Prof. Anna & Dr. Lev Goldentouch on Memory, Speed Reading, and Becoming a SuperLearner

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ā€œThe most global and important questions in our lives are the ā€˜whyā€™ questions.ā€
— Prof. Anna Goldentouch

For most of my adult life, I've had a very keen interest in optimizing in improving my physical health, mental capacities, and my productive life (hence this blog and podcast). In 2009, I met someone with incredible superhuman ability to learn and it dramatically accelerated rate – one of the first true “Superhumans” I had ever come into contact with. As theĀ story goes, I went on to train with that individual and his wife, from whom he learned these skills, and soon became able to absorb and retain information on a whole new level.

However, it was until about a year or so later (when I approached my two private tutors with a proposition to create an online course teaching their methodology) that things really got interesting. Fast-forward over a year, and ourĀ course, Become a SuperLearner, has over 22,000 students over the world!Ā From there (and with significant support and encouragement from students) , I developed my passion for helping people achieve superhuman feats, and this blog and podcast are just the next logical step in that journey.

For theĀ inaugural episode of the podcast, I thought it only fitting to interviewĀ the husband-and-wife team that started it all, Professor Anna and Dr. Lev Goldentouch. Their combined backgrounds in both psychology and information theory are the basis of the methodology for training what I would later brand “SuperLearners,” and together the three of us haveĀ taught tens of thousands of people to read, learn, and memorize information at a rate of about 3X.

If you're just tuning in, and have never seen or heard of our course, this podcast certainly piqueĀ your interest, and will get you thinking about different ways to enhance your Ā learning and memory. If you have attended the course going, you'll find this episode to be a fascinating deep dive into some of the topics that we covered, as well as a clarification on some of the things you may have struggled with.

Furthermore, if you want to learn more about Anna and Lev, or read some of their work, you can check out their blog, KeyToStudy.

I hope you enjoy it!

ā€œOnce we stop getting new stimulus, our brain will deteriorate very fast. But even if we suffer some temporary deterioration, by exposing ourselves to new stimulus, we can develop the neural networks back.ā€
— Dr. Lev Goldentouch
ā€œI think that the future [of academia] is to give students the big picture – the templates, the patterns. Because you can fill the details with your own learning.ā€
— Prof. Anna Goldentouch

In this episode, we discuss:

  • How Professor Anna & Dr. Lev developed their methodology
  • Why their methodology has been so successfulĀ where many other speed reading programs have failed
  • How ā€œmarkers” Ā work, and how they fit into the bigger picture of accelerated learning
  • How Dr. Lev loads up different modalities or categories to prepare for reading an article or text
  • An explanation of why and how different learners with different skill sets and backgrounds create different markers
  • How basic principles, such as markers, must be taken by students and modified and adapted to their own characteristics
  • How short micro-breaks play a role for accelerated learners
  • How Lev organizes and stores his vast knowledge from nearly a decade of accelerated learning (with a pretty wild demonstration)
  • An alternative to the ancient Memory Palace technique developed by Lev, the ā€œMemory Landscapeā€
  • Whether or not there is a benefit to reaching the upper echelon of speed readers – 1,000wpm and beyond
  • The upper limits of speed reading – 5,000wpm – and whether or not people who are not ā€œnaturally giftedā€ can reach that level
  • Some tips from Dr. Lev on how to apply the methodology to a popular and technical subject like computer programming
  • The importance of making the information fun and engaging – and useable – for learning
  • The incidence of falling into ā€œbad habitsā€ such as slow reading, and why it happens
  • Does the SuperLearner methodology work for children?
  • What exercises do Anna and Lev do with their own children?
  • What would a SuperLearner class for senior citizens look like?
  • The effects of active learning on dementia and Alzheimers
  • ā€œHacksā€ to stimulate the brain and promote neuroplasticity
  • The differences between SuperLearning audio vs. text
  • What Anna and Lev are currently learning – and how
  • Annaā€™s recent successes in bringing students from a ā€œCā€ to an ā€œAā€ average
  • The future of academia as Dr. Lev and Professor Anna see it
  • The proā€™s and conā€™s of digital vs. analog learning
  • How Anna and Lev each approach highly technical & difficult materials
  • What devices Anna, Lev, and Jonathan prefer for reading on
  • Does the better peripheral vision of the female eye help in speed reading?

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

ā€œThe first step of reading, when you acquire the reading process, needs to be vocalized. But, by the step where you know and remember all the symbols of your language, you should be able to read words as whole.ā€
— Prof. Anna Goldentouch
ā€œEventually, weā€™ll be merged with computers one way or another. Itā€™s just a question of how and when.ā€
— Dr. Lev Goldentouch

Transcript:

Welcome to the Becoming SuperHuman podcast where we interview extraordinary people to bring you the skills and strategies to overcome the impossible. And now here's your host Jonathan Levi.

Hello and welcome to the very first edition of the Becoming SuperHuman podcast. I'm your host Jonathan Levi. This podcast has been a long time coming. For most of my adult life, I've taken a very keen interest in optimizing and improving my physical health, mental capacities, and my productive life. In 2009, I met someone with an incredible superhuman ability to learn at a dramatically accelerated rate.Ā 

As the story goes, I went on to train with that individual and his wife from whom he learned the methodology and soon became able to absorb and retain information on a whole new level. But, it wasn't till about a year or so later. When I approached my two private tutors with a proposition to create an online course featuring their teaching methodology.Ā  Then things really got interesting. Fast forward over a year and our course Become a SuperLearner has over 22,000 students from all over the world. Through interacting with these students, I've learned that they, like myself, are eager for skills, tips, and tricks to get more out of their lives. To learn more, to be healthier, and to generally exceed the limits of what is possible. Essentially,Ā  it's become clear that podcast is in order and this is that podcast.

Every week or close to it. I'll interview someone with a unique approach to expanding human potential. Whether that's physical performance, mental acuity, financial success, or any topic. I think you, as a listener, might find it interesting on those bounds. Since this is our very first episode. I thought it fitting to invite the husband and wife team that started it all. Professor Anna and Dr. Lev Goldentouch. Through their combined backgrounds in both psychology and information theory, they've developed a methodology for training what I would later brand as SuperLearners together. The three of us have taught tens of thousands of people all over the world to read, learn, and memorize information at a rate of about 3x. If you're just tuning in and have never seen or heard of our course, this podcast will certainly pick your interest and get you thinking about different ways to enhance your learning and memory. If you have attended the course, you'll find the following to be fascinating. A deep dive into some of the topics that we've covered and a clarification on some of the things you may have struggled with.

And so without any further ado, I give you Professor Anna and Dr. Lev Goldentouch.

So, Dr. Lev, Professor Anna, welcome. Thanks so much for making time today. I know you're both very very busy. Hi and you know, I'm really excited about today's podcast because our listeners, our students rather, have sent so many great questions. And it's also a really exciting opportunity to share what we teach with a wider audience far beyond Udemy and our course. Sure.

