5. Howard Berg: The World's Fastest Reader

Hello, Book Thinkers family, and welcome to episode number 5 of our brand new podcast, Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books. During each episode, I interview some of the world's top authors, and as a listener, you can expect to discover new books, new mentors, and new resources that you can use to achieve more and live better. In this episode, I have the pleasure to interview author and Guinness World Record holder Howard Berg.

Hi, Nick.

Howard was introduced to me by an earlier podcast guest, Russell Brunson, and is actually recognized as the world's fastest reader thanks to the cutting-edge accelerated learning techniques he developed. Our conversation touches on how to learn, how to increase your reading speed, and how to increase your comprehension and retention while you're reading. So please enjoy my conversation with the amazing Howard Berg. Hello, Book Thinkers family! Today we have Howard Berg with us, the world's fastest reader. So Howard, I'd love for you to tell the Book Thinkers family a little bit about who you are, where you come from, and why reading has been so important in your life.

Well, I'm considered the world's fastest reader. I was in the 1990 Guinness Record Book. I'm the only person ever to be recognized in that book for reading.

Fast.

I was 80 pages a minute, and it started in Brooklyn where I grew up. I grew up in the projects, which was a terrible place to be. Right now it's actually the most violent project in the city of New York, which is a hard thing to beat. And I found there were a lot of gangs, but there was only one safe place in my neighborhood, and that was the library, because gang kids would rather be dead than caught in a library. So I read a lot and had college reading when I was 11. I went to the State University of New York Binghamton when I was 17 to major in biology. In my junior year, I got fascinated by the brain and I wanted to be a psychobiologist. Back then, you needed to major in bio and psych. There wasn't a single discipline. And then there's a second-term junior and I had no psych courses. So the dean said, you can't, you have to do a 4-year psych program in 1 year. You'll have to take 6 science courses, 2 4-hour labs. I had 3 jobs, so I was working 18 hours a week. He said, frankly, you're not smart enough. And that's when it hit me. They didn't teach learning in school. They tell you what to learn and why to learn and what will happen when you don't learn, but not why you hear a song once on the radio and you remember it your whole life, and then you read a book like The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and the next day you don't know any habits. So I said, there has to be a way to learn things that matter the way we learn songs. And there was. I got up to 80 pages a minute using what I was learning in my psych courses, applying it to the real world instead of mice and rats and fish. And, uh, Then I took the graduate record exam in biology, and I read 48 books in 3 nights, like biochemistry, genetics, cell physiology. I got 3 questions wrong, so I was in the 99th percentile. So when people say, do you remember anything, that's a pretty decent— had an 800. It was a pretty good score. And then it was about, was it me? Have I found a better way to read and learn? So I started a school. We took kids, they were 11 years old to 15, very young. Gave them a 30-chapter book in lifelong developmental psych, which is a softball course. Remember, these are 11 to 15-year-old children. They did it in one week, and I'm going to show people today how you can do that. And they— 15 out of 18 kids passed the CLEP, which is an AP test, and got college credit in a week. So I said, well, It isn't just that I can do it, it can be taught, which is far more significant. Otherwise, you're just a freak show. You know, you could do something, but nobody can do it but you. But if everyone could double, triple, quadruple their reading rate and understand better, think of what that could do to the world. If you watch the news, I think the world's in trouble. And I don't even hear anyone say there's too many smart people making too many good decisions. That's our number one problem. Not pointing any fingers. You can draw your own conclusions, but it seems to me if you're in a position to help make a change by teaching people how to learn, you should do it. It's sort of a karmic obligation, which I think is a good thing. So we're going to spend time today showing people how it's done. They'll be able to read by the end of this show 20-40% faster. They'll know how to remember. They'll know how— what to look for and what's important, how to get in the right state. A lot of very vital skills that anyone who's interested in reading will find invaluable, and I welcome the opportunity you've given to me today to do that.

Well, we're excited to have you on, and that distinction between how and why we're learning is such an important distinction, and there's not enough attention. Even today, we're in 2020, and we've been through so many different educational reform attempts, but we're still using very traditional means to get people Out of the high school and out of the college. And so I'm really excited for our conversation today as well. And one thing that I found fascinating is a question that I asked you last time we talked. Roughly, your best guess, how many books do you think you've read in your lifetime?

These are only a few of them, uh, but about 30,000. It's not just books though. I read a lot of online magazines and articles because books are generally a year or two out of date when they're new. Most people— I could write a book in 5 hours, but most people write a book, it'll take them a year. And I'll show you how to— if you want, I'll show you how to speedwrite a book today also. So, um, the book you got, you use research from other books, so that's out of date. So by the time it's published, material is usually 2, 3 years out of date unless it's a very special book like a special event book, something happened last week and They rushed it to publication. Most books are fairly out of date, and sometimes it doesn't matter. History is history. It hasn't changed. But when it comes to science and current events, things like that, it's really quite significant. So I like a lot of online reading because I can read the news that happened 5 minutes ago, not yesterday. And I can read the science breakthrough that occurred this morning Not 15 years ago. So it's kind of a combination of the 2, books and online reading.

Yeah, I think that's amazing. And I feel the same way. I've heard a lot of people talk about their favorite books, and maybe that's a question we could talk about a little bit later. And everybody picks books that are timeless, and it's because the principles and strategies will apply today. And oftentimes when a book does come out, it's out of date, and then it's out of fashion, and then you can't apply it right away to your life. And so There are certain books that focus on specific skill sets or strategies that you can implement that become that much more important. And so you talked a little bit about reading speed and teaching the audience. I think that'd be a fun place to jump right into. How can you teach everybody in the Book Thinkers family how to read more efficiently, faster, while retaining more information?

