BRAINHACK
by Neil Pavitt
It is a beautiful book to unleash your brain’s full potential. Highly recommended!
Think Smarter — General ways to make your brain work better for you:
1. Make a done list.
To-do lists are about goals, a done list is about achievements.
To more you can make a habit of it, the more likely you are to keep to it.
2. Change your memories
It's about making the memories you have better
The fact our memories can and do change is a good thing
When you recall a memory you are recreating, changing, and re-memorizing. The memory is subject to change every time you remember it.
You can’t always control what others think of you but you do have control over what you think of yourself.
3. Be Kinder, Be Happier
Every thought we have and every action we take creates new connections in the brain.
Happy and unhappy people experience similar events but interpret them differently
Kindness really can have a powerful effect on melting away negative emotions
4. Reward Upfront
Our natural tendency is always to go for the safe bet
5. Make a better impression
Making a mistake or being a little clumsy makes you more endearing
The occasional mistake is not only acceptable, it may turn out to be beneficial.
6. Exercise more to make your brain run better
7. Let your body do the talking
8. Be more musical
Making a career as a musician is like being a professional bodybuilder of the mind
9. Don’t get labeled
Language and how it is used has a very powerful effect on us
People are even more likely to do a job that has some connection to their name
A name is just never a name
Getting Started — How to use your time better and be more productive
10. See things differently
Seeing the colour blue or working in a blue environment has been proved to make you more creative
It just goes to show that whatever we think, how we truly see the world is never black and white
11. Watch cat videos
One of the other great benefits of watching things that make your laugh is that they’re fantastic stress busters.
12. Don’t be biased
The more experienced you are in a field, the more biased you become.
It’s always good to get the opinion of someone you trust on your ideas or projects.
13. Practice with purpose
It shouldn’t be practice makes perfect, it should be the right practice makes perfect
Deliberate practice will have the strongest effect on your brain
14. Stop Moaning
Even just the smallest of moans is still a negative thought.
One thing you actually can do is to complain instead of moan
15. Don’t be stressed
We often spend too much time thinking and not enough time planning and doing
What’s most important is to be well prepared
16. Make fewer decisions
A lot of successful people reduce the number of daily decisions they have to make
Too much choice can just be too overwhelming, so we end up just not making a choice at all.
17. Count the days, minutes, and hours
We called them “New day resolutions or ever, new month resolutions, we’d be far more likely to keep to them.
18. Look on the bright side
If you can find the silver lining, you can turn a negative into a positive and a pessimist into a realist
Problem Solving — Shortcuts to help your brain become better at solving problems
19. Take a Beak
Taking time out not only re-shapes your mind but also what you produce
20. Just Start
Fear of failure is like nice dry kindling to the fire of procrastination
21. Take away the context
The next time you’re got a problem to solve, try to boil it down to its purest form.
22. Keep Asking why
If your want to be a great problem solver, you need to cultivate a p truly questioning mind
23. Sleep well
Sweet dreams will always beat a strong coffee
A good night’s sleep returns your brain to full power
You don’t need to nap for long to feel the benefit.
24. Be more sarcastic
Being sarcastic and also listening to someone being sarcastic actually makes you more creative.
25. Notice your mistakes
When there’s a problem with the meaning our brain will pick up on it, but if it’s just a misspelled word it’s a lot harder.
26. Write by hand
You remember more when you use your hand to write or take notes.
27. Take notes
If you have a good idea, instantly write it down
Idea Generation — How to come up with more and better ideas.
28. Map it out
29. Run a brain marathon
There are lots of problems with brainstorms, but the main one is they don’t go on for long enough
If you want to get good ideas you’ve got to work at it.
Instead of trying to negate what another person says, you should try and build on it.
30. Do something different
Once we see something in a certain light or used for a certain purpose, it's very hard to see it in a different way.
If you want your neurons to make new connections, you need to connect with the world in a new way.
31. Don’t try to have good ideas
The first rule of having good ideas: Don’t try to have good ideas
By having a lot of ideas you will naturally start having interesting ideas.
32. Think like a child
To be really open in your thinking, we need to be restricted.
While we are valuing creatively more and more, it’s becoming harder to escape from our fear of being wrong.
33. Don’t finish
When you sit down to work on a project, don’t finish, come back and try reworking it. It might get more creative.
34. Take part in name calling
When you feel an overpowering emotion, just say the name of it.
Attaching a word to our messy emotions is a very effective way to lessen their impact
Just naming the feeling can help soothe negative emotions
When you give yourself motivational speeches in your head, it will lead to better performance if you use “you” rather than “I”
35. Stay focused
The lure of social media is consistently dragging us away from important tasks
The secret is to not get distracted
36. Work Messy
You actually get a creative boost when you work in a messy space.
Breaking through and innovating — The moment of insight and how to turn ideas into innovations
37. Enjoy being blocked
Just because it’s a struggle, it doesn’t mean you’re blocked
The important thing is just to get started and not worry too much
38. Think like Goldilocks
No one has great ideas without thinking about a problem for a long time
When the breakthrough or insight you’re been looking for does come, it’s accompanied by a surge of energy. This isn’t just mental, it’s actually physical.
39. Take a walk, have a shower
You have to be passionate about finding a solution and a little obsessed
If you want your mind to relax you got to get active.
40. Switch off
It’s important to let yourself get bored.
We are scared of being bored that we rarely spend time alone with our own thoughts.
We’re thinking all the time, but it’s only when your mind is ideal that you actually get to listen to your own thoughts.
41. Think when you’re tired
Being a bit sleepy is definitely beneficial to create thoughts.
42. Just say it
Talking something — or something — through your problems can often be enough to help you find an answer
43. Give it the overnight test
If there are any problems in your mind, your unconscious will work on those.
44. Plan a pre-mortem
Projects that are a success are also the ones that don’t have a little chinks in their armour
If you could imagine what can go wrong, you can fix it before it ever happens
45. Make a story out of it.
What’s the point of having all this information if no one remembers it.
The reason story is so much more engaging is simple: it engages a lot more of our brain.
Because our brains are built for stories, they absorb them more readily than other kinds of information.