So to give some background to our listeners, maybe you guys could share the story of how you both became what we call in the course SuperLearners how you became involved in the field? And how did you guys develop this methodology? I started the SuperLearner process when I was a student in Psychology, and I needed to read a lot of the researchers and I found out that I read very slow and I don't remember much except the basic ideas.

So I couldn't answer my questions very intelligently enough in my opinion. So I took the course and I find it very fascinating and a lot related to what I study in cognitive psychology. So I started to teach that. And after I finished my Master's Degree, I found myself very involved in the field. So I developed my own point of view and I started to formalize the course of mine for making the speed.

My reading is faster and besides that, I focused on how I recall information and how I remember it for the long term because sometimes when you were a student you don't actually read books fluently, you stop and you summarize and you formalize questions and answers so you don't need the speed. That way I can give both benefits for my students so I can focus on speed reading and the memory.

Awesome! So you took a much longer course than the one we teach which was kind of like a hundred something hours. Yeah, and at that point if I'm not mistaken you and Lev met and you guys got married and Lev also wanted to learn the methodology, right?

I didn't really want to learn it. I was consistent that I should learn it. Right, so she kind of made me take the long, long, long, long course which was very very frustrating for me. I was so annoyed by the process that basically I helped Anna develop her own course. Right, and you are not sludge before right? This is after your Ph.D. and everything. Yeah. It was awesome. So you had kind of a background in learning and information theory and that kind of thing. And so you guys kind of condense the course into what we teach now. Well, it was originally like 100 hours and it was 14 hours and it was 20 hours and now it's less than 10 hours.

So right, recondense the information further right now when it's 10 hours. The course that I took, the kind of private one-on-one tutoring and we've condensed it into two hours of lessons and then give people about eight to ten hours of homework. So very very interesting and it's an amazing story and I love how you guys both brought your unique backgrounds to kind of creating a methodology that's all your own. And as I tell him the course, I obviously personally benefited a lot from the material when I went to Business School. And the amount of interest that was generated just for my colleagues who would watch me read or people in my study group who would say, you know, are you going to read the case study?

Well, I already read it. That's really what led us to creating the course and the course has been so successful and I wonder you know, we've never really talked about it. What do you guys think has made the course successful because there's a lot of speed reading and memory courses online. And I know, I'm humbled to say ours is one of the more successful.

So what do you guys think? It is about our course that made it work? Well as things that we do are very very systematically and we give all the hospice that connects to people. Originally we condensed only the stuff that works for almost everyone. So the course has only the exercises that are consistently working for a very large amount of students. Students learn from success. When they have success in one exercise and then success in another exercise, this builds up their confidence, and finally succeed to do something that was very problematic when we started the course.

Right, and it's interesting like a lot of our students actually comment and I get a lot of messages on Udemy that hey, you know, I've taken two different speed reading courses and they've never worked and I'm so excited about your course because nobody has ever explained to me that I need to improve my memory first. I think what's interesting about what Lev said is he talks about you know, students need to feel success and they need to feel this kind of positive reinforcement. And one of the things we talked about in the course, is these six different requirements for adults to learn something.

I don't think a lot of speed reading courses are taken to account. But we took it into account very carefully. As people interested in learning process. We really thought about what needs to go into the course for people to enjoy it and get that feeling of success. So I would say I agree completely.

I think my process of thinking is how do I build the steps from the place that I am at, to the place where I want to be? So when I describe a person after you do this exercise you should be able to do that and when you see the benefits of this process. You almost can bear anything. So the exercises are very frustrating to do and difficult and maybe require more practice for some and others not but when they see the picture not the general picture, but for each step, I think they are more convinced to do their work.

Right? I put more tension and fun and I have written some exercises on Key To Studies that are different from what you can usually find and they are very fun to work with. Right. So it's not just technically studying and doing this tedious work, but actually enjoying what you're doing.

Right and the process of self-directed learning and choosing you to know that you're going to try this exercise you're going to do it's not like a lot of maybe say University or High School courses where we tell you exactly what you need to do. We say hey, you should maybe check out this YouTube video.

You should maybe check out these exercises and use your judgment. It's like we give the students a sense of urgency and a sense of responsibility in their own learning. We give a very systematic and maybe a little bit obsessive discussion and support to anyone with any kind of question. As I said, most of the exercises for most of the time which means that one percent of the time, and exercise will fail. And then the student can come to me and I will offer an alternative and for each exercise, we have like five alternatives.

Right. Which actually raises a question. I was talking to Anthony Metivier who's kind of a memory expert as well. And he reminded me of this quote ā€œsomething learned and then taught is something twice learnedā€. Have you guys learned in the last year and improved the methodology? I mean this is obviously more students than any of us ever expected to encounter with so the law of large numbers and that kind of thing takes place here.

So have you guys in your own methodology kind of learned from the students? Yes, of course, all the time. Each lesson makes me to think differently and to offer different exercises and explanations and techniques. I do believe in the core of the course, but I do look for new things all the time. Right. Some of our students are extremely talented and they kind of challenge my understanding of what is humanly possible.

Really. So occasionally, I kinda wonder is it really like that, or is the student kind of a joking? Playing with you. Yeah, so is this girl's rate as fast as I do but she doesn't actually understand what she reads, and then after she finishes reading she kind of freaks again from her mind. And so itā€™s a photographic memory.

Yeah, it's crazy. Exactly and we have lots of such students with different skills, huh? We're staking and I guess that's the beauty and to Levā€™s credit, he's done such a good job. And I think one of the reasons our courses are so successful is that a question doesn't go more than 12 hours without being answered and answered in an insightful way.

And I think we'd be lost without that, to be honest. I think that's such a huge value. I'm flattered, thank you. So, and I said something interesting which is you know, that she believes in the core principles and I think that's interesting because the core principles of our course really have been around for thousands of years this idea of creating visual representations of your memories.

This goes back to the Greeks and potentially even before them. Right, there's some thinking and kind of Buddhist ideology about creating visualizations, things like that. So really it would you guys agree, right? Exactly. So would you guys agree that what we call in the course markers or these visual representations for every piece of information creating symbols creating level likes to talk about these animated.

Symbols of you know, you slipping in the grocery store carrying 10 different items. Those items fall on your head in a certain order. We call that a marker in the course and I would say that that's really the core of the course. Everything is built on top of that idea when you guys say that's fair.

This is a beginning, some points just disappear because you kind of proceed without imagining. So if you do not have these images anymore. You just know that the process that created your understanding is the same process that used to create this image is when you just start. Definitely. It definitely becomes subconscious. And actually last night, I was sitting at dinner with a friend and he's taking our course, which is really funny. So he wanted to tell me. Three to five goals that he wrote down. We obviously have everyone write down five goals. And so he told them to me and then somewhere along in the conversation a few minutes later. He forgot them and he said, you know, I forget what the last one was and I told him in order what they were he goes how the hell did you do that?