Well, there's several different skills, so we'll cover them in sequence. Reading and learning are not the same thing. That's a big distinction. A lot of people think reading is learning. It isn't. It never has been. If it was, everyone would get an A when they studied and read a book. You could read a calculus book, memorize all the equations, and fail the test because you don't understand how to use any of them when you need to. So there's— and a lot of people will measure their learning by 2 incorrect variables. If you say to a student, did you study? They'll say, yeah, I read 5 hours last night and I read 400 pages. Irrelevant. I did a graduate course in educational psych in 7 hours. Now, it was a 5-month course, so 7 hours is a reasonably short time. I read the book 4 times. I took the AP test, which was a 6-hour test in 50 minutes, got a B+. I didn't need an A. I was trying to get a C because I was a teacher. I just needed the credit. So my goal was the credits, not the book. But the point was, did it matter how many hours I studied? How many pages I read. What was significant was I got a B+ in 7 hours and 50 minutes on a graduate course. So it's not time and it's not pages. It's do you understand what you read? Can you use it when you need to use it? That's important. So let's go through one step at a time. First, we'll look at speed. Would that be okay? We'll start with speed.

Yes, absolutely.

Okay, when this is over, pick a book you've read, preferably nonfiction, because fiction is generally designed to confuse you. If you know the ending of a mystery before it starts, it's not a mystery. If you know the Death Star blows up at the end of the book, it isn't quite the same story. But, but technical books are usually written to inform. They're not trying to trick you. They're not trying to make you Guess what happened at the end of World War II? And so pick a nonfiction book you've read. So the only thing that might confuse you is your speed, not the content. Now, if it's a book, if you read it at your normal rate, that would confuse you, it's a bad book for learning to read faster in. Once you can read faster, read anything. But when you're learning, pick a book that you would easily understand and read for a minute with a timer. You could use a smartphone. Or a smartwatch and read for a minute. Don't do anything special. Just see how far you get. At the end of the minute, take a pen or pencil, put a little line where you finished. So you've demarcated, you've measured your initial reading rate. Now the special sauce. Go to the second chapter and take your hand and go one line at a time, eyes following the hand, as fast As you could comprehend. As fast as you could comprehend. What does that mean? As long as you know what you're reading, go quicker till you don't, and that's when you find out you went too fast. And slow down just enough so the comprehension comes back. And for 5 minutes in that second chapter, move your eye continuously across. Don't slow it down. If you don't know what you're reading, it's too fast. Go as fast as you could comprehend. Then at the end of the 5 minutes, go back to the first chapter. Again, time yourself for 1 minute. Use your hand as fast as you could comprehend, and you'll go about 20 to 40% further just doing that one very easy to do change. And that'll get the flow of the data to your brain. Now the next thing is comprehension. Would you like me to, to go into that?

Absolutely.

So there's several things with comprehension. One, what do we do to make sense out of text? How does our brain learn? And 2, what are we looking for? Those are 2 very different things. First, what is the brain doing? 2, what should you be doing with that brain to actually learn something at a very rapid pace. So first, the secret to reading is called schema. A schema is what you know. So if you're reading, the man ate an apple, you don't go, wait, whoa, whoa, what's an apple? What's eating? What's the man? Compare that to, look at the Aegyptiophoenicius. It's still very specific language, but for most people, it isn't telling you anything. Our brain is using our experience with life, what we know. When we see those words in print, we recognize them. We know what an apple is. We know what a man is. We know what eating is. That's how we read. We know what words mean because we've used them compared to words that are highly specialized that we don't know. And so schema makes text meaningful, and I thought I would show you specifically how that works and an example, if that would be okay.

Yeah, I think that would help everybody kind of cement the idea in their brains and truly understand it.

So I'm going to read a passage with no schema and watch how confusing it is. The words aren't confusing, the meaning is. This is an easy thing to do. If possible, you could do it at home, but you can always go someplace else if it's necessary. Beware of overdoing it. This is a major mistake. And may cost you quite a bit of money. It's not very clear what I'm talking about, is it?

No.

I'm going to read it again, this time with a one-word title, but the title has schema. Watch how instantly everything makes complete sense with just a single word change. Laundry. Laundry. This is an easy thing to do. If possible, you could do it at home, but you could always go someplace else if it's necessary. Beware of overdoing it. This is a major mistake and it costs you quite a bit of money. It's not confusing now, is it?

No, not at all.

So if we learn to find schematic clues, we could go 2, 3, 4 times faster and act like the decoder ring. And the brain actually knows what you're reading, even though it's technical like genetics or chemistry or law or medicine or math. It doesn't matter. They're all languages. And when you're mastering the language, You could read with schema very, very rapidly. And the reason a lot of people are struggling in many books is writers aren't using their schema correctly, and they're making too many presumptions that you know what a Julius Phoenicius is, a Turgus Migratorius, which are real words, but they're not commonly used, and they're using them freely as if it was something everybody would recognize. So you, like, feel like an idiot When you're reading and the purpose of writing is to inform and communicate, not show how smart you are and how dumb they are. And then you alienate your audience, you lose rapport and they get bored because nothing's making any sense. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does. And I've actually never thought about the quality of the writing. I usually just think about my own experience. So if I'm having a tough time with a book, I'm not thinking about the writer's schema. And sometimes that probably is the problem.

Right. Actually, if you'd like, I'll show you to learn on 3 levels from any book. Would that help?

Yeah, and, and how can we apply those to our lives?

Well, if you're taking notes, which you should do in very technical material when you're actually studying, not reading but studying, usually you take notes on what? What would you normally take notes on if you were reading a book?

Well, sometimes I take notes on definitions and sometimes I take notes on Big epiphanies I'm having.

