How to Use Your Mind
Harry Dexter Kitson
Adapted for Modern Readers
First published 1916 · Lucid Classics edition 2026 · 120 pages
Original and Lucid edition, side by side
Original text
In entering upon a college course you are taking a step that may completely revolutionize your life. You are facing new situations vastly different from any you have previously met. They are also of great variety, such as finding a place to eat and sleep, regulating your own finances, inaugurating a new social life, forming new friendships, and developing in body and mind. The problems connected with mental development will engage your chief attention. You are now going to use your mind more actively than ever before and should survey some of the intellectual difficulties before plunging into the fight.
Perhaps the first difficulty you will encounter is the substitution of the lecture for the class recitation to which you were accustomed in high school. This substitution requires that you develop a new technic of learning, for the mental processes involved in an oral recitation are different from those used in listening to a lecture.
Lucid Classics
Starting college may completely change your life. You are walking into situations unlike anything you have faced before — finding somewhere to eat and sleep, managing your own money, building a new social world, forming new friendships, developing yourself in body and mind. Of all these, the problems of mental development will demand the most from you. You are about to use your mind more actively than you ever have. It pays to take stock of the intellectual difficulties before you wade in.
The first difficulty you will probably hit is the lecture. In high school, you learned through class recitation. The lecture is different, and it requires a different technique, because the mental work of reciting is not the same as the mental work of listening.
Original text
Nearly everyone has difficulty in the concentration of attention. Brain workers in business and industry, students in high school and college, and even professors in universities, complain of the same difficulty. Attention seems in some way to be at the very core of mental activity, for no matter from what aspect we view the mind, its excellence seems to depend upon the power to concentrate attention. When we examine a growing infant, one of the first signs by which we judge the awakening of intelligence is the power to pay attention or to "notice things." When we examine the intellectual ability of normal adults we do so by means of tests that require close concentration of attention. In judging the intelligence of people with whom we associate every day, we regard one who is able to maintain close attention for long periods of time as a person of strong mind. We rate Thomas Edison as a powerful thinker when we read that he becomes so absorbed in work that he neither eats nor sleeps. Finally, when we examine the insane and the feeble-minded, we find that one form which their derangements take is an inability to control the attention. This evidence, added to our own experience, shows us the importance of concentration of attention in study and we become even more desirous of investigating attention to see how we may develop it.
Lucid Classics
Nearly everyone struggles with concentration. Brain workers in business and industry, students in high school and college, professors at universities — all complain about the same thing. Attention sits at the core of mental life. Whatever angle you look from, the mind's excellence depends on the power to concentrate. One of the first signs that an infant is becoming intelligent is the ability to pay attention, to “notice things.” When we test the intellectual ability of adults, we use tasks that require close concentration. In daily life, we regard someone who can hold attention for long stretches as a person of strong mind. We rate Thomas Edison as a powerful thinker when we read that he becomes so absorbed in work that he forgets to eat or sleep. And when we examine the insane and the feeble-minded, one common form their derangement takes is an inability to control attention. All of this, added to your own experience, makes the case for taking concentration seriously — and for studying how it actually works so you can develop it.
Contents
- Preface to the Second Edition
- Preface to the First Edition
- Intellectual Problems of the College Freshman
- Note Taking
- Brain Action During Study
- Formation of Study Habits
- Active Imagination
- First Aids to Memory: Impression
- Second Aids to Memory: Retention, Recall, and Recognition
- Concentration of Attention
- How We Reason
- Expression as an Aid in Study
- How to Become Interested in a Subject
- The Plateau of Despond
- Mental Second Wind
- Examinations
- Bodily Conditions for Effective Study