DayDreaming is Your Greatest Asset

How Your Brain’s Executive Network Wins
After You Surrender Control

Speed Reading Rules

In 5th grade, Mrs. Crawford screamed out to the class,
“Harold, stop daydreaming and pay attention. My 18-inch ruler
gives you five seconds to answer the next question or face the
consequences.”

In high school, Mr. Abbot punched me on the right shoulder and
strongly suggested, “Mr. Wechsler, no daydreaming in my class.
Wake up your attention now, or go to the principal’s office.”

Fact: normal healthy folks spend up to one-third of their waking
hours daydreaming without focus or concentration. Neuroscientists
in Canada suggest some of us spend 30 to 70% of our time daydreaming.

Is it Bad?

Sigmund Freud believed daydreaming was neurotic and infantile.
Walt Disney said he got the idea for his theme parks watching his
daughters and daydreaming. Tom Edison stopped working daily for a
20 minutes devoted to his daydreaming ritual seeking inventions.

The latest research – 5.13.09, lead author, K. Christoff, University of
British Columbia, was published in the journal – Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, offering a roadmap to successful daydreaming.

Mind Wandering

The difference between day and night dreaming is our power of personal
control, and long-term memory storage in daydreaming.

Rules: to productively daydream, you must consciously start within 20 minutes
of boring lecture or mind-numbing routine task. It must last for a minimum of
ten-minutes.

Think of a time you found yourself re-read the same paragraph three-times
and not grasping any meaning from the words. Your left-hemisphere (language-processing) turn-off, and dominance shifted to your right-hemisphere, the essence of imagination and creativity. Call it spatial skills and pattern recognition.

Professor Christoff

When you engage in a routine, repetitive task like counting, filing or cleaning,
we become less aware of our mind-wandering. Studying students using a functional
Magnetic Resonance Imagery (fMRI), she discovered two separate but parallel neutal networks triggered during productive daydreaming.

For the past 25 years scientists were exclusively aware of our Default Network, activated during simple, boring events. It links our Prefrontal Cortex and Anterior Cingulate Cortex, and causes us to zone-out unproductively.

Professor Christoff discovered a second neural network triggered when our daydreaming involves complex problem solving. This is our Executive Network, and integrates left-and-right hemispheres using long-term semantic memory (language), and imagination and creativity to solve problems.

We get valuable new inventions and creative ideas only when both Default and Executive Networks are activated in parallel.

Milton H. Erickson, M.D. On Daydreaming

I am not concerned with how much you learn about
the Whys and Wherefores (intellectually) of (hypnosis)
or anything else – i.e. SpeedLearning in this room.

You will continue to process both the procedures (strategies)
and analyze the principles during your “twilight”
(scholars call it “hypnagogic state”) daydreaming moments.

How often do we DayDream?

Neuroscientists estimate our Twilight Zone between waking
hours (beta cycles per second) and hypnagogic (alpha and theta
cycles per second) time, at up to thirty (30%) percent.

Hypnagogic (Twilight) Daydreaming

We all experience these moments as being neither here-nor-there,
not-awake and not-asleep, yet a time when serious learning and
memory fix in our synapses and neural networks.

You have your own individual patterns of hypnagogic learning.
Is your dominant sensory representation visual imagery, auditory hints
(stream-of-consciousness), or remembered creative feelings leading to
mastering your new SpeedLearning skills?

Some of us begin daydreaming about our new skills and knowledge
immediately, others require time to consolidate our conscious
classroom experiences. Long-term memory is fixed through our
non-conscious alignment between the left and right hemispheres.

Integration (alignment) does not require awareness, attention or intention to make it so. The triggers are our corpus callosum, hippocampal, and anterior
commissures (joints) and they operate like our nervous system, silently and
deeply.

We call these three the “switchboard”, the interhemispheric communication
system between our left and right brains. You own three very powerful tools.
They operate on autopilot.

