2,000 Percent Living Lesson Five: Learn from Others by Reading

Expand your ability to read, comprehend,
and remember by at least twenty times.

Blessed is he who reads
and those who hear
the words of this prophecy,
and keep those things that are written in it;
for the time is near.

— Revelation 1:3 (NKJV)

There’s an old saying that it’s better to learn from the
mistakes of others than to make all those mistakes
yourself. Most people would agree with that point, yet
they still spend most of their days repeating the well-
known mistakes that others have committed. Why? In
many cases, these people don’t happen to know about
those particular mistakes.

You can only learn so much by watching others.
Frequently, you’ll find yourself in a situation you have
never seen anyone else face. At that point, it’s easy to
make big mistakes. Stop long enough to find out what
others have done before acting. Gaining and applying
much more helpful information in a timely way requires
fast, accurate, and effective reading.

Let’s look more closely at the opportunity to learn more
by reading about others’ experiences. An average adult
can read 200-400 words in a minute. Give those people
tests on what they have just read, and they will
accurately answer 70 to 80 percent of the questions. Yet
ask them about what they have read a year later, and
they will recall almost nothing. In addition, these people
will have read only one to five books during the prior year,
and those books will have been novels selected for
pleasure rather than nonfiction books that were chosen
for their useful content.

Is it possible that people could learn a lot more from
reading? Absolutely! Let’s look at how much can be done
by improving reading, understanding, and memory.

Read Faster

… “Let Him make speed
and hasten His work,
That we may see it; ….”

— Isaiah 5:19 (NKJV)

Most people will tell you that they would like to read
faster but feel that if they go any faster they won’t be
able to understand and remember very much. To them it
seems pointless to try to read faster. Yet there are many
people who read several thousand words in a minute and
remember virtually everything that they read. Why
don’t other people read faster and remember more?
It’s simple: They don’t know how. It’s another example
of making a mistake because of not knowing how to avoid
the mistake.

Let me speak candidly about reading as someone who has
read more than 5,000 books, written reviews of more
than 4,000 of those books, and studied countless articles.
Research shows that the process of learning to read isn’t
very simple for the brain. Many linkages need to be made.
In fact, the process is complicated enough that somewhere
between 30 and 40 percent of all people’s brains learn to
read in a way that makes printed information extra hard
to understand. For instance, letters, words, and numbers
may appear in a different order in their minds than they
do on the page.

What’s worse, in the typical school there are no reading
specialists trained to identify how a brain is mixing up
information and then to help the child read so that the
problems are reduced or eliminated. You may be one of
those people who hasn’t yet received such help. I feel
bad for you.

I do have good news. There is at least one person who can
probably help, my college classmate and friend John
Adams. If you can borrow, rent, buy, or already own a
Mac computer, he can diagnose what you need to do to
overcome any reading quirks and help you to learn better
methods. In a short period of time, you will probably be
reading much faster than ever before with good
understanding.

Why is John so good? Because he had reading problems
as a youngster and has been helping people overcome
such difficulties for many years, John knows what works
and what doesn’t for helping you. To find out more and
to get in touch with him (tell him I sent you and I’m sure
John will be extra nice in helping you), go to
http://www.proportionalreading.com/.

I have more good news for you. Even if you don’t have
any special problems reading but are just slower than
you would like, John can also help you. You should be
able to read at least 1,000 words a minute with very
good comprehension through using his methods. For
most people that will be a speed at least three times
higher than what they accomplish today.

If you can read and remember at least three times as
much, you can certainly avoid a lot more mistakes than
you do now by reading about what others have done. But
what if you want to do even better? I read faster than
that, and the method I recommend for speeding up above
reading 1,000 words a minute requires making a series of
small changes in your reading habits. Once you can read
with near-perfect comprehension at any speed, let me
outline the individual steps for going to higher speeds
while retaining similarly good understanding:

• Stop “vocalizing” what you read in your mind. (Most
average readers are simply reading “aloud” mentally to
themselves, a very slow method of reading.)
• Go much faster from reading one word to the next.
• Expand from reading one word at a glance to reading
two words at a time. (Once you become comfortable with
this method, you will have probably doubled your speed.)
• Increase to reading three words at a time. (This change
will triple your speed from where you started.)
• Keep adding one word to the number you read at a
glance until you can see and absorb a whole line of print at
one time. (This adjustment will increase your speed by
ten to twelve times from reading one word at a time.)
• Learn to read two lines at a time (and so on).
• At some point you will be able to read a whole paragraph
at a time.
• Next, learn to read one paragraph plus one line at a time
(and so on in adding lines until you can read two
paragraphs at a time).
• Read two paragraphs plus one line at a time (and so on
in adding lines until you can read three paragraphs at a
time).
• Continue until you can read a whole page at a time.
• Repeat the process of adding lines and paragraphs until
you can read two side-by-side pages at one glance.

Don’t feel like you have to go through all those steps to be
a fast reader. Just proceed from one to the other until you
gain the speed that meets your reading needs in the
amount of time you want to spend reading for information.

Understand More

“Therefore I speak to them in parables,
because seeing they do not see, …
nor do they understand.”
“But blessed are your eyes
for they see, ….”

— Matthew 13:13, 16 (NKJV)

As you learn to read faster, it’s very important that you
continually test your comprehension. Otherwise, you are
just racing your eyes faster while leaving your mind
ignorant of what you need to know.

