I have a confession to make.

I’m a (super) lazy reader.

I have always read very quickly and easily—reading is fun. Reading is a relaxing, soothing activity. It’s like trying to absorb information while sleeping; it’s effortless. This made especial sense when all I read was fiction growing up (sci-fi, fantasy, dragons, witches, magic horses, you got it) but it continued to be the case when I started to educate myself about people, sex, business and the universe. Reading was “work”, but it was still just as easy.

At a certain point my desire for information began to outstrip my reading speed. I tried not to crave information, but it’s so hard! Listen to me whine. I spent more of my time reading, but the books tended to pile up anyway. I stopped buying everything on my list. I started choosing material more carefully, researching reviews, picking up the ones I knew would be really perfect and letting the rest go. This was a great approach, but it has one flaw: What do I do when the really perfect books breed and multiply?

That’s exactly what happened. I couldn’t choose anymore. There were just too many! How much time was I really going to spend reading?

I decided to learn to read faster. I took a photoreading course (after coming across Steve Pavlina’s posts) and was very pleased! I’d never done any sort of speed reading and I loved how fast I could get through nonfiction, even long before having mastered any of the unconscious processing techniques. But there was one problem, and it’s the problem I’m working to solve now: I’m a lazy reader!

For all its awesomeness, photoreading takes effort. Maybe more accomplished photoreaders than I don’t notice the effort, but many of the photoreaders I’ve met came from hating to read. I came from loving to read, and the idea of taking a relaxing activity and turning it into homework is something I can’t help but balk at. Of course, I still read all my fiction the “usual” way—fiction is less suited to photoreading anyhow—but I’m finding it difficult to adjust and use photoreading as my automatic solution, every time. Part of my brain is a little offended that I’m taking this awesome, relaxing work and making it… work.

What the hell? my brain says, indignant. Who do you think you are?

I’ve been mulling this over for a few weeks, and I’ve thought of a few probable solutions. I still photoread quite well (if not perfectly), so all I need to iron out is my motivation.

I speculated recently about starting a super-fast readers club, so that anticipating conversation about many different books in short spans of time would give me a “reason” to read them fast and be ready to discuss. (I’m letting that percolate. Something might come of it. Right now, I’m taking advantage of the Alternative Alternative MBA, and that’s a great “reason”—though maybe we should have another discussion, sometime, about why I feel I need more of a “reason” than just wanting to read the damn book!)

I’m thinking about coming at new books from a direction Seth suggested a few months ago: Use information to do something, not just learn something. This is great because photoreading involves setting a purpose for yourself, information you’re looking for, questions you want to have answered and identifying the most useful parts of the book—and the next step, after finding what you want, is to use it to make something happen. Well, of course! If I start to associate reading with an active approach (instead of with relaxing and getting all the information I want without expending any effort), I may find that my motivation as regards reading changes a lot.

This is all just speculation so far, but you’ll know what it means when I start making posts about books and actions together in the same space, instead of just gushing about my recent reading crush. It’s time for this to happen. I have a hell of a lot of books to get through, but feel free to translate: I have a hell of a lot of change to make.

Not long ago I ordered three tomes on book design, and two came immediately in the mail. I’ve been waiting (for more than a week at least) in the hopes that I might read all three together in an appropriately syntopic fashion, a la Adler (and Scheele). This morning I had just decided, well, to hell with it—I’ll read the first two syntopically and add the third when it comes. So I headed down to the gym with my big heavy books, and without really thinking about it I stopped at my mailbox.

Guess what had serendipitously arrived for me!

So now I have three gorgeous books on design for publishing (plus a book about beautiful website design, for good measure). And I’m feeling pretty good about my spontaneous corner of the universe.

Our picks (Pace helped), in case you’re curious:

The Elements of Typographic Style (Bringhurst)
Book Design and Production (Masterson)
On Book Design (Hendel)

I recently made a post in Pavlina’s Personal Development forums because some people were asking about the PhotoReading seminars that Learning Strategies offers, and it just so happened that I attended one last weekend. Of course, y’all knew that, but I mostly talked about my hypnagogic hordes of bugs. Oops.

This particular seminar happened in Dallas (in Addison, which is just north of the city) and was instructed by Millicent St. Claire. I link to her site because she’s fantastic to work with, but I’ll tell you right now that her site doesn’t manage to put across just how awesome she is. It’s a great site, but she is very real and effective in person. She’s also incredibly warm and vibrant, engaging, and excellent at what she does.

