In particular I get a lot of questions that ask me to de-mystify some of the strategies and techniques recommended by the various specialists in this field.

Here is a typical question:

"I've bought Tony Buzan "the speed reading book" and got almost in the middle of it, where there is a detailed description of meta-guiding techniques, and I was just wondering if you have to master the double line sweep in order to be able to use one of the advanced visual guiding movements (for example, I especially like the 'S' and the Zig-Zag ones).

When I am using 'the double line sweep' method I cannot comprehend what I read at all, but maybe it will come in time with practice. Also, I sometimes come back to reading just one line instead of two at a time, because of the old habit. I would appreciate if you'd give me any tips how to avoid it. 

Is it possible to start learning and using Zig-Zag meta-guiding technique and get visible results instead of starting with the double line sweep method?  When I use double line sweep method I cannot comprehend anything. Is that normal? When should I start comprehending anything? How long it takes to get first bits of comprehension? How much should I practice"

First of all, let's explain what some of the terms in that question mean.

Tony Buzan coined the term "meta-guiding" in his speed reading book that the question refers to.

What it means is a series of ways of swiftly running your eyes across a page relying on your peripheral vision to "take in" what is there.

Conventional reading as taught in schools is very limited because we …..read…..one….word…..at…..a……time.

Our natural capabilities extend far beyound that where we can read more than one word at a time.

In fact we can make sense of 3, 4 ,5 and more words in one go and this is one of the core principles of an effective reading course.

Beyond that we get into skimming and scanning technques which allow us to seek out what we have to read and also help us swiftly filter out what we don't need or want.

At the very advanced level these techniques are the basis for actually "reading" what is on the page at very high rates and here we are drifting into the realm of Photo-Reading and Quantum Reading. 

However we shall just stick at the basic level for now.

So the meta-guiding concept is really another (trade marked?) name for describing a range of options we have for guiding our ours across a page.

This relates to another key principle of Speed Reading which is the use of a guide to help our ours across the page when we are reading.

Even now if all you did was use a pen and run it along the underside of the line as you read it, your reading speed and effectiveness would improve.

So what are the techniques that come under this term "meta-guiding"?

Well here is a quick sketch of the ones mentioned:

 In the double line sweep you move your guide (usually a pen but it can be your finger) along a line and then you bring it to the start of the next line down +1 (hence the term "double line").

The "S" and the Zig Zag should be fairly self explanatory.

The coloured line in each case showing the path followed by the guide (and hence the eyes).

Now as you look at these you might think "Wierd! - There is no way I can read like that!"

Well that is an understandable thought because it is likely to be very different from the way you have been  taught to read and the way you have probably been reading all these years.

But let me just point out that if you want to improve your reading effectiveness, then these sorts of techniques are what you must use.

They will feel unusual, probably uncomfortable but that is just because they are different to what you have been used to but believe me, they do work if you give them the chance.

And it is during that discomfort phase that our questioner finds themselves.

They ask if they should master one before moving onto the next one.

Well the answer is that the options offered in the book are exactly that, they are options.

Each method achieves the same things but in slightly different ways.

This person prefers the Zig-Zag and so that is the one they should persist with.

They go on to ask about comprehension and this again is another very common question when using these advanced techniques for the first time.

If you take your age and subtract 5, that is likely to be the number of years you have been reading.

That is a long time to create and condition a habit and so when you try and change that habit, your brain is not going to be used to the new way.

And so initially you will find you won't be able to comprehend very much, if anything at all.

However the brain is an extremely adaptable mechanism and given enough time and enough practice, it can pretty much adapt to anything physiologically and psychologically possible.

What will affect the transition from one way of doing something to another is the belief that the new way will work and just how much effort they are willing to put into it.

I believe that specific practice on training the technique (as opposed to just trying it out in your everyday reading) is required and when it comes to reading you should "practice" for 20 minutes a day for at least 21 days.

But the key thing is to set the goal and put the effort in UNTIL it works for you.

Believe me, these techniques work and thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people use them every day, the only question is are you going to do enough to make them work for you.

