Brain Hacks
Strategies to Rally Motivation and Get Things Done
(Even When You Don’t Want To)
Understanding your brain might be the best brain hack of all.
Brain Hacks is a graphic novel that helps tweens and teens understand something that can be surprisingly complicated:
Why can I know exactly what I need to do…and still have such a hard time doing it?
Through relatable characters, humour, visual explanations and practical strategies, Brain Hacks explores how thoughts, feelings, memories, motivation and imagination all work together to influence what we do.
And, more importantly, what we can do when our brains aren't cooperating.
Who is Brain Hacks for?
Brain Hacks was created with tweens and teens in mind, but the concepts are useful well beyond adolescence.
It may be especially helpful for young people who:
Have trouble getting started
Procrastinate even when something is important to them
Feel overwhelmed by large or difficult tasks
Struggle with motivation or follow-through
Get stuck in negative thinking
Have executive functioning challenges
Want to better understand their emotions
Find social situations confusing
Benefit from visual explanations rather than long verbal lectures
Want practical strategies they can actually use
It's also designed to be useful for the adults supporting them.
Parents, teachers, SLPs, counsellors, psychologists and other professionals can use the language and concepts in Brain Hacks to create conversations about what's happening — without reducing everything to “you need to try harder.”
Brain Hacks was created by Jennby Sojat and Michelle Garcia Winner.
We wanted to take ideas that can feel very abstract — motivation, executive functioning, thoughts, feelings, memory, perspective and problem-solving — and make them concrete.
And we wanted kids to actually enjoy reading about them.
So we didn't write a textbook.
We wrote a graphic novel.
Brain Hacks follows five teens dealing with the very real demands of school, friendships, activities, expectations and everyday life.
Along the way, they meet their brain-based CREW — characters who help make what's happening inside their minds visible.
Instead of simply telling readers what they should do, the story helps them understand what their brains may be doing and introduces strategies they can experiment with themselves.
The Story behind the Book
We've been incredibly excited by the response to Brain Hacks.
One of the things that has meant the most is hearing that readers aren't simply enjoying the story — they're understanding the message behind it.Dr. Damon Korb
“In his review of Brain Hacks, developmental-behavioral pediatrician and executive-functioning expert Dr. Damon Korbhig hlighted the way the book approaches motivation by first helping readers understand and accept why motivation can be difficult — and then breaking down practical steps for moving forward.”
He connected the book to the idea of “choose your hard”: sometimes staying stuck is hard, and trying something different is hard too — but one of those choices creates the possibility of moving forward.
His verdict?
“I chose upside.”