Use Your Head (Ariel Books)

This is a book that can change your life! The book explains to us the great potential of our brain . It also shows us how to make learning easy. It contains hand- on exercises for the readers to do. I like Buzan's way of presenting the materials. It is easy to read though the chapter on MMOST especially the graph under overview is rather incomprehensible. This book teaches you how to learn effectively, which means learning and recalling what you have learned, applying what you have learned. Many people have undergone training and seminars and are not able to remembered what they have learned not to mention applying it in their daily life. Have difficulties in your studies or learning new stuff? Get hold of this book and learn mind mapping to make learning a fun!

Often villified because he breaks new ground continually, this book encouraged me to attend one of his seminars. I have to admit I found Mind Mapping difficult until then. After the seminar, with just a little practise, I found the technique is unbeatable. How else can you attend seminars/lectures, and come out with complete notes that cover everything you need. This book gives a broad overview of all his techniques and lets you experiment to find the ones you like. Once you have an overview then get the more specific titles, like Mind Mapping etc. If you are at all interested in improving yourself this book is a must! Be Warned his techniques are not little tricks that can be applied instantly to make a little improvement. They are something you need to learn and practise, but when you do, they will change your life forever!

Tony Buzan is smart - in two ways. Firstly, he is a good marketer. But full credit to him. He manages to achieve this while still sharing infinitely valuable tools for 'expanding' your mind. But secondly, he is at the forefront of the study of mnemonics (that's how to remember stuff). Use Your Head, the first in the 'BBC Mind Set' series is simply an overview of all the areas into which you can specialise by purchasing his other titles. I read his 'Use you Mind' title prior to reading this and I kid you not, from being a klutz when it came to remembering lists and faces, after 5 days I was remembering lists over 100 randomly ordered words. I could repeat them backwards, forwards, around the dinner table I got my family to test me by asking me what word number, for example, 86 in the list was and I could recall perfectly. They called me a freak. And the coolest thing about it was that it is simple. Like really simple. I guess that my advantage was that I was passionate about improving my memory and therefore incessantly practiced. But like I said - 5 days it took me! So I am a fan. I'm currently on page 98 of 'Use Your Head' and have already managed to improve my reading speed, today(!), from 250 words per minute to 470 words per minute. I'm now on the section about mind mapping, and have actually got his specialist mind mapping book, called funnily enough, 'The Mind Map Book' sitting on my desk ready to be read and practiced next. I'm already a top student in my studies, but I seriously cannot wait to get back to school to put all of this to use because I feel like my brain is actually working for the first time. If you have to choose one book in his series, I would suggest 'Use Your Mind' (all about remembering), but that's just me. I promise you that if you approach it with the enthusiasm that I did and are willing to harass your friends and family into testing you, then you will see exactly what I mean. It's groundbreaking. And if you choose to ignore, that's cool, your loss.