Build and Condition Your Brain

If you were offered a pill that could do the following for your brain...

• Increase the growth of brain cells in your memory centre (hippocampus)
• Improve blood flow and nutrition to your whole brain
• Enhance your ability to learn and remember
• Improve your daily mood
• Delay the onset of symptoms of Alzheimer’s

...would you take the pill?

Most of us would say "yes". But you don’t have to take a pill to get these benefits. All you have to do is exercise regularly and you can have all of the advantages above and more. In fact, the more you exercise, the more advantages you can accumulate. The easiest way to get more power from your brain is to take part in aerobic exercise for 20 to 30 minutes preferably daily, but at least 3 times a week.

Aerobic exercise is where you move the big muscles in your legs, hips, and your arms, as when you walk briskly, run, or swim, or use one of the cardio machines at your gym. This movement increases your heart rate and the depth of your breathing. This gets more oxygen into your blood which fires up the recovery process in your muscles and your brain neurons. As Dr. John Ratey explains in his book Spark: The revolutionary science of exercise and the brain:

“It turns out that moving our muscles produces proteins that travel through the bloodstream and into the brain, where they play pivotal roles in the mechanisms of our highest thought processes.”

In fact, Dr. Ratey has been quoted as referring to one of these proteins as “Miracle-Gro for the brain”.

If you need some more motivation, take a look at the YouTube video, 23 and 1/2 Hours by Dr. Mike Evans.

An easy way to start an exercise program is to start counting the number of steps you walk per day. You will need a pedometer, or you might want to go high tech and get a fitbit, which will track steps, distance, calories burned and even stairs climbed.

Here is what my friend Jeannette Folin says about using a fitbit.

“Being self-employed, I always thought my time was best spent working on generating income, not exercising. But after using the fitbit to track my daily exercise, I quickly discovered that I was billing 10-15% more hours during the weeks when I got at least 45 minutes of exercise a day. And now I realize that the exercise was boosting my physical AND mental energy levels.” 

When you have some hard intellectual work to do or some important decisions to make, take 10 minutes first to climb the stairs in your building or take a brisk walk around the block. Then come back to your desk and reap the benefits of your re-charged brain for the next hour.

Wired and Tired

We have two opposing forces or rhythms operating in our brains at all times. One is the Circadian Arousal System and the other is called the Homeostatic Sleep Process. Let’s call them the Awake cycle and the Sleep cycle. Certain hormones and various other chemicals are released in the brain to support the Awake cycle. After about 16 hours, other hormones and various chemicals are released by the brain and the Sleep cycle takes over. It is almost as if the two cycles are in competition with each other. But each wins the competition for a certain amount of time and then the other takes over. These two cycles continue throughout our lifetime and seem to work pretty well until something disrupts them, like travelling to a new time zone or using an electronic device right up to bedtime.

Electronic Devices Steal Sleep

There is growing evidence that when we play video games, or even just surf the internet for engaging information, we trigger the fight or flight stress response in our brains. If we do this just before falling asleep, it means that although we sleep, we don’t attain the same depth of normal sleep because our brain is still vigilant (the fight or flight response).

In addition, there are two more problems with using electronic devices just before bedtime. First, the screens are very bright. This bright light shining directly into our eyes shuts down the release of melatonin, one of the important chemicals for turning on our Sleep cycle. Second, anything electronic emits electromagnetic radiation (EMR). Internet use compounds the level of EMR. Like bright light, EMR disrupts melatonin release. Plus it can also enhance our fight or flight state.

According to Dr. Victoria L. Dunckley, M.D, “The Kempton West Study in Germany (2007) showed that residents exposed to a wireless cell phone transmitter (which emits high amounts of EMR) installed nearby, developed dramatic changes in their melatonin and serotonin (another brain chemical, related to feeling calm and having a sense of well-being) regulation. Interestingly, night time melatonin was reduced in the majority of the subjects, while daytime melatonin increased. Essentially, the melatonin release ‘flattened out’ and shifted to being released in the morning. This effectively reduced deep sleep and at the same time caused a feeling of exhaustion upon awakening in the study participants - the ‘wired and tired’ effect.”

Are you or your children waking in the morning with the following complaints?

• Feeling as if you have not slept well
• Dark circles under the eyes
• Poor memory, poor focus
• Hard to wake up in the morning
• Disorganized in the morning
• Irritability and meltdowns
• Difficulty with learning

You might try cutting out all interactive electronic devices, like cell phones, iPads, and e-readers after 7:00pm.