So well, I have a symbol for each one and it hadn't even considered that I was creating these symbols. And he goes what? I told you I want to learn Portuguese. I said, yeah. Well, I pictured your face on a map in Brazil, and just happened. There was no kind of processing. So is his face on a map in Portuguese him looking at technical manuals because he wanted to improve his ability to read technical manuals at work.

So on and so forth. So it becomes this amazing second nature thing, but I know you guys also create markers differently between yourselves and it's a very individual thing. I create them very differently and. I remember one time we were all sitting over coffee discussing the course and everything and all three of us found different markers.

So give me some thinking, I obviously teach in one way, but give me some thinking on how you guys choose markers. Say I'm reading an article on TechCrunch. What do you look for and what would a good marker be for you guys? I would do some kind of pre-reading depends on how deeper I want to go with my memory of details from the article and I would set up a goal for the article then when I read I found the details that would support this goal.

So actually, I don't need the main ideas because I get it from the details. But that way I have more specific details. The details that I didn't know that I can add to my knowledge and build up this understanding. And that way if I will remember them was my marker. I would be able to support my say with an intelligent answer and I will feel like I understood what I read, but also I have more details that are specific to what I read.

So in the pre-reading which is kind of another thing we talk about. You're really deciding actually what kind of markers you want to make. So we're generating interests were kind of pre-reading and getting a map of what's in the text. But we're also saying am I reading this to be able to recite it as poetry or am I reading this because I'm looking for a specific piece of information. Which often you know, if you're writing an essay, you're really looking for that one quote, for that one summarization. Interesting.

My approach is a little bit different. Before I start reading from the title, I understand which network of understanding I should load. I kind of load different ideas. They are similar to what I'm going to read. From that point on I build the core knowledge base that I already have. Of course, yeah. Now once I finish reading, I take a minute or several seconds and I analyze everything that I read and I added to the network in the most full and complete ways that I can find.

This way I don't have to reread it. I do not have to recall the article. I basically analyze it to the point that I don't need it anymore. And it is a part of my knowledge base. Uh-huh. So you said you have these kinds of different categories that you load up and forget what it's like a dictionary or four different ideas. And I kind of load per subject material.

So give us some examples of what those different ideas or kinds of categories would look like. This is a technical document. I'm going to add it to my understanding of technical knowledge. No, no, it's very very detailed and accurate. It's like pushing a button on the internet and loading a dictionary into a puzzle. It lasts like 100 of milliseconds or something like that. It's very very fast and I actually feel like a click in my head and from that point on I read differently.

So I'm reading European history from the 1600s to the 1650s mode. Stop, I'm loading the renaissance, I'm loading another DaVinci, I'm loading everything that is connected. I'm loading the same period in Japanese history and Japanese Renaissance because it is connected by ideas that are similar. I'm loading the Roman understanding of mechanics. I'm loading the great philosophers of developed engineering so it is not yet known. I'm loading a little bit of art, just for fun. I'm loading Machiavelli and everything that is connected to it. And it takes like 10 milliseconds. Continue, please. Wow.. wow, so and wow that kind of takes my breath away. So the idea behind doing that. Is now when you're pre-reading you're just adding these markers into all the stuff that's already there.

So Leonardo da Vinci, Renaissance, Greek philosophers, Japanese Renaissance. So on and so forth as you were speaking, I actually came up with an image of every single one for those. Right, that's very incredible. My thinking is more technical because I don't have such a background. So I would take all of my knowledge of how I would build an article that would have a sense that would have a purpose now use this technical knowledge of how to write down because I wrote a couple of the essays and physicist.

So this is the knowledge that I more connect to. Interesting, so. Would you guys say that the differences in how you approach the process in the markers comes from kind of your natural aptitudes or it comes from you know? Lev is trained in a very technical subject of electrical engineering and so on, you're trained in psychology. And so on would you say, I'm obviously of the original perspective. Yeah. Yeah. I'm a researcher and Anna is a teacher, she addresses the subject of the ways that she would teach him to anyone. I address them as my own personal research. It's a very different approach. Uh-huh.

Interesting. So I guess the takeaway there is kind of to use actually at another interesting thing. Anthony said a quote from our interview and we were talking and as you guys know he teaches similar ideas. He says there are no systems. There are general principles and practices that allow you to create your own systems. Would you guys say that? That's true? It's like you take an on principle and you try to personalize it and with each iteration. You take it further and further away from the original principle. Right. But then after a while, you kind of understand that you still work with the same principle. And do you come from your understanding back to the original principle once you close the loop where two or three times your kind understands the idea.

So it's a matter of using the training wheels. Exactly like we say, you know create this many markers, review them after this many paragraphs spend this much time, but then after a time, you make it your own right and so it's not a fixed system. It's kind of and often that's what we're implying when people are asking questions.

We're saying look in the beginning. Yeah, you make three to five markers a paragraph but in the end, adapt it to the text, adapt it to your own approach to the methodology. What kind of information is more interesting to you? Or do you train in that kind of thing sometimes in the process of visualization, which is the first step? I analyzed with the people what their advantage? What are they trained to do? Right. And I tried to convince them not to use natural visualization. So let's say to you coconut, and you would imagine something brown in your hands. If you are more personal if you use your personal memories. Yeah, so don't go to the natural tendency to visualize something. Use your own advantage because you are more personal. Find something that relates to that in your personal memories and when you are more focused on that, to use it not automatically but to think about how do I use it in my thinking process. I think that's what gives you the advantage that we talked about earlier.

And it sounds like that's exactly what Lev was doing. He is taking this previous knowledge. I'm also doing something a little bit different which is taking a small break after each article that is after each section doing something completely different. This takes me all this mechanical handling of information and allows me to be more creative posting my approach and my understanding. Also, it reduces the pressure on my eyes and my mind. It is where I can consume much more information. In fact, my friend's job is that I do not work for almost a year. I drink coffee most of the time because you know. I noticed that when we were working in the VC office together, it's like you do these sprints and you know, you kind of mingle around see what everyone's doing, and then come back and do these quick sprints. The basic idea is that I can stay very focused for very short periods of time or I can make them longer in intentional flow but then there are prices that I have to pay for it. So I need to be very careful which of the times I'm going short sprint.

Research shows that just by going into a flow state. For a soft flow state, you're kind of tired. You need a better diet. You need more exercise. This is a sense you sometimes cannot get. Mmm. So one question I have that you guys have. Obviously, I had these skill sets much longer than I have which means you've accumulated a lot of information over the years.

I know Lev, you try to read a hundred or so articles a day. Yeah. I still do, I probably read more. Right and of course and I'm sure you're keeping very up-to-date and everything like that with a lot of different news. And so one of the big questions that I raised and that I've started dealing with three-four years on where you guys store all this information.

How are you keeping? Years and years and years worth of accelerated learning, you know in the forefront of your brain and accessible. Well, it's like many interconnected networks, which I can divide into clusters and each time. I need to load the information before I read something. I kinda load everything to my working memory.

