It’s been a while since I posted about photoreading. And perhaps that is because it’s not a novelty any more.
I use it all of the time - textbooks for my studies, newspapers, reports, and I get great results with it, sometimes suprising results that I could harp on about for days, and you would either believe me or not.
Recently I photoread my first novel. A fascinating experience indeed. Not only did I read through the book quicker than I would normally read a novel, but I also had a much more vivid experience of the book than I normally would. Many times in the book I noticed that details of the scene I had imagined included details that weren’t described until later on, so my imagination was far more stimulated and multi-sensory, immersing me in the story as a witness rather than observer. That’s the best way I can describe the experience, you really need to have your own experience to get more information on this.
And there have been countless little moments where photoreading has surprised me. The most recent being when I had 5 minutes to read a 40 page report before a meeting to review it. I read it through, superread it to highlight my comments on the errors and headed off to the meeting. As part of the discussions it became clear to the attendees that I actually knew the content of the report better than the author, who had copied and pasted much of the content. I was also able to comment on the inconsistency of the themes in the document. And the interesting thing is I didn’t have time before the meeting to consciously process these things. As the meeting progressed and the report was actively discussed, the answers came and I just let them come out. Brilliant.
So there you go, some of my experiences. If you are intrigued, head over to this blog, a guy is documenting his experience with photoreading and I wish him the best of luck with getting out what I do.
http://withthebeginninginmind.blogspot.com/2007/06/photoreading-journey-so-far.html