Don’t allow these devices in bedrooms. To stop using interactive electronic devices early in the evening will probably be a real challenge but, if doing so gives longer and more restful sleep, it will be worthwhile.

Remember, when you lack sleep, you’re only working at half power. Not enough sleep could lead to a momentary lack of attention causing an accident, leaving you with a brain injury for the rest of your life.

As William Shakespeare says:

“Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleeve of care,The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath,Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,Chief nourisher in life’s feast."- Macbeth (2.2.46-51)

Don’t miss out on your precious sleep.

Are You Sabotaging Your Best Intentions?

“Self-Control is not a problem in the future, it is only a problem now.”

- Shlomo Benartzi

According to eminent psychologist Daniel Kahneman, we each have two selves. There's the Experiencing Self, which lives life continuously and is aware of what is happening about 3 seconds at a time. And then there's the Remembering Self, which thinks it remembers most of what happens, but which actually remembers very little.

Kahneman believes the Remembering Self can (and often does) sabotage our best intentions. Kahneman's insights carry a lot of weight. He's a former Nobel Memorial Prize winner, one of Foreign Policy magazine's "top global thinkers", and the author of the best-seller Thinking, Fast and Slow.

Let's see how his theory works in practice. What do you remember about July and August? You experienced a lot in those two months: more than 1.6 million three-second intervals. But, if asked what you remember about the summer, what would you say? How long could you talk about your summer? Twenty or thirty minutes perhaps? That is not much compared with the 80,000 minutes you actually lived during July and August.

Although your mind only remembers a fraction of what you think about moment by moment, your Remembering Self makes almost all of your decisions. Here's where the sabotage comes in. When we make decisions, we don’t choose between experiences - we choose between our memories (or our stories) of those experiences.

How many times has your Remembering Self promised you that you will:

• Save more for your retirement
• Exercise more regularly
• Pay down your credit cards
• Eat healthier foods
• Stop procrastinating

And yet, when you actually experience the moments when you could put those promises into practice (your Experiencing Self), your Remembering Self sabotages the opportunity by remembering  a good reason why you can’t do it this minute.

But there's help at hand. Authors Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein suggest we can overcome the 'can't do it now' message if we give ourselves a gentle nudge, rather than a giant task.

Nudge Yourself and Improve Your Life

According to their new book, Nudge, Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, you can achieve your goals more easily, and live more happily, if you get into the habit of giving yourself... a nudge. For example, if you would like to increase your retirement fund, arrange with your bank to transfer $25, $50,or $100 per week into an RRSP fund. Once the arrangement is made, you will hardly notice the deduction, but you will enjoy seeing your fund steadily increase.

Want to eat more healthily? Here's how the nudge strategy works. Instead of declaring you are going to lose 10 pounds (a giant task), give yourself a nudge: remove all sugary, fatty, and salty snacks from your environment and replace them with your favorite fruits and veggies. You can also explore stickk.com to choose other nudges which will help you achieve your goals.

So, when that self-sabotaging Remembering Self tells you can't pay your debts, or improve your diet, or get fitter - give yourself a nudge.

Wired for Easy Answers

Good decisions take time.

Daniel Kahneman demonstrates that we have two systems of thinking:

System 1 is what he calls 'thinking fast'. It represents intuition, and engages us three seconds at a time. It tirelessly provides us with quick impressions, intentions, and feelings. It is also called the Experiencing Self.

System 2 is 'thinking slow'. It represents reason, self-control, and intelligence. It is also called the Remembering Self. But the Remembering Self only remembers a tiny fraction of what happened, although it thinks it remembers almost everything.

The Remembering Self is also reluctant to put much effort into thinking and will only do so when it has to. For example, if I ask you to tell me the answer to 2+2 you would give me the answer easily. But if I asked you to tell me the answer to 271 x 37 you would resist - unless you could reach for your calculator.

Of course, we are working with both 'selves' simultaneously. But both compete for our attention and the Experiencing Self often wins, even though the Remembering Self is more rational and cautious. The big problem for the Remembering Self is that it has to work harder to stay on task and quickly forgets most of what the Experiencing Self has been experiencing.

Watch Daniel Kahneman for more of an explanation.

When System 2 thinking gets tired, the brain goes with System 1. So when you have an important decision to make, you will get a better result if you allow time for careful, step-by-step thinking, and don’t let yourself be swayed by your fears and hopes of the moment. Ask critical friends or colleagues for their honest input and sleep on the decision for at least one night.

