving memory and speed reading. The course I selected for this purpose is Become a Superlearner: Learn Speed Reading & Advanced Memory.
The research and methodology is lead by Dr. Lev Goldentouch and Prof. Anna Goldentouch, the course is taught by Jonathan Levi. From the start you can tell that Jonathan Levi is influenced by Tim Ferriss, which works for me since I am familiar with his work. For anyone who isn't, Tim Ferriss came into the public eye with his book, The Four Hour Work Week, which goes over the idea of lifestyle design with a heavy emphasis on automation and life hacking via the pareto principle (80/20 rule).
The research and methodology is lead by Dr. Lev Goldentouch and Prof. Anna Goldentouch, the course is taught by Jonathan Levi. From the start you can tell that Jonathan Levi is influenced by Tim Ferriss, which works for me since I am familiar with his work. For anyone who isn't, Tim Ferriss came into the public eye with his book, The Four Hour Work Week, which goes over the idea of lifestyle design with a heavy emphasis on automation and life hacking via the pareto principle (80/20 rule).
I've only gone through half the course, but I am taking a break from the videos. This isn't because of a lack of interest, but each of the concepts takes a lot of practice and can't be rushed. I haven't had time to practice, so I don't want to skip too far ahead in the videos without building the right foundation first.
The first half of the course focuses on improving memory. It doesn't matter how fast you can read if you can't remember it.
The Superlearner course starts with a baseline test for reading speed and retention. My baseline was 287 wpm with only a 64% retention rate, yikes! After a week watching the videos, my reading speed has gone up to 390 wpm with 100% retention! Since everything from the last week has focused on memory, I was surprised to see even my reading speed increased.
Even though my retention has gone up, I know I'm not using 100% the strategies the course goes over. Old habits are hard to break. After each video I try out the methods taught, but after some time my head starts to hurt since some of the ideas are counter-intuitive to how I was taught to read. It just goes to show that reteaching our minds is like working out muscles in the body. It's not easy at first, but as you practice, momentum starts to build.
The course focuses on using images as a way of taking information from the working memory and storing it into our long term memory. One of the first things the course goes over is making memorable images that are related in order to remember information in a text. As you are reading, you create memory markers that connect and store information from the text. This doesn't come naturally for me.
This is the stripped down version of what the first half of the course goes over. There is more information that I'm not including, so if you are interested in speed reading, I recommend the course. So far I am enjoying it and I find the information to be useful.
I'll end this entry with a video about the US memory champion, Nelson Dellis as motivation:
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