OK, first a bit of housekeeping. What was the “the last one?”. Well, it was basically RanTim(randomized micro-timeboxing) applied to reading a book.

Secondly (in sequence but not importance), I have to thank Takashi ISHII, author of The One Minute Study Method That Will Really Make You Smarter (Amazon | 本当に頭がよくなる 1分間勉強法 (中経の文庫) | 石井 貴士 | 倫理学入門), arguably the most underrated book in the history of Amazon (and the reason why a low rating on Amazon actually makes me more likely to get a book: because the crowd is not wise, Mr. Surowiecki; it’s just a rabid, emotional mob of swine that
doesn’t know pearls when it sees them). It is thanks to him that not only this “TV reading method” but also MCDs (massive-context cloze deletions) exist.

There’s a DVD video seminar version of the book available for rent through Tsutaya; it is 81 minutes of pure gold. And yes, you guessed it, it’s also underrated. Because the crowd lacks wisdom. The seminar was even better than the book and more directly inspired this TVRM (TV Reading Method; don’t you love how I’m just rolling off these acronyms (haha)?).

So, ISHII’s position is basically that multi-pass reading is the way to go: better to read the book ten times really badly than once really well. Why? Because it’s faster, funner and you actually understand and retain more. So far so good. But here is where things start to diverge. There are differences, so pay attention!

• The ISHII-style multipass reading technique (“One-Minute Reading”), as introduced in his DVD seminar, is based on paper books of a specific size and requires practice and timing to master.
• The AJATT TVRM, on the other hand, assumes digital books and lets our digital tools do the work for us so we don’t have to.
• ISHII-style ORM, by Ishii-sensei’s own admission, involves an early “induction” period of intense frustration. Well, I don’t like experiencing negative emotional states (lol…does anyone?) not even for short periods of time, so the TVRM, like Amazon packaging, is “frustration-free”. Except it’s actually frustration-free where Amazon packaging just claims to be 😉 (zing!).
  • By the way. if it sounds like I have beef with Amazon, I literally don’t; I’ve been a customer of theirs for more than half my life now. Love ’em to bits, even though I hate the Kindle. They need to outsource the reader software; they’re great at distro and logistics, but their UI/UX game is so weak it isn’t even sauce; it’s just gray water.

So how does this TVRM work? Well, you’ll need:

• A digital book file, and
• A tablet computer running a mobile OS
  • I have both Android and iOS, but I’ve only used TVRM on Android because it’s just so much easier to handle files their. iOS is well-designed and great fun, but it’s, like, a beautiful lawn that you’re encouraged to look at but not play on.

How does TVRM work? One word. Auto page-turning. Not just auto-scroll. Auto \-scroll is nice but not as much fun as auto-page-turn; auto-scroll makes you move your eyes too much and tires you out. Trust me. Experience speaks.You’re better off having the page turn in one fell swoop.

EZPDF and MoonReader both have auto page-turning (if you tweak the auto-scroll settings on MoonReader, it becomes auto-page-turn). And that’s it. You set the speed, and read as much as you can before the page goes away. Run out time? Keep moving. Hit the end of the book? Go back. Rinse, repeat.

Simple, fun and powerful. I’m reading and retaining more already. Try it for yourself and see!