If you are a manager or a technical expert, you tend to be convinced very easily that you know best, that you have very good intuition about your particular field. But this depends on whether the domain you work in is inherently predictable and whether you have had sufficient experience to learn the regularities.

In today’s fast changing world, those conditions are very difficult to maintain. To keep your expertise up-to-date, you need to be able to listen without pre-judgment to many different resources, especially front line employees and customers.

This information about our Experiencing Self and Remembering Self ties in directly with the insights from my April newsletter on Willpower. The fact that our willpower can be easily depleted and then we are more subject to immediate temptations, sounds a lot like the collaboration/struggle between thinking fast and thinking slow.

It also explains why it is so difficult sometimes to concentrate, as discussed in my December 2012 newsletter.

Focusing our pre-frontal cortex on important tasks takes effort. When we do concentrate our attention, extra blood rich in oxygen and glucose flows to the relevant neurons, helping us concentrate even more.

However, our cave-dweller past can upset our plans. We are hard-wired to switch our attention to bright lights or colours, loud noise or movement, or even a moment of fear. It's one of our many survival mechanisms. In an office, it could be the ping of an email or a flashing light on your phone or a worrying thought. Once your attention has been distracted, it takes real effort to re-focus.

To teach our brains to focus more predictably, we need to set up conditions which reduce distractions.

originally published June 2013 Newsletter

Read Faster, Remember Longer: Technique

We see and we think very rapidly, much faster than we can talk.

Have you ever been in (or narrowly avoided) an accident? Do you remember how much thinking went on in only a few seconds? We think that fast all the time and our subconscious works even faster than our conscious thinking. When you’re driving down a multi-lane highway, changing lanes, talking to your passenger, assessing hazards and watching for cops in the rear-view mirror, your eyes and your brain work almost automatically to use your well-developed driving skills and keep you safely on the road.

Are you skilled at a hobby, or a sport, or at playing a musical instrument? Do you remember how slow and clumsy you were as a beginner? Yet now you can apply the skills rapidly and easily.

Boost Your Reading Speed and Comprehension

Just as you can drive rapidly, you have the brain and eyes that allow you to read really fast. Being able to read your work related material quickly with good concentration and retention is a skill you can improve dramatically.

Here are some tips to help you read more effectively.

1. Take a document you need to read this week. First scan the whole document quickly, asking yourself “Why am I reading this now?” The answer to that question is your purpose - the reason you need to read this document this week. You need to find certain key information, you need to refresh your knowledge of some other information, and you need to page rapidly through the document to the end to get a better sense of where the “good stuff” is. This overview helps focus your attention and improve your concentration.
2. Try sliding the forefinger of your preferred hand (or your cursor) under each line, reading as quickly as you can understand. Reading is getting information from print. Keep in mind the information you are looking for and read quickly to meet your purpose.
3. Try to finish a section or chapter in 5 minutes or less, then look back over what you read and talk to yourself about what you’ve learned. You might want to make a few brief notes.
4. Continue through the document this way, reminding yourself about your purpose and looking for the information you need. If you notice that your mind starts to wander at any point, speed up. Mind wandering indicates that you are reading more slowly than you can think and that is a waste of time and energy.
5. When you have found the information you need to meet your purpose, add to your notes.
6. Then review your understanding of what you have learned and look through the document once again to pick up any additional detail which will be helpful.

This is very similar to a study technique called SQ3R, which stands for Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review, a study method introduced by Francis Pleasant Robinson in his 1964 book, Effective Study.

This technique causes you to work much more effectively with your brain when you’re reading. By surveying the document and asking yourself questions about it, you draw information from your long-term memory and prepare your brain to learn more.

Then you read with more engagement and concentration using your finger to keep you on track.

Next you recite to yourself what you've understood while looking back over the document to remind yourself of the various aspects of what you've learned. Then you review the questions you asked yourself as you surveyed the document and make sure you know the answers.

Even if you never take a speed reading course, this focused and concentrated reading will help you read faster and remember longer. If you time yourself and keep a record of your progress, you’ll see steady improvement. If you want to push your speed and comprehension even more, consider a speed reading course.

Strengthen your Willpower

The best way to reduce stress in your life is to stop screwing up. That's the conclusion of Roy F Baumeister and John Tierney in their book Willpower - Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength. They found willpower gives people the strength to persevere and to make good decisions - but willpower is easily depleted.

