Reading With the Right Brain: Read Faster by Reading Ideas Instead of Just Words (20 page)

Imagine your reading to be like walking through a museum. You move quickly past displays you’ve seen before, slow down to consider those new and interesting items, and then sometimes stop and stare at the most surprising finds.

Information density also affects your ability to stay connected with the material and to prevent your mind from wandering. Since the prefrontal cortex tries to be energy efficient, it attempts to ignore low density information.

When information density is too low, you will have a tendency to begin skimming the text, which will make it harder to keep your mind firmly connected with it. However, when information density is too high, you may be forced to slow down so much that it can become difficult to keep the larger picture of the information in your mind.

Being aware of how information density changes and affects your comprehension will help you accommodate these changes by accepting a constantly changing reading speed.

Information Attachment

Conceptualizing information is still not the very end of the reading process. Information that is not attached to previous knowledge will quickly evaporate and disappear. Information attachment takes place via attributes the new information shares with existing information. Do you enjoy a sport or a hobby? If you do, you will easily remember a new record or achievement in that field.

Your current personal knowledge base was built out of those things you found interesting in the past. This existing knowledge is what supplies attachment points for new related information. Your interest in a subject will improve your comprehension because you will have many other pieces of related information with which to quickly associate and attach new information. It is literally true to describe an interest as an “attachment” to the subject, because new information about the subject will easily find more attachments to your existing knowledge.

Furthermore, if you have a larger number of interests, there will be more subjects that will be easier and more interesting to read about. This actually creates a virtuous circle: the more you know about each subject, the more interesting it becomes; and then the more interesting it becomes, the more you’ll want to know about it. This is a terrific cure for boredom. In fact, when something seems boring, it’s often not the material that’s boring—it’s us.

Developing more interest in a subject will also change your reading from passive to aggressive. You will find that you will tend to aggressively seek information as you read about these subjects, rather than passively wait for ideas to occur to you.

Thought-Unit Attachment

Another form of information attachment is the attachment between the thought-units in each sentence. Each of these meaningful phrases will attach to the prior and next phrases, and your comprehension will depend on these bonds. Although it’s easier and faster to comprehend words in meaningful groups than one at a time, these groups also become more meaningful in the context of their neighboring groups.

For example, you will notice that when you first start reading something, your comprehension may start off feeling weak and tenuous, but then it begins to strengthen as you continue reading. This is because each thought-unit you encounter is assisting those around it by supplying additional supporting context. Each new piece of information elaborates on the preceding piece and then narrows the possibilities of what’s coming next.

This takes effect, whether you are starting a book, a chapter, a page, a paragraph, or even a sentence. It takes a bit of effort to get traction as you encounter each new idea. Let’s walk part way through a sentence to demonstrate this. Consider this sentence:

“Now, as it turned out, the Rebellion was achieved much earlier and more easily than anyone had expected.”

Dividing this into thought-units could look like this:

Now,
as it turned out,
the Rebellion
was achieved
much earlier
and more easily
than anyone
had expected.

When you come across the first thought-unit, “
Now
,” it would appear that this is likely some kind of exclamatory statement, but otherwise the meaning would still be pretty vague.

But the next phrase, “
as it turned out
,” adds to the meaning of “
Now
,” which now appears to indicate
when
something
turned out
. And not only does the second phrase add to the meaning of the first, it also gives a clue as to what the next phrase might be about. It doesn’t tell you
what
the next phrase is going to be, but it narrows the list of likely possibilities. This makes the third phrase easier to understand because you know it will be limited to something that will make sense in the context of the previous phrase.

Next, when you come to “
the Rebellion
,” the same principle applies. This phrase clarifies the information of the preceding phrase and again narrows the possibilities of the following phrase. We now know, “
as it turned out,
” refers to some rebellion; additionally, we know that the upcoming phrase will probably describe something about the rebellion.

While this has been a rather long-winded description, the whole process occurs in microseconds. The mental process of attaching thought-units to one another is so fast as to be almost unconscious, but it’s important to understand that the thought-units and ideas are parts of a chain. Reading should be a smooth stream of comprehension, with each piece fitting into its neighbors in a continuous flow of information in context. Therefore, your comprehension will usually start out slower as you collect this context and then accelerate as the information becomes more meaningful and the larger ideas emerge.

A good metaphor for this process is thoughts connected by a string. First, you have to be sure you have a firm grip on the string; then, you can gradually start to pull, and the rest of the string will come along. But if you yank too hard or too quickly, your mental string will break and your comprehension will slip away. Also, some sections of a string may be more fragile than others, which means you will have to pull more slowly and carefully to maintain comprehension.

