Reading With the Right Brain: Read Faster by Reading Ideas Instead of Just Words (6 page)

“Ah,
you do not
know
what I suffer.”

“But
I hope
you will
get over it,
and live
to see
many young men
of four thousand
a year,
come into
the neighborhood.”

“It will be
no use
to us,
if twenty such
should come,
since you will
not visit them.”

“Depend upon it,
my dear,
that when
there are twenty,
I will
visit them all.”

Mr. Bennet was
so odd
a mixture
of quick parts,
sarcastic humor,
reserve,
and caprice,
that
the experience of
three-and-twenty
years
had been
insufficient
to make his
wife understand
his character.
Her mind
was less difficult
to develop.
She was
a woman
of mean
understanding,
little
information,
and uncertain
temper.
When she was
discontented,
she
fancied herself
nervous.
The business
of her life
was to
get her
daughters married;
its solace
was visiting
and news.

Mr. Bennet was among the earliest of those who waited on Mr. Bingley. He had always intended to visit him, though to the last always assuring his wife that he should not go; and till the evening after the visit was paid she had no knowledge of it. It was then disclosed in the following manner. Observing his second daughter employed in trimming a hat, he suddenly addressed her with:

“I hope Mr. Bingley will like it, Lizzy.”

“We are not in a way to know what Mr. Bingley likes,” said her mother resentfully, “since we are not to visit.”

“But you forget, Mamma,” said Elizabeth, “that we shall meet him at the assemblies, and that Mrs. Long promised to introduce him.”

“I do not believe Mrs. Long will do any such thing. She has two nieces of her own. She is a selfish, hypocritical woman, and I have no opinion of her.”

“No more have I,” said Mr. Bennet; “and I am glad to find that you do not depend on her serving you.”

Mrs. Bennet deigned not to make any reply, but, unable to contain herself, began scolding one of her daughters.

“Don’t keep coughing so, Kitty, for Heaven’s sake! Have a little compassion…

Chapter 3: Your New Reading Experience

Words are flowing out like
Endless rain into a paper cup.
They slither wildly as they slip away
across the universe.

-“Across the Universe,” the Beatles

There certainly does seem to be an endless flow of words today. Unlike a short time ago, when our access to words was limited to the space available on our bookshelves or to the amount of time we could spend in our local library, today we have literally an infinite amount of reading material available. It’s easier than ever to access, and it’s there for us twenty-four hours a day. Our biggest challenges now are deciding what to read and how to get through it all.

Today there really is only one limit to the information available, and that limit is us. Our reading speed is the only limit there is to the many things we can know and the many stories we can experience.

A superior reading skill can give us greater access to this expanding cornucopia of information, and access to this information can have a powerful effect on our lives. It can make our lives easier, happier, and even safer and healthier—which might even mean longer! Plus, this greater access to information will also make our lives more interesting, as well as make
us
more interesting.

In addition to acquiring information, improved reading skills can even physically enhance our brains. A study in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that older people who read regularly are two and a half times less likely to have Alzheimer’s disease. Reading skills also strengthen our brains by boosting memory, focus, concentration, and analytical thinking.

But wait, there’s more! Conceptualizing information and really paying attention to its meaning will increase your
awareness
of life. Instead of having a superficial awareness of the things you see, hear, and read—conceptual thinking will make you more aware of the deeper reality of what things actually mean.

Your Reading Upgrade

Conceptualizing ideas instead of listening to sounds is learning to experience reading in a new way. This is a major upgrade to those very old reading lessons from your childhood.

Remember when you first learned to read? You learned all the letters and the sounds the letters made, and then you also learned when the letters made different sounds in different words. It was all pretty confusing at first—a lot for a little kid to take in—but eventually you learned to read.

Some really helpful tools during that learning process were the special reading books, the
Dick and Jane
stories. These books were carefully developed to make learning as easy and interesting as possible. By practicing with these books, something gradually happened—you began to recognize words at a glance without thinking of each letter. At that point, reading became automatic; you could read words without thinking about how you did it.

That’s about as far as your reading education went; you could read
words
. Today you’re no longer reading about Dick and Jane. You’ve got a lot more to read now, and that reading has gotten a lot more sophisticated and complicated. But when was your last reading lesson? Fifth grade? Today, are you reading any better than a fifth grader?

For a lot of people the answer is, sadly, "No." This is not a happy group of people because it’s frustrating to have poor reading skills, and it’s embarrassing, too. It’s frustrating to take forever to read a single book, and it’s embarrassing to be uninformed about so many of the interesting and fast changing events in the world.

The Unread Masses

Unfortunately, poor readers aren’t a lonely bunch; they have a lot more company than good readers have. There are sadly more and more people who, for one reason or another, have either not progressed in their reading skills after childhood, or have even regressed through a lack of practice. Sure they may read their text messages and tweets, and maybe even headlines and picture captions, but a large number of people shy away from anything more demanding than the
TV Guide
, and they restrict the selection of what they read to material with plenty of pictures. At a time when there is more information than ever easily available to us, we are nonetheless turning into a readerless society.

