Title: Mind Performance Hacks 
Subtitle: Tips & Tools 
      for Overclocking Your Brain
Author: Ron Hale-Evans
Publisher: O'Reilly
Edition: First, February 2006 
Pages: 330
Price: $24.99 USD, $34.99 CAD,
      £17.50 GBP 

Short Review

Smiley Rating: Excellent. :) :) :) :) :) of 5.

If you want to improve the functioning of your mind, I strongly recommend this book.

The book is part of O'Reilly's Hacks series. That means it consists primarily of hacks, i.e., interesting ways of doing things in the subject domain. In this case the subject domain is Mind; there are hacks on calculating, remembering, deciding, thinking creatively, etc.

Want more detail? You could try my somewhat longer review.

George Woolley of Camelot.pm and Oakland.pm

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Miscellaneous

List of Chapters

• Memory
• Information Processing
• Creativity
• Math
• Decision Making
• Communication
• Clarity
• Mental Fitness

Note

• To view the full table of contents, visit the O'Reilly catalog entry for the book.

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Online

Safari

I read this book on Safari Tech Books Online.

Searches

There is more on the web on this subject than you'll ever absorb.

Very General Search

For a very general search you might try searching on:

• mind techniques

Search by Category of Technique

You might try some more specific searches based on chapter headings, e.g.:

• decision making techniques
• communication techniques
• clarity techniques
• mind fitness techniques

Search by Term

There's a list of Some Cool Terms below in this sidebar. You could do some searches based on some of those terms, e.g.:

• "memory palace"
• speedwords
• creativity po
• "mental toolbox"

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Some Cool Terms

• Blənder (3): is a very loose way of using language that may appear sloppy but allows for greater precision. Portmanteaus are prevalent in Blənder.
• Conlang (6): stands for Constructed Language. Conlangs are constructed for humans by humans; they are often referred to as artificial languages. There are many Conlangs, e.g. Esperanto is a Conlang.
• E-Prime (6): stands for English Prime; a modification of English in which the verb to be is not used; expression in E-Prime is intended to be less dogmatic.
• Emotional ABCs (7): a contemporary model of emotion. The A stands for Activating event, the B for Beliefs, and the C for emotional Consequences.
• Lojban (6): a specific Conlang designed to remove restrictions on creativity, communication and clear thought.
• Memetic Sex (3): an analogy; a way of thinking of play involving mind hacks; produces ideas.
• Memory Palace (1): a memory technique that is especially good for recalling items in sequence. You place the items you wish to recall in places (often rooms) in your mind.
• Mental Momentum (7): the tendency of the mind to continue in the direction it's already going.
• Mental Toolbox (8): a conceptual toolbox in your mind where you can place mind hacks for later use.
• Murse (1): a man-purse.
• Paronyms (6): two (or more) words that have somewhat different forms and also somewhat different meanings, e.g. furious and fuming are Paronyms. See Portmanteau.
• Po (3): sometimes thought of as standing for provocative operations; a set of brainstorming tools; consists of PO-1, PO-2 and PO-3.
• PO-1 (3): involves keeping bad ideas with the hope good ideas can be generated from them.
• PO-2 (3): involves juxtaposing ideas randomly to generate more ideas.
• PO-3 (3): involves setting aside an existing idea without rejecting it (thus making room for alternatives).
• Portmanteau (6): a word that derives its form and meaning from the blending of two (or more) words. E.g. frumious which is derived from furious and fuming.
• Pre-delete (2): a technique for getting rid of stuff. When you receive something you make note of when you can zap it; when that time comes, you do (zap it, that is).
• Scamper (3): a mnemonic for recalling a certain set of brainstorming techniques for deriving more ideas from ideas already brought up in a brainstorm. The S stands for Substitute; the C stands for Combine; etc.
• Speedwords (2): a powerful shorthand that is fast to write, easy to learn, and uses only characters that can easily be typed into and saved on a computer.

Notes

• The numbers in parentheses are chapter numbers of chapters where the term is prominent.
• I wasn't familiar with any of the Terms above (except Portmanteau which I couldn't have defined) before I read this book.
• The characterizations of the terms are intended to give you some idea of the meaning of the terms; they are not intended to be precise definitions.

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Mind Fun

• Acme Forgetting Service
• Beling Here Now! (I.e., being here now while wearing lots of cool jewelry.)
• blonging (being accepted because you have cool jewelry.)
• Cat Psychology
• flurious, fornify
• Steve Job's Reality Distortion Field
• What Dog Are You Like? (Click on Game.)
• Winnie the Po

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My Toolbox

Why

The reason for this toolbox is to make it more likely that I'll use hacks I learned and tested earlier plus selected hacks from the book.

Overview of Toolbox

• 2 drawers
• The top drawer contains the 3 areas starting with C; each area in the top drawer takes up 2 compartments.
• The bottom drawer contains the other 4 areas which each takes up 1 compartment.
• 10 compartments
• 7 areas

Compartments and Tools

Top Drawer

• Clarity #1/self: self-hypnosis, talk to yourself*, focusing (talk to parts of your body)
• Clarity #2/other: 12 breaths, acceptance per LMGTE, clearing, Sedona, TM
• Communication #1/CL: Blənder*, construct a language*, E-Prime*
• Communication #2/other: word creation
• Creativity #1/BS: collaborative problem solving, Po* (PO-1, PO-2, PO-3), SCAMPER*
• Creativity #2/other: constraints* (minimalism), humor, memetic sex*, onar, role playing*

Bottom Drawer

• Action: declarations, promises, requests
• Memory: memory pegs*, memory palace*
• Other: tool box hack*
• Self-Test: Perl self-test program, practice

Note

• * after a tool means it's in the book.

Not Included

• There are no compartments for the following chapters of the book: Information Processing, Math, and Decision Making.
• Many (actually most) hacks from the book are not included.

Approach to Remembering

Top Drawer

• The mnemonic for the areas in the first drawer is CCC.
• number of hacks per compartment: 3 5, 3 1, 3 5
• hacks from book: 9 (at least one in each area)

Bottom Drawer

• The mnemonic for remembering the compartments/areas in the second drawer is AMOS.
• number of hacks per compartment: 3 2 1 2
• hacks from book: 3

Approach to Self-Test

• write down the drawers, compartment names (without checking the computer, etc.).
• check against computer (when done)

Cool, I got 100%! But the Toolbox keeps changing.

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