Outsmart Your Brain is like other texts in this genre in that it speaks to techniques to help both students and teachers to find ways for them to write, study, read, listen, etc. The book is very practical and worth a look, especially as it pertains to how it presents the basics. I recommend it to first-year students primarily.

I wish I could have read this sooner. It was very informative and helpful. There were a few statements that I had a hard time fully believing. I feel as if some of the information could be true for the author but not absolutely everyone. For the most part it was very helpful to understand how thinking, memory, and studying works and can be most effective.

Thank you to NetGalley for this advanced reader's copy for an honest review.

Outsmart Your Brain is an insightful guide for learning and studying better. It is largely a resource for students and teachers/professors, but lifelong learners may also find it beneficial as it goes over the psychology of why certain methods work and others don't. It is very well organized, and key points are easy to take away. I especially recommend reading this in physical book/ebook form, so it's easier to see and highlight tips to try.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for providing this ARC. All thoughts are my own.

Where was this book when I was in school!

Outsmart Your Brain is a phenomenal resource for students, instructors, and parents alike. It should be required reading for high schoolers all the way through college.

I was pleasant surprised at how much I enjoyed this book. Daniel T. Washington does a terrific job of mixing scientific evidence with real life applications. He manages to take a topic that could be very boring and turn it into an ah-ha experience.

Special thanks to NetGalley and Gallery Books for allowing me to read this book in exchange for my honest review.

This format felt confusing as information was included for both the learner and the teacher. My brain did not like that, and it was not helpful for me to read the teacher parts. But if I skipped them the chapters felt incomplete. Very odd sensation. Some good tips here for learners though some folks with learning disabilities would likely not be able to apply all of the suggestions as stated.

OUTSMART YOUR BRAIN by Daniel T. Willingham is subtitled "Why Learning is Hard and How You Can Make It Easy" so he is primarily gearing this to young people and their teachers although any age could benefit from this advice. Willingham is a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia and has spoken previously at school Institute Days for professional development. In his latest work, he writes in a conversational tone that seems relevant and appropriate for teens and young adults. There is a section, for example, called Learning by Listening where he offers several tips (e.g., verbal and non-verbal clues about organization; or getting over reluctance to ask questions) to help capture and retain the deeper meaning of a lecture. That is a skill which high school and even college students often have difficulty mastering without frequent cues and practice. Each chapter also has a portion devoted to instructors with a bullet pointed summary (e.g., talk more slowly; signal when something should be written down). Other chapters deal with preparing for and taking exams, defeating procrastination, gaining self-confidence and coping with anxiety. Willingham stresses that "truly independent learners maintain a state of intellectual openness and curiosity .... which ultimately brings interest, enjoyment, and satisfaction." Slightly less than ten percent of the book is devoted to bibliography. Several unaffiliated workbooks already exist for this title, perhaps highlighting a need for the inclusion of some practical exercises and topic summaries for students. OUTSMART YOUR BRAIN received a starred review from Kirkus.

Outsmart Your Brain is a practical manual full of good strategies for learning how to learn and retain information collected and curated by Dr. Daniel Willingham. Due out 24th Jan 2023 from Simon & Schuster on their Gallery imprint, it's 336 pages and will be available in hardback, audio, and ebook formats. Paperback due out in 3rd quarter 2023 from the same publisher. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links throughout. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.

This is a well researched, practice based guide to learning how to learn. The information is aimed at doing well and performing in school, but there are great takeaways for all-ages (meeting participants, committees, work groups, etc).

The information is arranged thematically: How to:

understand lectures,
take notes,
learn from labs/activities/demonstrations,
reorganize notes,
read difficult books,
study for exams,
judge exam readiness
take tests
learn from past exams
plan work
defeat procrastination (super good tips)
stay focused
gain self confidence
cope with anxiety

The author writes authoritatively and accessibly in plain language and includes practical, usable, concrete suggestions for improving performance and learning. Throughout the book, Dr. Willingham includes anecdotes from his career as an educator which underline *how* to make learning *enjoyable* (and thus more successful). I sincerely wish I'd had access to this book during my own study years.

The bibliography is full of well curated/analyzed sources and likely worth the price of the book for educators and teachers.

Five stars. This would be a superlative choice for public or school library acquisition, as well as home use.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

This book gave some great information and was written and outlined in a while that made it easy to dive into chapters that were relevant to my life and skim through those that weren't.. While this was certainly geared toward those who are still in school, as a non-student I still found it very useful.

This was a very insightful book about how to learn. It’s a book I wish I had when I was younger because I think it would have helped me as a student learner. There were a variety of topics covered including how to listen to get the most out of a lecture, how to take notes, how to read texts that cover content, how to take a test, and how to deal with anxiety. I think the “In a Sentence” summaries, the hooded text, and the format of each section that highlighted tips will help readers understand the main points. A very practical and insightful book for anyone who wants to be a better learner.

I think this book will be helpful for high school students or people who are going to college later in life. If you have graduated college and didn't struggle too much, you won't get much out of this. However, if you want to improve your note-taking, learning, and academic understanding this book will be very helpful for you.

Outsmart Your Brain is an amazing book!! I only wish I had read the book while I was in high school and college. It would have made lectures so much easier for me to listen to. I would have been better prepared to take notes and learn what was important. I always took tons of notes just to make sure that I was listening.
Daniel Willingham did a great job of expressing that listening is a very active, not passive, thing to do.
My plan is to use this book to prepare for any learning that I plan to do in the future. If I go to a lecture, I will read the chapter about preparing for a lecture and how to take notes. I hope to take a test in the future to judge horse shows - as I prepare I will use the chapters on organizing your notes and taking exams. I will also be using the chapters in the future on how to plan your work, defeat procrastination and stay focused. So even though I am a retired engineer it looks like I will be using every chapter of this book in the future. I guess it is never too late to Outsmart Your Brain.

