Chapter 9. Analyze it

There is such an anecdote: "People who say that a person uses only 10% of his brain, themselves use only 10% of their brain." But recently this opinion was elevated to the rank of truth and was widespread everywhere!

Scientists have proved, that if we used only the above-mentioned percentage, we would simply not be able to survive evolutionarily. We use the brain even when we sleep, not talking about the wakefulness phase! Brain activity is disabled only if this organ has received fatal damage.

Today, research related to neuroscience is being actively developed. Being a passionate enthusiastic seeker of the answer to the question, as I think, I began to study research.

Our brain consists of cell tissue, which in turn is a collection of nerve cells or – neurons. They occupy a certain place in the patency of nerve impulses and are responsible for the implementation of a reflex, forming signals for other nerve cells.

It was found, that the number of neurons in the head is about 100 billion! There is a whole Universe in our head, but we spend our resources on studying instructions for instant soup!

New studies, that were conducted by the neurologist Herkulano-Houzel show, that they are actually smaller. The researchers used the brain of four healthy (of course, before the end of life) men from 50 to 70 years. The result of the study showed, that in fact there are about 85 billion neurons in the brain, but not 100, as previously thought. Should add, that these 15 billion cells make up 1/6 of the size of a healthy male's brain.

Contrary to popular belief, the size of the brain and the level of its development doesn’t depend on each other at all. But the number of neurons affects brain development and the key factors are:

Many of my readers, probably, heard the fact, that the larger the head, the more intelligent a person is. However, I repeat, the size of the brain isn’t key in its development! For example, Einstein's brain weighed 1230g, while the brain of a healthy man reaches 2.000 grams. Thus, brain research hasn’t yet revealed a significant effect of any particular factor on intelligence. However, as I have already said, the key signs of development are the interconnection of neurons, which can be increased throughout life.

I will give you some interesting facts on how you can trick your brains with quite simple actions.

For example, Purkinje Effect, named after the founder of neuroscience, Jan Purkinje. Even at a young age, the scientist found a rather specific hallucination. At the first stage of the experiment, it’s necessary to close the eyes and look at the sun, and at the same time begin to open and close your eyes with your palms. After a few minutes of these manipulations, you can see colorful figures in front of you.

And now lift your leg a little higher from the floor and begin to perform motor actions in the right direction. During these movements, start drawing the number six with your finger. Surprisingly, your foot will begin to move in the other direction (as well as figure 6), and it will be almost impossible to change the movement to the original one.

You are. And there is someone you want to be. The difference is what you start doing today.

Neuroscientist Barry Gordon reports, that the brain has different departments, each department of which is engaged in the performance of its specific functions. Departments, that wouldn’t work, just doesn’t exist. If the cells of some of the divisions are inactive, they die. It’s the reason, that I strongly advocate the idea of non-stop learning.

Imagine, that your brain is a complex mechanism, consisting of tiny metal screws and wheels. Information is an oil that lubricates parts. The better each element works, the more effective the operation of the mechanism as a whole. At that moment, when a person ceases to "lubricate" the debugged mechanism. Parts start to rust. The mechanism ceases to function and slowly produces the necessary actions. There is a degradation, after which it is very difficult to resume the smoothly running system.

“It is neural connections, that help different areas of the brain to transmit data to each other, thereby ensuring the vital processes for us: memory formation, speech production and understanding, and control of the movements of our own body,” the scientists report.

A group of scientists led by Stephen Smith from the Center for Functional MRI of the Brain at Oxford University decided to find out whether the total number of neural connections in the brain can affect its work as a whole. During the study, scientists used data from previous projects, on the basis of which a kind of "map" of the brain was compiled. With its help, you can understand, which area of the brain is responsible for which process, and how the different areas of the brain interact with each other.

As a result of the work, it was managed to find out: the greater the number of neural connections present in the human brain, the more active it is. People whose brain was saturated with contacts between neurons have higher education, have no problems with the law, strive to lead a healthy lifestyle, are in good psychological condition and generally showed a high standard of living.

According to the authors of the study, the relationship between the number of neural connections and the quality of human life was so obvious that the researchers themselves were amazed at the results.

