Reading With the Right Brain: Read Faster by Reading Ideas Instead of Just Words (29 page)

But look!
Here come more crowds,
pacing straight
for the water,
and seemingly bound
for a dive.
Strange!
Nothing will content them
but the extremest limit
of the land;
loitering under the shady
lee of yonder warehouses
will not suffice.
No.
They must get just
as nigh the water
as they possibly can
without falling in.
And there they stand—
miles of them—
leagues.
Inlanders all,
they come from
lanes and alleys,
streets and avenues—
north, east,
south, and west.
Yet here they all unite.
Tell me,
does the magnetic virtue
of the needles
of the compasses
of all those ships
attract them thither?

Once more.
Say you are
in the country;
in some high land
of lakes.
Take almost
any path you please,
and ten to one
it carries you
down in a dale,
and leaves you there
by a pool
in the stream.
There is magic in it.
Let the most
absent-minded
of men be plunged
in his deepest reveries—
stand that man
on his legs,
set his feet a-going,
and he will infallibly
lead you to water,
if water there be
in all that region.
Should you ever
be athirst
in the
great American desert,
try this experiment,
if your caravan happen
to be supplied
with a metaphysical
professor.
Yes,
as everyone knows,
meditation
and water
are wedded forever.

But here is an artist.
He desires to paint you
the dreamiest,
shadiest,
quietest,
most enchanting bit
of romantic landscape
in all the valley
of the Saco.
What is the chief element
he employs?
There stand his trees,
each with a hollow trunk,
as if a hermit
and a crucifix
were within;
and here sleeps
his meadow,
and there sleep
his cattle;
and up
from yonder cottage
goes a sleepy smoke.
Deep
into distant woodlands
winds a mazy way,
reaching to overlapping
spurs of mountains
bathed in their
hill-side blue.
But though
the picture lies
thus tranced,
and though
this pine-tree
shakes down
its sighs like leaves upon
this shepherd’s head,
yet all were vain,
unless the shepherd’s eye
were fixed
upon the magic stream
before him.
Go visit
the Prairies in June,
when for scores on scores
of miles you wade
knee-deep
among Tiger-lilies—
what is the one
charm wanting?
Water—
there is not a drop
of water there!
Were Niagara
but a cataract of sand,
would you travel
your thousand miles
to see it?
Why did the poor poet
of Tennessee,
upon suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate whether to buy him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach? Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea? Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.

Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I begin to grow hazy about the eyes, and begin to be over conscious of my lungs, I do not mean to have it inferred that…

Chapter 17: Techniques

What techniques can keep your mind from slipping into its old reading habits and keep your attention on conceptualizing? Sometimes having the proper perspective of what you are doing will help.

Here is one analogy I find helpful in keeping my mind on the conceptual track. I imagine my reading like slot car racing. Those toy cars have small pins extending from the bottom which fit into a slot in the track. The little pin is what keeps the car on course. However, this pin can slip out of the slot, and if that happens, the car will suddenly go flying off the track. Of course this happens whenever you go too fast around a sharp corner. The trick to slot car racing then is to go as fast as you can while keeping that little pin in the slot.

Reading is like this. Speeding along through simple and familiar reading material is like racing down a straightaway. But coming into more difficult material or complex writing style means you’ve got to slow down, otherwise you’ll find you are reading along, when all of a sudden nothing more is entering your mind. This is because you lost comprehension and slid off the track. This requires you to stop and go back to where you lost comprehension. Plus, each time you restart, you will then need to avoid the temptation to immediately lurch back to full speed; which would only cause you to lose traction, spin your wheels, and get nowhere.

Just like in racing slot cars, pushing your speed in reading can be counterproductive. The only way to read faster is to concentrate on technique by doing the following:

• Maintain concentration (pin firmly in the slot).
  
• Vary your speed depending on reading material (track conditions).
  
• Avoid mind wandering (flying off the track).
  
• Avoid regression (needing to put the car back).
  
• Gain speed gradually while you develop context (get traction).
  

So, are there any techniques to help you get the most speed at all times, in all types of reading? Are there any specific tactics—as opposed to general strategies—some kind of reading tricks that will keep you focused and concentrated on what you are reading?

