Compelling tips and tricks to improve your mental skills Don't you wish you were just a little smarter? Ron and Marty Hale-Evans can help with a vast array of witty, practical techniques that tune your brain to peak performance. Founded in current research, Mindhacker features 60 tips, tricks, and games to develop your mental potential. This accessible compilation helps improve memory, accelerate learning, manage time, spark creativity, hone math and logic skills, communicate better, think more clearly, and keep your mind strong and flexible.
Table of Contents:
Introduction xvii
Chapter 1 Memory 1
Hack 1: Remember to Remember 1
Hack 2: Build a Memory Dungeon 6
Hack 3: Mix Up Your Facts 10
Hack 4: Space Your Repetitions 14
Hack 5: Recall Long-Ago Events 18
Chapter 2 Learning 25
Hack 6: Establish Your Canon 25
Hack 7: Write in Your Books 32
Hack 8: Read at Speed 44
Hack 9: Learn by Teaching 49
Hack 10: Play the Learning Game 52
Hack 11: Pretend You’re a Grad Student 55
Hack 12: Study Kid Stuff 59
Chapter 3 Information Processing 63
Hack 13: Polyspecialize 63
Hack 14: Integrate Your Interests 67
Hack 15: Sift Your Ideas 72
Hack 16: Ask the Hive Mind 77
Hack 17: Write Magnificent Notes 83
Chapter 4 Time Management 95
Hack 18: Keep a Mental Datebook 95
Hack 19: Tell Time Who’s Boss 99
Hack 20: Meet MET 106
Hack 21: Get Control of Yourself 111
Hack 22: Locate Lost Items 121
Hack 23: Huffman-Code Your Life 126
Hack 24: Knock Off Work 129
Chapter 5 Creativity and Productivity 135
Hack 25: Manifest Yourself 135
Hack 26: Woo the Muse of the Odd 138
Hack 27: Seek Bad Examples 143
Hack 28: Turn a Job into a Game 148
Hack 29: Scrumble for Glory 160
Hack 30: Salvage a Vintage Hack 167
Hack 31: Mine the Future 174
Hack 32: Dare to Do No Permanent Damage 179
Hack 33: Make Happy Mistakes 182
Hack 34: Don’t Know What You’re Doing 187
Hack 35: Ratchet 195
Chapter 6 Math and Logic 199
Hack 36: Roll the Mental Dice 200
Hack 37: Abduct Your Conclusions 204
Hack 38: Think Clearly about Simple Errors 209
Hack 39: Notate Personally 215
Hack 40: Notate Wisely 218
Hack 41: Engineer Your Results 223
Hack 42: Enter the Third Dimension 233
Hack 43: Enter the Fourth Dimension 239
Chapter 7 Communication 263
Hack 44: Spell It Out 264
Hack 45: Read Lips 271
Hack 46: Emote Precisely 275
Hack 47: Streamline Your Shorthand 283
Hack 48: Communicate Multimodally 287
Hack 49: Mediate Your Environment 291
Chapter 8 Mental Fitness 299
Hack 50: Acquire a Taste 300
Hack 51: Try Something New Daily 305
Hack 52: Metabehave Yourself 308
Hack 53: Train Your Fluid Intelligence 315
Hack 54: Think, Try, Learn 321
Hack 55: Take the One-Question IQ Test 331
Chapter 9 Clarity 335
Hack 56: Cultivate Beginner’s Mind 336
Hack 57: Take a Semantic Pause 340
Hack 58: Retreat and Reboot 350
Hack 59: Get Used to Losing 355
Hack 60: Trust Your Intelligence (and Everyone Else’s) 359
Appendix A The Unboxed Games Manifesto 367
Appendix B 3D Visualization 369
Index 373
About the Author :
Ron Hale-Evans is a writer, game designer, and the creator of the Mentat Wiki, a collaborative environment for exploring ways to become a better thinker. He has done technical writing for the Free Software Foundation, the Linux Foundation, and Microsoft. Marty Hale-Evans is a technical editor who has worked for Microsoft, Boeing, and the University of Chicago Press. An award-winning game designer, she currently chairs a local literary science fiction convention and pursues various creative endeavors.