Thus, it turns out, that the development of the brain directly depends on the continuous “feeding” of neural connections. I consider effective reading to be one of the most important forms of “nutrition” of brain activity.

I emphasize on efficiency, because regular reading doesn’t lead to full results. For example, you can read a treatise on medieval knightly campaigns at a speed of 1000 words per minute. But if at the same time you don’t understand the text and cannot explain it clearly then, then the efficiency of reading is zero. The same principle applies to the quality of texts. If your chosen book is a vivid example of modern fiction, then you will not gain new knowledge, on the contrary, you can easily degrade to the level of fiction novels.

In this chapter I will talk about how to learn to read so, that the effect of reading is maximized. So, after you finish reading a good text, you feel how new neural connections are created, how clearly you think, how the brain requires more and more healthy, and wholesome food.

Let's start with the basics. Each action should have a clear goal, i.e. reading should be directed. You must clearly represent the result, that you want to get after reading the treatise, journal, notes. You can use reading to solve a difficult problem, get an answer, feel pleasure – the goal in this case affects the inner mind, according to the principle of a signal that helps to achieve the desired effect.

Armed with a clear goal, you should move to a level of relaxed vigilance, which is necessary for accelerated learning. You should be making efforts in the process, but you not be worried about the result that is already laid on the cortex of the brain. Imagine, that you playfully read the book – you don’t worry, you know exactly, what you are doing and why.

After you have designated the goal, you should study the “appearance” of the book – its cover with all useful content. Is the author's name say to you something? Remember some echoes, that may indicate his competence. Analyze the name to make sure it matches the goal. Look at the content. Perhaps, there are chapters, that are not interesting to you and you should focus your attention on specific paragraphs.

After a preliminary "acquaintance" I recommend referring to reviews. Many times this information saved me from wasting time. I compose whole "trees" from books, when I see, that one author readily recommends certain works of a colleague. Carefully read those books that are of practical use – they may contain tips about where to turn for the next “portion” of the necessary information.

The next important step is preview, which should become a habit. =Preview ensures you 100 percent effectiveness, as you study a subject before proceeding to study it. Do you try on clothes before you buy them? Are you studying a movie review before you go to the cinema? Reading shouldn’t be an exception.

This chapter will help you to save a considerable amount of time without losing the quality of information perception. Thanks to simple tips you will learn how to:


You should start with the effective viewing technique, which will help you to read the desired text several times faster than your usual speed.

How can you understand the main idea of the text just by looking at it? Is it achievable? Based on my own experience, I can answer this question in the affirmative – you can! Most often, the essence of any information field is located approximately in the same places. Any text has its own laws of construction. The author concentrates the main idea in strictly defined places of the book or article. Sometimes it’s enough for an experienced look to find this place, make a quick view and not read the entire text.

The typical structure of any text is based on the Socrates description: first it’s necessary to learn, what the author wants to inform, then to give out the information, and then explain it to the reader. Having considerable experience in writing various texts, beginning with the university, a familiar copywriter told me about the elementary construction of any text, be it a report or a whole dissertation:


Whatever text you may discover, fiction or highly specialized, you’ll always find the trinity mentioned above, with these or other variations. Even in postmodern literature, no matter how complicated or confusing it is, you’ll always find acquaintance with the characters, the development of the plot and the denouement of the plot. However, the preview is of little use for acquaintance with the world classics, however, it is almost irreplaceable for studying scientific literature.

The principle of the preview is based on the method of evaluating the text “from the general to the particular”. First, you evaluate the whole picture and only after that proceed to a detailed study. Scroll through the book of your choice. Even at the moment of the flickering of words, sentences and paragraphs, your look will surely “pull out” several keywords, on the basis of which it’s possible to draw a conclusion about the content of the entire book.

Then you can flip through the book a little more slowly – you’ll see its structure, how it’s divided into chapters, how key words and phrases are highlighted. Imagine, that you meet a new friend, you study his appearance, listen to his voice, ask his name and learn a profession. Believe me, some texts will become your real friends!