First of all it was listening to Radio 2 (if you are not UK based that is the radio channel listened to by everyone other than the "yoof of today").

Then it was spotting the occasional silver highlights in the hair…

And now it is gardening!

Never thought it would attract me.

I have always appreciated a good garden but have never really wanted to get involved.

Sort of like Rugby really. 

I have always appreciated a good game of rugger - watching those brutes battle away in the scrum over that odd shaped ball - but I have never really wanted to get stuck in.

So today I found myself eating my lunch and perusing my partner's copy of Gardeners' World and for the first time I was vaguely interested!

What next?  Will I be getting a mid life crisis?  Or is this it?

Anyway, in a small feature on the editorial page the Gardeners' World team were giving there money saving tips (must be one of the most used and abused features in publications around the world over the last few months).

Jess, the Sub Editor made this recommendation:

"Grow Asparagus!  In the six years I've had mine, I've split it into 12 plants.  They look great dotted around the garden and make terrific presents for friends and family"

"Mmmm" I thought. 

That is strange.

Now I know what asparagus is.

I have eaten it, I have cooked it, I have even seen and recognised it in our garden but I have never thought of dotting it around the garden and then giving it as a "terrific present" to friends and family.

That seemed rather odd, even to a gardening virgin like myself.

So with a rather quizzical look on my face, I re-read the piece…

Ahhh I see…

Agapanthus not asparagus!

It should have read:

"Grow Agapanthus!  In the six years I've had mine, I've split it into 12 plants.  They look great dotted around the garden and make terrific presents for friends and family"

Now that does make more sense (in as much as it was not Asparagus but some other thing which I took to be a flower of some sort).

Has this ever happened to you?

Have you ever read something, thought it odd and when you went back it was because you had mis-read what was there?

Well it is a common occurence (go with me on this because it is a common occurence for me and so to convince myself I am not going mad I am declaring it to be a common occurence for everyone).

What happens is that the brain naturally tries to make sense of what it sees around us.

It takes what we know and tries to super-impose that on what we are experiencing.

99.9% of the time it is correct but every so often it comes up with an interpretation that is (often in hindsight) completely wrong.

This is the same part of the our thinking that we use when we look at a cloud and see a shape that (to us) looks like a dog or a man with a watering can.

In that instance we are forcing it a little and we know the cloud isn't a dog.

But when left to its own devices, the brain will "fill in the blanks" of the evidence presented to it and will come to a conclusion of its own.

When I first glanced at the word "Agapanthus", it was a word I had not seen written down before (I have some vague recollection that I might have heard it before but I am not sure about that because I have trained my partner to refer to flowers in our garden as "the red one" or "the blue spikey one").

And so my brain seeing the "A" and a word ending in "-us" in a gardening made the conceptual leap to "Asparagus".

It filled in the gaps and gave me an answer that made sense to it.

So this is further evidence (to me anyway) that it is the brain that does the reading.

This knowledge is extremely useful because once you grasp this point and understand what it means, it becomes far easier to improve your reading speed (and therefore effectiveness as a reader).

Knowing this, you appreciate that the techniques and strategies and practice required to read faster are the way they are because they are targetting the brain and not the eye.

And it helps to eat lots of asparagus too and give your friends heaps of agapanthus.

I have a feeling that as I read more gardening magazines, this is going to happen more and more.

You might have been 4 or 5 years old.

If that is too far to go back for you then just think about young kids reading in the classroom.

How do they do it?

Well the chances are (assuming they have a grasp of the alphabet and can read basic words) that they will be using their finger to guide their eyes to the words and they will be reading out aloud what they hear.

Why do they read out aloud?

Well it gives them feedback on what they are reading and it is a great way for the teacher and her assistants to make sure the child is on track and is actually reading properly.

It is one of the standard practices in teaching kids to read.

Of course this makes for noisy classrooms so there comes a point at which the teacher is satisfied with the standard of reading and so she encourages the child to stop reading out loud and to start reading to themselves quietly.

