Product Description

* Use the genius inside you
* Learn HOW to learn
* Expand your memory capacity 100 times
* Energize your brain

Become the confident superlearner you've always wanted to be! At school or at work, we are constantly challenged by having to acquire new skills and ideas as those we've learned become obsolete. By mastering the seven basic elements of complete study skills presented in this book, you can tap into your hidden potential for maximum performance and increased learning power.

Study Smarter, Not Harder debunks many of the myths associated with studying techniques. The practical exercises in this guide are immediately useful, making studying efficient and painless. This book will help you achieve your goals, whether you are aiming to pass the next exam, get into a postsecondary institution or a graduate program, or upgrade your job skills.

Study Smarter, Not Harder answers questions such as:

* How quickly can I learn the fundamentals of good studying?
* Will speed-reading solve my problems?
* Do women and men need to learn different study skills?
* If I forget today what I read yesterday, what am I doing wrong?
* How can I improve my memory and concentration?
* Is cramming for exams such a bad idea?
* How do I cope with a boring instructor?

At any age, at any time in life, you can increase your intelligence and learning ability. Study Smarter, Not Harder will show you how to learn -- which is the most valuable skill you will ever learn.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #22117 in Books
• Published on: 2007-08-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 232 pages

From the Back Cover
At work or at school, requirements rise higher and higher as competition grows fiercer. We are constantly challenged by having to acquire new skills and ideas as those we've learned become obsolete.

About the Author
Kevin Paul began his professional career teaching study skills at the University of Victoria. He has been a student service professional for the past 20 years and has talked with thousands of students about what it takes to be a successful learner. Currently he is president of Kihon Learning Systems, a company dedicated to helping students of all ages achieve success in their studies.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Part I Introduction

1. The knowledge explosion

TAKE HEART! The solution to your problems and anxiety is closer than you might believe. The answer is already between your ears.

You already have the engine you need your brain to adapt and thrive in a world where you have to keep learning new things. All you need are the tools to get that engine running at a higher level of efficiency than it is now.

How much room for improvement do you have? Just think of it this way. Your mind power and learning potential are like space. What you actually use is peanuts compared to your capacity. The unused potential is like the vastness of unexplored space.

No matter what your present level of learning ability and achievement may be, YOU CAN DO BETTER! -If you're failing, you can pass. -If you're passing, you can get Bs. -If you're getting Bs, you can get As. -If you're getting As, you can do even better!

What does it take to start down the road to achieving the kind of learning mastery that your potential promises? It takes three things:

(a) Desire to be a better learner. Picking up a book like this is a start. It shows that you want to expand your horizons.

(b) Belief in yourself. High self-esteem is a vital ingredient for success in any activity, and this is especially true of studying and learning. Chapters 2 and 3 will give you some of the basic foundation for looking at your learning ability in a whole new way. This foundation is meant to show that your potential to earn As in anything is not a myth. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 will show you how to build on that belief in yourself and to activate it in each study session.

(c) A bottomless toolbox. Desire and self-esteem are good things, but they are useless without some ways to build on that foundation and make practical use of it. A house is only as strong as its foundation, but you can't live in a foundation. You have to build on it. The chapters in Part III show you how to develop study tools that will build on your foundation.

Now it's up to you to take the next step: a step away from the anxiety about your school work and the eruption of information in the world and a step toward developing the kind of mind that can handle all this with ease and fun for the rest of your life.

2. You can learn anything

Congratulations on taking the first step along the path of lifelong mastery.

Mastery of what? You can master anything you want to learn. Whether it's your high school diploma, college career program, university degree courses, sales training seminar, or professional licensing exam, there is no limit. You can learn anything you want if you unlock the genius inside you. The possibilities and potential are extraordinarily exciting.

a. You are a genius

Yes, you read that correctly. It does say GENIUS!

This book is about how to bring out the genius inside you. That's right! You have the potential to learn and achieve learning results at the true genius level.

This is not an exaggeration. There are ways of studying and learning that are painful, arduous, and, ultimately, fruitless, and you are left worse off than before. You probably have some personal experience of this kind of education.

Conversely, there are ways of learning and patterns of study that not only help make you more knowledgeable, but also increase your inherent intelligence. Does that sound impossible? Isn't intelligence set in stone when you're born and there is nothing you can do to change it?

Think about it. Research shows that spending countless hours as a couch potato in front of the TV will actually reduce your I.Q. And if it can change in a negative direction, then it can certainly be coached into the positive. Believe it or not, you are already an incredibly efficient learner. Acquiring a language and walking are two of the most complex activities in which humans engage. It is not yet possible to get enough computing power to synthesize these basic human achievements. It takes a very sophisticated learning capability to achieve language and walking. Research shows that even driving a car takes more brain power than piloting the lunar excursion module that landed on the moon.

Just to give yourself a review of what a good learner you already are, do the following exercise. Write down all the things in your life that you have learned that have nothing to do with formal classroom schooling.

Customer Reviews

Pragmatically this is a waste of time.
After finishing the book I feel robbed of my money and my time. Although the author does provide some helpful tips, he wastes a lot of space stating the obvious, repeating himself NUMEROUS times, and filling the margins with absolutely useless random quotes whose purpose is only to consume space and make the book look larger.
This book is for the novice and for those who believe everything they read. The author is only marketing the lure of good study skills, he doesn't actually teach them to you. One may think the book looks nice, big, inviting, and there are many pages. But a lot of it is repeated b.s. If you would like better books check out "What smart students know" and "How to become a straight-A student"

Lots of information
This book has lots of sound advise. It does, however, repeat itself a lot, and it also doesn't seem to realize that we don't have all the time in the world. The trick is to chose the techniques that work best for you on a particular subject and be flexible. On the whole, it is a good book.

Now in an updated second edition
Now in an updated second edition marking the tenth anniversary of its publication, Study Smarter, Not Harder is a straightforward self-teaching guide to expanding one's memory, firing up one's brain, and learning the tips, tricks, and techniques to study with maximum effectiveness and minimum time expenditure. From learning the art of study reading (which is very different from "speed reading"!), to the importance being aware of one's own alertness cycle and the point of mental diminishing returns, harnessing the #1 study skill of the ability to focus, and more, Study Smarter, Not Harder absolutely lives up to its title. Highly recommended not only for high school and college students, but also anyone preparing for a new career.