After you are done with the introductory part, the preview begins. This process takes about five minutes for book, about three – for report, three for report and only 30 seconds for article. Throughout this process, you compare the text with the goal, identify key points and decide whether to continue reading or finish it at this stage. Don’t be afraid to refuse to read just because you have already taken the book in your hands and it seems a pity for you to postpone it. If already at the preview stage it doesn’t represent value for you, then why waste time on its full study?

Preview is a scanning mechanism, i.e. obtaining general information, that acts as a scheme or image of the text. You receive or don’t receive confirmation of your own expectations, thanks to which the reading process becomes more efficient and enjoyable. In the subconscious you have already outlined a plan for reading, you have already created in your head the outline of a particular publication, which you will gradually fill with meaning, details, facts, names.

Another trick of the preview is that the human brain perceives only familiar objects. The more you know about the content of the text, the easier it will be for reading and reflection.

You should not pay too much time to the review – if the time is running longer than expected (see the information above), then you are already reading in the usual slow way. The review should contribute to the compilation of the mental plan of the readable text, which significantly increases its chances of being captured in memory for a long time.

Speed reading is not a crazy speed of reading – it’s a search for the right text and the most effective assimilation.

The speed reading technique is set up according to the same principle: the goal is set → the content is explored (table of contents) → the general structure is viewed at an accelerated rate, the important terms and keywords are marked → the places, where the most important information is marked – the text is read in an accelerated mode with pauses in the right places.

Information during the views will be set aside on the subconscious and in the future it can be activated as necessary at the level of intuition. For this, it’s only necessary to enter into a special state associated with concentration.

As soon as you develop the habit of pre-evaluating the text, you can automatically and intuitively select the materials you need.

We now turn to a more complex issue – separation of the wheat from the chaff, i.e. we will learn to get rid of information garbage. How to learn to identify it in advance and ignore?

Here we are assisted by a prepared in advance consciousness. You can program it according to the following scheme:


Speaking of keywords, I mean the so-called anchor words (they are often used in online advertising). They attract attention, as if they are asking to stop, a glance clings to them – hence their name. In fact, they serve as reference points on which to rely at the time of studying the text. They suggest the subject and content of any text.

Anchor words help the mind to formulate questions for inner comprehension. They act as target objects of the brain in the process of fast reading and contribute to the activation of special attention.

By tuning your brain to pre-recognition, you significantly simplify the task that needs to be solved during the actual implementation of the reading.

The next stage of comprehension of the text is its perception. It is based on four levels: preparedness, in-depth preparation, knowledge and special knowledge.

The process of knowledge of the text is determined by the science of hermeneutics (the science of interpretation). What the words are composed of – letters and syllables – do not represent an informational meaning. They act only as code marks on the basis of which words are formed. Moreover, not even words and sentences are the goal of reading, the meaning, the thought that they express. Understanding the text is directly related to the full disclosure of its meaning or value.

In order to fully reveal the basic idea, to understand the text, it’s necessary to perform a number of specific actions.

What is understanding in its essence? Psychologists testify, that understanding is the process of establishing logical connections between objects by using existing baggage of knowledge. For example, we read: "The builders built a house." We have knowledge of what the profession of "builder" is, we know, that exactly buildings are being built, we know, that the "house" is the box, in which people live. We understand the meaning of the read. Reading a simple text is connected with an understanding, that merges with perception – we instantly recall the knowledge, obtained earlier or choose from the existing knowledge, that we need at the moment and link them together with new impressions. However, most often, while reading an unfamiliar or difficult text, understanding the essence is a complex, additional effort.

For a complete understanding of the reading, you must be careful and be able to apply the knowledge gained. In addition, for effective reading, you should be aware of certain thinking techniques. Most commonly used are two basic techniques: the allocation of semantic data points and anticipation.

Data points are semantic groups into which any text is divided. They are designed to deeper understanding of the text and facilitate the subsequent memorization of information. Additional details, nuances, secondary words or facts may also act as supporting points. In the final sense, understanding is reduced to encompassing the text as a set of basic ideas, keywords, capacious phrases that precede the text of subsequent pages.