Things that deplete our willpower include difficult decisions, lots of decisions, lack of sleep, lack of food, disorganization, trying to change a habit, making other major changes, starting to exercise, chronic pain, and dieting. Once our willpower is depleted, we tend to make more mistakes, to find decisions harder to make, to be more irritable, and to eat, drink, and spend too much.

You can strengthen your willpower by making sure you are getting enough sleep, eating regularly - especially at breakfast time - and recognizing your supply of willpower is limited. To strengthen your willpower, you want to develop effective habits. Your brain loves routines and habits, but it hates changing them. So just developing new habits will deplete your willpower. But your strengthened willpower will pay off in the future.

To strengthen your willpower:

• DO have one clear annual goal.
• DO convert your annual goal into monthly goals.
• DO identify your top three To Do’s for each week.
• DO your top three To Do’s first.
• DO have a To Don’t list, which outlaws phrases like:
• “I’m too busy.”
• “I’m too tired.”
• “I deserve a cookie.”
• “I’ll do that later.”
• DO recognize that whatever your conscious mind says to your subconscious, your subconscious believes every word. Instead of saying “it’s too hard”, say “it’s hard, but it’s not too hard”. Instead of saying “I should/I must”, say “I would prefer to”.
• DO set up to avoid crises. For example, hitting the snooze button too often, procrastinating, and believing that last minute rushes work as well as a systematic planned approach.
• DO review your progress regularly and reward yourself for good progress.
• DO remind yourself that like any development, strengthening your willpower takes time and effort.
• DO resist poor decision making, by writing out your rationale for the decision.

To strengthen your willpower:

• DON’T work on important decisions when you are tired, hungry or angry.
• DON’T forget Murphy’s Laws when you’re planning.
• 1. Nothing is as simple as it seems.
• 2. Everything takes longer than you think.
• 3. If anything can go wrong, it will.
• DON’T set unrealistic deadlines.
• DON’T procrastinate on fun, allow specific time for it.

Use these do’s and don’ts to strengthen your willpower. You will decrease your stress and increase your enjoyment of life. Your enriched willpower will do more than just help you get through crises; it will help you avoid them.

In the Conclusion chapter of Baumeister and Tierney’s book, they say:

“Everyone appreciates the benefits of self-control - someday. But when, if ever, is that day ever going to arrive? If willpower is finite and temptations keep proliferating, how can there be a lasting revival of this virtue? 

We don’t minimize the obstacles, but we’re still bullish on the future of self-control, at both the personal and social level. Yes, temptations are getting more sophisticated, but so are the tools for resisting them. The benefits of willpower are appreciated more clearly than ever. You could sum up a large new body of research literature with the simple rule: The best way to reduce stress in your life is to stop screwing up.”

Train Your Brain to Get the Important Things Done

First you need to understand how to harness and direct your fantastic brainpower. Your pre-frontal cortex (just behind your forehead) is where all your big thinking happens. It is often called the Executive function. According to Wikipedia, it's:

• where we resolve conflicting thoughts (good and bad, better and best, same and different)
• where we calculate the consequences of our actions
• where we create our plans to achieve our goals, and calculate our chances of success
• where we exercise 'social control' (suppress urges that, if not suppressed, could lead to socially unacceptable outcomes)

Focusing this part of our brain on important tasks takes effort.

When we do concentrate our attention, extra blood rich in oxygen and glucose flows to the relevant neurons, helping us concentrate even more.

However, our cave-dweller past can upset our plans. We are hard-wired to switch our attention to bright lights or colours, loud noise or movement. It's one of our many survival mechanisms. In an office, it could be the ping of an e-mail or a flashing light on your phone. Once your attention has been distracted, it takes real effort to re-focus.

Reduce distractions.

