René Seifert – Entrepreneur & Global Citizen

It’s been quite a while that I had done the last seminar – completely detaching myself from the everyday routine. And this one has paid off big time. Thanks to my friend and fellow EO member Karl Funke for organizing it and hosting our powerful group in his beautiful house in Munich.

I was lured into the seminar with the bait of “speed reading” and what I got went way beyond. Our trainer, Ruth Wenger, founder and CEO of the Swiss company Alphaskills opened up a completely new world to us. Ruth has been professionally involved into research, studies and moreover practical application of human consciousness for the last 30 years.

What is all of this about? From a starting point, we all have to digest a lot of reading material for professional purposes. Our seminar on “Informations Management” was geared towards increasing both our efficiency and effectiveness in doing so. It is worthwhile to pre-empt that “reading faster” is only one piece of the entire puzzle:

1. First, one is supposed to screen the material and decide if it’s really relevant. The decision to dismiss an article is sometimes the most effective way of all.




2. Then, preparation for reading is supposed to scan over the content to get an idea of the structure. This would apply for an article as well as a book.




3. Goal setting: Formulating and setting of an objective what should be known/learnt/achieved after having read through. (“After reading this book, I want to have a better understanding how to apply global innovation into my company.”) This is indispensable for directing one’s brain onto the right path and indeed quite a change to “let me just see what’s written in there.” This can include setting up the primary branches of a mind-map, which is very conducive for the right brain that will come in charge for the next step.




4. This one is entirely new for most of us: Putting oneself into the “Alpha-State” through an imagination/breathing-technique. This is no cosmic yadda-dadda, but something that can be measured during EEG in a frequency spectrum between the state of external awareness and that of dreaming during sleep. In this meditative “Alpha State”, the mind is relaxed, yet alert and very much receptive similar to a dry sponge.





5. Next comes the actual “speed reading”: Letting ones eyes flow over the text by pulling the eyes over it. Rather vertically top down than jumping over each word line by line. Therefore text printed in rather narrow columns is particular well suited for this technique. It is surprising how much one will perceive via this scanning technique, which relies broadly on our ability for peripheral vision.




6. It is not prohibited, rather the opposite, to slow down and read in the regular, also called “digital technique” to absorb some facts and data really, really well, as long as it serves the objective set under (3). At this point, one might also get back to the mind map and continuously enhance it with more branches and relationship.

This technique worked astonishingly well for me. I was able to increase my speed from 450 words per minute (which I got told was a lot anyway) to 1002 words per minute in our last exercise. In a longer exercise, we got 6 times 5 minutes (deliberately these 30 minutes were broken down with interruptions) to get a gist of the book I had brought: C.K. Prahalad’s “The New Age of Innovation”. It was surprising to observe on myself that I got more than just a fair idea what the concept of the book is about by following the Alphaskills-methodology. I guess I’ll invest another 30 minutes into that book and will then happily put it into the shelf as “done”, whereas I would have at least needed 4-5 hours to read it in the old style.

It is worthwhile noting that reading a poem or a novel will not follow this strategy, because the beauty of the content lies in their linguistic nuances. However, after rigorously practising the technique it is well known that it will also speed up the time for such leisure-reading without compromising on anything.

All in all, a highly recommended experience with a phenomenal highly experienced trainer Ruth. After the 2-day seminar there are in addition different online-modules to be worked on from the company’s website in order to increase the level of practise. This online curriculum will last for the next 8 weeks and start for me right now.