I load only their components of some of the more important clusters for the kind of articles that I'm waiting. The brain is very big and it is very good at compressing information. But to access the information we need to use some methods of acceleration and linking of course. Acceleration is location. It's something which we do not learn before we are like to see years of in SuperLearning. You don't have to accelerate before because you just don't have enough. Your brain has enough batteries to load everything up to three years ofĀ  SuperLearning. At this point, you get to the new point where you just need to load only the stuff that you can progress.

Aha. Interesting, interesting Anna. Yeah, all this said process has happened to me parallel to my personal life, which is having babies and it's, you know, having its own price, but I do believe in my mapping think system. So when I focus. When I read something and I really focus on that and I pay attention to my markers to my specific detailed markers.

I do believe it works like a train like a process of remembering jokes. I wouldn't be able to tell you all the jokes that I know but each time any word or any situation would remind it to me. So I trust this process and it works for me. Right, right interesting. So, Dr. Lev, I know you're not a huge advocate of the Memory Palace technique. I think you've developed your own methodology above and beyond the Memory Palace. It is very much like a memory palace, but with two or three elements above it, and I basically cannot use the Memory Palace without it. Interesting. So for those who don't know about the Memory Palace, you can listen to the episode with Anthony Metivier, or we can just give you a brief idea of what it is.

So this idea that you use physical locations, for example, your home or your office. You clear everything out of the shelves, you clear everything off the tables, you create specific locations and then you take these markers or these visual images then you say okay my knowledge of what the Russian word for open goes on this cabinet in my house that doesn't open properly. It sits right there. I have a symbol, I have an image so you can walk through your home and you have all these symbols and images. What Dr. Lev is saying is that he uses the kind of architecture that he's built. On top of that kind of 2000 – 3000-year-old methodology, which I'm very curious to explore how it works.

First of all, if this is a shelf in my house. Probably I will not remember it because I can't find anything and I feel like that happens when you get married, things kind of move and get organized in a way that you maybe don't understand. So I kind of teach to approach it more actively. I kind of take him a tail and morph it into a shelter that I would prefer.

But before I can even start moving I kind of imagine an environment in which I want to put the whole setup. It can be like a video game. Aha, so it's you take some sort of Star Wars or Lord of the Rings or whatever scenario and do you start building stuff into the building that was home or whatever.

Uh-huh. So you have a landscape, imaginary landscape in a sense and you're mapping information to that. Yeah. I'm not mapping. I'm actually creating the landscape. I'm over the information, I'm creating the landscape, I built this universe. And I also build the active person in the stories that move and access information so that it is not passive. It is active. That is very clever. So you don't actually have to do one of the things a lot of athletes do, is they'll spend a week. They'll go to a new city and they'll walk through every Museum. They can find every building, apartment, hotel they can get access to because they need to build a library or video games. I love it.

I love how you kind of taken it to your own. Because it uses the same principles in the same evolutionary advantage, which is the human brain is really good at knowing location. We're really good at remembering where that watering hole was. That you've adapted it to kind of a modern approach. I edited NPCā€™s for example when you have some kind of recurrent principles, it's like an NPCs that you meet in different places, like a guide that goes with you. An NPC? A non-player character, non-player character. Okay. Got it. Got it. It's like a guide that goes with you like your own R2-D2. It goes after you and each time. You have a question. You kind of ask him and you kind of ask him at the same places, so at each point that I want to get some kind of perspective, I kinda ask my own R2-D2, Oh, please tell me what is this and he says well this is that interface that works like that USB 3.1. Itā€™s twenty-nine percent better than USB 3.0 energy. Lev did you ever walk in the room and see Lev with his eyes closed with maybe like a finger on his Temple interacting with his inner R2D2 Memory Palace guide.

I think he looks like a very important person so it gets deeper into his thoughts and looks okay. Don't bother me. That's super interesting. Yeah, but it can take hours, you know. Yeah, so it's certainly a huge investment. Although I found I was sitting the other day at the DMV waiting in line for about an hour and a half and I decided I'm going to take.

All these Russian words that I've learned are about 800 of them and I'm just going to start putting them in places. So I sat there and I cleared out all the shelves in my home back in California, and I started placing things. And I've noticed a huge huge Improvement so I can only imagine it with kind of a next-level methodology.

It helps you store 10 years worth of super learning information. It's kind of like Google, I try to hold back in jail. Some of Google's methods. Don't listen to my own mind and sometimes it works. Mmm. So, you know that brings up another kind of interesting idea, which is in the course we deal a lot with the idea of comprehension versus speed. And of course, it's pretty logical that there's a trade-off between very high speeds of reading.

And actual understanding and comprehension what originally excited me when I met Lev was that his comprehension actually increased above the standard comprehension. So I was reading 450 words a minute when he tested me in my office at about 20 to 30 percent comprehension. And he was reading above a thousand words a minute at 80 to 90% comprehension.

So in fact by learning the methodology, I wasn't really giving up anything. I was kind of gaining both speed and comprehension, but we've talked about in the past that speed readers or the best speed readers. They vary their speeds and they adapt to different densities of material and to the text itself. So I'm interested to hear you guys talk a little bit about that and you know with your extremely high top speeds.

How do you approach the decision of how fast to read certain material? You do it on the fly, do you base it on wait, I'm not really getting as much as I want here. How does that work? This isn't the course material. We do not teach it in our basic course. Right. Our students do it 1000 words per minute with 80% in the standing right before we even try to approach the question.

Wow, so it's for the really really diehard people. Yes, because otherwise you have too many temptations not to work that hard and you will not get to your potential right which I think is what happened to me at some point. I decided I'm about 800 words a minute and I said to myself well, I could learn this or I could learn, you know, I'm working on learning Russian. I'm learning obviously, I had a podcast, I'm learning how to write Kindle books and stuff like that and it's just I guess my question is for the average person working not as a researcher not through a Ph.D. program, but you know working in sales or working at a start-up or a doctor or whatever. It may be you do think that there's a huge level of benefit for going above a thousand words a minute or a very specialized skill for a specific kind of person. I think that it is good for everyone because we are leaving a constantly changing environment. There are many tests that anyone should and will go in order to just live their life, right?

I had one student from the president. He says that he has to go through a very hard time government tests just to make some kind of department so. Well, and that was the reason why he was going to take our course and to pay for one on one with Anna. So it's something which is very important for everyone because, at some point in our life, we will face in the next level exam or the next level, but I think I'm shifting in our technology and we will need to adapt right that's true or you know, hopefully, we'll get to a point where we can use radio waves to implant knowledge into our brains kind of like the Matrix.

To develop our brains. It helps to build robots. We need to invest in processors. Yeah. So how much work would it take for me to get from my 800 words a minute to somewhere like where Lev is. You know 1200 words a minute. Are we talking for a hundred-hour? 20 hours? What's it like? All right, I read two thousand words per minute with 80% percent retention.