To teach our brains to focus more predictably, we need to set up conditions which reduce distractions. Try some of these tips over the next couple of weeks:

1. Prepare your thinking. Remind yourself of the value of reaching your goal or solving your problem.
2. Set a time limit on how long you intend to focus on the task. Thirty minutes may be enough to fine-tune existing ideas; 90 minutes may be better for innovative thinking.
3. Arrange your space to minimize distractions. An unoccupied board room or office where others can’t find you is ideal. If that is not possible, wear headphones or earplugs, turn off all pinging, flashing, vibrating electronic alerts - emails, calendars, and cell phones. You may need to cover lights and/or pull down the blinds.
4. Accept that your brain will kick up repeated distractions to tempt you into a little mind wandering. While you are working on focusing your attention, your brain will try to do what it does more often, which is to happily jump from one thought to another. When you persist in bringing your attention back to the important task you are working on, eventually the rest of your brain will quiet down.
5. Recognize that learning to concentrate is a skill. As you reduce external distractions and train your brain to focus more quickly and completely, you will experience the 'flow' of being fully engaged and productive in your work more easily and more often.
6. Don’t wait until 'you are in the mood'. We are rarely in the mood to do something challenging.
7. Don’t respond to distractions. As soon as you move out of your chair, blood flows to different parts of your brain and muscles, and it's harder to get back on task. Congratulate yourself for resisting the distraction, promise yourself a reward for staying on task, and celebrate your improved concentration.
8. Don’t expect to concentrate for 1.5 hours at first. Start with 10 to 30 minute sessions, so your brain has a chance to learn your new process. Your brain cannot store the oxygen and glucose that your stimulated bloodstream brings to your pre-frontal cortex. Every time you give in to distraction, your blood flow is re-directed away and that tires the pre-frontal cortex. It's like draining the battery of your cell phone when it has too many programs running.

Perfectionism is Unhealthy and a Waste of Time

According to Dr. Gordon Flett of York University who has specialized in studying perfectionism and anxiety, “Perfectionism is the need to be, or to appear to be, perfect.” He has identified three types:

1. self-oriented: those who expect perfection of themselves
2. other-oriented: those who demand perfection from others
3. socially-prescribed: those who think others expect perfection of themselves

People who are perfectionistic have unrealistically high expectations for performance, but take little joy in their accomplishments because their results are never quite good enough. This means that sometimes they avoid taking on a certain challenge because they fear that they can’t do it perfectly. Unlike high achievers who enjoy the “flow” of marshaling their strongest skills, stretching towards a challenge, and doing the best they can with the time and energy they have, perfectionists focus only on the result and find the hard work and long hours exhausting and the result imperfect.

Perfectionists live with an “internal bully” who is horrified by mistakes and is constantly threatening failure. This harsh internal voice often causes the perfectionist high anxiety, frequent frustration, guilt, and even panic. The person is often seen as a high achiever by others, but also as a person who is uncomfortable to be around because they seem so perfect.

If the perfectionist demands perfection from others, he or she is very difficult to work for or to have as a parent or spouse.

Martin Anthony's TEDx talk

Dr. Martin M. Antony is Director of the Anxiety Research and Treatment Lab at Ryerson University and Immediate Past-President of the Canadian Psychological Association. Dr. Antony is also currently a professor and Graduate Program Director at Ryerson University. He has recently co-authored a book called When Perfect Isn’t Good Enough. In 2010, he gave a very interesting TEDx talk with the same title.

High achievers set high standards for themselves and work energetically to achieve them, but their whole sense of self-worth is not dragged down if they don’t meet those standards perfectly.

If you suspect that you may be a perfectionist, ask yourself the following questions designed by Dr. Gordon Flett:

TEN TOP SIGNS YOUR A PERFECTIONIST

1. you can't stop thinking about a mistake you made
2. you are intensely competitive and can't stand doing worse than others
3. you either want to do something "just right" or not at all
4. you demand perfection from other people
5. you won't ask for help if asking can be perceived as a flaw or weakness
6. you will persist at a task long after other people have quit
7. you are a fault-finder who must correct other people when they are wrong
8. you are highly aware of other people's demands and expectations
9. you are very self-conscious about making mistakes in front of other people
10. you noticed the error in the title of this list

If you do think you may be a perfectionist, ask yourself what it may be costing you. People who are perfectionistic often have high anxiety, procrastinate frequently, don’t delegate as they should, spend more time planning than doing, avoid something if they fear they cannot do it perfectly, and may have difficulties in relating to peers, direct reports, and spouses.

If the price is too high, you can work towards changing the thoughts and behaviours which cost you too much time and energy. Start by watching Dr. Antony Martin’s TEDx talk, then read his book When Perfect Isn't Good Enough. Also, you will probably find Dr. David Burns, MD, book Feeling Good - very helpful.

