Power Up Your Mind: Learn Faster, Work Smarter by Bill Lucas

Product Description

Bill Lucas, a leading international expert on life-long learning, shows that while we have learned more about how the brain works in the last decade than we have ever known, only a fraction of this is grasped and applied by most people. Power Up Your Mind applies this practical knowledge for the first time and shows you how to learn. Drawing on research from a wide variety of subject areas, from neuroscience to psychology, from motivation theory to accelerated learning, from memory to diet, this book shows how everyone has the capacity to succeed and how most people use only a very small portion of their talents. For learning to be effective, an understanding of how the brain works is essential and unlike most of the recent thinking on the mind, Lucas connects an understanding of the brain with the reality of the workplace and translates what we know about the brain into useful insights for work. Much work-based training is a waste of time and money because the majority of people are neither emotionally ready nor practically inclined to apply their learning to the way they behave. Power Up Your Mind offers a new model of learning-READY, GO, STEADY-which will revolutionize the way you learn and perform.
Product Details
Amazon Sales Rank: #980386 in Books
Published on: 2001-10-25
Number of items: 1
Binding: Paperback
272 pages
Editorial Reviews

Hilary Cropper, Chief Executive, FI Group
"Should be read by everyone who cares about human performance in today's business environment."

Mike Liebling, Director of Trainset and former director, Saatchi and Saatchi
"At last, a powerful and practical new book for learners who want to become leaders."

Peter Honey, business psychologist and author of LEARNING STYLES
"An excellent book...Putting into action even a fraction of Bill Lucas' suggestions will transform your life."
Customer Reviews

for a more effective performance at work
Are you leading an active working life in which information and the solving of problems play a central part? Do you often find yourself incapable of living up to your potential, that is not being able to concentrate, remember things or find creative solutions? Then you might want to consider this book.

IN-DEPTH INFORPATION ABOUT THE POSITIVE ASPECTS OF THIS BOOK.
It gives you basic information about how your brain works and how this relates to the problems you experience, giving suggestions of how to overcome them. Starting with getting ready to learn, passing reflecting on and using what you have learned it ends with how to make conscious learning a daily part of your life, including tips how to balance between work, personal life and your aspirations in general. Also, it deals with all types of learning as opposed to only memorising facts.
The most inspiring and indeed useful bit of this book was the part about ensuring a creative, productive and enjoyable environment at work, how to make sure that everybody gets the most out of the information offered and how to overcome problem-solving barriers. Other positive things where the questions and fill-in forms designed to make you think about and apply the new information, as well as summaries at the end of each chapter to check whether the most important stuff has come across. You will also find out ways to make a company more successful in regard to making the most out of its human resources (and making them happy along the way), what learning-type you are and interesting stuff about multiple intelligence, much of it illustrated with nice example-stories and quotations.

WHY ONLY 3 STARS, THEN?
I expected to be able to use my mind and memory more effectively after working my way through this book, but it simply doesn't help you to power up your mind, with the sole exception of helping you to become more creative. You don't learn techniques of how to remember things more effectively, nor do you learn how to become mentally fit and agile. True, it gives you some information on all of that, but it's more stuff to make you think and figure out your own approach (or buy another book) rather than hands-on things.

RECOMMENDABLE - If you want to understand yourself better as a learner and learn some ways to make working more enjoyable and effective, this book provides information about nearly every step to do so and gives you a basis to build upon when and if you should come across some hands-on mind and memory training.

NOT RECOMMENDABLE - If you're looking for ways to improve your memory or even your cognitive abilities, unless you're interested in the lay aspects of those parts of the learning-theory that have something to do with business life. This is really nothing for you if you're a student and looking for ways to improve your performance in school or at college.

CONCLUSION
YES for business people, NO for students and aspiring mind-acrobats.

Insightful!
In Power Up Your Mind, Bill Lucas attempts to teach readers how to learn. To accomplish this goal, he sets out to provide a blueprint to the workings of the human brain through easy-to-grasp descriptions and illustrations designed to explain how the brain ingests and processes information. What's lacking is a comprehensive review of the basic theories of learning that experts have deduced from the biological structures and mental functions that Lukas describes. Nevertheless, we from getAbstract recommend this book for its theoretical insights and practical advice about learning and memory.