Wow, so it's a bit of work. It's a lot of work. Yeah, if you read hundreds of articles per day, you will get there right there. The World Championship is about 60 percent retention at about 5000 words per minute. Oh my God. At that point. I mean you're talking about people whose life is speed reading.

Yeah. This is kind of like the memory athletes who train 8 hours a day. This is a competitive sport where people who are kind of genetically different and then they train a lot. That's true. Right. So an interesting thing I heard recently is completely tangent, but they're saying that in the Olympics today what you're dealing with and at that level of competition you're dealing with people exactly like you said who are genetic mutants, right? Michael Phelps is arms or two or three centimeters longer than they should be for his height. And you know at the level that the Olympics have gone to you're dealing with people who are naturally gifted on top of a superhuman work ethic. I think that's both discouraging and also very interesting as a good thing is that everyone's a little bit different in something.

Everyone will be good at something and a little bit different. Ah, so probably I cannot be a very good speed reader or memory athlete but I'm a very good researcher. It's interesting to hear me say that you're not a good speed reader when you read two and a half times faster than I do, but I think my problem is I always am looking at this cost-benefit.

I'm not ranked at championship level. I am ranked well, below it. Right. So an interesting thing that I like about. Tim Ferriss has this one quote that he says like you don't go to the most gifted most talented people in the world because they can't teach you because they're freaks of nature and they're gifted and you know, Michael Phelps couldn't teach you how to swim but you go to the guy whose body is disproportionate and spent, you know, three years in a wheelchair.

And that guy can teach you how to swim because he's had to overcome these hurdles. And so perhaps that I mean the fact that Anna struggled with dyslexia is perhaps why she's so effective as a teacher because you shouldn't be able to read. I mean on the quote-unquote normal realm you shouldn't be able to read nearly as fast as you do and yet. We teach tens of thousands of people to speed read. I think there's something to be had there. There's a point to be made there definitely. So one of the projects that Dr. Lev and I are working on and I'm intentionally announcing this because I want our listeners to hold us accountable to getting it done in the next few months is a language learning course. And that leads me to an important point, which is I think that our course is successful because we deliver on the promise. That students can learn anything more successfully whether that's history or languages or playing a musical instrument. I think that people come to Udemy and I think they see these 20,000 courses and at least in my experience there were hundreds that I wanted to take and I added them all to my wishlist.

And I think the average person who is not trained in accelerated learning looks at that and goes how the hell am I going to learn all of this? How can I soak up all this information and at that point hopefully they find our course and they decide to take our course first which helps them to learn everything.

They want to learn so much faster. So maybe it would be cool to give our listeners some tips that they can apply to some of the other hot subjects that people are trying to learn right now. And I know that on Udemy the most popular subjects that people are trying to learn right now is programming and we're very fortunate that Dr. Lev knows what about eight programming languages if I'm not mistaken. So 20 different programming languages? How have you applied? Obviously, you learned some of them before the same template all over again. It was a little bit of different syntaxes. So you don't actually have to learn anything by syntaxes you do forget syntax is but that's something that is really very easy to learn.

Right? So you basically store a lot of different templates of how the things are done. Right, Now, you just close the template and then put some kind of syntaxes above it and that's it. Interesting. So you let's say you were to go learn a newer programming language like angular js or swift or something. You would look at how this syntax is different and then you would store just those differences above the existing templates. Basically, a language is developed like a human being or anything biological is mutated one from another.

So basically, I think that every program I should know to see and design patterns I see. Once a person is functional and sees design patterns in functional. See, everything else is just mutated from there. Aha. So you kind of addressed the biological tree of mutations. Interesting. You get it and I think that's really interesting because what we talked about in our course is that you need to link everything to existing knowledge. And that's exactly what Lev is saying is you probably learned to see one of the first languages. I started because I'm writing about raising a place for kids and I learn to see. Then when I learned basic, I was 14 years old, right? I just came to Israel.

And this was the first time that I saw a computer. So I said, okay. What can I do? Well, I could play games in it. Okay, cool. Now I want to program one. Yeah, that's so interesting. And at that time they didn't have these easy programming languages I mean today. People can learn Ruby on Rails in one month and they can build their own applications.

But back then it was a pretty big challenge to learn programming languages. I imagine it was very simple. I just learned basic language for kids that was like built for kids to learn computers, aha. So once you learn basic, it is really easy to apply the same principles to every other language. Right, like object-oriented and all that kind of stuff. Itā€™s like new ideas needed to add. It took me some time to add object-oriented ideas because the philosophy behind them is a little bit different. So I actually had to build a dictionary for all the ideas of polymorphism and virtual objects. I just had to develop new templates to store this information with. Aha. But once I could do C++, I could do Java and I could do pretty much everything.

Very cool, you know, another thing that I think like if you remember I was trying to learn Ruby on Rails before we built the course. I was kind of deciding what am I going to do? Am I going to build this course? I'm going to maybe start working on web apps and I tried to learn rails and even with the super learner methodology. I still understand how it works and I can throw around these terms like object-oriented programming and I understand the syntax. But I really just don't enjoy it and at some point, I thought to myself think of what Anna told me. It's like you have to use a different methodology. But you also have to figure out a way to make the information fun and engaging for you.

There's no way you're going to learn something. If you haven't figured out a way to make it applicable. And to me I said, you know, I know so many great programmers all over the world. I know Lev. I know my friend year and I couldn't convince myself that it was important for me to learn programming.

Especially after finishing an MBA, I would sit there and I'd say why am I doing this and I failed because I couldn't take that first step of why am I learning this? It was just you know, everyone's learning to program. I should learn to program it. I think that's an interesting thing. I never learn something if I don't have an accurate project where I can actually apply the skills and build something which is creative, exactly.

So I would never go and just learn stuff on Udemy because this is cool. I would first kind of develop a skeleton of a new project that is really really exciting. Right then I will see what skills I am lacking and I will learn just a specific skill that I'm looking. Right. It's funny you say that because that's exactly how this podcast thing happened. I decided you know, wouldn't it be really really cool to sit and pick Lev and Anna's brain. Wouldn't it be really cool to reach these really interesting movement experts who are kind of at the forefront of Kinesiology and I got really excited and I said, how am I going to get access to these people and get an hour of their time and within a couple of days, I downloaded a bunch of courses on Udemy.

I opened up 50 tabs in my browser and read everything that I could about podcasting because I had this pressing need and I knew how I was going to use it and it was just a matter of getting through all those courses and all that reading to get to these interesting conversations and it was very easy to learn. Good job!

Thank you. So one thing I've noticed in the last year. So, now that speed reading has really become ingrained in my skill set. Is I remember that in the first year, I would often kind of lose the skill set for a day or two. Especially I wasn't sleeping very much during my MBA. And I would fall into these bad habits and Lev kind of comforted me at the time and he said don't worry, you know, the skill hasn't gone anywhere.

It'll come back when the conditions are right and it did and it did but I wonder when you've been speed reading for so many years and you guys are way further ahead than I am. Is it still kind of a situation where? You fall into bad habits. Do you ever catch yourself reading? Really slowly? Yeah.