Perfect. That's it. And that's 1/3 of the material that you could be learning. I'm going to tell you, you're correct. That's what most people do. They write about what they're learning. But there's 2/3 more you can use. And here's what it is. The second column— I take it in a 3-column table. And the first column is what I'm learning, which is what most people would do. The second column What did the writer do or fail to do that made it interesting? Did they tell a story? Did they use a picture? Was there an anecdote? Whatever it is they did that got me interested and motivated and brought my attention, made it more significant, I just learned something I can use when I'm writing. That's a writing strategy that will make my writings pop to other people when they learn? Because many good readers will also end up being writers. See, reading and writing are the same thing. Writing is output and reading is input. So as you're beginning to learn what did they do to make it interesting and meaningful, you found a way to make things interesting and meaningful when you write. The third column, and this could be often the most important, How will you use what you just learned? What will you do with that information? See, often we'll read and a month later you don't remember anything. It's gone. It was a great book, but I don't know, I don't remember anything I learned. Because you didn't use it. All you did was look at it. You can't learn just by looking. You have to do something with the information to make it more meaningful to your brain so it wants to retain it. So in the third column, I write down, and this is how I'll— let's say I'm reading a book on marketing. Here's how I'll use this strategy to increase my income by 150% in the next 6 weeks. Does my brain want to learn that? Yeah, because I'm going to increase my income and then actually do it. So every day, take 2 or 3 or 4 of the things you said you were going to do, do them. And that's when you actually start to learn the material because you're not thinking about it, you're using it, you're applying it, you're seeing results, you're seeing changes in the quality of your life. Those are things your brain doesn't want to forget because they benefited you. So those are 3 things you want to look at. What am I learning? Why was it interesting or boring? To avoid that. And how will I use what I just learned to change my life for the better in some way, which creates the motivation, which creates the learning. Now, would you like to see what to learn?

Absolutely. And before we go into that, I just want to reiterate that, you know, the Book Thinkers community, we're very focused on driving behavior change through the books that we're reading, and we focus on a lot of nonfiction personal development type stuff. So this content that you're giving is perfect for everybody.

Oh, I'm glad you said that. I'm more of a nonfiction reader myself. Um, I rarely read fiction. I do, but very rarely. I usually read to learn. Can I give you an example?

Yeah.

About 15 years ago— I don't like to read, by the way. I love to learn. To me, reading is a screwdriver. It's a, it's a path to an outcome. So I was interested in— my wife wanted to go to Hawaii. I was lecturing on cruise ships. They had a cruise that went to all the islands. I said, fantastic, I'd like to be the speaker. He said, but they don't want speed reading. I said, what do they want? They want someone to teach photography, Photoshop, and video. So at first I said, well, I teach that. I, I didn't teach any of that. I didn't know, I didn't know what Photoshop was. I had never read a single book on Photoshop, but I learned very fast. And I know the rule is if you read 10 books on something, you become an expert. That's why in college you get 10 subjects in your major. You read 10 books, it's your major. That's what you read 10 books on. So, uh, they said, okay, but you better do it right or they'll throw you off the boat. Not in the water, but when you get to shore.

Hmm.

So I read 10 books on Photoshop. In 3 hours, I learned Photoshop. I didn't know it takes 4 years in college. Then I read 10 books on video the next day, learned video. You know, again, 3 hours. I read 10 books on video, on photography in 3 hours, learning photography. So then I go to the cruise and I'm like, please let these people be 90 years old and not know what a digital camera is. My perfect audience. The first gentleman walked in the room, he says, I'm a professional photographer, 50 years. No, 38 years, not 50, 38 years. And, uh, I came to learn photography from you. I'm like, well, I'm thinking I learned it last week. The next guy walks in, he says, I've been doing Photoshop for 5 years.

I hear you're expert.

My wife's sitting in the front row kind of crying because they told us we'd get thrown off the boat if I didn't know. And these were like the worst possible people I could have had. And so for a week, I'm teaching these people how to do photography and Photoshop and video. At the end of the week, they said, how many years have you studied to learn all that information? Because I learned it last week in 3 hours. That's the win. I don't have time to learn Photoshop. I need to use it tonight. I don't have time to learn marketing. I need to make some money for my company. I'm busy. I want to learn fast. I had an 84-year-old, Ruth Lubin. She read 3 books in 3 hours the day after I taught her. So it's not an age thing. Now, she didn't read 10 books in 3 hours, but then she'd have a world record. But if you're 84 and you read 3 books in 3 hours, that's a pretty good number. And I think that showed you that anyone could do it. So if you'd like, now I could show you what to learn.

Yeah, please do.

A lot of people say to me, Howard, this book is so big, I don't know what to learn. You ever have that feeling? Like, it's like overwhelming, there's so much data in it.

Absolutely, happens all the time.

What if I said there's only 5 things you need to learn? Would that help?

That would make it a lot more digestible.

I'll show you what they are and How to learn them. The first thing you want to learn, especially in nonfiction, is the vocabulary. About 80% of a new topic is the words. Like Aegyptiophoenicus, it's a red-winged blackbird. If you're studying birds, and some people do, not everyone, you want to know that word. Everyone else is like, what do I need? I need to know it's a red-winged blackbird. I don't need to know the word. So learning vocabulary is the first thing. How do you know which words to learn? The writer usually makes them look different. They're bolded, they're italic, they're underlined, they're in a glossary. They did something that says, look at this, it doesn't look like everything else for a reason. They want you to pay attention. The second thing you want to learn are names. Who's in the book? What did they do? The third thing you want to learn, and this is more technical books, any number, any date, any statistical formula. The 4th thing you want to learn in most nonfiction books, they're broken into sections, headings and subheadings, headings and subheadings. What are the 5 main concepts in each section and subsection? The big takeaways. And in the process of figuring that out, you're learning because you have to think. What is— what's important here? That makes your brain have to do more than look at words. It has to think, what was important? What was the big lesson here? And 5, questions and answers. And I'll give you a little enrichment on that. Most nonfiction books, majority of the questions, especially in textbooks, they're at the end. So you read 50 pages, there's 20 questions, you can't answer any of them. Because you didn't know it was important. What if you read the questions first and you knew what they wanted you to know when you were done? So while you were reading, this is one of the 20 things they told me I need to know. Wouldn't that make your brain pay more attention to that information so you wouldn't have to go back and reread it a second time? So I read the last things first. I begin with the end in mind. I look at what does the writer expect me to know when I'm done? And then when I'm reading, I know what it's expected of me to learn. And when I see it, I know it's more important than— if it's a new subject, I don't know what's important. But the guy who wrote, or the gal who wrote the book, knows what's important. That's why they wrote the book. And they're telling me, these are the 20 questions you should be able to answer now. So I look at that first to get a sense of what should I consider more important based on the authority and knowledge of the writer. So now I've got all the words, all the names, all the numbers, dates, statistics to form your questions and answers. Would you like to see how to do this to learn any book in 1/5 the time?

