A User’s Guide To The Student Brain
For Forbes, I get the occasional chance to review a book. I just finished one that is actually pretty useful, from Daniel Willingham, who finds a way to bridge the gap between scholarly studies of how the mind works and studently struggles of trying to learn stuff. So here’s the lead-in for that review.
Daniel Willingham’s new book, Outsmart Your Brain: Why Learning Is Hard and How You Can Make It Easy, provides a handy guide for students and the people who work with them.
Willingham has a PhD from Harvard in cognitive psychology and currently serves as a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia. His experience and study has given him a unique opportunity to look at where what we know about how the mind works meets students trying to get their mind to acquire and retain information.
Willingham notes that the greatest challenge will yield the best results in the long run, but we are wired to avoid those challenges. Because they are harder, he observes, they feel less productive.
Outsmart Your Brain does read like a user’s manual. Each chapter has a clear focus on a particular slice of learning (How to take lecture notes, how to read difficult books, how to study for exams, how to defeat procrastination, etc). And while many of the chapters complement each other, you need not read them in order, nor do you need to read them all. Each one addresses its particular focus independently, allowing the reader to move directly to their biggest personal concern.