Sure. Yeah. Is there any why or reason? It's just sometimes some things that they choose as I think so. It shouldn't be speed-read like you speak it. Hey cool, that is available for. Right, so occasionally, I just choose not to speed read to and just enjoy what I'm reading and some more aspects. Occasionally, I just cannot process information fast enough, some languages like MRSA super compressed by themselves. You cannot actually speak it. Thereā€™s a medical proof of a very complex theory. It just will not work. Right. So sometimes reading is really hard and sometimes it's easy but understanding what you want is the hard part.Ā 

Definitely. And there's a million and one-speed reading course that I always tell people I'll teach you how to speed read in 10 minutes, but it's going to take you to know, ten ten-twenty hours for you to understand what the hell you're reading. Yeah, there's that Woody Allen quote. Like I took a speed reading course and we read War and Peace. I think of War and Peace, it's about Russia. And that was my experience. I came into this having done the Evelyn Wood speed reading program and I'm sure Lev has some comments on how funny I was trying to sit there in the office and read these articles and claiming that I knew how to speed read which I think is really funny.

I never talk like this about people. Everyone has his own problems. So surely. I have a few so it's kind of a lot of humility just to understand how overall are. Fair enough, fair enough. Have you guys noticed that recently in the Facebook group for the course? One of the coolest things that I've seen?

A lot of people in two or three have come in and said I'm starting my kids on this course and I want my kids to grow up like a super learner. I don't want them to suffer through school. Like I did, I definitely felt the same way if I have kids. I want to start them on this. But one thing that comes up is you need to be a very proficient reader and you need to have a wealth of content. To link your markers to write links to existing knowledge.Ā 

So you guys teach your kids this methodology? Can it be taught to kids or how does that work? Usually, I tell to people that our Udemy class applies from ages 13 to 70 because different emphasis that needs to be put on the younger children as well as older adults.

It's kind of fun when the kids are very young. Their reading skills are not very well developed. So the emphasis is more on visualization, imagination, creativity, and on productivity, and how to make things work. Right. When we are older we kind of know how to make things work. Sometimes we are not very efficient in it but at least we know how to do it. Younger kids don't know that shows a kind of needs to be developed in this direction. Interesting, but you guys say I imagine you sit with your kids and you work a lot on things that are not taught in school. Usually I kind of tried to make them develop their own visual markers with some information that is not taught until University level.

Right. Like her, I can teach six years old about king of laws by explaining how you see water in the river and how it swells around and how it goes from above to below and stuff like that. And once I show how I open this faucet in a bathroom, they kind of understand how transistors work. Yeah, that's interesting.

That's kind of how my dad explained to me. How transistors worked when I was a kid. I used to play with electronics. So the idea is that markers as a concept work for everybody. Yeah, but speed-reading definitely not until you're very proficient as a reader. The first step of reading when you acquired the reading process. Needs to be vocalized right but by the step that you know, and remember all the symbols in your language. You should be able to read words as a whole. Yeah. So yeah in this game and that I do with my children, I just make cards of words or two words. So I made them read the subvocal process. So even at the age of first grade, I can ask my son to read without vocalization and explain it to me. Other children taught. To read out loud at least a third grade, right because we want to teach them to pronounce right? Otherwise, how would we know and how do you read for yourself that you read it correctly. Right. But I do it as an exercise. Now. You read it very nice for me out loud. And now you read for understanding.

So, I do. Give them the right habits to be able to build it from the first earlier stages. Interesting. I call a lot of foreign languages like certain different languages and we call between the languages and we work on this word means action is this but sounds like this insert as a language.

Yeah. And this is very fun. It's like always funny. The connections are really unexpected and it generates a lot of interest in different cultures. Yes. That was one of the breaking points for me in learning languages is, I now have a library of three languages and if I want to learn a new word, there's a 99% chance that I have some sound in my library of sounds that I can connect it to in one of those three languages so it becomes very easy.

To learn and sometimes I'll mix within one word like the first half of the word sounds like something in Hebrew and the second half sounds like something in Spanish and together. That's what they mean. So that's a really powerful thing as well. Do you guys think that there's potential in building a course?

Either for senior citizens or for children? For senior citizens that has actual emphasis is a little bit different. It's like not forgetting what you know. Yeah. Why do we teach about markers with each kind of how to build this network of markers? But once you are focused on not forgetting them you need to make this network stronger. I build something that I call anchors which are super strong markers that are used to upload the whole network. These anchor markers are a little bit different from regular markers. They are more lively. They usually are more creative when I build a regular marker. I say that can be either a logical or creative. Anchor markers are always more creative.

So it focuses my attention on a specific network of ideas. There are always more active like you do not put your keys somewhere. The keys appear there for a reason you put them there so that something will happen so that the key demon doesn't find them right? It's always more active. And when you are focused on not forgetting something when you're focused on 100 percent retention, then anchor markers become very important.

So I'm not that important for speed reading. If you're a senior citizen, you should invest more because the brain is less active. So this approach would require them to be more active about it. Yeah. Yeah, focused on that right and that would be enough. Right. They say it, one thing that I found interesting and I now have my father studying two languages because they say that learning a language or something very complex actually can fight off, they haven't proven it yet, but can fight off Alzheimer's and like mental deterioration dementia stuff like that and a lot of the elderly suffer from this because they're doing a lot of passive. They're watching a lot of TV. They're playing a lot of bingo not creating these new neural networks not creating new synapses stuff like that and it can, I mean obviously, your brains are going to deteriorate, you know. This is an issue that is called neuroplasticity.

All right. Where our brain makes all these changes and adapts to new stimulus. Right. Once we stopped getting new stimulus. Our brain will deteriorate very fast. Right. So even if we suffer temporary deterioration by exposing ourselves to new stimulus, we can develop the neural networks back. Exactly and any kind of new stimulus, new places, new foods leads to an increase in neural per nephron which puts the brain in a hyper-aware state and creates learnings. Localized. Right. Neuroplasticity is localized. So right if you want to develop some sort of area. It is important that the new stimulus is somehow related to the areas that you want to develop. Right. Yeah, so you kind of need to go out of your comfort zone in many different areas right now more adventurous.

Definitely, that explains why a lot of these memory athletes will fly to a new city that they've never visited to build new memory palaces, for example, or you know, I had someone who told me that if I'm trying to learn about new cultures, I need to try the foods. Because now I'm thinking in this cultural context, I mean maybe in a more culinary context, but I'm thinking in this cultural context of you know, why would the Thai people make food so spicy.

Well, it's very hot, and well in their history they were dealing with rancid meat and things like that and it gets me thinking. In that vein which helps you understand their culture a little bit better. For example, it's much easier for me to start with your point. Once you have the whole of History. It's very easy to focus on specific aspects of history and have a huge network, which is very similar to the TV's big commercial. Yeah, I kind of store these historical facts, and then I kind of zoomed in on an area pinned on phenomena and this is just cutting the network in different ways instructing them on different aspects. Interesting you guys listen to podcasts at all.