Get More Power from Your Brain

If you are 35 or older, you have had at least one moment when you cannot remember something you know well. At first, we laugh it off as a signal that we are just lacking a little sleep or we are too busy. But not having enough sleep, running on cortisone and adrenalin because there are too many deadlines in a day, being too busy to exercise or eat well is actually damaging that precious brain of yours.

We are all a little scared of Alzheimer’s and we have good reason to be scared. Although only 1% of people under 60 are affected by this horrible disease, it hits 10% of people between 65 and 74, 33% of those between 75 and 84 and 50% of those over 85.

How old will you be in 30 years?

There is good research now that indicates that we can delay or prevent the start of Alzheimer’s even if it is in your family genes. But the sooner you start deliberately taking care of your brain, the better for you.

If you are intent on keeping your brain healthy, then you must develop a way to continue your learning for your whole life. You must reduce your stress and get enough sleep. And you must exercise daily and eat food that is good for your brain and your body. Start by making sure you are getting some aerobic exercise, like walking, every day as this is the best and fastest way to slow the aging process.

The Multitasking Myth

Another thing you can do is to reduce the number of interruptions you have each day. People will argue that they can get more skilled at switching from one task to another and that is true if both tasks are familiar and relatively easy. But there is still a price of slower timing and reduced accuracy over being able to concentrate on one task at a time.

Research on people driving while talking on their cell phones shows that they’re a half-second slower to hit the brakes in an emergency than drivers who are not talking on their cell phones. A driver going at 70 mph travels 51 feet in a half-second. If you happen to be the unlucky pedestrian or another driver within that 51 feet, you’re going to be hit by a car traveling at 70 miles per hour!

The term multitasking comes from the computer world, where it appears as if you can run two or more programs on a computer simultaneously. In fact, what computers are doing is shifting tasks in and out of the central processing unit multiple times in less than a second. Computers can do that, but we can’t.

In 2009, researchers at Stanford University studied two groups of students. One group did a lot of multitasking on a daily basis and the other group did very little. The researchers expected to find that the high multitasking students were better at screening out irrelevant information, organizing their memories, and switching efficiently from one task to another. To their surprise, they found that the high multi-taskers were significantly worse at all three measures. They could not pay attention, control their memory, or switch from one job to another as well as those who seldom multi-task.

Multitasking implies that we can actually perform two or more tasks at the same time, but we cannot divide our attention like that. What happens is that when our attention is on one task, it is as if the other does not exist. When we shift to the second task, we have to make the shift, orient to the new task, stimulate the neurons that relate to that task, get them actually moving forward on the task, and hopefully stay on the task long enough to get something done. We are able to shift rapidly between tasks, but every shift takes a little extra time and we are more likely to make mistakes. In addition, constant multitasking can increase our stress level.

Speed Reading: Read Faster and Remember Longer

If you are like most people, you read more slowly than you can think. Since a piece of writing is actually slowing down your thought process, you will tend to be easily distracted, to get bored, and worst of all, to get drowsy and even fall asleep when you are reading. Given that most of us have learned to look at only one word at a time—even though we can easily see several words at a glance—we frequently look back along the line or back up the page when we read. In fact, the average adult “regresses” 15 to 20 time for every 100 words they read. Think about how much visual information the brain has to screen out when we are reading that way.

The term “Speed Reading” was first used by Evelyn Wood, a schoolteacher who decided to take a Masters degree in Education, specializing in reading. When she started in the late fifties at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, she discovered that the main professor she was studying with read at over 1,000 words per minute with good comprehension. Since she knew that most people read between 200 and 250 words per minute, Evelyn found this intriguing and decided to find others with this unusual ability and find out how they were doing it.

She tracked down about 40 people who met her criteria of “Natural Speed Reader”: they could read at over 1,000 words per minute with good comprehension. She watched them read, measured their speed and comprehension, and asked them to tell her what they were doing and how they were doing it. She found that all of them had developed this ability by themselves, but they all had three techniques in common. Using these techniques, she taught herself to speed read. She then designed a course to teach others to speed read as well. Later she offered her very successful techniques to high school teachers in Salt Lake City. But the school board declined her offer, and she realized she was going to have difficulty getting the educational world to accept the notion of speed reading as an acceptable new teaching technique.

So she moved to Washington, DC, and began working as an independent educational consultant. Because the Russians had beaten the US into space with the Sputnik, there was an intense interest in education in the US at that time. Not surprisingly, her business flourished. It became even more successful after she was invited to The White House to teach President Kennedy and his staff to speed read. Her methods gained national renown.

