I thought this would be an interesting category for the Resource Library to collect all of the interesting methods, techniques, classes, trainings, and other ways to improve ourselves. We all want to improve the world, our business, our products, whatever - but improving ourselves is a key way to also making those things better. Being able to process, design, analyze, manipulate faster and better. So here are some ways to do it. 

The idea came after reading these two articles called "Learning to Learn Faster". There are two parts, and here are some of the highlights followed by links to the originals.

“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.”

“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.”

"... the use of a visual pacer improves reading speeds by 25 percent.  

But Kwik tells his students to either use their left finger for that pacer; or hold that pacer (i.e. a pencil) with their left hand—and that’s where this story gets interesting.

Here’s why: The left side of the body is controlled by the right side of the brain. While brain function is not evenly lateralized, the right side is far more creative than the left. When we control a pacer with our left hand, we are actively engaging these same creative process. It happens subconsciously, it happens automatically, but by engaging the right side of the brain we’re firing up the imagination which, in turn, fires us sense memory..."

"human performance is hackable. Learning is hackable. The brain is hackable. Literally."

"...the conscious mind processes roughly 40 bits of information a second. The subconscious, though, can handle 20 million bits of information a second."

"This is also why taking a shower or driving a car is such an effective problem solving hack. When we engage in lightly stimulating activity—activity that requires mental processing, but not too much of it—we are occupying the conscious mind with a task, and allowing the subconscious mind to take over information processing responsibilities."

Interested in learning how to take advantage of methods such as the "McGuyver" technique to greatly increase your problem solving ability? Check out the full story in the great articles below. I'm hooked.

http://singularityhub.com/2013/06/18/learning-to-learn-faster-the-one-superpower-everyone-needs/

http://singularityhub.com/2013/07/11/learning-to-learn-faster-part-ii-harnessing-the-subconscious-for-accelerated-performance/

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  • Very good article.  I believe even Evelyn Wood teaches the pacer technique. I have tried it and it works great! However, with books diminishing and the modern office going paperless the pacer technique is a little bit of a problem on the desktop computer. I suppose with a tablet device it would work fine but tablets are not ready for the office quite yet. Its just like my children's ages.. just when I think I have it all figured out it all changes again..


  • Admin

    ASME has a good series of articles on entrepreneurship. It's a topic I've been thinking about quite a bit lately, as starting a website like this really gets the juices flowing from a different direction than the routine entrepreneurial hit I get from my day job. So when I find a good article about it, I'll share it here!

    https://www.asme.org/career-education/articles/entrepreneurship/fro...

  • Great info!

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