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greetings folks Tim Ferris here author
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of 4-Hour Work Week tools of Titans Etc
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I think a lot about ingesting
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information and it sounds so sexy
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doesn't it learning how do you speed up
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the consumption of say text if you want
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to read faster how do you do that
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without succumbing to some pseudo
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science nonsense about uh speed reading
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there's a lot of garbage out there but
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how can you improve your ability to
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absorb written information without
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sacrificing comprehension there are some
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very straightforward ways to do it I'm
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going to show you that right now and I
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will use these two books to demonstrate
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so these are fiction and non-fiction
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respectively how to get filthy rich in
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rising Asia one of my favorite uh recent
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fiction books uh which I generally don't
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try to read super quickly but these
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books are the same size so I'll show you
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then vagabonding which is one of my
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faves has been since 2004 all right so
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let's take just for the sake of
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Simplicity and I would recommend you do
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the same a book that has fairly
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standardized formatting in other words
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there aren't a lot of bullet lists there
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aren't a lot of graphs it's mostly
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text and since we can only manage what
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we can measure step number one is
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figuring out roughly how many words per
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page are on uh this particular say
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spread right and then throughout the
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book so you're going to go through and
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you're going to count say on a page like
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this the number of words in 10 lines
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okay so you come up with a total divide
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it by 10 that's your average number of
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words per line and then you can see here
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most books have a consistent number of
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lines per page you multiply that let's
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just say it's 30 okay you have an
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average of 10 words per line that's 300
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words per page great easy enough all
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right what we want to do next is
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establish your Baseline so you're going
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to read for one minute you're going to
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be focusing on reading at your normal
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speed of course now you have an
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experimental or observer effect so it
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might be slightly off but that's all
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right you're going to read for one
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minute and uh then you're going to do
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the math multiply it out and figure out
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how many words roughly have I read that
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is your words per minute rate
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wpm and uh what we do should help double
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or triple that without too much trouble
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all right now
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uh I'll do a demo before we go into how
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to mess with your
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book if you look at say my nose all
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right in this
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video can you still see my finger of
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course you can can you still see my
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finger over here yes you can that is
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your peripheral vision even if your
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fixation point if your primary point of
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focus is right here when we read most of
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us when we are taught to read we read
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word by word so we go from the fur fmost
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left word to the furthermost right word
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and so on seems logical the problem with
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that is is you're not using any of this
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space or the margins and the way that
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you then remedy
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that is by drawing lines on some pages
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and I would suggest you indent one word
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from either side okay and so what that
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might look like
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is something
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like this so now you have lines going
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down either side of the page and instead
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of starting all the way to the left
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you're going to start at this line and
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then you're going to end at that line so
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much like a say typewriter with a return
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carriage going down you're now going to
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be zigzagging just as you would normally
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but the parameters or the boundaries
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have been moved in by a word you will
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you will not have any trouble reading
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and you you should still have full
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comprehension and if you do this for say
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5 to 10 pages then if you're not having
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any trouble whatsoever you can inbt by
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another word and you can either use
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lines or you can spitball it you can
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estimate it
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and by doing this alone just that you
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can train yourself to get to the point
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where effectively you are very much
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focusing on the middle thirdd of the
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page and you're just dotting down the
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page left to right and that in and of
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itself could easily double your reading
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speed without sacrificing comprehension
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uh the next observation just
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mechanically that can be very helpful is
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that the eye doesn't track in a clean
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smooth line when you are say glancing
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from left to right right so if you want
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to do a test close one eye you put a
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finger on that eye and then slowly track
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across the wall on the opposite side and
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what you'll notice is that the eye jumps
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right and these are I believe I've never
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actually heard this said I've only read
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it a million times cic movements uh the
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eye will jump from fixation point to
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fixation point and you can see this with
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Retina scanning and eye tracking which
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uh I've seen a fair amount of just in
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psychological studies I've been an
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experimentor and a subject both at
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Princeton where I did stuff actually in
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the lab of Danny Conan who who wrote uh
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Thinking Fast and Slow incredible
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incredible scientist but I was just
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clicking space bars looking at stuff on
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the screen uh and then at UCSF and other
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places how do we utilize that what that
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means is when you're looking at a given
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page your eye isn't moving
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smoothly across each line it's fixation
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fixation fixation so the
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less that we can regress meaning bounce
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back or bounce up you want to stay on
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that reliable forward path and the fewer
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fixation points we have it's just a math
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problem the less time we're going to
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spend reading each page so what does
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this mean this means that thus far we've
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just been looking at the page and
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reading what we're going to do now is
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use a Pacer so you could use your finger
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and now you are actually going to
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track with your finger Trace underneath
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the line like so and try to think of two
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fixation points per line for your eye
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but this will keep you from bouncing up
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to previously read material we've all
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had the experience of being really
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sleepy say and feeling like you've read
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the same two lines five or six times
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this is partially because your eyes are
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tired and you end up back skipping and
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jumping all over the place all right so
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then you use your your marker your Pacer
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to move down the page and the last test
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I would have you run or experiment prior
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to remeasurement so let's say you do
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that for 10 minutes and so you you've
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you've moved in the in the boundaries uh
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the the edges of the page so to speak
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where you stop and go to the next line
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and then you're minimizing the number of
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fixations and you're preventing back
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skipping by using Pacer the next thing
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you're going to do is say for five
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minutes is to read slightly faster than
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your comprehension allows so you want to
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get to the point where you're losing
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maybe 10% and the effect that we're
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looking for is resetting your comfort
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set point in Reading at full
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comprehension in other words if you're
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used to always driving at 30 mph and
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then you get to the point where you're
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on a highway say I was just in Texas and
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it was speed limit 80 mph oh my God does
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that feel fast and suddenly you feel
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like you're operating at very high speed
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you then dial back when you go into say
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a 55 Zone it feels like 30 all right
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you've adapted to the faster speed so
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for 5 minutes just practice reading with
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slight comprehension loss so a little
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bit faster than it's comfortable and
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then what I want you to do is retest
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your word per minute rate so now you're
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going to use the bumping in from either
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side you're going to use the pter and I
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want you to make sure that you have full
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comprehension and in doing that I would
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wager that the vast majority of you uh
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probably close to 100% if you followed
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all these instructions will have at
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least improved your reading speed by 50%
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some of you will double triple quadruple
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your reading speed without sacrificing
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comprehension no Voodoo no magic
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involved it's just understanding the
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mechanics of the eye a little bit about
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the uh about Optical perception and then
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recognizing how you can optimize that
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for the printed page and that's it so
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congratulations you've probably double
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or tripled your reading speed and for
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poetry for fiction you can always read
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slower but now that you have a Ferrari
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instead of a Yugo you can choose from a
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wider range of speeds so there you have
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it have fun reading I recommend both how
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to get filthy rich and r in Asia and
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vagabonding among many many others
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there's a world out there to explore so
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I'll let you get to
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it if you enjoyed this video I want to
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propose you check out the podcast the
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Tim feris show why has it been number
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one on iTunes across all categories in
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some cases number one in business why
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does it have 70 million plus downloads
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because I interview world-class
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performers from Athletics business that
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includes billionaires from everything
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imaginable entertainment to tease out
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the routines the habits the tools that
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you can use
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so checking out the Tim Farah show