Use Your Brain

If I could broadcast a single idea from Erica Dhawan's book to every white-collar worker on the planet, I’d choose this: Never let AI write the first draft of your thinking. Use Your Brain is a deeply useful guide to knowing when to speed up, when to slow down, and how to remain intellectually vital in a world that seems intent on flattening originality.

Daniel H. Pink, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Power of Regret and Drive

The most powerful learning is the kind we do ourselves. Dig deep and figure it out. Erica's here to help.

Seth Godin, author of The Knot

Part wake-up call, part playbook, Use Your Brain is what happens when rigorous thinking meets a storyteller who can make you feel the stakes in your chest. This book is brilliant and deeply necessary.

Dr. Marshall Goldsmith, Thinkers50 #1 Executive Coach, New York Times bestselling author of The Earned Life, Triggers, and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There

Use Your Brain is a timely and practical guide to staying mentally present in a world increasingly designed to think for us. Erica Dhawan shows that the greatest risk of AI is not merely getting the wrong answer, but slowly surrendering the judgment, effort, and discernment that make an answer truly ours. This book offers a useful framework for working with intelligent tools without allowing them to replace the distinctly human work of thinking.

Nir Eyal, bestselling author of Hooked, Indistractable, and Beyond Belief

Use it or lose it. That is the wise warning of this book: that if we don’t respect and use the very sophisticated brains we were born with, they—and we—will become emotionally, socially, intellectually and creatively disabled. We have important choices to make today and this book is a smart, and very human, guide to making good ones.

Margaret Heffernan, CEO and author of Wilful Blindness and Uncharted: How to Navigate the Future

This book explains how to prevent smart machines from making you dumber. With timely insights, engaging examples, and practical advice, Erica Dhawan might just save you from brain rot.

Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of VIBE and THINK AGAIN, and host of the podcast Re:Thinking

This profoundly insightful book is urgently needed for anyone seeking to lead thoughtfully in an AI-saturated world. With rare clarity and humanity, author Erica Dhawan shows that the greatest risk we face is the quiet surrender of our own judgment, curiosity, and connection. Use Your Brain’s compelling stories get the message across, while its practical frameworks show how to use AI in ways that preserve and strengthen the distinctly human capacities that wise leadership demands.

Amy C. Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management, Harvard Business School, bestselling author, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

The greatest risk in the age of AI isn’t that machines become smarter than people, it’s that we stop using our own minds and the intelligence of our teams. In Use Your Brain, Erica Dhawan shows how to avoid the false win of effortless answers by knowing when to slow down, tap the brakes, and reclaim the driver’s seat. This smart and deeply researched book will help you think more clearly, lead more wisely, and remain unmistakably human.

Liz Wiseman, bestselling author of Multipliers and Impact Players

Outsourcing your thinking is not just a terrible idea, it’s an existential threat. ‘I think therefore I am’ is as true today as it was in 1637 when Descartes wrote those words. Dhawan offers an indispensable guide to ensure you manage AI, not the other way around.

Kim Scott, bestselling author of Radical Candor and Radical Respect

Erica Dhawan has a unique ability to alert us about the unintended consequences of technological progress. This brilliant book is the most important manifesto to date on why and how we need to protect our creativity, curiosity, and critical thinking from the lazy misuses and abuses of AI, and why harnessing human intelligence is the only differential in the age of intelligent (and at times not that intelligent) machines.

Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, University College London and Columbia University professor of business psychology and chief science officer at Russell Reynolds Associates

In a world racing to let machines think for us, Erica Dhawan delivers a beautifully written and timely reminder that human connection, imagination, and joy cannot be outsourced. Her framework is exactly the playbook this AI moment demands: a practical guide to the reflection, judgment, authenticity, and accountability we need to nurture our humanity.

Hubert Joly, Harvard Business School professor, former CEO of Best Buy, and bestselling author of The Heart of Business

Use Your Brain is thoughtful, practical, and relevant for anyone trying to stay present and fully human in a world moving too fast.

Shawn Achor, bestselling author of The Power of Beliefs and The Happiness Advantage

I love how this book offers a practical framework for combining AI’s power and speed with the uniquely human strengths of judgment, originality, and mental sharpness.

Alex Osterwalder, Strategyzer founder and CEO and creator of the Business Model Canvas

Erica caught herself letting a machine tell her son's bedtime story, and realized how quietly we have started handing over our thinking. Use Your Brain is her case that in a world addicted to speed, your own judgment is the last thing you should ever automate. A wake-up call for anyone who has quietly stopped thinking for themselves.

Ankur Warikoo, bestselling author of Make Epic Money, Entrepreneur and Content Creator