The seminar was split into three sessions: Roughly 6p-9p Friday evening, 9a-7p Saturday, and 9a-6p Sunday. I was thankful for Friday’s brevity after my long drive from Austin (I got on the wrong branch of 35 North, so I was on the road about four and a half hours), but Saturday and Sunday I arrived in class super early to play with biofeedback games and talk to people and relax. The classroom was a great environment for anybody wanting to learn something. It was wholly non-traditional, intensely creative, and very focused on accelerated learning right down to the details. There were poignant quotes on the walls, beautiful posters, 3-D stereograms for photofocus practice, cups of rainbow-colored markers, fresh white paper, and scads of brain toys on the tables. (Man, we had a ball playing with those toys.) It was like the best kindergarten ever.

There were rules, too: No stress. Ever. And all that was asked of us was that we open our minds and Do The Thing—skepticism was welcome and invited, so we all felt very free to ask questions and make suggestions. There were even note boards for those of us who were too shy to ask something outright, and Millicent made a regular point of getting to those boards and getting questions answered for the whole group.

There were 38 people in the class. Two of them were younger than me (both pre-college, one several years younger than that) and most of them were older professionals—30’s, 40’s, 50’s, and one at least one septuagenarian with entertaining anecdotes and a great sense of humor. They were all very warm, open-hearted people with an interest in this thing that felt important to me, this thing I wanted to learn well, and that endeared them to me. By the end of the weekend we’d pooled our contact information so that it would be easy to create a post-seminar support structure in the name of helping each other and talking about our PhotoReading exploits. Millicent was very excited and encouraging on this score, and I think that made us even more hellbent on making it happen. I was constantly impressed at how on the ball she was in regards to creative, mindful learning all the way down to the bits and pieces; she a consistent motivator in all the ways that mattered.

Millicent used a whole slew of super-interesting techniques to help us learn. These were widely varied and ranged from neuro-linguistic programming to Brain Gym exercises to visualization and interpersonal conversations (and writing poetry!). These made a huge difference for me, and I made a point of writing many of them down so that I can look into them more in the future. (I will probably be blogging about some of them!)

Many of the techniques we used were not specific to the PhotoReading course itself. I bought the home study course quite awhile ago, so I was particularly curious about how much would be different in the seminar. The answer? Everything but the basics! We did a lot from the course, and all the important things were included, but we learned them in a huge variety of creative ways. A lot of these I had heard of before, a lot of them were new to me—and a lot of them were bits and pieces from other Learning Strategies materials used specifically for learning to PhotoRead. I loved this, because it let me see first-hand how I felt about methods and workshops that I’d been curious about but not ready to test on my pocketbook. (This resulted in me picking up other Learning Strategies offerings while I was there, since I liked some of the techniques so much and had a feel for their benefits—and there were special weekend discounts available to the seminar participants. That was awesome, since I likely would have bought those things anyway.)

I also loved having the opportunity to hear from seminar participants who’d done the seminar before, once and twice in some cases. Some people had incredible personal stories to tell about how PhotoReading has affected their lives and work, and some of those stories were amazing—just knocked me out of my seat. Some of those people were back to brush up on their technique, but after experiencing the weekend for myself I’m pretty sure I’d go again even if I felt completely solid. It only costs $80 to attend and audit after you’ve completed the first seminar, which of course is an excellent marketing strategy, because it makes me want to register again with other interested parties. I’m seriously, seriously thinking about it; it would be a fantastic thing to do with friends or family.

The seminar weekend in its entirety was unbelievably relaxing and empowering for me. I drove home from Dallas feeling really refreshed, proud, confident. There was so much positivity, so much creative productivity, so many reminders to me (and to all the participants) that we are powerful, unique, amazing. I spent a total of $550 to register (a discount because I had the home study course, and a discount because I purchased the registration in July), but if I had paid the full price of $750 I would still feel that it was the best money I’ve spent in a very, very long time. It was absolutely astonishing.

Ultimately I left feeling a) damn accomplished for a beginning PhotoReader! b) completely relaxed and excited to go back to work, like I’d taken a great vacation! c) thrilled with all the neat people I’d met and could keep in touch with, and d) incredibly, overwhelmingly positive about myself and my ability to deal with the world. That last one feels really good.

There’s no way I’ve covered it all in this post, because the weekend was packed full of fascinating experiences and new information. But if you want to ask me questions, please feel free. I love talking about it.