What you are about to see is not just praise.
It is proof.
I did not realise how much time and mental energy I was losing, until I got some of it back.
Dear Sanjeev,
The President once approached Oliver Wendell Holmes Jnr, who was in his 90s and reading Plato. When asked “Mr. Justice, why are you reading Plato now?” he replied “To improve my mind, Mr. President…”
Voracious reader that I always was, I thought there might be very little left in “how to read”. I could never have been more wrong.You systematically countered every myth and gave a gamut of tools.The course was fun, the fellow learners varied and equally keen.Your energetic exuberance was indefatigable!
I started with approximately 165 words per minute (wpm). After two weeks I was over 950 wpm. Comprehension — as you predicted — only increased due to a heightened focus.
Due to work constraints and the need for nuance, accelerated reading could not always be appropriate. Yet for large volumes of background ‘legalese’ where one hunts for specific data, Lightning Reading gave me a most expeditious way of finding needles in haystacks. You gave a sniper a satellite targeting mechanism!
Subvocalisation … a habit killed very fast: I just bit the tip of my tongue and read on. Houston, we have lift-off!
The wand is an excellent tool. It was replaced with a pencil, pen, letter opener, little finger, toothpick, laser pointer and even an incense stick. The length and width can cost 100–200 wpm.
Eyeball movement became fatiguing. I moved my skull rather than the eyeballs.Finding the sweet spot was critical. I dropped from nearly 1000 wpm to a comfortable 800 wpm.
Familiar works vs. a new read: A familiar document would easily be done close to or above 1000 wpm. For new documents: a primary quick scan, secondary paragraph-by-paragraph cherry picking, then a crucial pause. Overall time spent was1/4 to 1/3rd of before.
I do not take notes or underline, except side-note references or “hinge points”.
Finally, an open mind is the most precious thing, and your course affirms that age-old truth. I went from 165 wpm to nearly and sometimes over 1000 wpm. Such a quantum leap is truly a testament to the teacher and his work.
My eternal gratitude to you, Sanjeev!!!
The method is the same.
The use cases are different.