Yeah, absolutely. And, uh, before we jump into that real quick, I had Jim Kwik on the podcast recently, and Jim just wrote a new book. It's called Limitless. And what he did is he explained that concept about begin with the end in mind. And he put questions at the beginning of each chapter and subchapter in the book. And I loved that. And so just like you were talking about, when you're reading, when you're learning, you need to write down what pops. That popped for me. And so in the future, you're right, I'd love to write some books. And that was something that I know I'll do moving forward. So yeah, let's move on to the next part.

I also like to do that when I'm writing. I like to put the front of the chapter, um, bullet points. These are the 10 things you want to know, you know, so people can prioritize it.

Mm-hmm.

So basically, the way to do this in 1/5 the time— we did this with the 11 to 15-year-olds I told you earlier. You set up a 3-column— the columns in Word. The first column is the word, the second column is the meaning. The first column is the name, the second column is what they did. The first column is the number, date, statistical formula. The second column is why it's important, how you use it. First column is a trigger word. The second column is the main idea. The first column is the question. The second column is the answer. So how you do this in a group, let's say you've got a large book you have to learn as a group. Instead of you do chapter 1 and I do chapter 2, which never works, I'll do the words in chapter 1, you do the names, you do the numbers, you do the main ideas, you do the questions. Then we shift. We all do 1/5 of the work. In the second chapter, the person who did the words does the names, the one who did the names does the numbers, the one who did the numbers does the main ideas, the one who did the main ideas— does the questions. The one who did the questions does the words, and you keep rotating. So you're taking notes in a column, and at the end you take all of the notes, and you don't have to read the book. You have all the words and what they mean, all the, all of the names and what they did, all the numbers, dates, statistics and why they matter, all the questions and answers, all the ideas, and that's what you study. And you could do a technical book, like even a medical book or a journal, in 1/5 the time using that strategy. So you can become a master of any subject very, very quickly. You know exactly what you're looking for. You know when you found it, and you're leveraging the power of the group. So you don't read the whole chapter. You read the part that you're assigned, and everyone does the same. And as you become more well-versed through this system, you're able to do it very well. So that's how our 11 to 15-year-olds did a 30-chapter book. We had 4 groups of 5 kids, then they did 5 chapters, the next group did 5 chapters, the next group, and then they took all the information that they sliced up. They read the table, not the book, and they took the AP test and passed it. Because if you know every word and what it means And every person and what they did, every formula and how it's used, every main idea and why it's significant, and every question and answer, you're golden. You could, you could go through anything, even the most technical material, in a very short amount of time following that easy strategy.

Wow, that would have saved me a heck of a lot of time when I was going through school and being tested on what I was learning and Because it's always a process that you go through with other people. So everybody could take advantage of that.

And that's—

and also for my work, we have a little book club and we all read every page of every chapter. And this is a much more efficient way to draw out the really valuable stuff and then implement it into the business, which is the purpose of the book club in the first place. So we can save ourselves a lot of time. I'm going to send them this clip and then we're going to move forward in this direction because it'll Yeah, 1/5 of the time. That's brilliant.

You can even set up the table for them and make it even easier for them to learn it.

I will. I definitely will. I'm going to set one up for myself every time I read a book now.

It makes it so much easier. Reading should be a pleasure, not a chore. And this is a very easy way to make it meaningful to your brain in a fraction of the time. And that's really what it should be. That's what it's about. So now we know what to read, we know what to look for, we know why our brain is learning it. The next big issue to me would be, how do you get in the right state? You know, have you ever studied really well and then it was a test? I'll give you an example. I'm a driving instructor— I'm not, but I'm teaching you how to drive— and you're ready for your road test. I say, go, go take your test. You come back and say, I failed. How could you fail? You were perfect in the call. I got nervous. It was a test. How many of the people watching either get nervous taking tests or maybe speaking in public? And so even though they know the material well, they fail to perform when they need to. That's emotional intelligence. Would you like to see how to create emotional states and, and solve some of those problems?

Yeah, I think everybody here would find a lot of value in that because I receive a lot of questions on that subject of and emotional intelligence?

See, what makes me a little different than a lot of the other speed reading people is I studied psychobiology. I understand the brain. So I'm working from research on how the mind processes and learns and then applying it to reading. I don't think anyone's done that before, which is why I got the world record, because I was fortunate to have very good teachers and I listened to them. They were very good. They helped my— one of my favorites was John Fuller. He was the father of behavior genetics. He invented it, and he was my mentor. So just kind of giving him some recognition. He's a really great man, wonderful person. So emotional intelligence. Let's, let's say you get tired. I know a lot of people tell me when they read they get tired, or when they're taking a long test, or in a long meeting, or maybe just driving home in traffic. At the end of the day and you just want to go to sleep and you can't. Would you like to see how to wake up instantly?

Yes.

Okay. For this one exercise, our audience should stand. If you and I stand, they'll see our navel, which nobody wants to see. But for everybody else, stand up. Now we know the left side of the brain controls what part of our body?

I don't know.

The right.

The right.

It crosses over. The right controls the left, the left controls the right. So we're going to take advantage of that. So you learned something. There you go.

Hey, I'm learning a lot.

There we go. Make it fun. It should be fun. If learning isn't fun, it's a waste of time. So take your left hand and touch your right shoulder. Remember, you should be standing. You and I can't, but everyone else— left to right, right to left, left to right, right to left. Go ahead, do that. Left to right, right to left. It's like the Macarena without the music. Get a little dancing going. Yeah, right. Now the next thing we're going to do is the same movement, but left hand to right knee. That's why standing helps. Left to right, right to left, left to right, right to left. If you're standing, you'll notice you have to think a little bit more. It's one part of your brain's moving your hand, the other part's kind of moving your knee a little bit. So we're gonna do 3 sets of these. And oh, one last thing. When you're done, grab your right thumb in your hand like this and go, I feel great, like you mean it. I feel great.

I feel great.

Like you mean it.

I don't want to yell into the microphone. I feel great.

Yes.

Love it. Yes.

