Review: The Cheat's Guide to Instant Genius

The Cheat's Guide to Instant Genius is a brand new product released by my publishers, WCCL. It's supplied on CD, and at its heart is a 147-page e-book in the universal PDF format.

Instant Genius, as I'll call it from now on, is essentially a comprehensive self-development guide. As it says in the introduction, "It shows you how to act, think and behave like a genius, giving you techniques and tips on accessing your creativity, improving your memory, accelerating your reading speed, and increasing your overall brain power."

As a psychology graduate and someone with a life-long interest in self development, I found the range of advice and techniques in this guide fascinating. Some of the techniques, e.g. those in the memory chapter, were familiar to me, but many others were new. I was especially intrigued by the chapter on NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), with its advice on how to create instant rapport with anyone, and the following chapter titled "The Persuasion Equation", which sets out some devilishly clever methods for getting other people to see things your way. There are some powerful techniques here that you should definitely be aware of, not only to use yourself, but in case they are ever used against you.

As writers, of course, we want to know how to boost our creativity and our facility with words, and Instant Genius covers these areas as well. There is also a section about Speed Reading, which provides a complete step-by-step guide to mastering this skill. The manual also covers mind mapping, a system of note-making that combines right- and left-brain skills. I regularly use mind mapping for planning writing projects, so can vouch personally for the effectiveness of this method.

Apart from the main course manual, you also get a wide range of bonus items, including free mind-mapping software, bluffer's guides to Shakespeare, Classical Music and the Great Writers, an inspirational audio meditation session, and many more.

Are there any drawbacks to Instant Genius? Well, it would have been nice if the table of contents at the front of the manual had included page numbers, preferably with hyperlinks to the sections concerned. As it is, navigating around the manual can be a bit frustrating at times. Also, I would like to have seen a few more illustrations, especially in the mind mapping section. The effectiveness of mind maps depends to a large extent on their visual impact, so it seems a little odd not to see any reproduced in the chapter concerned.

Still, these are relatively minor quibbles. There are masses of material here to set you on the road to "instant genius", and it is of course easy to follow up any topic that interests you by reference to the Internet (you can, for example, easily find full-colour examples of mind maps just by entering the term in a search engine). References to further information are also provided from within the manual.

Instant Genius is currently available at a discounted launch price - for more info, just click on any of the links in this review. Before you do, however, I'd like to make my own very special offer to you. Buy Instant Genius via one of my links, and I will also throw in an additional bonus item of my own. This is "Secrets of Improving Your Memory", an in-depth report I wrote for another publisher a year or two ago, which features several powerful (and little-known) memory-boosting techniques. Just email your receipt for Instant Genius to me at genius-at-nickdaws.co.uk (change the -at- to the usual @ mark). I will verify your order and send you my report, normally within 24 hours.