Prohibition

It is natural in learning new procedural skills (typing, computing, driving, and
SpeedLearning), to attempt to understand Why (analysis) it works, while simultaneously experiencing (practicing) the How of your new skill.

Keep intellectualizing separate from the procedural (skill) drilling. They are
in opposition. Call it Analysis (separation) verses Synthesis (combining).
One cancels out the other, so don’t step on the accelerator and brake together.

SpeedLearning Principle: Why (?) it works is intellectual and left-brained; How (?) to do it - is a procedural, right-brained (motor) skill. They are contradictory during
the learning process, and later integrated and aligned.

Principle: keep the experience (doing) away from your intellect. Experiencing is right-brain dominant (pattern-recognition), while analysis is left-hemispheric
(language) centered. When you attempt to combine, you inhibit the firing of your new synapses, and hardwiring of new neural networks.

Google: Donald O. Hebb brain principles: the cells that fire-together, wire-together.
The connection between neurons (nerve cells) increases in efficacy, in proportion
to the degree of correlation between pre-and post-synaptic activity.

He helped explain the concept of Stimulus/Response in neuroscience.

Endwords

Would having a unique competitive advantage in school and career help you
obtain promotions and financial rewards? We suggest that reading three-times
faster, with double your present long-term memory skills may be useful.

Ask us how. www.speedlearning.org hbw@speedlearning.org
1-877-567-2500

Speed Reading Rules
See ya,

copyright © 2009 H. Bernard Wechsler.
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Are Contrarians Right More Often?

Are Contrarians Right More Often?

Speed Reading Rules

Disputes between academics are not bread-and-butter issues for 99%
of us, but there is a Positive Feedback to apply to your career. Hold-your-horses.

Who believes in Flying Saucers, Blackbeard’s Treasure, and allegations
the CIA has been illegally reading our Email for the past 15 years?

How about the Government (CIA) conducting Mind-Control
experiments on the public, prisoners, and American soldiers since the 1960s?

Don’t we flip past the Conspiracy-Nut stories like Washington D.C. blew-up the World Trade Center? Me too.

Now view www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13845.htm

My father used to endlessly reiterate – What your eyes see, your heart is bound
to believe. Please view (I double-dare you!) this Discovery Channel 50-minute video originally shown 7.04.06. It would convert a corpse that the CIA is dangerous to
the good health of the U.S. It is fully documented, and offers a woman whose entire
memory was dissolved for a CIA experiment in mind-control.

Science

My personal religion is the use of the Scientific Method as much as possible in
personal decision-making. After the nit-picking is over – Freud was right 90%
of the time, and Darwin’s evolution is 98% on the money.

Any adult Homo sapiens who denies Natural Selection through evolution, and the validity of Origin of The Species, Charlie Darwin’s book published in 1859, is
on a par with denying the Holocaust of World War 2, and maybe the Principle of
Gravity.

For about fifty-years educators argued whether reading is best taught using Phonics
or Whole-Word. The third group jumped-up-and-down for 50-50, both Phonics and
Whole-Word. So what, who cares but stupid educators?

The population of the U.S. is 306,700,758, call it 306.7 million. And the population
of the planet Earth is recorded as almost 6.8 billion folks. So?

Reading in one form or another is a skill used by about 85% of these human statistics.

For the last 25 years reading has been taught by concentrating on Phonics.
That means our brain depends on Phonemes – sound-by-sound to create speech and
reading. Nice try, no cigar.

Neuroscience

The other side – Whole-Word – said no-way, our brain remembers entire (whole) words at a time, not letter-into sound. Memory recalls the Shape of words, and
once we got it, it is stored for future retrieval with the sounds and meaning.

The educators compromised and taught 50% phonics and 50% Whole-Word.

Wrong again. Our brain reads word-by-word. Words are seen as units and processed like a runaway-train. It took until April 30, 2009 published in Neuron, to provide scientific proof “the brain recognizes common words as WHOLE- units.”

