I have always wanted to travel to the less well-known places, places that are not popular tourist destinations. In a globalizing world, the opportunity to travel will only increase

The challenges in living in a foreign culture are enormous. So why not share some lessons leant?

Idea of making a blog

To share information with a group of people living in different parts of the world, I was looking for a medium that is easy to use and is interactive. As I’m not a technical person, an ordinary website will be too hard for me. Blog is then the natural platform

Idea translated into action

Initially, I didn’t know how to start, until a friend recommended the Blogger’s online blog platform. I have my old blog there, at http://bordercrossed.blogspot.com. After a while, I realized I wanted to make it better, and started researching on how to do it

I came across a 50-page pdf guide on how to make a better blog, the Blog Profits Blueprint (affiliate link) by Yaro Starak. There I learnt some tips to make my blog better. The original goal of Blog Profits Blueprint is to help people make money using blogs. But it serves my purpose of building a good blog to reach a broad audience well. The best thing is that it’s free and comprehensive, sparing me from searching different websites for piecemeal advice

Hungry for more, I have decided to join Yaro’s blog mentoring program (affiliate link), an online course, to learn how to make Borders Crossed a better blog. I joined the program 2 weeks ago and it’s been going well

What other people say about Blog Profits Blueprint and Yaro’s blog mentoring program

Art of money - Online Business - Inside Out

“He knows blogging and he knows online business inside out. Secretly I hate him because he makes way more money than me, and he’s about half my age :)”

Chris Sandberg’s Internet Business Blog

“… even though a lot a what he was writing about was stuff I already knew, Yaro organized and presented it in such a way as to emphasize the most important aspects of pro blogging.”

TopCat Blog - My Thoughts on the internet world

“Overall, I enjoyed reading this book. Yaro didn’t touch on the technical aspects of blogging at all (i.e., what Wordpress plugins to use, etc). Instead, he laid out steps for selecting topics, writing posts, and blog marketing.”

Rajesh Shakya - helping technopreneurs excel and lead their life

“I liked the way, Yaro provokates about the pillar articles (contents) as the most essential requirement for the success of th blogs.”

Viral Voices - “Blog Profit Blueprint” in Action!

“This blog is set out to test the strategies and tactics as outlined in Yaro’s e-book, and therefore, yes, it is set out to achieve effective blogging, in return of which I can earn some money, thus proving that, yes, Yaro’s blueprint works!”

The world has changed - from too little information to too much information

In the past, professionals and business people always complained about the lack of data to help them make sound decisions. Nowadays, with the advent of the Internet, people complain that too much information exists and they don’t have enough time to find the right information and digest it. There are 2 challenges in acquiring information

1. To focus on the best information sources available and ignore inferior ones (quality)
2. Once you have found the best information, to absorb more information using less time (quantity)

I want to share some tips to overcome the 2nd challenge. It’s actionable and you will see significant results within an hour, perhaps a 100% improvement in productivity

The limit of human beings - luckily our brains is not the limit

Human being can only read at certain speed. In today’s age of information overload, how can we “get up to speed” to absorb more and more information? Research has been done to understand what the factors limiting our speed of reading

1. Sub-vocalization - The tendency to read aloud even when one is reading silently. While you are reading, you can probably notice the little movements of your tongue, as if you’re reading out loud. The maximum number of words that human beings can vocalize is about 150. This limits to reading speed to not much faster than 150

2. Eye-ball movement - As we read, our eyeballs invariably move. It seems that lateral movement of the eyeball requires much energy, and thereby slows down reading speed. Informal, non-scientific evidence based on me and my friends’ experience (any scientific research to prove or disprove this?), suggest that it is slower for one to read in languages that are written horizontally, compared to reading the same thing on languages that are written vertically. Our eyeballs can only roll so fast. This is a physical limitation
3. Concentration - When I am reading a book, I tend to think about other things that are remotely related to contents of the book, or not related at all. This is especially bad when I was reading online. Sometimes I’d go check email, or when an interesting link comes up, I have problem resisting to click on it. This distracts me from concentrating on the content I’m reading, and thus reduce the speed

The conclusion is that the speed at which the brain can process the information are not constraints to reading speed. This is good news, because technology and discipline can help us resolve the 3 constraints above. However, if our brains were to blame, it’d be much more difficult to increase the speed it which they run

Solutions to overcome human limits - Speed-reading tools

There are two types of speed reading tools. They serve different purposes

1. Rapid word-flashing software
   • Purpose: the purpose of the first type of tools is to help you read documents on a computer screen faster
   • How it works: This type of tools rapidly flashes words at the same position of the computer screen successively. It is like watching a movie in front of a computer screen. My eyeballs don’t have to move, and it helps me to concentrate. Best of all, when the speed of reading is higher, it eliminates my tendency to sub-vocalize
   • Preliminary test results: I managed to get up to 400 words per minute using the tool after a little practice, and for sure the speed can increase if I continue using it. It doesn’t seem to increase the speed of reading books though
   • Example: RapidReader. I recommend that you try a free trial version, downloadable at their website

Screenshot of RapidReader

2. Speed reading techniques training software
   • Purpose: The purpose of the second type of software is to improve your ability to read fast, both on screen and on paper, without the help of any tool
   • How it works: Instead of displaying words in the same place so your eyes don’t have to move laterally, this type of software trains your eyes to improve your span of vision. So when you’re reading a book, your eyeball will only focus on the middle of the line, and use your peripheral vision to read the left and the right. Now your eyeball doesn’t have to move laterally, increasing reading speed
   • Preliminary test results: I managed to get up to 350 words per minute reading a passage online, using the tool after a little practice. I can practice this skill without the tool, so it is useful for book-reading
   • Example: Best Reader. I recommend that you download a free trial version to try it out

Conclusion for lazy people

For quick results without much additional work, I recommend Rapid Reader, a rapid word-flashing software. Given the increasing number of documents I read on-screen, this is more useful. And the fact that I can sit back and relax to read faster is something I can’t resist

I hope the tools will help you increase your information uptake

Additional information

Examples of languages written horizontally

• English, from left to right, then top to bottom
• Arabic, from right to left, then top to bottom

Examples of languages written vertically

• Japanese, from top to bottom then right to left
• Mongolian, from top to bottom then left to right

For more on different writing systems, see Wikipedia entry on writing system

To me, Arabic is a language that’s fun to learn. I’ve recently started learning it, and discovered many free resources online that teach Arabic to foreigners. Here are a few. I recommend Madinah Arabic, but that is just my personal preference. Other sites may suit your need better. Enjoy!

Madinah Arabic
Comprehensive site that offers 2 free courses, Arabic Reading Course and Arabic Language Course. Arabic Reading Course aims to help you learn the Arabic script, before learning the language itself. It suits me best because I want to learn reading, writing, speaking and listening. Also native Arabic speakers said that it’s much easier to learn conversational skills if I can read the script

Gulf Arabic
It teaches the Arabic dialect spoken by people in Gulf countries, i.e. UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the Southern part of Iraq. The whole website is in Roman (English) characters. Therefore, even if you don’t want to learn Arabic script, you can still learn Arabic for casual conversation purposes

Islamopas
It focuses on letter recognition, with each lesson teaching you a few characters. The short lessons, may not teach you the most number of words, but ensure that you remember most of the words being taught

Arabic 2000
It is a commercial site that offers a full Arabic language curriculum online, at a price. It offers 1 free lesson, which is indeed quite long, starting with basic grammar