Let me share some lessons that have worked for me in
creating more understanding. I learned long ago that my
mind works a lot faster than my reading. As a result,
there’s room in my mental processes to be thinking
about questions as I read. Consequently, I choose to
read not only to understand what the writer intends to
share with me but also to gain an appreciation for any
lessons that apply to avoiding mistakes in areas where
I am inexperienced.

Here are some questions that I often use for nonfiction
reading that are designed to help me overcome my
inexperience:

• Is the experience I am reading about similar to what I
am facing?
• How does the experience differ from my situation?
• What advantages did the person have that I don’t have?
• What disadvantages did the person have that I don’t
have?
• What information did the person have before taking
action?

• What information would have helped the person to make
a better decision?
• What other experiences are referenced that I should
research?
• What other circumstances might be a lot like this one and
the one I face?
• Is there some better alternative that didn’t occur to the
person I’m reading about?
• What would I have advised the person to do differently
with the benefit of hindsight?

To these questions I often add other questions that are
important concerning the credibility of just a particular
book or article. For a source that seems a little off in its
accuracy, I might ask:

• How did the author gain the information?
• How credible is the information?
• What is the author ignoring?
• What is the author probably misstating?
• What is the author’s bias?

You might think that having these questions in mind
would slow down my reading a lot. Actually, adding the
questions seems to have the opposite effect: My speed
and understanding increase as I eagerly look for
answers that will help me with something that’s
important to achieving my goals.

Before reading any material, I search through the article
or book using these questions to determine which parts
(if any) apply to what I want to learn. As a result, I often
don’t have to read the whole source.

By concentrating just on sections that are information rich
for my questions, my attention level is higher and I
understand more. The questions bring another benefit:
When I’ve found what I need, I can stop reading unless
the book or article seems to offer important insights into
other areas relevant to my goals. Not reading what I
don’t need is another great way to stay focused and keep
understanding high.

Another way that I maintain a higher reading speed is by
having nearby little strips of paper as I read. I insert one
of the strips into the book or magazine so that I can easily
find the page again if I need it to reread something I
found to be of interest. I have a system of colors and
sizes of strips that tell me what I will find when I return
to the page. A green strip means a constructive lesson.
A red strip means a negative lesson. A blue strip means
a piece of helpful background. A plum strip means an
interesting point that’s unrelated to the reason I picked
up the source. In this way, I may only have to glance at
just a few pages later to deepen my understanding by
cross-checking what’s written on one page with what’s
written on another page. If I find a page that contains
all the information that I need, I just put a whole sheet
of paper there. I find that the simple act of putting in
the paper strips and sheets seems in increase how well I
remember the relevant sections. As a result, I’ll probably
only need to refer to one in thirty of the pages that I’ve
marked with strips of paper.

The type of material also affects how rapidly I can read
and understand. Mathematical formulas require me to
stop and to study them. Legal treatises are often written
in such convoluted ways that it takes extra time to
decipher what the writer is trying to say. Philosophical
texts are often filled with problems and questions that
are designed to make readers stop and think. Present me
with information in a field that’s new to me filled with lots
of unfamiliar vocabulary, and I will probably read more
slowly than you would if you were already familiar with
the subject. As you should, I let my understanding of the
material determine how quickly I go through it.

Remember More

“When the bow is in the cloud, then I will look upon it,
to remember the everlasting covenant between God
and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.”

— Genesis 9:16 (NAS)

Unless you are blessed with a photographic memory
(something that I once had, but no longer have), you’ll
have to do more than just read and remember
information. You may need to refer to something you
read many years ago. How can you do that? Let me tell
you about the method I’ve been using for ten years.

I write book reviews of almost any nonfiction book that I
read that I publish on Amazon.com. While my main
purpose is to help other people find the books that will be
useful to them, I also benefit by having a record of what
I’ve read and what’s important about it. My reviews
usually summarize the key points in the book and what’s
significant about them.

My memory is usually good enough to allow me to
remember the right source book for answering a
question. As a result, I can quickly do an online search
using my name and the book’s title to find my online
review. I can then read the review in a few seconds and
will usually obtain the answer I’m looking for. If not, I
can determine if I need to look at the book again (by
going to the library, borrowing it, reading a copy I’ve got
at the office, or buying one).

Let me assume that your memory may not always be
quite as good as mine is now. You can also sprinkle
technical terms throughout your review, and then do
online searches that employ your name and those
technical terms. You’ll find all of the relevant reviews
you wrote.

If you find that it helps to have more detailed descriptions
of the lessons in the book, you can include those in your
review (by accessing the pages next to the colored strips of
paper). In that way, you can have the equivalent of course
notes concerning the source.

I usually spend less than a half hour writing a review or
making notes on a source. Often, the amount of time spent
is less than ten minutes. For a 100,000 word book (a
typical length for more thorough nonfiction sources), that
amounts to the equivalent of slowing my reading speed by
no more then 38 percent. I consider that writing time to
be well spent because it increases my ability to remember
key lessons after many years by well over twenty times.
If I make ten fewer mistakes in a year that would each
cost me many hours of problems, the benefit of this time
is probably an even higher multiple of the time spent on
writing.

I also find that writing reviews increases my
understanding by causing me to think about what I will
want to say about the book while I read it. It’s another way
to become a closer, more careful reader. I highly
recommend this method.

Follow these suggestions and you will see vast new
opportunities open up as you access the information that
God wants you to know and remember. You will also be
willing to take on much more difficult tasks knowing how
easily you can draw on valuable information that others
have written.

Copyright 2010 Donald W. Mitchell. All Rights Reserved.