Pavitt - The Brainstorm Is Dead, Long Live the Brainhack

An incredible richness of insights and inspirational ideas.

Menno Van Dijk, co-founder and MD of THNK,
School of Creative Leadership

Neil Pavitt writes the user's guide your brain never came with. Full of fascinating anecdotes and mind boggling research from across the world, he shows how our brains are fallible, gullible, malleable and, ultimately, incredible. We just need to learn how to use them. This book shows you how.

Ian Gilbert, Founder of Independent Thinking

Cover-to-cover packed with wisdom, wrapped in fun and entertaining anecdotes. There are over 40 golden nuggets in this book, all easy to mine and own and apply to everyday life. A very rare thing indeed a useful book for people who want to upgrade their brainpower.

Marc Lewis, Dean at The School Of Communication Arts

This book is a must-read for anyone who wants to discover the full extent of their creative potential. It's jam-packed full of simple yet highly effective strategies and techniques that will sculpt' your brain and significantly impact the way you think and how you create now and forever!

Gabriella Goddard, Founder and CEO of Brainsparker App

Neil Pavitt has a rare talent for making what could be difficult subjects accessible and simple to understand. His new book gives you the tools to train your brain and think smarter. Fascinating stuff. I learnt a lot.

Peter Freedman, Director of Thinking at Think Inc

Neil Pavitt transforms scientific discoveries about how your brain works into wondrous stories that will fire up your imagination. You will form new neural pathways just by reading this bookand if you try his simple brainhacks you will develop the skills to optimize your brain.

Linda Naiman, Founder of Creativity At Work

Full of counterintuitive ways to increase your creative potential.

Tony Davidson, ECD and Global Partner at Wieden + Kennedy

A wonderfully inspirational book that can help us all to unleash our ideas on the world. If you want a book to support you through difficult creative/life periods, and to expand your work when all is going well, then I strongly recommend you try this.

Miles Hanson, Founder and CEO of The Collaboration Company

Where you are now, and where you would like to be is called your potential. If you learn how to be at your best that gap will disappear. Read Brainhack very carefully. It's like a user manual for you to optimise you.

David Hieatt, Co-Founder of Hiut Denim Co and The Do Lectures

Brainhack keeps the reader abreast with all the latest theories in neurology as well as telling some good stories about how the brain behaves. In 45 instructive brainhacks', Pavitt reveals how every one of us can make more of our brains. As a creativity professional' myself, I found tips and hints in this book that were new to me.

Patrick Collister, Creative Director, The Zoo Google EMEA

Neil Pavitt

This edition first published 2016

2016 Neil Pavitt

Registered office

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Pavitt, Neil, author.
Title: Brainhack : tips and tricks to unleash your brain's full potential/Neil Pavitt.
Description: Chichester, West Sussex, United Kingdom : John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2016. | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015038324 | ISBN 9780857086426 (pbk.)
Subjects: LCSH: Psychology, Applied. | Brain. | Cognition. | Mental efficiency.
Classification: LCC BF636 .P386 2016 | DDC 153.4dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015038324

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-0-857-08642-6 (paperback) ISBN 978-0-857-08644-0 (ebk) ISBN 978-0-857-08643-3 (ebk)

Cover design: Wiley

Cover image: gst/Shutterstock

Internal pages designed by Andy Prior Design Ltd

For Kalya and Harry

There are billions of neurons in our brains, but what are neurons? Just cells. The brain has no knowledge until connections are made between neurons. All that we know, all that we are, comes from the way our neurons are connected.

Tim Berners-Lee

Are you ready to become a hacker?

Probably the first thought that comes to most people's minds when they hear the term hacker, is of someone who seeks and exploits flaws in a computer system or network.

In a way, that's what this book aims to help you to do. It's just that the network you're trying to find a flaw in, is your own brain.

Amazingly 95% of your brain's day-to-day activity is unconscious. One hundred billion neurons, one hundred trillion connections and we're only in control of a tiny 5% of it.

The forty-five brainhacks in this book aren't going to suddenly give you control over huge swathes of your unconscious. That would be a nightmare. It's unconscious for a reason; the last thing you want, is to constantly have to think about putting one foot in front of the other every time you go for a walk.