Yes, there are some techniques which can be of assistance when trying to read and comprehend faster. I mention them here not as stand-alone gimmicks for faster reading, but as things to try in context with reading phrases and concentrating on whole ideas. The most important thing is still to be totally focused on conceptualizing ideas, but these techniques can be helpful in maintaining that focus.

The Only Finger Pacer

Although most of the wacky finger waving methods so popular in many speed reading courses are laughable, it can be helpful to run your finger down the right-hand side of each page or column of text as you read. Doing this appears to be a helpful reminder as to which line your eyes should line up on next, and it also keeps you moving ahead. Try it, and see if it works for you. This does not mean forcing yourself to try to keep up with your hand—the hand
is
quicker than the brain—but use it as a gentle guide and prompt to keep your place and keep you moving forward. I personally find this one of the most helpful tricks for starting off and getting
into
the material.

And although, as I’ll explain in the next chapter, the famous Evelyn Wood never recommended any of the odd-ball finger waving patterns so common in many of today’s speed reading courses, she did apparently advocate this simple finger pacer technique, as evidenced in a rare occurrence she made on the What’s My Line television game show on June 29
th
, 1961. You can see it here in this
short clip
on YouTube:
http://youtu.be/zyyh9o08FW4

Skipping Line Ends

As your eyes approach the end of each line of text, try jumping back to the start of the next line just before your focus actually gets all the way to the last letter of the line. This doesn’t mean not to read the whole line, but to trust your peripheral vision to pick it all up so that you can be processing the very end of the line during the time your eyes are moving down and across to the next line

When reading whole phrases at a time, your focus point is usually aimed somewhere near the middle of each word-group, but there can still be the tendency to continue moving your eyes to the very end of each line even after you have “read” the last phrase. This can be tricky, as you can’t afford to distract yourself by mentally thinking about doing this, but you just have to be willing to let your eyes move back a bit sooner than normal.

Focusing Ahead

Focus your attention slightly ahead of each phrase. As you are processing one phrase, already be moving your focus to the next. Of course you can’t go forward until you understand the previous phrase, but you can start to move your eyes slightly sooner if you think you’ve got it. This will tend to happen automatically when you get in the zone; your reading will begin to flow more smoothly because you will already be anticipating the next phrase.

Slowing at the Start

Start off reading slowly, being sure to imagine what you are reading in order to establish mental traction while you pick up the thread of the subject matter. Do this by spending a few nanoseconds longer on the first phrase of each sentence than those that follow. This may be too small a time period to be even consciously aware of, but you must make sure you conceptually understand what the first phrase means in order to have a better connection to where the sentence is going. This “slowing down” may ironically result in faster reading overall due to the stronger conceptual connection.

Speeding at the End

Likewise, at the end of each sentence, spend a few nanoseconds less reading it than you did the thought-units before it. If you are reading in an anticipatory mode, you will likely already have predicted what the last phrase will be anyway. All you need to do is verify your suspicion and move on. You can spend that extra time picking up the thread of the next sentence. One way to do this is to mentally focus on locating the first words of sentences as you read. This will have the effect of jumping you ahead and putting a few extra nanoseconds onto these initial words.

Most of these speed adjustments are actually too tiny to consciously measure though. What you are really doing is concentrating on imagining the meaning of what you are reading and giving yourself
permission
to slow down or speed up as needed. In the end, you are primarily trying to avoid the staccato, mechanical, fixed rate of reading.

Reading Distance

Hold the reading material at a comfortable distance—close enough to be clear but also far enough to reduce unnecessary eye movement between phrases. You’ll see what distance works best. This seems simple, but you will be surprised how effective proper distance is.

Stop When Necessary

Be careful not to stumble over unknown words, phrases, or ideas because these can derail your attention. Your mind will instantly respond to these mental potholes by blanking out, and nothing else will register in the text that follows.

This is one of the major sources of mental blank-out and one of the main things to look out for. Many times when you find yourself reading empty words, you will discover that if you look back a bit, you will see something in the text which was not clear to you. If you don’t understand something, stop and figure it out before going on.

Relaxing

Relaxing is not actually a “trick” but is still a very important ingredient. Relaxing relates back to not allowing yourself to start pushing your speed. As much as you might want to read fast, this pressure will only serve to sabotage your efforts. It will be like trying to pull your fingers apart in those Chinese finger traps. Relax and let your speed occur as a natural result of clearer understanding for a more comfortable and enjoyable type of fast reading.