watch tHe skies

Anthony Robbins is giving away a free copy of his book “Notes from a friend” to anyone in Europe who fancies one. Just head over to www.anthonyrobbinseurope.com and register. It’s a real book, not an e-book, from one of the leading names in motivation, and author of the famous “Unlimited Power” (a book on my shelf that might finally get read now I am a photoreader) !

The book covers the following:

1. Ways to tap the power inside to change anything in our life
2. Great reminder statements to go over when we are overwhelmed by feelings which pull us down
3. How our decisions can change our life
4. How to keep focusing
5. How to ask the right questions - This is a very valuable chapter - it has 5 ‘problem solving questions’, 7 ‘Morning power questions’, and 3 ‘Evening power questions’.
6. How we can find empowering words for commonly observed negative emotions/expressions
7. Metaphors that make a difference
8. Effective Goal setting and ‘Training the brain’ so that it knows that the goal is a happening thing.
9. The Ten day mental challenge - which is actually a neat mental game with its own rules, a clear goal, and the effect it is going to have on you. This game wraps up and covers all the concepts discussed in the entire book.  The game is intended to achieve the following:

• Make us identify our mental habits that hold us back
• Make our brain seek for powerful, helpful choices
• Effectively increase our confidence level by making us realize that we can turn our lives around for the better
• Create new habits, standards, expectations that will help us grow and enjoy life more and more, everyday.

but I have decided to mind map my knowledge of the subject during postview to try and get more out. I’m also conscious that my “purpose” was probably a little lame for a first try. “To absorb the tools techniques and information so that I can apply it second-nature with people to enhance my dealings with them” has been replaced with a more specific goal “to understand the characteristics of the 16 personality types”. I’ve also included the 16 MBTI personality types in my list of trigger words (ENTJ etc) and I will use them as the key points in my mind map.

My photoreading experience today wasn’t quite as strong as yesterday. I found it harder to direct conscious thoughts, they kept wandering. I’ve found that with self-hypnosis too; the first time you try something it is easier to stay focused, once you start becoming aware of the process and it’s purpose, the mind wanders.

Following postreading, a process that I think i understand now - to establish curiosity and ask questions, I am starting to get a real feel for the structure of the information and the fact that it’s not about learning the characteristics of 16 types, but about the four different human natures and how they influence who we are. So my questions are now around:

What are the characteristics of the key human natures?
What are the clues that point me towards a person’s personality type (appearance, demeanor, job, occupation)?
How do the types see each other?
What language do I use to improve communication?

These have been generated using a mind map, a method I use for work purposes all of the time, but something I haven’t applied to books that I read for my own personal interest.

I must say that today I feel that by the end of the 5 day test I will have nailed the contents of this book. Will I have inwardlardly absorbed all of the relevant information? Not sure, but there is a surefire test, as this book contains a set of short assignments that I can use to see how far I have come.

I’m sure you are asking how much of the book have I actually “read” in the conventional sense? The answer is hardly any so far, a few headlines, the contents page and the names of the four human natures. You can find my mind map to date here.

Now I am instructed to put the book completely out of my mind, to hopefully let my questions ferment, and allow the answers to osmose in to my conscious mind. We shall see…

I went to WHSmith last night and had to really resist the temptation to buy a load of books that I’ve been meaning to read. I am very excited about this working, and the potential that I offers me, although my bank balance may disagree…

Ok so I did give photoreading another go - this time on a 26 page report I needed to review. I followed the process of previewing, photoreading and postviewing, and then I ran through the document and marked it up. In total it took me around fifteen minutes, plus a break between the reading and commenting, and I picked up a lot of problems that with normal levels of concentration I would have missed. Are these attributable to my not-conscious mind? Not sure, but I certainly benefited from the state of mind afforded by the process.

Well today I took my first photoreading step, and fully previewed and photoread “The Art Of Speedreading People”. Photoreading Speedreading? Hmm maybe not a great idea but there we go.

The book suggests a five-day programme to lock-in the photoreading skills:

Day 1 - Select book, prepare and photoread.
Day 2 - Prepare, preview (< 2 minutes) and photoread. Postview for 15-20 minutes. Jot down trigger words and questions to stimulate the activation of the content.
Day 3 - Prepare, photoread, superread and dip in to the book for 30 minutes.
Day 4 - Prepare, photoread, superread and dip in to the book, reviewing questions and revising them.
Day 5 - Prepare and photoread. Review the table of contents and browse specific sections that you have become interested in. (more…)

So my latest book is “The Photoreading Whole Mind System”, by Paul Scheele. The system was invented by Paul Scheele to help people read books rapidly, and designed as an adaptation of speed reading, which Scheele described as requiring much practice and being tiring to the mind. The distinguishing feature of PhotoReading is that it is claimed to make use of the unconscious mind to rapidly absorb material, as opposed to conventional reading or speed reading, which utilises the conscious mind.