Since it takes a bit of reading to first develop a context for the material and to understand what it is about, it’s important that you are willing to let your reading be slower at first and then speed up on its own as the larger ideas materialize around this context.

Flow

Another thing that affects reading comprehension is writing style. Writing that flows well, that just seems more natural, is always a lot easier to understand. If the author’s words have a natural rhythm and they flow well, it will take less mental energy for you to translate the writing back into ideas, leaving you more energy left for processing those ideas.

Good writing flow is an important factor in reading comprehension. Good flow probably has more impact on comprehension than sentence length or vocabulary. Unfortunately, good flow is not easily achievable for writers; few excel at creating it. Below are two sentences to compare. Both are examples of good writing, taken from famous novels; but one flows better than the other.

From
The Velveteen Rabbit:

For at least two hours
the Boy loved him,
and then Aunts and Uncles
came to dinner,
and there was
a great rustling
of tissue paper
and unwrapping
of parcels,
and in the excitement
of looking at
all the new presents
the Velveteen Rabbit
was forgotten.

From
The Jungle Book:

Mother Wolf lay
with her big gray nose
dropped across
her
four tumbling,
squealing cubs,
and the moon shone
into the mouth
of the cave where
they all lived.

Although both examples contain good writing, you will probably notice that the first one seems to
flow
better—it’s somehow just a little easier to understand. This is true even though the first sentence is longer, and its words are no shorter or easier than the second sentence.

The difference here is flow. Flow has to do with the flow of ideas—either through time or from big picture to detail. Good writing flow progresses logically, the way we think. It is easier to understand a sentence that describes a period of time if it moves from past to future, rather than backwards as a series of flashbacks. It is also easier to understand a sentence that describes a scene if it starts with the overall image and then zooms in on the details, rather than focusing on multiple minutiae and making us wait to see what they add up to.

The first example above flows from one moment in time to the next in a logical fashion, making it easy for us to understand where the ideas are going.

The second example moves through space—instead of time—but from detail to big picture, rather than vice versa; so that we need to hold the details in mind until the whole picture emerges.

The result of good flow is that it takes the reader carefully through the information, ensuring the short-term memory is never overburdened with unsupported moments in time or unattached fragments of a scene. With good flow, each new piece of information is easily and logically associated with the prior piece, and the reader is not required to wait to assemble the pieces like a jigsaw puzzle at the conclusion of the sentence.

Being aware of density, attachment, and flow means actively maintaining a balance between speed and comprehension. A lot of things can affect your comprehension. Allowing your speed to fluctuate not only allows for better comprehension, but it even helps maintain your attention. If you read at a constant, mechanical, unchanging speed, it can be like listening to a boring, monotone speaker. So mix it up. Slow your pace when necessary, and be ready to sprint when you can.

Practice Exercise #11

Read this next exercise, making sure that you are concentrating on comprehension. See each idea because this is key to getting the right brain involved. The right brain doesn’t understand words, it understands ideas. But feed it ideas only as fast as it can handle them—no faster, but no slower. Remember, it’s your comprehension speed that you want to maximize, not just words per minute.

When you’re ready, begin reading the first thousand words of

The Voyages of Dr. Dolittle
by Hugh Lofting

The Voyages of Dr. Dolittle

My name was
Tommy Stubbins,
son of Jacob Stubbins,
the cobbler
of Puddleby-on-the-Marsh;
and I was
nine and a half
years old.
At that time Puddleby
was only quite
a small town.
A river
ran through
the middle of it;
and over this river
there was a very old
stone bridge,
called Kingsbridge,
which led you
from the market-place
on one side
to the churchyard
on the other.

Sailing-ships
came up this river
from the sea
and anchored
near the bridge.
I used to go down
and watch the sailors
unloading the ships
upon the river-wall.
The sailors sang
strange songs
as they pulled
upon the ropes;
and I learned
these songs
by heart.
And I would sit
on the river-wall
with my feet dangling
over the water
and sing with the men,
pretending to myself
that I too
was a sailor.

For I longed always
to sail away
with those brave ships
when they
turned their backs
on Puddleby Church
and went creeping
down the river again,
across the wide
lonely marshes
to the sea.
I longed
to go with them
out into the world
to seek my fortune
in foreign lands—
Africa,
India,
China
and Peru!
When they got
round the bend
in the river
and the water
was hidden from view,
you could still see
their huge brown sails
towering over
the roofs of the town,
moving onward slowly—
like some gentle giants
that walked
among the houses
without noise.
What strange things
would they have seen,
I wondered,
when next they came back
to anchor at Kingsbridge!
And,
dreaming of the lands
I had never seen,
I’d sit on there,
watching till
they were out of sight.