All your life you have heard the term speed of light (Einstein and Relativity), is
186 thousand miles per second. Perfectionists remember 186, 282, 397 K mps. Some us know the speed of sound (airplanes) is 769 miles per hour.
The speed of conversational speech is 210 wpm, while audiobooks and
lecturers drop down to 100-150 wpm for our comfort-zone. If they
speed up they get, “What’d he say, huh?”
Reading speed for college graduates on basic Reader’s Digest level
text is between 150-250 wpm. What about comprehension? When tested
on simple stuff the average is 70%, and reduces to 60% on semi-tuff text
and 50% on tuff-stuff. These results are based on 50 years of studies.
No one except savants (Rainman) and the 1% with eidetic imagery (photographic memory), have 100% comprehension so forgettaboutit. Perfectionists get bipolar (manic-depressive) disorder.
Fact: students by scientific research, and most likely the rest of us, are daydreaming 30% of our waking hours. Paying attention is about a 50% event; being in the zone, in the flow and peak performances occur under 10%. We are mentally floating (75% attentive) four hours daily. Google: Pareto 80/20 principle for pure wisdom.
Three Libels
a) limited attention span,
b) need for immediate gratification
c) long learning-curve.
Attention
Our attention focus is both biological and psychological. While your brain is
taking in new information (occupied) it is simultaneous working on putting into
long-term storage what you previous learned. Your mood (psychology) and motivation calculates the length of your attention. It varies with your interest.
Get this: the reason you are daydreaming while listening to the presentation or
lecture is you are too smart. The speaker is coming at you to process new information at 100-150 wpm, while your parietal-frontal cortex is capable of comprehension between 310 to a high of 550 wpm.
Your 3-pound coconut gets bored and converts its excess capacity to daydreaming
a weekend vacation to Maine, a shopping spree at Bloomingdale’s or a replay of an encounter with your significant other.
Your brain has no union or Federal Labor laws to protect it; it operates 24/7 with no weekends or holidays off for good behavior.
Gratification
Who doesn’t want immediate gratification for our efforts? When we request coffee,
a file and learn a new skill, our dream is instant fulfillment. It is human and recognized by our mind as magical thinking. It is a desire, a goal, not an expectation.
Controlled gratification is an emotional motivation to succeed. We use our Mental Directed Effort (volition) to improve and reach our goals.
Learning-Curve
LC began with Professor Hermann Ebbinhaus, University of Berlin in 1885 on his
famed research on memory. It disappeared until 1936 when T.P. Wright used LC to refer to steps in producing aircraft. A short learning curve is good and a long one lousy. Preparation and experience improve your learning-curve for the future.
Organized systems and controls, and personal experience shorten your learning-curve. Remember it is an important variable subject to improvement.
Maniac Thinking
The speed of your thoughts affects your mood, attitudes, and emotions. Aha!
When you think faster by speaking swiftly, (it is volition and habit to read and
think as slow as molasses), you take conscious control of your feelings.
So What
Remember it this way: mental-movies come first, producing emotions (mood) based
on what you imagine, second and triggering your behaviors last. How often do you say to yourself if not others, “I am not in the mood to do this right now”.
Is there a way to change your mood instantly to be in the mood to work, learn
and produce?
Published in Psychological Science September ’06 Manic Thinking by professors
Emily Pronin of Princeton and Daniel Wegner of Harvard, offer research that speed
is the answer.
Half the participants in the experiments read a series of statements twice-as-fast as
their average reading speed. The other half read twice-as-slow as standard reading speed.
Next, they had them read depressing, negative text like “I want to die, go to
sleep and never…” The compared this text to reading positive, happy text. “Life is
a party, I feel great!”
Results: reading positive or negative text was incidental. If you choose (volition)
to use your Directed Mental Effort to speed read aloud 2x faster, your mood, attitude and feelings do a 180 degree turn-about. Your brain gets juiced in the cognitive intelligence (parietal-frontal area) processing area. Your mood improves.
Fast reading appears to activate your logic and reasoning by lengthening your
attention-span, and enlists the support of your amygdala (emotional center) to
improve your mood and attitude and delete stress and tension.
According to Pronin and Wegner, you get extra goodies. Specifically, feelings of
power, creativity, energy and a dose of self-esteem.
Our own research indicates these emotional improvements put you in the flow,
in the zone and offer peak-performances. It lasts for up to four hours unless you
renew the strategy. We call it Speed Learning.
Self-Efficacy
Sounds like a phony-baloney research term. Efficacy is the power (competency) to
produce an effect or skill; self-efficacy is your belief (true or untrue) about your ability to learn the skill or fulfill and accomplish the goal.
Double So What
High self-efficacy produces the motivation to take on stuff over-your-head, while low self-efficacy produces self-talk (internal-dialogue) you cannot even tie your shoes so give it up and watch
If you learn self-efficacy – yes it is a subject with rules – (see Albert Bandura, The
exercise of control – Self Efficacy) you empower your thoughts, feelings and actions.
Maybe this is self-evident: humans regulate their efforts with the effects they expect
from their actions. If you don’t believe you can learn tennis, you refuse to take lessons. If you are mentally convinced you are an employee, you will not consider
being an entrepreneur even if Chase bank put up the capital.
If you think you can succeed, you try; if your self-efficacy is low you avoid. You will
expand more effort, persist in the face of rejection, and gather help to succeed with
high self-efficacy. Use Directed Mental Effort (volition) to improve your SE.
Dr. Bandura posits four factors to go from a low to a high SE.
a) Mastery Experience. Previous successes in learning raises SE, rejections piled up give you the flop-sweats.
b) Vicarious Experience. What one fat, little ugly guy can do, so can I.
c) Social Persuasions. A whisper from an acknowledged winner gives us
the heart to try or continue in the face of negative feedback.
d) Physiological Factors. Reframing your sensations. Relabel trembling
as eustress, a sign you are going to do great on the stage.
Endwords:
May we suggest life-long-learning leads to self-efficacy. Would it help you to 3x your
learning-skills and 2x your long-term memory? Ask us how.
See ya,
copyright 2007
H. Bernard Wechsler www.speedlearning.org hbw @speedlearning.org
Author of Speed Learning for Professionals, published by Barron’s; partner of
Evelyn Wood, creator of speed reading, graduating two million, including the
White House staffs of four U.S. Presidents.
Interviewed by the Wall Street Journal and fortune Magazine for major articles.
http://www.speedlearning.org
hbw@speedlearning.org
Tags: autosuggestion, learning, memory, self-help, speed reading