Of course the noise level in the room drops significantly as fewer and fewer children need to say what they are reading.

There is a transition stage from reading out loud to reading completely silently and that is the stage where the words are mouthed but not actually spoken.

However the noise inside the childs head continues as they "read to themselves".

Inside his or her mind the youngster will still "hear" the words mentally as they read out and so the only real difference between this and what they were doing before is that the words are not actually expressed as sounds.

This is a habit and reading trait that continues and is perpetuate in adult life.

That is sub-vocalisation.

So what does this mean?

Well over time as the child gets older and their reading ability improves, they will read more and more information of increasing difficulty and complexity.

But they will still be reading it to themselves inside their head because that is how they were taught to read - first out loud and then silently to themselves.

Of course with practice they will be able to read faster compared to their first faltering reading steps but there is a limit to how fast they can read if they continue to use this approach.

You see by relying on the ongoing verbalisation of the words inside their head as they read, the student is limiting themselves to how fast that verbalisation can take place.

The maximum speed at which individual words can be verbalised is about 400 words per minute.

Our speed goes up slightly when we are not constrained by having to move our jaws, lips and tongues to make the sounds i.e. when we are sub-vocalising but not be very much.

So continuing to adopt this method of reading will set a ceiling on just how fast someone can read and in the courses I run, the average reading speed of my participants is in the region of 250-350 wpm primarily because of this sub-vocalisation.

One of the first things to do when looking to increase the rate at which you read is to eliminate or dramatically reduce the amount of talking that goes on inside your head.

So how do you do that?

Well there are two ways you can do this.

The first is to overcome it by practicing taking in groups of words (another cornerstone of effective reading).

With practice, the mind will not have time to "talk the words" as it reads but will still pick up the meaning of what is written simply by looking at what is there.

It is a little strange at first because we are so used to saying the words inside our head, but our brains can take in these chunks very easily and will adapt given sufficient practice.

The second way is to imagine turning down the volume of the voice in your head as you read until you can no longer hear it.

Imagine a large black volume control knob or slider (whichever works for you) on the control panel of your mind and as you start to hear your reading "voice" just adjust the control until you can no longer hear it.

If you combine this idea with constant practice, in time you will no longer need to say the words as you read them and your reading speed will definitely improve.

If you have your own way of reducing sub-vocalisation, then do let me know.

I have to so I can keep up with these things:

1.   What is going on in my industry

2.   Developments in my area of professional interest

3.   Ways to make my business even more successful and profitable

4.   Ways to develop myself

5.   Things I am generally interested in outside of my professional field.

I also listen to audio programs on a regular basis too.

I travel on a regular basis and regularly find myself in situations where reading a book just is not possible (or legal) and so the convenience of having my ipod loaded up with some great stuff means I can listen to the worlds experts at the press of a play button.

Whislt I do enjoy my reading, I especially enjoy listening to audio programmes.

You get to hear incredible authors and speakers delivering some great content and I believe that when you listen to an inspiring and inspired expert share their knowledge, espcially if they are in a live situation in front of an audience, some of the magic of their performance passes through the headphones.

I have listened to probably thousands of hours of audio over the last 15 years, many of the same programmes over and over again and I am constantly adding to my already large library.

Just recently I purchased a fabuolus audio programme from Nightingale Conant called "Success is Your Own Damn Fault" by Larry Winget.

Larry is a…mmm how do I describe him…..Larry is a colourful character to say the least. 

He is known by his trade marked title as the World's Only Irritational speaker and the Pitbull of personal development.

He is a tough, take no prisoners kind of guy who says what he thinks, is funny with it but essentially tells it as it is.

You won't find any suggestions for bonding, hugging or any other sort of touchy feelie stuff - Larry just is not that kind of speaker.

He is hard hitting and will tell you the truth about what it takes to be successful.

I like what he has to say and having seen him live at the National Speakers' Association convention in Phoenix a couple of years ago, I have always enjoyed (and benefitted) what he has to say and how he has to say it.