Gotta have passion. If you don't feel great, you can't create the state. You can't make a state that's like I feel happy. You're not happy, so you're not going to feel it. So we're going to do 3 sets of these starting at my speed with the shoulder taps first. Ready? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Knees. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. 8. How do you feel? I feel great!

I feel great!

Yes!

Yes!

A little faster this time. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Knees. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. How do you feel? I feel great!

Yes!

Now this time go as fast as you can. Ready? 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. How do you feel? I feel great. Yes. Now, do you know what happens when you do this 3 times?

What happens? Nothing.

I feel great. You probably would like something. Give me one second. I have a prop that'll make this more interesting. Can you give me one second?

Yeah, absolutely. Hello, Book Thinkers family. A quick word from today's podcast sponsor. Today's episode is sponsored by Audible. Audible is the leading provider of spoken word entertainment and audiobooks ranging from bestsellers to celebrity memoirs, business, and my favorite, personal development. And as part of Audible's partnership with us, we're actually offering listeners a free 30-day trial. This trial includes 1 credit good for any premium selection titles you'd like on the whole platform. So that's pretty much any book, including the one we're talking about today. That book is yours to keep even after the trial is over. Now, this trial also includes access to Audible's Plus catalog of podcasts, audiobooks, guided wellness programs, and Audible Originals. You can listen all you want, no credits needed. Now, everyone on the Book Thinkers Instagram knows that I love physical paper books. There's nothing better than having a book in your hand, scribbling notes everywhere in the margins. I kind of tear those things up. But I've been completing an additional 20 to 30 books every single year using Audible by listening when I'm in the car, doing chores around the house, or while I'm on my morning walks or runs. You could take advantage of this free trial by clicking the link in today's show notes or going to www.bookthinkers.com/audibletrial. You will not regret it. Now back to today's episode.

Okay, I'm back. Remember Pavlov? He rang a bell, he fed a dog. He rang a bell, he fed a dog. He rang a bell and the dog drooled.

Mm-hmm.

You don't want to drool, but you want to feel great. The latest studies show it takes 90 days, not 30 days, to make a habit. So every day, slow, medium, fast. I feel great. Yes, that's your bell. Squeezing your thumb and saying, I feel great. Yes, that's your conditioned stimulus. Now you're in an important test or a meeting. You don't want to start going with your hands on your shoulders. You'll look really weird at the meeting. But you can grab your thumb and say to yourself, I feel great.

Yes.

And what will your brain remember? The state. that you were in every time you did this, and you could trigger the state. That's what I taught the special forces at Fort Bragg, the Royal Thai Army. These people, you have a bad day, you work late, or you had to change your vacation. They have a bad day, they're dead.

Mm-hmm.

And they're taught really well how to stay alive. And sometimes things don't go the way you plan, and if they get nervous like the person taking the road test They won't remember what they were taught and they could die. So I was showing them how to stay in a state of mind you need to be in when things are going not the way you want. And that's kind of life. You're in business, it's really about troubleshooting. You have your itinerary for the day and then everything starts to happen. And often you spend more time doing things that you didn't anticipate because it's just things that happen. And if you can't stay centered and focused and calm, you're going to be a failure at business because that's part— it's probably the most important skill of all is staying in the right state to be able to rationally deal with— like right now, a lot of people are struggling with coronavirus. But there's really 2 different problems. There's the virus and your emotional state, how you feel. They're not the same thing. Things could be terrible, but you could be optimistic. and positive, but you could be depressed and miserable. If you're depressed and miserable, you're debilitating your cognitive function of thinking, and the problem will probably not get solved and get much worse. So we need to make a distinction between what's going on in here and the circumstances we have to confront and deal with. Successful people have learned to manage their state. And it's a key part of learning. It's staying focused and not getting distracted. I'll give an example. I read the healthcare bill on Cavuto in 50 minutes. Now, he asked a lot of— he asked all the big speed reading people to do it, and they all said you can't do it, it's impossible. It's 1,500 pages. You read it in less than an hour and then do an analysis. I said, well, I can do it. He said, how come you could do it? I said, that's why I'm in Guinness. I'm the best in the world at what I do, but because I also understand the brain. And what I did before the show is I meditated for 90 minutes. I had to be very focused. He put an earpiece in my ear. So he's interviewing Pelosi, Boehner, Cantor, much more interesting than the bill, which is a lot of legal jargon, very dull. Very technical, but I can't listen to them speaking. I won't learn the material. I have to tune out that distraction that was tempting me to pay attention. But when he says Howard, I have to instantly respond. So I have to be— so I have to be— so I have to be focused enough to tune out everything but my name. And then The book is all that exists, sort of like a ball player. There's the ball and there's me. There's a book and there's me. Everything else is gone. The room is gone. The reality I'm in is gone. It's just data and me. And that's emotional intelligence. And most of the people who teach speed reading teach speed reading. I don't. Speed reading doesn't work because reading doesn't work. The right way to do this is a Swiss Army knife. You read faster to find what you need to know and haven't learned yet. You switch to a brain-based learning skill to analyze what you don't understand. So you read the calculus book but can't do calculus. What good was that? Reading it isn't going to fix it. You have to learn it. Memory, which I'll show you how to do, how to remember and recall what you learned so you can use it when you need it. Emotional intelligence. So you're in the right frame of mind to use what you learned despite what's going on around you, despite the fact that there's a lot of chaos in the world. You're okay. You recognize that there's chaos, but that's what's going on out here. What's happening in here is up to you. That's a choice. But most people don't know how to switch it on and off on demand. And so they're blown about by all the chaos that's around them, and they lose their focus, they lose their concentration. And despite the fact they could have gotten a lot of benefit out of what they were learning, they never really experienced the benefit. So if you know how to read faster, know what to look for, know how to understand it when it's confusing, know how to get in the right state to use it, That's a, that's a tool, and that's my approach. Most people do not want to read faster. They want to learn faster. They want to understand better. They want to be able to use it more productively when they need to. I always felt that was more important than reading fast. And so it's a big difference between what I do and most of these other people who are very good at teaching speed. But The problem is, and the guy who owned Evelyn Woods was Maurice Thompson. He paid me $5,000 to train his son. He said, you fixed the problem. You made it a 21st century learning system, not a speed reading system. You went past the reading to the full learning, which I thought was far more important. And that was my goal. I had 6 science courses to learn. I couldn't learn at a low level. I had to really learn a lot very quickly. And so I developed a different approach than everyone else. I don't focus on the speed. I'd rather see you go 100% faster and really know what you learned well and use it to its full benefit than go 5 times faster and not know the name of the book the next day, which is what happens. The other problem with most speed reading is it's mechanics. You do these exercises like I showed you with the hand. They do work. But then you read something you don't know. You have to slow down and learn that word or that name or that formula. You lose your speed because it was conditioned. It's all or nothing. You either read fast or you can't read fast at all. And I said, that doesn't work. People have to slow down and learn new words. They have to slow down to learn new ideas that are confusing them. How do you do that? So by employing more of a psychological approach than the mechanics. I used the mechanics because they worked, but they only worked to a point, and then you lost it because of that. So I fixed that problem by using what I learned about the brain to make it a learning solution and not just a speed system. And if you'd like, I could show how to remember now.