I wish this book (or one of its type) had been available to me when I was in high school and college and that I had the drive to find it. The lessons it contains would have made my studying and note taking much more effective!

There are many things to like about this book:
- It's organization lets you read it straight through, or choose the chapters that you feel would be most beneficial to you. This organization also makes the book a good reference tool.
- Key points are highlighted.
- The 94 tips presented are practical and helpful.
- The author doesn't just offer opinions, he backs them up with research.
- Each section is summarized "In a sentence" which reinforces what you've just learned.
- At the close of each Chapter, he has a section "For Instructors". In it, he clarifies the points that make learning difficult for students and gives them a plethora of ideas as to what they, as teachers, can do to help students get past these obstacles and get their material across in a more understandable manner. To me, this is one of the most important and helpful things in the book, and make it an outstanding reference for educators.

An excellent books for students and instructors alike, I rank this as 5 stars.

My thanks to Gallery Books for allowing me to read an advance copy of this book through NetGalley. The publication date is set for 1/24/23. All opinions expressed in this review are my own and are freely given.

I am familiar with Willingham's work, from his previous book Why Don't Children Like School? This book is aimed at the older child- high school/college into adulthood. The info given covers everything from lectures to reading text to studying for a test to even test taking. It also veers into adulthood which is the best way to remember something which would be good for workplace learning. Overall it’s a good text for both students and teachers to learn how their brains work and see what actually does work better. Something that I had always been told but there had never been really any science behind it that I have found, was to skip over questions on a test after reading them if you didn’t immediately know the answer and come back to them later. The reasoning is that your brain can be processing the question in the background while it deals with answers immediately and when you go back to read that question again your brain has found the information in his file system. Makes perfect sense. All the suggestions and chips in this book are the same. There is some diversity for those atypical students in the book. However there are signs that may not actually work well for say a dyslexic student, they may need more use of technology than trying to write out notes, for example. But overall it’s a strong book and one that I would recommend for all teachers homeschool teachers, And high school college students. Adult trainers for adults in the workplace can also learn from it as well. It would be a great book to give for Christmas for those that you know when those fields.

Lots of great information for anyone who works in any educational setting. As a teacher, I find it helpful to teach my students how their brains work so they can worker smarter and not harder. This book gave me some new insight to pass along to them. Thanks to Netgalley, the publisher, and the author for a digital ARC in exchange for my honest review.

This book is really fantastic!! I really wish it was around when I was in school! This book is very user friendly! I learned a few things about my own habits that might not be the most productive in terms of getting results. The sections on highlighting and reading difficult books was very interesting! This would be a valuable tool for students

As an educator, I felt like Outsmart Your Brain taught me new methods to help my students learn more effectively. Willingham explains how to train your brain to learn in an easy and thoughtful way and explains why the strategies we were taught in the past don't work. I can't wait to use and teach some of the methods I learned when school begins.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC!

I have always been a fan of Willingham's work. His book Why Don't Children Like School? changed my teaching (for the better) in a profound way in which no other book or professional development has, so I credit him with helping me improve my teaching. His other books are also great reads and have their merits. I was excited to hear about his new book, but was cautious as to what it might contain- would it be, I wondered, more of Why Don't...dressed up in a new package?

The answer is a definite "no". Outsmart Your Brain is primarily geared towards college students, and there's the distinction a) college level learning, and b) students. That being said, I think that teachers should read this; it will help them view education from the standpoint of the learner, not the teacher. Yes, there is some overlap with Willingham's work, but this book extends this to send many important messages directly towards the student.

I can't really say there was anything that stood out to me as above any other section, but I think he does a great job of breaking down myths and giving great suggestions on what to do instead (learning styles: bogus; particular forms of note-taking over others: not necessary; tech: a distraction). The good teacher will read and suggest students read, or will add to the syllabus. The great teacher will read this and make adjustments in their instruction based on what Willingham has to say here.

What an awesome read! As a teacher, I found this book to be informative, inspiring and helpful during a time when it seems impossible to motivate students and help them learn. The students I work with would not read this on their own - not at fault of the book or the author - but simply because they just don't read. If it was a book I'd assign as a required read, I'd be concerned with the lack of true concrete "steps" students can take to advance their learning. The evidence is solid, ideas are great but younger students would require a lot more specific guidance in order to implement some of these suggestions.

However, I would love to implement some of these things in my own classroom and look forward to be able to access this book in print so that I can really dive into and come up with curricular ideas. I appreciate the evidence-based content, as in education, in order to implement new ideas or new ways of doing things, we must be able to "defend" our actions. Thanks so much for this wonderful, helpful text!

I recommend this book to everyone. Most self-help books feel scattered and often repetitive. But this book is well lined out with useful information.

This book is really fantastic!! I really wish it was around when I was in school! Willingham is a professor and an excellent writer. His insights from that perspective are so informative and very helpful to read from a student's perspective. He also provides guidance for his fellow instructors. The advice he gives throughout the book is both engaging and very helpful. While much of it isn't necessarily new, the additional insights and his unique framing make them resonate more. He tries to help all kinds of students and is also up to date on relevant research of the tips he provides. As organization and planning is a large emphasis in the book, I unsurprisingly found that the book was also organized very well and intuitively, in a manner that actually makes it easier to remember the information learned throughout. While I do enjoy reading this genre immensely,I found Willingham's book to be hard to put down as it maintains interesting content in a manner that keeps the reader constantly engaged. Fantastic book and especially great for students!