So when the regular mailing piece from Nightingale Conant dropped through the letterbox a couple of weeks ago promoting his latest programme, I sent off for it immediately.

It is good….very good.

And for Larry to get that good he has not only been there, done it and got the t-shirt in rising from poverty to riches, losing it and then getting it back again, but he also has researched the topic of success extensively.

He claims to have read over 4000 books (and I have no reason to doubt him and if I did I would not be stupid enough to challenge him on it!) and listened to approximately 5000 hours of audio programmes.

Now I am sharing this with you not because I necessarily want you to go out and buy this programme (although that is not a bad idea if you feel you are ready to be successful in whatever you do), but because of something Larry says on disc 2, track 2 at about 3:30.

He shares his experience of reading so much and after going through all those books, he probably knows a thing or two about being an effective reader and he offers a GREAT piece of advice that alone was worth the investment in the programme.

He says that you should read for INTENT and not CONTENT.

I will write that again because I think it is so powerful:

Read for INTENT not CONTENT.

So what does he mean?

Well if I give you a book and recommend you read it without telling you why, you would have to work your way through the whole book to see what you could get out of it.

But when you read for INTENT, you have a pretty good idea of what you need right now (assuming you have clarity on what you are trying to achieve and the focus to concentrate on that and that alone) and so you can scan through the book to find the stuff that is relevant to you, discarding or ignoring what is not useful to you right now.

Larry suggests that you can focus your INTENT by asking yourself:

What is the one thing I can get from this book (tape programme, speaker, DVD etc) that will help me in what I am trying to achieve and that I can USE RIGHT NOW!

By giving you mind that sort of clarity you can get through material very quickly until you find that one thing, that one idea or that one suggestion that will move you forward.

Now if you can get through a book a week (and if you can't you are going to be left behind in your industry or field) that is 52 books in a year, 52 great ideas.

What would your life, business, relationships, performance, income etc etc look like if you just took one great idea a week and applied it (and made it work)?

So as Larry says, read for INTENT and not CONTENT and focus on finding that one thing.

When you do this you will get through far more books and much quicker too - so just by changing your approach to books, you have accelerated your reading speed and you can do it instantly.

Let me know how you get on.

I bet you do, we all do?

Are they a problem for you?

Well I bet like the millions and millions of people on the internet these days you probably get "too much" e mail.

Lots of that might be SPAM and we can do something about that with SPAM filters and filtering devices (Google Mail is excellent for only letting you receive genuine e mails).

So even if you have dealt with the dross that bothers everyone, you still have to deal with those real pieces of correspondence that require your attention.

In the work I do helping professional people become more effective so they can release more time for the more important things in their life dealing with e mail is one of the biggest challenges they face.

Certainly in large organisations where the tendency to copy EVERYONE on e mails creates this unnecessary flow of electrons that clogs up in boxes throughout the company, e mail volume is a problem.

Even if you could reduce the CC problem, a big challenge is the way e mails are written.

Long meandering paragraphs, too much information, not getting to the point and a myriad of other poor communication habit mean not only do we have to read this stuff, we also have to decipher it.

Perhaps there should be an "Email writing course".

One of the things on that course would be the layout of the text.

I subscribe to quite a few e mail lists for a variety of different reasons - personal and professional.

Some are better than others for their content but one that stands out not only for its content (subject is irrelevant here) but for te way it is laid out so that it is much easier to read.

Here are just a few lines from a recent e mail I got from a marketing expert called Tellman Knudson:

I was at this party…

Fantastic spread of food,
good music, awesome company…

but one thing stood out-

and since then I've checked
in with my friends who
threw the party-

It's the most refreshing
thing I've ever tasted.

The thing I like about how this is written is that the text is just a few words wide allowing us to simply run our eyes down the page to take in the writing.

I also like the gaps between the ideas so it makes it very easy to read.

This is chunking in its purest form and means the reader can scan through this very quickly and get the meaning from it.

I am convinced if more people write their e mails like this, they would be far easier (and therefore far quicker) to read.

So the next time you write an e mail why not try doing it like this…

Let me know how you get on.