I do. Yeah, that's one of the most popular questions that I get is how to retain more information from these books and for a longer period of time?

There's quite a few ways. One of the things I do, I make a tool chest. I say, people, there's no one right way to read fast. Everyone's different. You may be an art major and I'm a bio major. You're going to read an art book a lot better than me. I might be the world's fastest reader, but you spent years learning art. I haven't. You know the names of the artists. You know the famous paintings they make. Your schema is much better than mine. You're an attorney and you spent years studying law. I could read the law book and understand it, but not at the level you did, spending years of your life immersing yourself in that topic. So one, there's things we know better because we have aptitude. 2, there are things we understand better because it's what we love. And then there are things we hate and we have to learn anyway. So one size fits all doesn't work, which is how most programs— this is how I read, you should read this way. No. Here's what can be done to speed up. This is what you could do to learn. What you do in a novel may be different than a science book and different than a newspaper and different in a history book. They're all different. What do you want to learn? How much do you need to know? How much time do you have? You need to have a system that adapts to the learner and their learning style and their aptitude and their prior experience with these subjects to make it work for everyone at the best possible level. So I'm going to show you a memory tool now. There are many, but this one is very fun and easy to learn. So are you ready?

Yes, I am.

I'm going to give you 10 things to remember. I won't show you how. That's our control group. Then I'll show you how instantly you'll know all 10 backwards and forwards. And even better, it's not a memory technique, it's a tool. So pay close attention. I'll give you a little enrichment. You only remember 10% of what you read. That's not very good. You know what? You remember 90% what you say and do. So I'm gonna have you say and do to remember this because it's a tool and you'll want to use this the rest of your life. Are you ready?

Yes.

Here are 10 things to remember: pole, shoes, tricycle, car, glove, gun, dice, skate, cat, and bowling pins. I'm willing to bet that you don't know 10 things backwards and forwards right now.

If, uh, if you were a betting man, you would be correct in this situation.

You will though. In 3 or 4 minutes from now, you'll know all 10 backwards and forwards, no effort. Are you ready?

Let's do it. I hope I can, uh, live up to the expectation here.

Please, you'll have no problem. No one will. I do this with 3-year-olds, literally 3-year-olds. It's that easy. All right, when you have a system, it's all about systems. The Greeks discovered this thousands of years ago. When you want to learn a list, take a list you know. Where is that list? The list you know is in your brain. It's like hangers in a closet. What do you do with a hanger?

Put a piece of clothing on it.

So you can hang what you want to learn on what's already hanging. And we're going to use the numbers from 1 to 10 because I'm going to bet, Nicholas, you and our audience can count to 10.

Yes, I can.

With 10 numbers, we'll learn 10 things super fast. The number 1 looks like a pole, like a flagpole, a lamp pole, big tall 1. When I say 1, you say pole. Say it. 1.

Pole.

Perfect. Remember, say and do, you remember. 2, shoes. How many shoes do you wear?

2.

What's 2?

Shoes.

What's 1?

Pole.

Perfect. 3 is a tricycle. How many wheels are on a tricycle?

3.

What's 3?

Tricycle.

2.

Shoes.

1.

Pole.

Perfect. 4 is a car. How many tires on a car?

There are 4.

So what's 4?

Car.

Go to 2. 2, jump.

Shoes.

1.

Pole.

3.

Tricycle.

Your brain's starting to see how this works. 5 is a glove. How many fingers in a glove?

5.

What's 5?

Glove.

What's 3?

Tricycle.

What's 1?

Pole.

Perfect. Six-gun. They love them in Texas. Cowboys like six-shooters. Six-gun. What's 6?

Gun.

4.

Car.

3.

Tricycle.

2.

Shoes.

Perfect. 7 is lucky in dice, at least in the first throw. So 7 is dice. What's 7?

Dice.

5, give a clue.

Glove.

3.

Tricycle.

1.

Pole.

We're almost done. See how easy this is?

I'm getting nervous.

8. Skate.

8, skate.

What's 8?

Skate.

6, what did they love in Texas?

Gun.

4.

Car.

2.

Shoes.

Perfect, you're almost done. 9 is how many lives a cat has, so 9 is a cat. What's 9?

Cat.

7 was lucky in—

Dice.

5 is a—

Glove.

3.

Tricycle.

1.

Pole.

Almost done. 10. How many bowling pins are in a lane?

10.

What's 10?

Bowling. 1. Pole.

2.

Shoes.

3.

Tricycle.

4.

Car.

5.

Glove.

6. Love in Texas.

Gun.

7's lucky in?

Dice.

8 rhymes with?

Skate.

9 is a cat. And 10?

I forget 10.

The game of bowling. Yes, perfect. Now, oh, how does that make you feel?

Makes me feel great.

Yes. When you feel great doing it, it strengthens it. Here's how to use it. You just learned how to speed learn numbers. Numbers are really tricky. A lot of your viewers are reading technical books. There's formulas, there's percentages, there's Dates. Here's another one. Let's say I'm in a hotel, the room is 314. By the time I get to the lobby, I forgot what room I was in. Ever had that happen? You're like, I don't know what room I'm in. Yes, that has happened to me.