I've recently really started enjoying podcasts because it's so slow. Yeah, so I have to use the podcast app on the iPhone, which goes up to 2x speed, and then things are kind of manageable. But I like it because I can kind of I can do a physical activity and physical activity is another one of those things that put the brain in a learning state and put you know, raises endorphins stuff like that so I can do physical activity and I can listen to a podcast and my retention is pretty high considering auditory information is of less quality than visual but I've found it really really interesting.

It's a great way to consume more content. Expose myself to a different method of visualizing why you listen to stuff and it has to be taught separately. I actually have several articles about it on Key To Study. Oh great. On how to remember conversations and stuff like that. Yeah. This is something that needs to be learned separately from reading books because you don't have structure.

Yeah, right and you look at the book. You have a very concrete structure and you can't pre-read a conversation. Unfortunately, what are you gonna talk about in the next five minutes? Can you give me an idea? Yeah, definitely. So those are already on Key To Study and we can link to them in the show notes. Welcome to some say it's I know it's always you're always adding when you guys have time but that's interesting and I think we could talk for an hour just about that because so many people today are consuming information by video, TED Talks, Udemy courses, obviously.

So there's a lot of interesting stuff to be said there as well. Yeah, we would love to have another podcast and we would love our listeners to vote on what subjects are more interesting for them. Definitely. I think it's highly likely that we do this every couple of months we sit down and we kind of review because look when it comes to superhuman skills.

I think one of the most important ones if you want to learn other ones is. Learning right and I remember Len and I are sitting kind of in the cafe or the cafeteria rather at the VC office and talking about all these superhuman skills. I know Lev studied meditation for a long time and I studied all kinds of different things.

I personally study physical fitness very extensively but none of that's possible. If you're not the kind of person who can learn an entire field of study in a week. Hey, fix usually little bit more than a vacation for me. Now. It takes about 3 months to learn something. Sure. Actually, that's a really good question.

What are you guys learning right now? I'm actually building some kind of investment. Philosophy was everything about it. It is built on my Ph.D. in finance from us and stuff like that. So it's really cool. I have built another website around it instead of building PHP tools for analysis mathematical theory around it.

It's very good. That is very cool. So you're doing a lot of learning and kind of algorithms and things like that more like trading and various types of assets and modern portfolio management stuff like that. That's very cool. That's very very cool and super super technical super complicated stuff. From what I remember, it was easy.

Really very very easy. So what else is challenging you? I don't actually do something that is challenging. I filled it up step by step when I got to it. It's easy if I see something and it's too challenging. I just give up because it's got to force it, right. So breaking things down into manageable chunks.

Yes. Yeah, I think that's smart. I think that's also what I've kind of done with languages and with the podcasting and all that stuff is first, let me just learn this one element once I get it's actually exactly what you talked about in the beginning of the podcast like once I feel that experience of success and I have this one interview that I think has gone really well now I'm motivated to learn more.

How do I edit it? How do I promote it? How do you know to remaster the audio and I have motivation because I have traction. Which is cool, so,Ā  Anna, what are you learning? What are you working on? I'd like to see I'm very invested in what I do. So, I like to look at that from different angles and now I am studying for learning disabilities and licensure.

So I want to understand and be able to explain and to measure these kinds of problems. That I'm dealing with people so I would be able to explain them. Where is it coming from? And how do I recommend to work on that. Interesting. I'm taking a step back. Yeah, I step back into kind of the origin of the Genesis of the methodology.

Well, she has a logo for children. I take a student from C to A in five days and it always works. Amazing. And it always works, so far it never fails. Amazing. From C to A you assist students in five days and five days. It sounds like that might be another Udemy course. Amazing. And is that a lot of just training them to use their visual?

No, no, when I do the analysis, I'm measuring cognitive processes and I need to build a picture that makes sense. Uh-huh. Well, to get to creativity how to get from A to B from B to C and how to make all this progress work. So that they do not get stuck at each point. I say they kinda get the task and they finish the task because they know how to complete it. Amazing.

Sometimes it seems like, if I add A and B, I would get C. Right. And sometimes I can arrange it differently and I need to be focused on one. Right. To find the one that is correct. Right because I want to build a further training program. So I can't be changing this picture further. Right. So I need to focus on something and it's very hard for me.

My downsizing is to see the big picture. Yeah, so I'm very professional in this kind of thinking to make people see the details. But for me, it's still very hard to see the big picture. So this training is actually an opportunity to do that. I need to see a big picture. My next question is actually a big picture question.

So I apologize. What do you guys think? The future of academics are? Because I always look back at the way that I was taught. In grade school, high school college graduate school and I think to myself like, why did I sit there and listen to lectures which first off aren't as effective as self-directed learning in my opinion, especially for my learning style.

Nobody ever gave me markers. Nobody ever suggested that I build a Memory Palace nobody ever suggested that I chunk information. I was never ever taught how to preread an article. I mean it just seems. Almost as if the system was built thousands of years ago, and for some reason, nobody wanted to make it more efficient or effective and the things that students need these tools.

No one cares to teach in Academia. Do you guys think that's going to change? This is like an accounting process once you set. You measure different criterias. It changes the whole process. Nobody is willing to set up a new set of criteria because it is very hard and what you do with those people who learn all this set of criterias, people who do succeed under this kind of traditional methodology. Yeah, it's very hard to have several like competing methods for example as the founders of Google and the other very successful people the year learned under different systems and under different rules, and they're very successful. But not everybody's advanced all these different systems.

There are more successful than those which ones who study traditions. When you say different systems, you're alluding to the fact that kind of like in Soviet countries. They had a different learning methodology. No. That's how different ideologies like the Montefiore method like it is like. Montessori, it's yeah.

Yeah, Montessori is like one hundred and something years old. Right. 120 years old. So it's not very new. It works differently. Right and some people are very successful because of it and some people are not successful because of its what's that methodology that Sergey and Larry from Google. Montessori. They made it to the US when they were like eight or nine years old. I think if I'm not mistaken. You should read their magazines? Larry was born in US. As far as I remember, Sergey kind of came to USĀ  when he was four years old and my father was a professor from some kind of Saint Peter Brook University setting like that.

Interesting. It's like I read it 10 years ago. So my memory is not very yeah, and it's not information you probably use at home. I think that the future is to give the students the big picture that templates the patterns because you can feel the details with your own learning. And you need the details when Google search is a second away.

Yeah, it's more about understanding the content. Yeah, exactly. And I think from the master's degree you were studies is less on learning information, but to build your thesis and then the problem is about the same because you become a very information follower. And not the building and idea. It is interesting.

I was recently told about something called High Tech High which apparently they've just now opened in Israel. But it's this idea that kids come everything is on the laptop all the lectures or through the laptop, the teacher sits in the front of the class with a laptop and directs the students to do this and basically, all they're doing is self-directed learning like there's obviously some controls on what they're allowed to browse, but it's like today we're going to learn about European history from the 1600s and it's their choice if they want to learn about Leonardo da Vinci or if they want to go into Japanese Renaissance or if they want to learn about the Renaissance as a whole and all these different things we talked about before which somehow I still remember it because I have markers for them.