Here are some sad reading statistics. Although the numbers are staggering, they are unfortunately not that shocking.

• 58% of the US adult population never reads another book after high school.
  
• 42% of college students never read another book after college.
  
• 80% of US families did not buy or read a book last year.
  
• 70% of US adults have not been to a bookstore in the last five years.
  
• 57% of new books are not read to completion.
  
• Most readers do not get past page 18 in a book they have purchased.
  

Benefits

I know the lament: "Who’s got time?" Of course we’re all so busy, and reading takes SO MUCH TIME! So it comes down to a cost-benefit analysis: How much time will improved reading skills cost, and how much benefit will be received? The benefit is that you will get more out of your reading; enjoy it more, be more informed, and have better comprehension and retention. However the real price is actually free, because with faster reading, your time investment will be continually refunded.

Time

How much time does it take to read a book? Remember that the average adult reads two hundred words per minute. Assume this average person wants to read a book which is three hundred pages long and has approximately four hundred words per page. This book would then have a total of one hundred twenty thousand words. At two hundred words per minute, this book would take ten hours to read (120,000 / 200 = 600 minutes or 10 hours). At four hundred words per minute, however, this book would only take half that time—five hours.

So, how long would it take this average person learn to increase his reading speed from reading two hundred words per minute to four hundred? Four hundred words per minute is not actually a very difficult speed to reach. If it took a total of five hours of practice to learn this speed increase, then those five hours would be saved back after reading only one book. But a reading speed increase is a gift that keeps on giving, because the faster a person reads, the more books they will want to read and therefore, the more time they will get back.

Besides this time rebate, what about the benefits side of the equation? The major benefit, of course, is improved comprehension. This means getting more
out
of your reading. When someone asks, “What is that book about?” you can actually tell him.

But there are even more benefits to gain from improved reading skills.

Power

The mental exercise of reading develops a more powerful mind. The act of reading is one of the most sophisticated mental achievements of the human mind. The mental exercise this involves strengthens your intelligence, sharpens your analytical skills, and improves your ability to separate reality from fiction.

Even more power can be developed by extending your reading to your right brain. One way is by improving the power of your memory. By conceptualizing thought-units, you are concentrating on more complex ideas, making your reading more memorable and storing information more efficiently. You are not just reading new information, but conceptualizing it and associating it with previous information. Each of these complex memories creates even more association points for future memories to attach to. The more you know, the easier it becomes to know more. And more knowledge is more power.

Success

Reading—combined with the ability to understand, recall, and make use of the material you have read—also plays a major role in achieving success in life.

Faster reading and better comprehension have powerful impacts; whether it’s being better informed in your job, or having a better understanding of your studies, or simply by being a more well-rounded and informed conversationalist.

Good reading skills produce many advantages. It’s no exaggeration to say that in this modern interconnected and competitive world, the ability to read, comprehend, and better organize information into useful knowledge could be considered tantamount to a survival skill, and a prerequisite to most success.

Uniqueness

By concentrating on concepts, you will be remembering not just the facts, but the real meaning behind what you read as well. You can’t remember every detail you read, but you can remember the
meaning
. Your own personal meaning is created by the selection and significance of attributes you connect to information—these selections being based primarily on your previous knowledge and interests.

These conceptual connections are what make each of us unique. Each person has his own informational combinations, and these combinations and intersections of information create each person’s uniqueness, enabling each person to see information in unique ways with unique perspectives.

This is true of all kinds of reading. No matter what you read, all reading changes you. In a lot of ways, we are what we read. We are the sum of these experiences, and many of our experiences come to us vicariously through reading, from anywhere and from any-when. Regardless of whether it is fact or fiction, educational or relaxation, all reading adds something to who we are, and to our own uniqueness.

Innovation

It’s the conceptual connections of information which create the real power of human intelligence. The information itself is cheap—the whole world of information is only a Google search away. The real power of human intelligence is not in the collection of information, but in the
connections
of information. It is at these unique intersections that ideas build upon each other to produce new, relevant and more valuable ideas. These unique combinations are the real mother of innovation.

Read for Enjoyment

Many people who say they don’t have time to read will also say they don’t have time to learn to read faster, but since reading faster could
save
them time, this seems like a contradiction.

When you are facing a contradiction, check your premises; you will usually find that one of them is wrong. I believe the mistaken premise here the belief that those people
want
to read in the first place.

I suspect the real truth is that most people don’t want to read simply because it’s not enjoyable for them. I hope one benefit of conceptual reading is to make reading more enjoyable. I have found that by improving my own reading, I’ve developed what feels almost like a reading addiction. The more I read, the more I learn; the more I learn, the more things I discover that I want to read about.

So why not deemphasize the collection of raw data, and instead concentrate on the development of intelligence by fostering your reasoning ability and creativity—which are all enhanced through the connectedness of information and conceptual reading of ideas?

Realistic Expectations

Of course every skill takes practice, but at least this is practice that works. This is not practicing some so-called secret speed reading tricks—like the ones you find in every other book. This is practicing seeing the ideas behind the words by concentrating on the larger blocks of information.