I always rip off the little corner of what's given to me and stick it in my wallet.

One after, this is easier. You make pictures. 3 is what?

3 is a tricycle.

1 is a pole. 4 is a?

Car.

A tricycle hits a pole on a car. Picture it in your mind. A tricycle hits a pole on a car. Tricycle, what number?

3.

Hits a pole?

1.

On a car?

4.

That's your hotel. It's also the value of pi in geometry, 3.14. So students learn it for science and math and history dates. Business people use it for numbers, dates, statistics, phone numbers, room numbers, anywhere there's a number. So now you know how to speed learn numbers.

Wow, that was a fantastic example, and I know that everybody in the audience who is going along probably feels great just like I do. So I love that. That's fantastic.

I have a website, Berg Learning, B-E-R-G Learning. We have some free lessons, and we also have some really great programs there that they can try. They could try them for free, and then if they like it, they can buy them. But I'm trying— it's reading, it's writing, it's memory, it's math. It's, it's really easy. I made them fun. To me, if it's not fun, there's no point. If learning isn't fun, you don't want to learn.

Right.

Too many— how many teachers did you have that made you laugh? You couldn't wait to get back to the next class. And then there was the ones where, when is the bell gonna ring? Someone kill me. I taught in a school where 2% graduated and I had to keep them laughing or they'd kill me. My job interview was, teachers get killed here, do you want the job? I kept them laughing. I found as long as they were laughing, they wouldn't kill me. So I made sure I was fun and funny and I kept that going when I became a professional teacher and trainer. I think when people are having fun, your endorphins are flowing. Your brain wants to remember what made you feel so good.

Mm-hmm.

This turns out what made you feel so good was learning to read faster and remember more and understand better. So you're not just getting a lot of facts thrown at you, you're getting it so it's enjoyable and pleasurable so that you can remember it later because it was enjoyable and pleasurable. Not painful.

Yeah, well, I love it. You're a very fun person to talk to, and I know that during our first conversation where I cold-called you, we had a great conversation and we were laughing and telling jokes. And I could do biology jokes. Yeah, tell something.

So I do a lot of public speaking and people will say, you know, I say, you know, you don't see a lot of biologists has to do comedy. I was actually helped launch Comedy Central in the mid-'80s when They first started, they were only in Manhattan. It was Hard Network, and Denis Leary was their first star, and I was on his show. He had 14 episodes. I was on 7. And I was Jon Stewart's first guest as well. He had me on as his first guest. And you don't see a lot of biologists asked to do that. I'm going to show you why. Here's a biology joke. A mushroom walks in a bar. Bartender says, get out, we don't serve your kind. Mushroom says, why not? I'm a fungi. And that's why we don't get asked to do comedy that much. I love that joke.

And when you told that to me the first time, I, you know, I consider myself a smart guy sometimes, and it took me a second to get that. And I was like, oh, you're right, that's why biologists aren't up, up on stage doing shows.

Yeah, we, we're not, we're not known for our tremendous humor, but I was, I was put in a situation, was make them laugh or get killed. You know, it really, it really does make you— make people laugh. As long as they're smiling, they won't kill you. I was the only one in the room without a weapon. Literally. Literally. 4 teachers went out on gurneys in 10 years. One was in a coma. They beat him unconscious.

Oh.

So when I tell you it was a scary place to work, I had gunfights in the hallway. I had knife fights in my class. And like the, like the movies, like the movie. I remember this girl walks in the room. And this guy goes and slaps her in the face. She pulls out a knife, tries to kill him. So I called security, they disarmed her, and she pulled out 3 more knives. So finally they arrest her and the kid, and they walk out. And I said to him, what happened? What was that about? He said, well, she's been telling everyone she paid for his girlfriend's abortion, and he paid for it himself, so she was dissing him.

Oh geez.

I was like, while they were fighting, I was like, hey, we're learning about the North Star. I said, so it's not really north, but it's not worth You try to break up the state. If you can deal with emotions, you can create states. People won't be as violent when they're having fun and laughing. But fortunately, they were, they were in another plane altogether. That was— but you could imagine doing that for 10 years. Well, it made me a much better teacher, because if you could hold that audience in their seats and have them actually learn something, you could teach anybody. Mm-hmm. And I had— I was, I was put into the, you know, the, the tactical force of teachers. And I think it made me a better teacher. It also gave me more empathy because I've seen the failings of the system. I offered to teach this to the kids as, as to help them. They had a 2% graduation rate. Let me help you. I could show them how to learn. They don't know how to learn. The principal says it's not in the curriculum. You can't do that. So one day I'm teaching my biology class and one of the kids says, I don't know how to answer the questions in my book. In the book I gave him, my subject. And I'm showing him how to do biology homework in his book that he asked help from. And the principal comes in and says, what are you doing? And I told him, he says, we don't pay you to do that. You're teaching learning. I told you not to do that. You're not working. He wrote down I wasn't doing my job.

That's awesome.

Helping kids learn. I quit. I quit my job after that. I said, I can't do this. I didn't sign up to dumb people down. And I'm fortunate now, I train teachers around the world and I travel to all the countries. And I hope some of our audience will give me the opportunity to help them. I'm a little different. A lot of people have big companies and you can't reach them. When I— when someone has a problem and my staff can't help them, I personally help.

Yeah.

I get on the phone with them and I make sure they learn what they paid for. I think it's more than just about making money. If you tell someone you're going to teach them something, you should teach it to them or they shouldn't have to pay for it. And that's how I was a yogi when I was younger, and I learned about karma and dharma. And I think when you tell people you're going to do something, you should do it or you shouldn't be expected to get paid for that. And I— and that's how I do it. Unfortunately, I don't have to make a lot of refunds because I teach it and they learn it and they're happy. And to me, that, that makes me feel like I'm doing what I promised. And I think that's really important. I'm a grandparent and very alarmed by what I'm seeing between the virus and global warming and the riots and all this garbage going on in the world, the craziness. Everyone hates everybody else. The answer isn't coming from violence. The answer is going to come from understanding. I go to these third world countries. My— I told the Green Berets, my job is to make it so you don't have to do yours. I said, people who have good jobs, that have happy families and nice homes and good jobs, they don't blow themselves up. It's people who have nothing to live for. So my job is to empower people with wisdom to learn and understand so they can have the kind of life they dreamed of. Because books are the gateway to wisdom. They give us the data we need to accomplish the things we dream of doing. And my job is to show them how to do that. Would you like to see some real magic? I mean, actual magic, not an illusion or, you know, a sleight of hand. There's actually real magic.