PhotoReading is divided into five main steps:

1. Defining your purpose for reading
2. Previewing the book
3. Photoreading
4. Activation
5. Rapid reading

In the first step, the reader defines his or her purpose for reading the material he or she wishes to PhotoRead. After that, he or she “previews” the book by reading key headings and subtitles to get a feel for the book. The third step, which can be considered to be the key of the system, is the actual PhotoReading step, in which the reader adopts a style of reading the book which is purported to allow the information to flow directly to the unconscious mind.

The idea is then to “activate” the information, allowing the conscious mind to extract information directly from the unconscious photos of the book. Is it bobbins? Well, I don’t know, I’m still reading step 2, but I’ll let you know if it works. It is actually based on some fairly simple NLP presuppositions, that the unconscious has a far greater ability to absorb and process information than the conscious mind has. Quite whether the difference is 25,000 words a minute remains to be seen. But even if it doubled your reading and comprehension speed, it would be very useful in today’s world of information overload. Given the number of books I seem to be reading simulataneously, a book in ten minutes would be very, very handy

In my mission for transcendence, I am currently reading Brian Tracy’s “Goals! - How to Get Everything You Want — Faster Than You Ever Thought Possible”. It’s all about setting yourself and being aware of targets in your personal and professional life. What interests me is how people become limited by their own beliefs, programmed in to them by society, friends, family etc.

Also of interest is the way that we restrain our achievements by thinking in the negative. That’s not to say that we consciously think negatively, it’s just that most of us (me included) think about what we don’t want to happen, not what we do want to happen.

For example, many people spend their work lives trying not to make mistakes, the view being that failing to make mistakes will result in a secure job. This eventually programs them to be risk averse and stifles their productivity and creativity, whilst the people who embrace new ideas and aren’t afraid to make mistakes will learn quicker and ultimately prove more successful because they aren’t actively avoiding mistake making. This point is reinforced in several books by Management guru Tom Peters who suggests that the most powerful people in an organisation are those that don’t see any reason why they shouldn’t try something different, rather than those who try and play by the book. That’s not to say that these people are rule breakers, it’s just that they take opportunities to try things that aren’t covered by job descriptions and procedures. (more…)

Yesterday I read an article by a guy called Steve Manning about how to write a book. In particular he was talking about writing fiction and the crux of the article was about where to get a plot from.

His suggestion is to head down to the nearest used bookstore and trawl the shelves for a “bestseller”. He then recommends that you buy it, read it and if you liked the story, distil its plot down on a piece of paper and there you have it a plot. Then feel free to tweak time, place etc to get the theme of your story.

My first reaction was abject horror, surely that is simple theft? Then it occurred to me that actually when you think about it, there are only a handful of basic themes, forbidden love, the nobody destined to save the kingdom, the crime of passion etc., a theory suggested by Joseph Campbell (”The Hero has a thousand faces”), based on human pschological makeup. I mean, how many times has Romeo and Juliet been used as a plot? Sure it’s tweaked here and there but still people pay good money to see films and read books with the same basic plot?

So is Manning’s idea plagiarism, or just an honest suggestion of the process used by successful authors? Probably a bit of both, and with the recent Da Vinci case closed, perhaps it supports the fact that these guys who churn a book out every couple of years are going straight to the best source of stories to fast track their new income stream; the used book shop :).

Most of you regulars will know that I’m a big fan of the Ricky Gervais show on podcast. It is a strange show in that most of the humour, in fact, speaking, doesn’t come from Ricky, or from writing \ directing partner Stephen Merchant, but from their old XFM producer, Karl Pilkington.

Karl’s view of the world differs from most through a fundamental misunderstanding of the basic laws of the universe. Gravity aside, theories of evolution, conservation of energy, time and space do not trouble his thoughts. Ever. My favourite idea of Karl’s is that they could make a watch that tells you how long you have left to live. Not sure why you would want to know but there you go. Other daft comments include:

“I’m saying, who’s happy at the end of this? You’ve got a fella who hasn’t got a present over here because their mate brought ‘em a goat. So there’s one bloke he’s not happy. Then, you’ve got the person who’s opened it, who like I said, wanted something else, right, it’s a goat, and they go ‘who’s gonna look after this?’, right, so another one, he’s not happy, and then you got the goat going ‘what am I doing here?””

-On Oxfam’s scheme to buy a goat for someone in Africa instead of an Xmas present for a friend. (more…)

It seems that a lot of visitors to my site seem to find us by googling “maghook”. So I thought that I would put them out of their misery but giving the fictional yet oh so useful device its own page. So if you are that way inclined, head over to maghook central.

If you aren’t that way inclined, bother not sir.

So let me get this right. The authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, a book suggesting evidence that Jesus really married Mary Magdalene and had a child, and all that other stuff in the Da Vinci Code, is a breach of their copyright and we are supposed to believe that this isn’t a massive publicity stunt?

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