"Michael, what if I don't want to read everything quickly?"

My answer was quite simple:

"Well don't then!"

For a moment or two this person was lost for words and that gave me time to explain the challenge faced by people who have not developed their reading abilities above and beyond that taught in schools.

There is a huge problem with the standard of reading, not only in this country but across the world.

I am not talking about levels of illiteracy.

I am talking about the millions and millions (if not billions) of people who have completed their education (whether that be school, college or university) and who are ignorant of the fact they have a massive reading problem.

So what is that problem?

Well if I told you of a school that is turning out pupils with only 25% of the qualifications they are easily capable of achieving, I am sure you would be shocked.

If you had kids you certainly would not want them to go to THAT school.

If you were a radical social activist, you might campaign for the school principal to be reprimanded by the local education authorities, possibly suspended and maybe even replaced.

The story would certainly hit the local press and depending on that day's world events, it might even appear on the national six o'clock news.

Now whilst there are fewer and fewer schools with that sort of record across the range of qualifications expected of those leaving school, every school that has reading on the curriculum is churning out pupils with a reading ability 25% or less (and more likely to be less) than what they are capable of.

Why is that so?

Why is this not reported on the News?

Has there been a cover up?

No, there has been no cover up because hardly anyone knows about it.

Only the few of us who have sought to increase our own reading speed and then have gone on to teach others how to do the same really know and understand the problem.

I run Speed Reading courses.

I prefer to call them "Effective Reading" courses because that is a better description, but essentially I show people how to get through written material faster.

How do I do that?

Well first of all I take away the bad habits instilled by our good old education system.

Habits that occur as a by-product of the archaic reading development typical across the world.

Now that might sound a little harsh but here is what I experience on a regular basis.

Professional people attend one of my courses and they generally have a reading speed of somewhere between 250 - 350 words per minute.

There is a bit of Speed Reading Training folklore that a few years ago the United Nations identified the average reading speed necessary to be "functionally literate" in today's information driven world.

They came up with a figure of 400 words per minute.

Now whether this is true or not, I have never been able to verify because I can't find an official UN reference to that figure or the study, but if it is true, all the people who attend a speed reading course are, by definition, functionally ILLITERATE!

With a little bit of new information, a short amount of practice, I can on average double someone's reading speed in a day, with NO loss of comprehension (see my recent post "Speed Reading Techniques - Do They Work").

So the average speed then becomes 500-700 words per minute whilst they are with me and then they walk away with a plan to even double that.

No I am no magician, I don't impart Effective Reading wisdom, I just remove some barriers that hold back the reader and give a few additional strategies to help people get through their reading faster.

And it is when this objective comes up that I usually get the "What if I don't want to read everything quickly" type comment.

You see because of the way most of us have been taught to read, our frame of reference is a "one gear only" reading engine.

So as soon as there is a suggestion of doubling the output, some people balk at the idea.

What they don't realise is that for the variety of different reading material they encounter they need more than the one gear given to us at school.

You wouldn't savour the nuances of the vocabulary of a great poem in the same way as you would read the instruction manual for your new cell phone.

Different material requires different approaches depending upon the type of material you are reading,  what you want to get out of it and the time you have to achieve that.

Using the reading skills we have been given at school is like a single (poorly tuned) violin trying to play all the parts of a full orchestral piece.

mmm….first time out for that analogy….not sure it it works but I will leave it in because it is close to what I mean and besides I am in mid rant so a little leeway won't go amiss.

But as I have seen over and over again, people are easily capable of 1000 words a minute plus, and with full comprehension too.

So for the average reader with their 250 wpm levels that have changed little since their school days, they really are only operating at 25% of their capabilities.

What could they have achieved if they were operating closer to their full potential?

Although more important in this day and age is the ever increasing problem of information overwhelm and whilst reading faster may not be the whole answer, it would really help.

And so with this information readily and freely available it is criminal that our school systems do not embrace this knowledge and develop their teaching to equip pupils with reading skills closer to their true capability.