One more thing – for Brilliant Stars – there is an area of the brain called –
VWFA (Visual Word Form Area) on the left hemisphere involved in recognizing
whole words. We do NOT focus on letters or letter combinations (syllables).

Wait! Meaning (interpretation) is assigned by Wernicke’s Area, only after
recognition of the words by our brain.

How Your Brain Does The Reading Trick

“Aoccdrnig to a rscheearcg at Cmabridgde Uinerstisy, it deosn’t
mattaer in what oreadr the ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset
can be a toatle mses and you can still raed it wouthit portbelm.
This is becuseae the human mind deos not raed ervey lteter by istleft,
but the word as a wlohe.”

Now you get it, right?

We all believe a picture is worth 1,000 words, but a few well-chosen
words is worth 1,000 pictures. Right?

Google: Grill-Spector 4.30.09, Neuron 62, p. 161-162.
Title: Deeos the Bairn not Raed Ervey lteter by Istlef,
but the Wrod as a Wlole?

Endwords

You are going to live a healthy, productive life into your nineties, if you
don’t fall in front of a Mack truck. If you wish to be independent, and not
suffering from one form of dementia or another (Alz included), you must
be a lifelong learner. That means you might consider being a speed reader.

You still have a lot of years in front of yourself, so would it be a good idea
to have a unique competitive advantage over your peers in school and career?
You can easily learn to triple (3x) your learning speed – permanently,
and to double (2x) your long-term memory. How about disabling Stress
from your long life?

If you are interested, Ask-Us-How, it is baby-easy, and you can add it
to your personal skills. Do it to get promotions and make more dinero,
but also do it to create a Cognitive Reserve in your brain.

Why?

To maintain your brain in its optimal condition, and learn and remember
like Einstein all the years of your long life.

Speed Reading Rules. See ya,

copyright © 2009 H. Bernard Wechsler www.speedlearning.org
hbw@speedlearning.org 1-877-567-2500
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Food For Your Mind

Food For Your Mind

Speed Reading Rules

You might want to remember the name B. F. Skinner. He was a psychology professor at Harvard from 1958 to 1974, and was cited professionally as
the most influential psychologist of the 20th century.

So what?

He showed scientific proof we can change others and improve ourselves
through Positive Reinforcement. Homo sapiens are motivated by rewards
that make us feel good – dopamine is the pleasure neurotransmitter.

Remember when your kindergarten teacher sent you home with a Gold
or Silver star on your Picasso-like first drawing, and your Mom hung it on the refrigerator?

We still need a Gold Star, a pat on the back, a few platinum words of approval,
or a prize to produce our best efforts. Why? Folks are instinctually competitive,
and simultaneously hardwired with a Fear-of-Failure.

If you and your peers do not receive Positive Reinforcement on a regular basis
for small successes, you freeze up and inhibit your creative nature and imagination.

Fear of Failure

Human are conditioned from the womb to the tomb, at home, career, school,
and by the media, that rejection, making mistakes, being wrong, and failing are the
greatest sins.

We are taught to stay within our Comfort-Zone, status-quo, and
homeostasis, and drastically fear change. Problem: life is change, and we are
wired for improvement, new knowledge and original experiences.

Yet our most powerful learning is Trial-And-Error. We must experiment, make mistakes, remember both our errors and successes, and improve our next performance.

Conditioned Negative Reinforcers

If you give someone a slight shock when they do not perform correctly, or stop
feeding an animal to punish for not obeying, they remember better the next time.
It is a negative reinforcer and produces results, but often results in resistance and
a negative attitude. Conditioned Positive Reinforcers work better.

Skinner on Learning

We are all in the business of lifetime learning of how to adapt to our environment.
All experiences change the structure and function of our brain. They create Synapses of learning, and hardwired Neural Networks of knowledge and habit.

See what you think of Skinner’s five rules of learning faster and better.

1. Search for immediate feedback (positive and negative) to
create permanent memories for learning.
2. Learn in baby-steps, not in large swallows of knowledge.
3. Repeat the directions: three-times for accuracy.
4. Start with Simple ideas, move to Harder to Comprehend,
and after greater experience, to Complex ideas.
5. Every step of the way – offer and accept Positive Reinforcement.