And I would love to see some real magic.

And it's ubiquitous. People don't even realize it's everywhere. What's real magic is turning a thought into a thing. Everything you see in your room, in your world, that wasn't made by nature is someone's thought that became something. The mic in front of you— someone thought of making a mic. The books behind you, the bookcase, your sweater, your headset— everywhere you look, it's a solid thought. What makes man such an incredible being is We have the power to turn our ideas into things. They go from inside our minds, our imagination, our inner world, to the outer world. That's magic— being able to transform an invisible, non-existent idea and make it tangible and real. And the way we do that is through learning. We learn the information we need to take this idea and give it form and birth it. And that's my goal, is to give people that power so they can increase their abilities, so they can have the things they dreamt of doing and not just dream about them. And everywhere you look, you could see someone's idea that turned into a thing. Isn't that an amazing way to walk around? Do that one day and look at all the things around you and say, that's an idea. It became a thing. It just changes your whole perspective of reality. When they said man was created in the image of God, we can change our thoughts into things. God said, let there be light, there was a universe. We can make things happen the same way on a smaller scale. It's hard to make a universe, but that's a bigger— that's a bigger, uh, to-do for most of us.

We can leave that to the Elon Musks of the world. Yeah, no, I believe that that's a beautiful way to look at it too. And I've read a lot of— you mentioned that you were a yogi when you were younger, and I've read a lot of spiritual books like The Autobiography of a Yogi and Siddhartha and books like that that teach mindfulness and presence and the importance of meditation and also the reciprocal relationship between giving and receiving. And so I believe in all of those things and I It's so funny, most of us, if you're listening to this, you're probably sitting down and you probably haven't even thought about the fact that you're in a chair right now. Feel your weight in the chair. When was the last time you were that present? And so I love lessons like that, and that really is true magic. So thank you for sharing that.

Well, those are all the books over there, are my mind development books. I was going to suggest a good book for you on that topic. You'll find, if you haven't read it already, P.D.

I have not read it yet.

It'll blow your mind. If you're into consciousness and self-discipline and awareness, which apparently you are, that book will just light up your life. P.D. Ouspensky, The Fourth Way. And for the rest of you, go to berglearning.com, try the program, see how well it works for you, and you'll be amazed with what you're capable of doing Just by releasing your natural ability to learn and use it more appropriately. I've been very lucky. I've had great teachers. I learned from them. And what I did is I took what I learned from them and what I— my own natural ability, and I watched myself learning, and I looked at the processing that was going on internally and made a list. And then I was able to turn it into a program. I do most of my writing in my sleep. And when I wake up, I transcribe what I learned. So I read a bunch of books, fill my head with information, then dream about what I want to do. And when I wake up, I transcribe what I dreamt about into a program. And it's worked for me now for 35 years. And I think a lot of your listeners and viewers will find it'll work for them just as well. And they'll be able to start seeing results they never thought— If an 84-year-old can read 3 books in 3 hours, Imagine what an average person could do who's a lot younger.

And share your age with everybody if you don't mind.

I'm 71. I'll be 71 in July, but I keep busy. I lift weights. I, I do yoga every other day. I do weights every other day. I'm writing. I'm making a new program every week. Uh, I'm constantly reading and teaching myself guitar now online. I challenge my brain On purpose, because you only stay young if you keep doing stuff. When you stop doing, you stop growing, you stop living. To me, every day is an opportunity to know something I didn't know yesterday. And I'll tell you a little secret: the more you learn, the more humble it becomes. The more you realize you haven't learned yet. If you even knew everything there was to know on this planet, it would just be this planet. You wouldn't know everything. It's a humbling thing. A little knowledge makes people arrogant. I see a lot of arrogant people. I think a lot of knowledge humbles you, and it realizes that you have a responsibility. So like Spider-Man, with great power comes great responsibility. When you have the ability to make people smarter and help them and empower them, that's not just about you anymore. It's about them. And I feel if the people who have these abilities don't use them, we aren't going to have a future. for anyone. So I feel very grateful I've been given this opportunity to take what I've discovered and share it with other people and empower them because they could solve problems I don't know how to solve because they read more and understood better. And that's my mission. Maybe someone can find a cure to cancer or the virus or how to balance the budget. I had a 16-year-old graduate with a 4.0 Economics major, master's in math at 19, 397. He's a professor at Yale. Had an 11-year-old who was a C student, an English professor at 22. Uh, one guy passed the bar at 19 in California. I can go on and on. And that's what drives me, is them. Me being in Guinness, that was a privilege, but it means nothing if I can't do anything with it to help other people. Watching the people I teach accomplish amazing things makes me feel my life is doing something other than just existing. And I hope some of our listeners will give me the opportunity to do that for them as well.

I do too. So state one more time, what is the best place for somebody to find your work and to take advantage of what you've built out as far as an infrastructure for how to learn and apply these techniques to your life?

Berg Learning. It's with B-E-R-G, berglearning.com, and they can easily get there and they'll find lots of great programs on reading and writing and memory and math. We have a great support team, and when they can't fix it, I do. And if we can't fix it, I give them their money back. I think you should only pay for what you get, not what you didn't get.

Fantastic mission, and I believe in everything that you stated, and I've had such a fun conversation with you today. So Howard, thank you so much for being on the Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books podcast. That is a wrap. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to this week's episode of Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books. To discover more books, more mentors, and more resources that you can use to achieve more and live better, make sure you check out our website at www.bookthinkers.com. There you'll find links to our mobile application, more podcast episodes, our shop so you can get some Book Thinkers swag, and our socials. With that, I'm signing off and I'll see you for next week's episode of Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books.