The Brain Workout Book

Snowdon Parlette didn't fill The Brain Workout Book with the brain boggler type of exercises seen in magazines. He opted instead for a collection of simple, practical, and often fun, activities. For example, he suggests that if you're right-handed, try using your left hand to hold a key and unlock a door. Parlette first dispels common myths about brains, such as whether brain power depends on brain size. He also says that intelligence is "an individual measure of how we employ the brain power and the talents we have been given. In other words, intelligent people make the most of what they have." His exercises are all designed to help stimulate your brain to enable you to make the most of what you have. He offers a simple quiz for determining how fit your brain is. He says "a fit brain welcomes new interactions, new challenges, new experiences." We have to get out of our daily rut. His first exercise is to simply "take a completely different route home from work" once a week. One section of the book discusses the functions of the right brain and the left brain, and how to stimulate each side. Putting together a jigsaw puzzle is a right brain stimulus, while working a crossword puzzle delights the left-brain. Reciting written material, such as a poem, aloud gets both halves of the brain working together. Parlette then explains the different kinds of memory and provides exercises that help increase the ability to remember. He also includes a chapter on exercising your imagination through daydreaming. Another section of his book describes special brain exercises for writers, artists, actors, musicians, scientists, and athletes. He also discusses how to rest the brain when suffering from mental fatigue. "For exercise our brain wants stimulation, fresh stimulation, new stimulation. Our brain needs to experience the unfamiliar, to go where it has not gone before," says Parlette. The Brain Workout Book helps all readers learn the best ways to give the brain the stimulation it craves and to allow it to travel to new levels of functioning.

"The Brain Workout Book" is one of the best self-help books that I have ever read. Snowdon Parlette has done a superb job of giving you some powerful techniques to improve your mental performance. The chapter on visualization was wonderful! The short section on "seeing like an artist" was well worth the price of the book. Very concrete, readily useful techniques!