Now search this list of seven activities that inhibit learning and discovery.

1. Blaming others – even when we are wrong is a guaranteed we will
never stick our neck out again.
2. Bribing a team to work without collective desire or interest produces inferior results. Look for curiosity and a need to discover.
3. Condemning our results to others (or in print) is never forgiven.
4. Criticizing causes a freeze-up of our future effort.
5. Threatening is counter-productive and increases a failure mentality.
6. Punishing in any form destroys 90% of relationships.
7. Nagging: how do you feel when you are repeatedly told what and how to do an activity?

The Brain of the 20th Century

Milton H. Erickson, American psychiatrist, suggested two learning strategies
that went against the grain. See what you think.

Interrupted Practice

At home, in school and in our career we are conditioned to believe we must
complete everything we start. Sounds smart. We understand this principle
as meaning once we start a project, we must continue on it until the bitter
end. Wrong.

Dr. Erickson taught at medical schools to learn the same way your brain does.
Take small bites of the apple at a time. How do you defeat a 50-foot giant?
Start with his ankle and take one bite at a time until he disappears.

He called it Interrupted Practice. Wake up fresh in the morning and do a
high-speed practice of a new strategy or learning for no more than 10-minutes.
Have breakfast and return refreshed and do another full effect of 10-minutes.

Wait! What so great about that? The average high school student studies for
about 90-minutes before taking a break, and forgets 86% of what he learned in the
first 65-minutes before he/she finishes. College and graduate school students
study until they drop into a coma for up to three-hours at a time.

Their results are a forgetting curve of up to 90% because they do not analyze
(think) they underline, and do not synthesize (consolidate), nor summarize
new ideas into their own words. Gathering the text and ideas in one place
does not create learning, it is phony-baloney text underlining note-taking.

Coda: if you can do four separate ten-minute slots of learning in 90-minutes,
you will remember 2.5 times (long-term) more than steady-stream concentrating.

Interference

Erickson discovered by scientific research the need for Separation between the
practice (drill) of strategies, and understanding the Why of it.
Homo sapiens have a need to understand Simultaneously with learning the
skill, knowledge or experience.

So what?

It creates interference between the function of your left and right hemispheres.
Why? Don’t ask! Just let the Right-Brain use its Pattern Recognition to map
the new stuff, and later after you own the skill, permit your Left-Brain to store the
knowledge for later examination and understanding in a Neural Network.

We teach the use of a Pacer to underline the sentences you read to access your
powerful Peripheral Vision to triple your learning skills. It is a reading strategy,
and students and executives disrupt their own learning by constantly Intellectualizing the sensory process by asking questions like Why? How? What?

That is Interference. Say the magic word and win a Duck? Separation – first own
the skills, then ask deep questions about How. Forget about meaning, and first get reproduce your learning skills, strategies or knowledge. Then understanding is easy.

Endwords

To create your own unique competitive advantage over your peers, ask us how to
3x your reading, 2x your long-term memory, and discover StressBusing skills.

Speed Reading Rules

copyright © 2009 H.B.Wechsler www.speedlearning.org hbw@speedlearning.org
1-877-567-2500
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These Seven Questions Make Geniuses

Seven Questions of Genius

Speed Reading Rules

Every year we read or hear a minimum of five (5) great ideas
that would help us in school and in our careers. What happens to them?

Our still-small-voice (Internal Dialogue) shouts at us – it will never
work – this thing takes too much effort – or - I am not smart enough
to implement this new method! The result is we give up before we ever
start.

The Einstein Memory System is baby-easy to learn and use. Many of our graduates
swear it is responsible for their career promotions and great earnings.

How Many Careers Will You Have?

Some of us know that we will work for at least five (5) different organizations
during our lifetime career. Is it important to have a competitive advantage over your peers when the economy is tough? Who do HR departments choose for advancement?