The trouble is, most teachers read slowly too and so it is a bit like the blind leading the blind…that too in my mind is criminal.

Well many people believe that to be the case and here is why:

Part of the problem with information overwhelm is not necessarily the volume because although that is a big factor what might be manageable for you might be far too much for me.

No the key factor is how we respond to that volume and only once it gets past the "too much" stage does overwhelm start to take hold.

A few years ago, before the explosion of information on the internet (how on earth did we manage before the WWW I will never know!), one of the "treatments" for a case of information overwhelm was attending a speed reading course.

The theory goes something like this:

Too much to read and not enough time - well if you read faster then you can get through far more and much quicker thus saving you time.

Now that was true back in the good old days when even having a mobile phone was considered the height of sophistication.

Of course the theory of Speed Reading is essentially about taking away bad reading habits that slow you down (habits by the way that you were taught to have in school!), giving you a set of better habits to have you reading more in tune with the way your eyes and brain naturally work and then showing you how to incorporate those habits in your reading practice.

It works. 

Check out my post "Speed Reading Techniques - Do They Work" for the proof.

But just being able to read faster is no longer all that is needed for information overwhelm.

Recently I made a statement on my site that said:

 "the efficiencies, effectiveness and increased productivity required by today's knowledge worker are simply not possible by just working harder or reading faster."

In a soon to be published interview with Mind Mapping Software Expert Chuck Frey, he challenged me on this and asked me to explain myself.

Here is what I told Chuck:

"Well the simple answer is that to be effective you need to work smarter. 

It doesn’t matter how fast I learn to read, and already I am a pretty impressive reader with high reading speeds, I will still never get through all of the information available to me even in my own small niche.

Even applying all of the tools, tricks, skills, cheats and short cuts of speed reading, there will still be more left to read at the end of the day.

So the skill today is about knowing “what is enough?” and “where to find it” and being savvy enough that when you do dip into the raging torrent to go fetch the stick you need, you resurface and come back to the bank again before you are swept too far downstream.

This is where the clarity, the discipline, the decisiveness and the persistence come into their own.

Reading faster just means it takes just a few more pages to reach that feeling of overwhelm and being out of control – but probably in the same amount of time as before.

Now I am not saying don’t learn to speed read because having that skill, when you define what the finite amount of reading is that you have to do, will save you an amazing amount of time. 

But being an effective reader where you also have a range of filtering strategies before you even get to the conventional “reading” part is far more powerful and a good Effective Reading course will give you those.

However those strategies really only work at their best if you have clarity, discipline, decisiveness and persistence."

Let me know what you think.

Unfortunately last week I was sworn to secrecy and could only hint at what the launch was all about.

Well the iphone application was formally launched yesterday and I can now tell you more about it.

The product is called Spreed:News and it is an application that allows you to customise your news and blog feeds so that you can read articles through its speed reading software.

There is some technical stuff about where to download it from and how to specifically use it and you can find these details at Spreed:News Software Launch Blog

Here is a video they have put together that tells you a little more about it.

 It is very simple to use and what it does is take the news or blog article you want to read and then presents the words to you at a rate of your choosing in convenient "chunks".

The range of speeds available to you is anywhere between 300 words per minute and 1200 words per minute.

This chunking or grouping of words is one of the fundamental principles of becoming a more effective reader (or speed reader) and this software does that automatically for you.

Now when you try this out for yourself you may find it feels a little strange.

That is because you are not used to taking in words in this fashion, however with a little perserverence you will get used to it and you will start to reap the benefits immediately.

I like this application alot and unfortunately I do not have an iphone (yet) but if I did then I would definitely benefit from this tool.

David Coleman and his team are working on versions of the application for Blackberry's and Windows moblie devices but I am more excited about the desktop application they have planned for a later release.

When this comes out, you should definitely get hold of that because it will help you RIP through your reading matter.

If you want to see a video of it in action without the gorgeous model then click on the iphone below and I take you through just how simple it is to use.

By the way, I forgot to mention the price of this application….its FREE!