Understanding of the text occurs at the moment, when the reader reduces the content of the material to specific logical formulas, marking in them the central semantic core, creating an associative array and thus reproducing a logical chain of thoughts. Strong points act as filters that allow the text to form into a concise basis, without losing a single significant component.

The next technique is the semantic guess. This is a psychological process, consisting in orientation to the expected future. Based on knowledge of logic laws of logic about the development of action, the ability to use the results of analysis, recognition - all these is provided by the so-called “wait reaction”. It’ a sort of adjusting the reader to certain guesses, when the text seems to have no sufficient basis for these reactions.

In the course of a special training session, it’s possible to develop the ability to instantly anticipate, by indirect (secondary) semantic features of the text, subsequent events.

If you see a signal in the text, that you can recognize, for example, by several initial letters, to guess the whole word or, by several words, the subsequent phrase, and by several sentences – the meaning of the whole paragraph or even a page, it means that your mind can process subconsciously information based on logic and previous experience. With this method of reading you rely more on the content of the text as a whole than on the meaning of individual words.

So, for example, reading a text familiar to you, you foresee how the disclosure of the main content will develop. Well knowing biology, you, having seen, the word "organic", for certain, can foresee the continuation of the word combination – "life". Possessing the technique of understanding the idea of content, you can easily comprehend the main idea of the author of the text.

Thus, when learning to read quickly, the ability to find strong points and build semantic guesses is the main factor in the formation of a peculiar recognition of phrase stamps, which significantly speed up and make better the very understanding of the text. Identifying textual stereotypes is one of the primary conditions for the development of automatic semantic word processing.

On the basis of these developments, you can easily avoid the danger, when already in the process of reading you found a lot of “water” in it, and your desire to read it begins to evaporate instantly.

The final stage of the analysis is its study. For me, it is significant for the reason, that without due doubt, accompanied by a multitude of questions, there is no meaningful process of thinking.

Ultimately, any book generates more questions than answers. Blind faith in information can be a source of erroneous information. Of course, to a lesser extent this applies to the exact sciences, but what if you got into the hands of a book of an unscrupulous author?

At this level of analysis, I recommend turning to the opinion of the American psychologist, linguist, scientist Robert Anton Wilson. Many of his works on language issues reveal the true meaning of the texts we read.

According to his book “The New Inquisition, all people, as a species, live in a world of endless informational signals. When we structure this information environment, the world makes sense to us. The structuring model is formed at the level of our biology and sociology.

So, if we are completely hypnotized by a certain tunnel of reality, we are able to reach fanaticism. The fact is that initially we have certain attitudes, which hinders our development. They are embedded deep in the subconscious and even unconscious. Such attitudes are often called stereotypes, that don’t allow us to think more widely, to go beyond the ordinary.

At this moment, our reasoning, inference, loses logic, and we cease to think rationally. We trust common truths that are not questioned. But doubt is our main ally in the search for truth.

I will give an example with the verb “is” (for example, in the statement “A is B”). This logic is very useful in mathematics, since "concepts and objects with which it operates, exist abstractly, that is, by definition." But what happens when we apply the principle of direct definition to certain abstract concepts? Think about the meaning of such statements as “Mona Lisa is a great work of art”, “This is real nonsense”, “This is the best song”, “Justin Bieber is the best singer in the world”? Do you agree with each of them? From the point of view of neurology, these statements should be formulated differently: “I think this is a great work of art”, “In my opinion, this is utter nonsense”, “It seems like the best song”, “From my point of view, he is the best singer”.

Instead of “all modern music is bad” one can say “not all modern music seems bad to me”. By applying this assessment to what you read and to your own areas of life, you’ll significantly expand the boundaries of use and understanding of information. For example, having read the statement of any figure, try to evaluate his message critically, look at it from a different angle, try to compare his opinion with the opinion of his opponents and allies.

What did you do today to achieve your goal?

At the end of the chapter I would like to give you a creative task. Rate statement "Everyone can master the speed reading." What emotions does it cause you? What emotions did it evoke before you read the book? Return to it after you have studied all the material and respond to it again.