The Einstein Memory System will permit you to be smarter than your rivals
in an interview for an executive position, and to deliver more once you are chosen.

Taking Notes

Most corporate meetings (as you well know) are a waste of time. How often do you
come away with a specific plan to implement the new ideas? Two days after a meeting, reading a memo or business article, 90% of us cannot remember
the title of what we heard, nor any of the core ideas.

We need a simple system to execute a form to save the great ideas we heard or read.

Einstein to The Rescue

The reason we take away nothing much from what we hear or read is because
we are not really involved in thinking about the ideas. We think our job is to just
listen or read and collect or underline data.

We have to analyze (figure it out), synthesize (combine, make whole), and summarize the key ideas, in our own words.

Now the article, chapter or subject of the meeting must be reduced to a single page of note taking. Have you ever done a visual Memory Map? It’s easy and will double
what you remember and use.

If we do not take the NEW ideas we heard or read, and link them to ideas we
previously KNEW, there is no long-term memory or learning.

Start Now

Make believe you just sat through a 40-minute meeting or read a five-page business
article. How are you going to remember it?

1. Take a single page and start a diagram with the main topic. You will write keywords that describes the big ideas you learned. Don’t copy – make up the keywords in your own language. Keep it short and simple.

You have just activated your PreFrontal Cortex for decision-making and organizing
the information into long-term memory.

2. Circle the 1-2 keywords in the middle of the page. It is your main topic.

3. Each next idea flows and is associated with the main topic.

4. Always print each idea so you can read it clearly a month later.

5. Use logic and common sense to connect each new idea as a subsidiary,
flowing from the previous idea. One will mind you of the next.

Any way you structure the page is correct because it is for your personal use
to remember what your heard or read. Our graduates use symbols, colors and
“doodling” on the page to link ideas for long-term memory with images.

For Genius Only

If you use this idea that combines a) Imagination (mental pictures), b) Association
(linking), and c) Location (a schema to remember), you will double your memory,
improve your comprehension up to 25%, and increase your reading speed up to
200%. Please hang in to the end – the benefits are worth it.

If you physically print the answers radiating from these seven
questions, your brain fires Synapses, and creates a new Neural Network of knowledge. So what? In a short time the Einstein Memory System goes on
autopilot and you organize ideas automatically because the system is a habit.

a) Who? Name the main characters, plaintiff or defendant, buyer or seller. Remember back in kindergarten: the Owl says Who! – Who!
From this moment you will associate the word Who? with a mental
image of an Owl.

b) What? Summarize what happened. Cause and Effect, stimulus/
response. Mental image: see a hat and let it remind you of the
Question – What? The word ‘hat’ is in the word - What?

c) When? Give the dates (timeline) involved. Be specific. Mental Image: see a Hen and permit to remind you of the question, When?
Why a Hen? It is part of the letters used to print the word,
When.

d) Where? In what country, state or city. What court? trial or
appellate. Your mental image for Where? is a rabbit – a
Hare. It reminds you of the word Where?

e) Why? We are searching for cause, meaning, or purpose. Each
party has their answer to Why? What do you think?
The mental image for Why? is an Eye. Eye reminds you of Why?

f) Which? You have to make the choice, exercise options. Which
decision was made? The mental image for memory is a Witch -
Flying on a Broom. The Witch reminds you of the question, Which?

g) How? This adverb asks for a strategy, procedure, or method.
The mental image is a Cow to remind you of How? It rhymes.
How milk? Cow, that is how?

Endwords

If you ask yourself these 7 core questions about what you hear in a meeting or
read in a business article, and record the answers in a radiating diagram, you
will have great comprehension, long-term memory and speed reading.

For more details ask us how to make these diagrams.

See ya,

Speed Reading Rules

copyright © 2009 H. Bernard Wechsler
www.speedlearning.org hbw@ speedlearning.org
1-877-567-2500
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Can You Use a Super Memory?