Imagine an application where you could upload the text from any document and have it presented to you in a way where you could ONLY read it fast, but do so in a way that you understood every single word.

Now what do I mean by fast?

Well the average reading speed for people who have not undergone any formal training is around 250-350 words minute.

Assuming you fall into that range (and it is highly likely you do based on my experience of teaching people to speed read) how would it impact your life if you could double or even treble the rate at which you process the written word?

Of course if like the majority of people these days you are overwhelmed with the massive amount of information you have to process then doubling your reading speed would halve the time it takes you to read.

Now you would either free up some time to use for more profitable purposes or you could make greater headway into what it is you need to get through.

Certainly the feelings of control you would have would increase and that horrible sensation of overwhelm would begin to ebb away. Now last night in a secret late night transatlantic conference call, I was shown a brand new application that can and will double, treble or even quadruple your reading speed.

I was contacted by a company that is not from Europe (you can work out for yourself which region it might be from) who wanted to get my thoughts on their product because of my experience of sharing speed reading advice to thousands of people.

I am sworn to secrecy and so am unable to tell you any more about it other than that it exists and within the week that it will be launched.

The only thing that Mr X has allowed me to share with you (I have to refer to him like that because ANY mention of who he is and what this thing does before it is formally launched will have me up before the Supreme Court before you know it!) is that this application will first of all be available on on a popular mobile device.

There are plans to launch a web based version of it soon too but the impending launch is for a certain handheld device.

What I am allowed to tell you though are my initial thoughts on this application. Well let's just say, I am extremely excited by this launch and expect tens of thousands of people to benefit from this application.

I believe the application is launched on Friday and formally announced on Monday.

So if you want to find out about this amazing Speed Reading Software then watch out for my post on Monday when I will be giving it a full review and telling you where you can get it from.

One last thing….you just will not believe the price of this thing when you see it

Q - "How do I remember what I read?"

I also get asked this by subscribers and visitors to the site too so I thought I would spend a little time explaining this rather short and succint answer:

A - "Buy a Memory Course"

Now I am not being awkward, I am not trying to be funny, I am being absolutely serious.

If you want to remember what you read, you need to take a memory course so you can learn how to remember.

You see most people's expectations of the reading process is this:

1. I see the characters on the page 
2. I recognise them as letters
3. I formulate the letters into words
4. I read the words and make sense of what is written
5. I understand what is written
6. I remember what is written
7. At a later date I recall what was written
8. I use the recall of that information for my own needs or for communicating to others

Unfortunately our reading development in school only takes us up to step 4 (reading the words and making sense of them).

Hopefully the rest of our education takes us through to step 5 but unless you have any formal training in memory development, that is where your reading skills stop.

So the reading skills the majority of people have don't match their expectations of what they feel they should get from reading a page.

Because in order for you to be able to remember something from a page of text, you actually have to memorise it.

Now some stuff will naturally stay in your memory for a variety of reasons (outstanding, unusual, association, something of interest etc) but if you want to recall the specifics you have to memorise the specifics.

Just reading them once is usually not enough.

Reading them through over and over again (the repetition approach) will help a little but is not recommended as a memorisation strategy.

The trouble is, most of us were not taught HOW to memorise when we were at school.

So what techniques do you use if you want to remember what it is you are reading?

Well the first thing you need to get very clear on is what is it specifically do you want from the material you are reading.

When you know that it becomes much easier to choose the right technique to use.

I am a big fan of Mind Mapping and so would always recommend using that as a note taking device when reading any content you want to commit to memory.

If you want to remember a sequence of facts then I would use the Journey Technique (using locations on a journey you know well as a form of mental filing system).

If you need to recall numerical data then you could choose either the Major System or the Dominic System.  Both of these are great ways to turn numbers into more memorable images.

Another very useful strategy is to create mnemonics like the "Richard of York Gave Battle In Vain" method of remembering the colours of the rainbow.

The key to successfully remembering the stuff you read is the clarity of what is important.  Then the rest is easy.

Of course we then start getting into long term and short term memory issues…

Maybe another time…