[nabs-l] Learning to learn faster

[Antonio Guimaraes]

Hi all,

Here's a link and part of an article by Steve Kotler on how to get more for your time, and how reading faster can help you.

I'm providing a link and part of the article since it would take me longer to copy and paste the article spanning three pages on the Forbs site. I'm more interested in discussing, and reading your thoughts as fast as I can than in giving you the entire thing.

Some thoughts that come to mind from reading this include

How do blind readers fare when many of us read with screen readers at a much faster rate than the average sighted person reading speed?

How does braille fit in on our daily practice when even the fastest braille reader reads only as fast as the average sighted reader.

Happy reading,

Antonio

http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenkotler/2013/06/02/learning-to-learn-faster-the-one-superpower-everyone-needs/



I have a new book coming out early next year, The Rise of Superman:
Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance. As the title
suggests, my subject matter is the outer limits of human potential and
the question of what might actually be possible for our species.
During the course of writing this book, I've been lucky enough to meet
a lot of amazing people interested in this very same question. This is
a story about one of them, a really nice guy named Jim Kwik. It's also
a story about learning and education, innovation and entrepreneurship,
and, well, superheroes. Actually, mostly, it's a story about
superheroes.
Of course, since I'm telling you this is a story about superheroes, I
now have to satisfy two additional requirements. There has to be a
superpower; there has to be an origin story. Let's take them one at a
time.
Jim Kwik's superpower is learning. He's the CEO of Kwik Learning for a
reason. Kwik is really, really quick. He can learn faster than mere
mortals.
A lot faster.
As learning requires reading, well, Kwik can read alright. Most folks
put away text  between 200-250 words-per-minute (wpm). Kwik fires
through heavy technical tomes at about 500 wpm; he devours light
fiction at upwards of 1300 wpm. And he can remember what he reads.
Actually, he can remember a lot more than that. If you've ever seen
Kwik on stage or attended one of his seminars, then you've seen him
memorize the names of every face in the crowd. Or long strings of
random numbers. Most people struggle to remember all seven digits of a
phone number. Kwik can remember phone numbers all day long. Hundreds
of them. And this isn't a parlor trick: as was mentioned before, Kwik
also remembers what he reads.
Consider what this really means. Books are the best way to store and
transport knowledge we have ever developed. Years and years of
back-breaking research go into books. And we can access that research
in hours? How crazy is that.
It's also for this reason that leaders are readers. This is true for
American Presidents (JFK, Carter, Clinton, etc.) and American business
leaders. In fact, Bill Gates--also a voracious reader--was once asked
what superpower he most wanted. What did he choose? "Being able to
read superfast."
Warren Buffett, who was sharing the stage with him at the time,
agreed, saying: "I've probably wasted ten years reading slowly."
Now, for those of us raised on Shazam and the Wonder Twins, fast
reading and better recall may not seem like true superpowers, but
that's only because we haven't done the math.
Kwik did the math:
"The average person reads 200-250 words-per-minute and spends 3 to 4
hours of their work day reading. That's more than one-third of their
time on the job. If that person makes $60,000 a year, then at least
$20,000 of that money is paying for them to read.  But proper training
can easily double the average person's reading speed (up to 400-450
w.p.m.). That cuts 3 to 4 hours down to 1 to 2. That's a savings of
over an hour a day. If you do that for 365 days a year, that's 9
different 40 hour work weeks saved. That's real time productivity.
Imagine what you could do with all that extra time."
But you can do more than imagine. Because there's another side to
superherodom that's relevant here--Kwik's origin story.
Kwik Origins
Jim Kwik wasn't always a great learner. In fact, just the opposite. At
the age of 5, he suffered a head trauma and afterwards felt broken.
Like his brain was broken. Like he could never keep up.
And, truthfully, he never could keep up. Growing up in Westchester,
New York, he was exceptionally challenged in school. His friends