Is Better Memory a Competitive Advantage For Promotion in School
And Career Advancement?

Speed Reading = Speed Learning

Can you land an executive slot in today’s economy because you
got more smarts than other interviewees?

When I was in my freshman year in law school, it was normal to
study one subject for three-hours without a break. Then you switched to
another subject, and did another three-hour session.

When the grades arrived a few months later, six-hours a day, seven-days
a week dedicated-learning did not prove out as a hot strategy.

Hardwired Learning

Fact: testing or self-testing enhances learning 2x compared to additional
study. The act of retrieval in critical in Long-Term retention.

What does that mean in plain English?

Answer: Study text for 15 minutes using a note taking system (BrainMapping).
Do some exercise (Breathe-Stretch-Shake, and Let-it-Go!) for 10-
minutes.

Return and learn for another 15 minutes and Brain-Map,
and exercise again for 10-minutes.

Do another 15-minutes of new information, and take a 10-minute break.

Why?

1. Constant stimulation does not cause Synaptic Connections (firing of cells)
to Switch-On a Neural Network for long-term memory.
2. You must have a Gap of time for consolidation of knowledge, when there
is no stimulation. Study for 15 and take notes, consolidate the info for 10-
minutes gaps of no stimulation.
3. The critical fact to learning is not stimulation, but Time to consolidate
the knowledge.
4. Each time you test your memory for keyword retention, you refire the neuronal synapses to create long-term memory.

Google: Professor Usha Goswami, Cambridge University, 2009; Roediger & Karpicke 2006

What is Breathe, Stretch, Shake, And Let-it-Go?

If you will get out of your chair – stand up and walk around, you will add
up to 10% additional oxygen to your lungs, and eliminate about 10% more carbon dioxide and toxins.

How about the fact that this consolidation Time-Out will release stress from your 12 ocular muscles, and avoid dry-eye from computer-page glare?

If you will do this baby-easy three-minute exercise, you will seriously improve
your nervous and immune systems, and activate your NeoCortex, Frontal Lobe,
and PreFrontal Cortex for stronger Attention, Concentration, and long-term
memory. So What? It will help 2x your learning and memory.

a) Standing, close your eyes. Take a deep, diaphragmatic inhale for a count of one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, and three-one-thousand (three-seconds).
b) Slowly release the deep breath while exhaling to the count of three
one-one-thousands (three-seconds).
c) Do this inhale/exhale diaphragmatic breathing a total of three-times.
Takes a minute or so.
d) Open your eyes and stretch your arms out as far as possible. Lift each
leg separately and stretch it out, and draw it back. Bend your back
and twist your torso, and do a neck roll left to right, and right to left.
Notice how it releases muscle tension and makes you feel good.
e) Shake means to act like a big dog or horse and separately move your
arms, legs, torso, and move your head and neck around. It relieves
anxiety and replaces it with deep relaxation.

The last part is the most important for long-term effect. Close your eyes, and
mentally picture your entire body looking relaxed and stress-free. Now slap
both hands against your body (hips) and say out-loud, Let-It-Go! (stress and
anxiety).

Do – Let-It-Go! once, twice, and three-times, and you are done and much
improved.

Volition

It takes 7 consecutive days of Breathe-Stretch-Shake etc to see strong
positive results. N.B. It takes 21 days to make it a habit.

Now you have a will power choice; do this simple, valuable 3-minute exercise
for your brain, body and mind, or call it a waste of time, and forgetaboutit.

We receive emails from students and executives who use Breathe, Stretch, Shake,
and Let-It-Go! at school or the office as a StressBuster. Many claim it improves
their lives, work, and grades. Who is the Boss of You? Choose.

Endwords

Would it make you stand out as a student or executive to read and remember
three books, articles and reports in the time your competitors can hardly
finish one? Is your personal productivity important for promotions?

Ask us for details. Speed Reading and Speed Learning rule.

See ya,

copyright © 2009 H. Bernard Wechsler hbw@speedlearning.org
www.speedlearning.org
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