Compound markers

If you learnt how to generate visual markers and how to increase and control your visual eye span, your reading speed could easily be around 800 wpm. If you want to read vaster and understand more, perhaps you need some other sort of training. This training is advanced and it is not a part of the basic training material.

1. Speed marker generation. If you have been practicing visual markers for 3-4 months already there is a good chance that your first association to anything is a visual marker. These associations with happen spontaneously if you release your control from the markers. This means that if you link your markers AFTER each prereading/reading cycle, you will not only catch words and ideas, but also markers for them. If you have very complex ideas, you can use predefined marker dictionary: markers you created already and are reusing. These spontaneously generated or reusable markers are automatic, and thus much faster then the markers you generate via cognitive process.
2. Generating meaning. Once you have generated you markers, you start chunking them. One way of chunking markers is creating images. Let us call each such image a compound marker. You can put several markers within (4-5 are reasonable). Then the markers may start interacting with each other in a way that generates meaning (logical connection). You may need additional markers (logical markers) to enforce this meaning. These markers (think of hands doing things, eyes looking in different directions, alien body parts etc) are placed in the image as a way of interaction between the original markers.
3. Adding details. You can use markers hierarchically, so that your mental interaction with one of them opens a new mental image with several markers. You may also want to add details that transform the generic marker you may get spontaneously into markers adapted to the situation. For this purpose we use themes – colors, scenarios, moods we carry from the compound marker to its elements.
4. Animating. Having 2-4 compound markers per section we may need to link between them. This linking should be very fast. One way of generating very fast linking is creating a motion of imaginary camera (zoom/pan) and/or objects within compound markers – so that an animation is formed. This feels very much like early Disney animations, where everything comes to life. I wonder why people still remember these primitive animations which may be older than the people who remember them.
5. Placing. Complex ideas should be placed within mindmaps or mental palaces. Animations should not be very long, so we do not loose our focus. An animation of compound markers can be placed in a compartment of mental palace and the main theme marker (anchor marker) can be placed on the compartment’s door. Alternatively it may be placed as an interactive icon in a mindmap: so once we activate it we see the full animation.

There is no special training to this methodology. You can use our regular memory exercises, only now you can increase significantly the amount and speed of objects you can remember. Enforcing stronger timing limitations and focusing on spontaneous visualization will make you switch from your regular markers to the compound markers. There may be normal performance degradation up to 2 weeks due to change of memorization habits. If used correctly, the compound markers may allow tripling your reading speed at current retention level.