seemed to excel effortlessly, while Kwik had to struggle privately
just stay in the game. Worse, this led him to be painfully shy. The
combination almost proved his undoing.
Kwik was temporarily relieved by the chance to go college. "It was
supposed to be great," he recounts. "College was a place where no one
knew me. They didn't know I had trouble learning. They knew nothing
about me. I thought I could be anyone--even a smart guy."
On his way towards smart, Kwik overloaded himself with classes. Once
again, very quickly, the burden proved too much to bear. Unwilling to
let himself slip behind, Kwik sacrificed everything at the alter of
study. He stopped eating, stopped sleeping, stopped exercising. The
neglect took its toll.
One day, Kwik passed out at the public library. He fell down a flight
of stairs and woke up in the hospital. He was battered and bruised,
dehydrated and exhausted. A nurse brought him a cup of tea. There was
an Albert Einstein quote printed on the side: "Insanity is doing the
same thing over and over and expecting a different result."
Old Al was singing his song.
The quote got Kwik thinking. Instead of thinking about what he was
failing to learn, he started thinking about learning itself. The brain
was supposed to be this supercomputer, right? So why did his
supercomputer keep malfunctioning? Why couldn't he focus? Why couldn't
he remember what he read? Why did he keep losing his damn keys?
And the longer he thought about it, the more he came to one
conclusion: School--this place he had spent all these years trying to
get smarter--is a great place to learn what to learn. But it's not
necessarily a great place to learn how to learn.
"If Rip Van Winkle woke up today," says Kwik, "the only thing he would
recognize is our education system. It was created for 18th century
needs, to train people to work in factories or the farm. Today, we're
paid by what's between our ears. We're knowledge workers. We're paid
for our ability to learn. Yet we have an educational system that
doesn't teach people how to learn. How to focus, listen, innovate,
think, remember, problem solve. Why do most people have poor reading
skills? One reason is that the last time most people took a class
called "reading" they were probably five years old."
So, Kwik made the art of studying his study. He started pouring
through tomes on neuroscience, adult development, and
meta-learning--which is the science of how we learn. He discovered
there was a lot to learn.
He also applied this knowledge. To his incredible surprise, progress
came quickly. After spending less than 30 days working on new learning
habits, Kwik could focus better, read faster, retain more.  After 60
days, he was getting better grades and in far less time. His
self-image started to change. His confidence started to soar. Hell,
before long, he barely recognized himself.
For the sheer joy of sharing, Kwik started tutoring others in what he
learned about learning. One of his first students was a young woman
desperate to read more quickly.
The woman struggled with the technique. Speed reading isn't skimming
and it isn't scanning. Done properly, an augmented with memory work,
it's very high comprehension and high retention. And not easy to learn
But this woman was incredibly determined. She kept at it. Eventually,
something clicked. And it kept clicking. She read 30 books in 30
days--an absolutely amazing total. So amazing, that Kwik had to ask the
purpose. Why 30 in 30? What could possibly be the hurry?
Her mother was the hurry. She was in the hospital dying of cancer.
Doctors had given her 60 days to live. Kwik's student was speed
reading books on health and wellness. It was a last ditch effort to
save her mother's life.
Kwik was 19 years old at the time and this was not the kind of answer
he was expecting.
"I didn't even know what to say to that," he recounts. "I also didn't
think it would ever work.
Six months later, Kwik got a call from the woman. Her mother had
survived the cancer. "It was a miracle," says Kwik. "The doctors had
no idea what was keeping her alive. But her mother believes she's
alive because of all the great advice she got from her daughter when
she was sick. The same advice, her daughter had gotten reading 30
books in 30 days."
That was when it all came together for him. "If knowledge is power,"
he says, "that was the moment I realized that learning is a
superpower."
More importantly, as Kwik himself points out, "I'm not special. I
didn't naturally have these superpowers. They were learned. And if I
can learn them, anyone can learn them--regardless of age, background or
education."