So I think that's a really interesting concept and I think that the more successful it kind of touches on wanting to sort it from what I understand. It's much more self-directed learning and the children are much more active and have much more agency and what they're learning. I'm a little bit concerned about the skills that we lost with all these methods. Like it is very important when I see someone who has a Ph.D. in physics and I kind of start to develop with him as a system of optics. There are people who know the formulas well enough to come to the board and just to do everything on the board and there's also. It's a direct jump to simulations. The good ones are those that can do other things from support. Really? That's very interesting. So it's more about being a holistic learner than it is about completely losing the skills that you know, yeah.

I for example people always talk about you know, what about these kids at high tech high they never use paper. So are they going to have handwriting skills and I say who the hell cares? Right? Because I think that's a much less relevant skill when you have. Technology that you can print something outright on the fly.

Right? Well, it's very good for very simple technologies. But once you get to really complex stuff, it's good to be able to slow down and think deeper. Right. And then it is very good to simplify things. Every work on computers. We can handle very complex information very fast, but we're not taught to simplify things.

When you kind of write them down, they need to be really really simple so you put much more attention to analysis and it's a very important skill. It's when we teach in the mind map. There are people that find the program and do it in the program. Yeah, and then when they need to build it in their mind, they think like a program, right but for me, pen is always the better choice. Well, then we all grew up with. I mean, I didn't use a computer for academic purposes until I was 14 years old probably and even then it was just for typing up papers. So I was never typing notes. I was never. Wikipedia didn't exist until I was about that age. So, you know, so very interesting.

So you talked about your working right now on a lot of finance and we talked a good bit about programming languages and it sounds that you guys have a methodology for working on highly complex material. I think the method has to be adapted in such a way that. If you're reading something that one passes through it isn't going to work.

How do you guys do that? How do you work on very technical material? My approach would be layering the information. The information, the data knowledge is built up in layers. So, I would spend time to pre-read something or. Pre learn or build a template of the subject. That would be more general. So I would know how many details do I need to go deeper and how actually they relate to the main goal of the subject.

So let's say we're talking about Ethics of Philosophy or Philosophy of Ethics. It depends on how do I look, in which details do I needed to formalize and learn. Except for studying the details of different philosophers. And what was their approach and what their main beliefs are. I would need to formalize the why question, the most global and important question in our life is the why question. So why are those details connected to the main goal? So I mean, I need to look at the subject several times maybe not before I would think about the structure of the information. That way I would have separation between the time that I think about the subject and I studied it.

When they're reading very complex subjects students often want to speed read and understand everything on the first read. It will not work with many of the items that you need to read. Occasionally. You will need to read put it away with something else and then we turn back with a new understanding. Ah-huh.

Occasionally the first time that we read something we don't understand it fully we get only the different components of how it works without getting the full picture. Building the full picture and the driving forces of what we are looking at is very important for a very good understanding of the complex material. Right.

So occasionally, it is good just to put the article every after a very short reading and get back to it after understanding the driving forces of the article. I see. So you kind of let your brain do its back-office processing if you will. It's a very active process. You go to Wikipedia, you go to Google and search for similar articles, you try to read textbooks on similar subjects.

You read articles which are referenced in the article that you want to read. And only when you are ready to get back to the articles that you come to meet. I see, interesting. You build your background. So I think that's all the questions that really I had there were so many that were submitted and those were kind of the top ones.

What do you guys think is the future of our course? How do you think that this methodology will grow, how will it improve how it changed with, you know, technology things like that. I mean one thing that we got a lot of questions about was that Spritz, right it's kind of this like speed reading software that they claim will improve your comprehension and speed reading and all that stuff and you know, we reviewed in the course and said look, This is no better than just looking at the page and saying you know what you read in terms of comprehension.

But what do you guys think is the future of superlearning? Well, you eventually will be merged with computers one way or another. It's just a question of how and when. So, basically, I think that we need to understand computers better. Computers may be more like us. Interesting. Yeah, for makes a big difference because when I started 10, 12 years ago, it was only newspapers and today sometimes I find myself learning.

What is it? What is a newspaper? Yeah, interesting. So Lev and I were talking before the interview. I know you guys picked up a Kindle recently. I use an iPad. I really can't get along with the Kindle because the pages I can't just scroll and on the iPad I use the continuous scroll feature. So I'm just flying and tap tap tap tap tap tap.

The screen size is just like my original angle, but tapping is a little bit slow for me. So the screen is a little bit too slow for me. Right. So I ended up reading or my 24-inch screen. Right. What about Anna? How are you consuming content on an iPad on a computer screen? Usually from my phone.

Really? Yeah, so you have the continuous scroll. Yeah. Yeah, and I have the column effect. Uh-huh. So it has one column. Yeah, less words just to saccade. She has seen ten elbows. So you don't have to do saccades if you're reading on the phone. If I remember you and I actually women have a wider visual spend from what I've researched.

Like they have better peripheral vision. Yeah, which I think is interesting. I feel that vision is different from the one for the speed read because it's another range. It's a different range, different resolutions, itā€™s for movement. Right. For reading. Ah, interesting is for situational awareness. Right. That is true.

Interesting. Very interesting. So very well. Thank you guys so much for making the time really excited. I know we're going to add some links to the show notes. Just some different articles and different stuff obviously to our course for anyone who's listening and hasn't taken the course. We're going to add a think it's an 80 percent off coupon. Since we've now teased you with an hour of talking about this course and all these different methodologies. So we'll include that in there. For people who want to get in touch with you guys who want to learn more maybe want to do private coaching with Anna. How do they get in touch so they go to the key to study blog so key to study.com, right?

Yeah, and you guys have your bios up there and different articles that kind of go beyond what our course teaches and all that stuff. Great. Awesome. Awesome. Thank you guys so much. Bye.

Thanks for tuning it to the award-winning SuperHuman Academy Podcast. For more great skills and strategies or for links to any of the resources mentioned in this episode visit superhuman.blog. While your learning please take a moment to share this episode with a friend or leave us a review on iTunes. Weā€™ll see you next week.

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19 Comments

  1. Luiz
    at — Reply

    Thanks, I learned a lot of interesting things in past episodes.

  2. Shivaditya Purohit
    at — Reply

    loved th heart and the depth of the conversation. The way that Dr. Metivier shared from his enormous experience and insights was just amazing. Thank you Jonathan for doing this podcast!! šŸ™‚

  3. Rob
    at — Reply

    Great interview with Dr. Greg Wells! He mentioned a doctor from Colorado around the 42:30 point of the podcast, discussing turmeric and black pepper. I couldnā€™t make out the doctorā€™s name. Can you provide me with his full name and maybe his website or contact info. Interested in his products.

    Thanks,

    Rob

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