The Butterfly Effect

Have you figured-out the secrets of speed reading?

When you consciously-practice moving your eyes left-middle-right, it simultaneously causes your brain to shift-attention from the beginning, center and final-section of the sentence - instead of reading-across at one-word-at-a-time.

Peripheral-vision (lateral-left and lateral-right), - causes a habit to be installed in

your brain that changes your reading-speed from one-word-at-a-time, to triple that, three-words-at-a time.

Dr. Maurizio Corbetta, Washington University School of Medicine, is the researcher who used fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imagery), to show that the same parts of the brain move both our eyes - and shift our focus of attention.

This means the same parts of our brain that control eye-movements simultaneously control what we pay attention to. Control your eye-movements and you govern your attention-and-concentration and triple your reading-speed.

Crunching is Speedup!

Chunking each sentence into three-sections, and crunching-words

(running-them-together), cause a reduction of up to 66% in subvocalization.

When we reduce mentally-hearing each-and-every-word we read to hearing only every second or third word by crunching (jamming), the words together we save up to an hour of reading time daily by speed reading.

Your Pacer

Using a your pen as a pacer to underline each sentence you read reduces regressions by 80%. Our eyes follow the trace-flow of the pacer (persistence of vision), and we do not lose our place on the page.

The pacer causes our eyes and brain to integrate with the speed of our dominant-hand moving the pacer - to triple our reading speed. The pacer almost eliminates regressions rereading sentences.

The first-step, the baby-step, the essential introduction to speed reading begins and ends with using a pacer. Using your pen to underline each sentence you read is the sine qua non (indispensable step) for speed reading.

The First Step Starts the Ball Rolling

Lets start with the answer and work backwards.

Small changes lead to massive reactions, the basis of the Butterfly Effect, by professor Edward Lorenz of MIT. Google the law of Chaos - under physics.

Call it baby-steps, but what is worth remembering is that all personal-growth begins with a single-change. Your choice-of-career begins with the baby-step of believing you can. Choosing a significant-other commences with a sight, touch or sound that touches-your-heart. And the first-step in speed reading is consistently using a pen-as-a-pacer whenever you read for career or pleasure.

Volition

It is volition choosing, making a decision and acting on it - the act of exercising your will - that is the beginning of every significant-event in your life.

a) if you want to learn something new (an idea, word or principle), you have to create an association between something we already know, and the new, new thing. You used the alphabet and typing to learn to become an expert on your computer and then to surf-the-web.

b) if you want to permanently remember ideas, names or dates, mental-imagery (mind-symbols), is your personal-tool for installing long-term memory. Tsunami has stickiness because her Nami is Sue.

c) if you want to reduce subvocalization (mentally hearing each word you read), because it slows you down to a crawl you choose to read sentences with your foot on the acceleration, and off the brake. We call it crunching, ignoring the space-between-words, and crunching the words together.

If you train yourself by subvocalizing the phrase Speedup! each paragraph, and later every-other paragraph until it becomes a habit - your brain automatically ignores the spaces between words, and compresses the flow of words.

You still read and comprehend each and every word (it is not skimming), but read twice or three-times f-a-s-t-e-r.

The Butterfly Effect

In 1972, at a meeting in Washington, D.C., Dr. Edward Lorenz of MIT, presented his scientific paper to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, that continues to echo in the twenty-first century. It was called: Predictability: Does the flap of a butterflys wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas? Picture it in your mind for long-term storage. Dr. Lorenzs subject was chaos theory, and how it affects our physical universe, and specifically the predictability of weather. His analogy is the butterflys flapping of its wings creates a disturbance in the chaotic motion of the atmosphere so that long-term behavior becomes impossible to forecast. Further, that simple systems of equations result in a pattern of infinite complexity. Lets get to the bottom-line: The Butterfly Effect stands for the proposition that - the slightest differences in one-variable have profound effects on the outcome of the whole system. Initial differences become magnified over time to produce dramatically different final-results! Speed Reading is Your Butterfly If you choose to live into your nineties, and enjoy your time down here, you will be useful to other people by learning new stuff all-your-life.

If we were related or best buddies, and you ask me the secret of a subject I have studied for fifty-years the answer is - always read with a pacer in your hand. There are three types of Pacers that improve your eyes and your brain: your handheld laser-pen, an ordinary pen, and the cursor on your computer mouse.

Your Brain is a Use-It-Or-Lose-It Skill It begins anew every day when you pick up your pen to use as a pacer - underline each sentence you read at the office or for leisure.

Using-your-pen-as-a-pacer continuously is the first-step, its the flapping-of-the-butterflys-wings, to reinforce the neuropathway (habit), of speed reading.

For those who have to know where the feet-grow-from: your pacer activates your peripheral-vision, permitting you to expand your visual perceptual-span (located in your fovea-centralis, of the retina), from a mere six-letters, to a width of eighteen to thirty-five characters. That is the difference between reading one-word at a time to comprehending three-to-six-words at a time. It ends snailing, and begins the power of speed reading.

Until We Meet Again What does Dr. Lorenzs Butterfly Effect have to do with speed reading?

Small changes lead to massive reactions, applies to all your dormant talents and gifts if you apply the Butterfly Effect.

Speed readers enter into a cascade of personal-growth because they know they can read-and-remember enormous amounts of text. They have a dozen strategies and techniques to draw upon as self-help tools. Fear of the unknown is a non-starter, and replaced by self-esteem - based on recognition of your new cognitive-knowledge and talents.

DWE

We are all equal, but some of us are more equal than others. George Orwell

Volition is choosing, and acting on your decision. She has two sisters, Intention and Attention, and together - they constitute DWE Directed Willful Effort your power of mental-force. Speed reading is a very practical step to becoming aware and developing your innate gifts-and-talents. Speed readers are auto-didactic(self-taught), and learn through trial-and-error, cause-and-effect, and stimulus/response. In the Knowledge Economy, the Information-Century speed readers rule because we use more of our gifts and talents. We plan ahead asking ourselves the magic-question What-if?, and having a Plan A, B, and C - because it gives us the competitive-edge.

Intention Tell me - how do you know (at any age), that you cannot learn the guitar, paint like Picasso, climb Mt. Everest or be a Pulitzer-Prize winning writer unless you make that first small change in your life - and discover your latent gifts-and-talents?

We encourage you to listen to your still, small voice; your mind wants you to exercise your volition. Remember back to when you read like a snail? It all begins with a burning-desire for change a decision, and acting on it. It works with speed reading, starting a new career, learning a foreign language, or initiating a relationship. Our suggestion is be useful in whatever you do and trust in the unfolding because small changes lead to massive reactions.

Endwords The task is not so much to see what no one has yet seen; but to think what nobody has yet thought about that which everybody sees!,

Edwin Schrodinger, physicist

copyright
H. Bernard Wechsler
www.speedlearning.org
hbw@speedlearning.org