Evelyn Wood franchised her company throughout North America and gathered many devoted followers—because speed reading worked. I learned to speed read through her course and went on to teach it for her company while I was taking my undergraduate degrees at Dalhousie University. After graduating, I taught reading in elementary school for five years and then went on to take my Masters degree in Education, specializing in reading. During that time, I developed my own speed reading course, based on the work of Evelyn Wood, and I have been teaching it for over 20 years.

Most people have only two reading speeds: slow and slower. Once you have taken a speed reading course, you will be able to read at various speeds: very, very fast; very fast; fast; medium; and slow. You’ll be able to adjust your speed to suit your purpose in reading and the difficulty of the material. At work, people are very knowledgeable about the content of their professional material, so they can read it a lot faster than they think they can. By the end of the day, the average person taking my speed reading seminar can at least double—and often triple—his or her speed. And they will still maintain good comprehension!

Guided by the practice exercises in the take-home manual, you can increase those speeds for reading professional material within a week. During the seminar, participants learn to read a 150-page book and make effective notes in less than 35 minutes. They learn how to establish their purpose in reading, set up their note-taking system, and quickly find and record the key information that will meet their purpose. Reading becomes an engaging challenge, rather than a chore.

Do you love to read and are afraid that speed reading will take the pleasure out of reading? No need to worry. Like most people, you will probably use speed reading for your professional reading, which gives you more time for others things you like to do—including leisure reading, which you can do as slowly as you like.

Click here for details about my Speed Reading workshop.

Greater Brain Power Skills Defeat Procrastination

Fear and doubt are what’s actually causing us to procrastinate most of the time, so to alter that habit we need to look into what’s causing our fear and doubt. When we put off something we really need or want to do, it’s often because we have imagined that:

• There are too many difficulties and we won’t be able to handle them
• We can’t do it perfectly now, so we have to wait for more time and energy
• We will make mistakes and then will be blameworthy
• We are not in the mood, and we have to wait until we feel just right

When we use our mind to imagine future difficulties, we stimulate the release of the same stress hormones into our brain as if those difficulties are actually happening. Using your powerful mind to frighten yourself and create stress when there is no need for stress is a poor use of your intelligence and energy.

To defeat procrastination, identify what you’re telling yourself that causes you stress and gives you permission to delay. Then: challenge that thinking. For example, you might find that you’re saying something like,

“X will be too difficult.”

Things might be difficult, but they are not too difficult. You've done difficult things in the past and you've usually been pleased with yourself once you've finished them. The only way to find out whether you can handle the difficulties is to get started.

“I can’t do it right now.”

This comment is often shorthand for “I can’t do it perfectly right now.” Many of us mislead ourselves into thinking that we must, or have to, do things perfectly. First of all, you can’t do anything perfectly because that would mean that it couldn't possibly be improved in any way. So delaying yourself from starting because conditions are not “just right” is neurotic and a terrible waste of time. Striving for excellence by doing the best job we can with the time and energy we have is much more healthy and realistic. Susan Sweeney, best-selling author and internet marketing speaker, and a person I really admire because she has accomplished so much, told me that her favourite saying when she finds herself beginning to procrastinate is,

“Done is better than perfect.”

Delaying starting something you've got to do, like your tax return, means that you will be stressed about it for longer and you will probably have to rush it at the last minute, which leaves you open to making mistakes and doing a less than excellent job. Delaying starting something that you want to do, that will bring you some real benefit from getting it done, by telling yourself any of the above excuses is just a bad thinking habit.

“I might make a mistake and then I’ll be a failure.”

Remind yourself that the most successful people make the most mistakes. They learn to be successful through their mistakes. Just like a young child tries, tries, and tries again until she learns how to do something, successful people know that the best way to learn is to get into action.

The last excuse is often the one that causes the most procrastination.

“I’m not in the mood right now.”

Basically when you’re facing a challenging job, you’re almost never in the mood before you start. Remember the last time you faced an overwhelming project like cleaning out your closet or basement? You didn’t really get in the mood to do it until you were well started. Then once you were started, you kept going and worked at it longer than you had originally planned because you got into the flow. You had a clear goal, unambiguous feedback about how you were progressing, a good match between your skills and the challenges of the task, a sense of control, and few distractions.

It helps tremendously to recognize that we’re rarely in the mood to do something before we’re actually involved in doing it. The answer here is to say to yourself, “I will be in the mood to do this once I've started.”