McGee’s Musings

Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School, Medina, John

John Medina is a molecular biologist bent on sharing how what we know about the brain can help us be more effective in the world at large. His central argument is that there are simple, but very important, lessons to be drawn from what science has learned in recent years about how the brain operates. Many of these lessons run counter to the practices and conventions that hold sway in our schools and organizations.

You can be pretty sure that I’m going to like any book that concludes:

The greatest Brain Rule of all is something I cannot prove or characterize, but I believe in it with all my heart. As my son was trying to tell me, it is the importance of curiosity.

For his sake and ours, I wish classrooms and businesses were designed with the brain in mind. If we started over, curiosity would be the most vital part of both demolition crew and reconstruction crew.

If you harbor doubts about evolutionary biology as the force that shaped our brains over millennia, leave this book on the shelf. Much of Medina’s narrative is driven by showing how our origins as hunter-gatherers shaped our brains. Here are the twelve rules Medina uses to organize his story:

1. Exercise boosts brain power
2. The human brain evolved, too
3. Every brain is wired differently
4. We don’t pay attention to boring things
5. Repeat to remember
6. Remember to repeat
7. Sleep well, think well
8. Stressed brains don’t learn the same way
9. Stimulate more of the senses
10. Vision trumps all other senses
11. Male and female brains are different
12. We are powerful and natural explorers

For each rule, Medina takes us through what we know based on today’s research. He’s a good storyteller and distills the research findings nicely. He also ends each section with concrete suggestions and ideas on ways to put the findings into practice.

Let’s take Rule 4, for example, “we don’t pay attention to boring things.” Formal and informal studies suggest that we have about a 10-minute attention span before our mind wanders off in search of something new and exciting. Ignoring this rule leads to boring college lecture hours and death by PowerPoint across the corporate universe. Factoring the rule into how you design your lectures or presentations, however, will enhance your prowess and reputation.

Of course, there’s a website to support the book, www.brainrules.net and Medina has a blog, Brain Rules. Both are worth a visit. Garr Reynolds, who wrote the excellent Presentation Zen, has a review and a nicely done presentation summarizing the book that are also well worth checking out.