Brain Rules summary and review

Brain Rules summary and review: In this article I'm going to give you The New York Times bestseller book Brain Rules summary and review. Brain Rules is written by Dr John Medina.

Brain Rules's author details

DR. JOHN J. MEDINA, the author of the New York Times bestseller book Brain Rules is a developmental molecular biologist, has a lifelong fascination with how the mind reacts to and organizes information.

John Medina is an affiliate Professor of Bio-engineering at the University of Washington School of Medicine. He lives in Seattle, Washington.

The author shares 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School, a provocative book that takes on the way our schools and work environments are designed.

He is also the author of Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five, a must-read for parents and early-childhood educators.

Brain Rules summary

Most of us have no idea what’s really going on inside our heads. Yet brain scientists have uncovered details every business leader, parent, and teacher should know—like the need for physical activity to get your brain working its best.

How do we learn ? What exactly do sleep and stress do to our brains ? Why is multi-tasking a myth ? Why is it so easy to forget—and so important to repeat new knowledge ? Is it true that men and women have different brains ?

In Brain Rules, Dr. John Medina, a molecular biologist, shares his lifelong interest in how the brain sciences might influence the way we teach our children and the way we work. In each chapter, he describes a brain rule - what scientists know for sure about how our brains work - and then offers transformative ideas for our daily lives.

Medina’s fascinating stories and infectious sense of humor breathe life into brain science. You’ll learn why Michael Jordan was no good at baseball. You’ll uncase over a surgeon’s shoulder as he proves that most of us have a Jennifer Aniston neuron. You’ll meet a boy who has an amazing memory for music but can’t tie his own shoes.

From this book Brain Rules you will discover how:

Every brain is wired differently
Exercise improves cognition
We are designed to never stop learning and exploring
Memories are volatile
Sleep is powerfully linked with the ability to learn
Vision trumps all of the other senses
Stress changes the way we learn

In the end, you’ll understand how your brain really works—and how to get the most out of it.

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Brain Rules review

The Brain Rules help you build better daily structure and be in control of your life our brain has limitless potential but in order to use its potential we have to better understand how it works and how we can improve it.

Today we'll take a look at in this book called Brain Rules by John Medina to learn the principles of surviving and trying in our life.

Our brain is a sophisticated information processing system but in order for it to function properly we have to ensure that we look after it.

So let's take a look at some of the strategies that you can use to increase your brains processing capacity.

Number one your brain reacts to most important stimuli it is important to understand that our brain will always react to the things that it believes to be the most important. But as we already know that is not always the case, imagine that you're working on your latest blog post you've been focusing for an hour and your energy levels start to sink for your brain.

This kind of activity is not fun as it requires a lot of mental energy and then suddenly you hear the sound of a notification on your phone subconsciously you already know that it is probably a distraction and you should keep focusing your new blog post until it's completed unfortunately your brain is not on your side and it starts to generate thoughts like what if it's something important so you can't resist it but to pick up the phone.

We also know how that is usually ending up a quick one-minute reply to your friend turns into 20 minutes message exchange and once you have your phone in your hands you're also exposed to all different temptations to check out your email or even social media.

This is a reason why removing all possible distractions is the key if you want to stay productive. Because if you leave your phone around then your brain will make it as the most important activity. the brain selective focus is the bad thing if the brain wouldn't be selective we would be overwhelmed with the hundreds of thoughts at any given time and unable to focus on anything.

To take advantage of the brain selective focus we have to make sure that we create an environment that allows us to focus on things that are most important for us.

Number two our brain is continuously developing and evolving. when we were born our brain is only partially constructed the biggest development project continued until early 20s. at this point it starts to slow down but that is not to say that development stops our brain keeps developing as long as we keep learning new things.

People can learn in their 60s 70s 80s and Beyond. Warren Buffett is currently 89 years old and he still reads about five hours every day. so you have to make learning a daily habit something that you do all the time. always look for new opportunities to do even more when you go to conferences to listen to the talks you should be using break times to meet new people and make new connections.

When you're driving from work to home or from home to work don't listen to the radio instead listen to some audio book or podcast to learn something new. if you want to watch something in the evening instead of watching the latest movie you could watch autobiographies of successful people.

To learn new things you had to be continuously expanding your thinking and learning new things if you want your brain to develop and evolve.

Number three how we store and remember things 19th century journal sahal oh geez Hermann Ebbinghaus discovered that students usually forget about 90% of what has been learned in a class within 30 days but he also proved that students were able to remember information much better when they repeated it over and over in regular intervals.

Spaced intervals make your brain think that the information that you're repeating is important and therefore your brain will remember it another strategy that you can use to remember information better is by attaching meaning or grouping the items.

Sometimes your brain does it subconsciously, but sometimes we have to do briefly attach meaning to remember things better.

For example when you go to the gym you know that you have to take water bottle, membership card and towel with you. in this case you don't think about each individual item but instead you think about what you will need to work out in the gym.

Number four exercise to increase your brainpower, exercise allows your body to get more energy out of the food that you eat. therefore exercise is highly recommended to increase your brainpower as your heart rate increases during exercise blood flow to the brain increases as well as blood flow increases your brain is exposed to more oxygen and nutrients excess also induces the release of beneficial proteins in the brain.

These nourishing proteins keep your brain cells healthy and promote the growth of new neurons and on the trapped into the thinking that you need to hit the gym six days a week any exercise that you will do will be better than doing nothing but it's recommended to do some sort of exercise daily for 30 to 60 minutes.

Number five sleep benefits, sleep is an incredibly important component if we want our brain to function to its full capacity sleep serves to re-energize the body cells clear waste from the brain and support learning and memory.

A study examined a group of soldiers researchers kept the soldiers awake for one night and then ask them to take cognitive tests the following day one night's sleep loss resulted in 30 percent loss in overall cognitive skills where two sleepless nights resulted in 60% decrease.

Another study showed that if people got only six hours or less sleep a night for five nights the cognitive performance would decrease by 60%. so while it's important to get that one last thing done before your bedtime it's much better to invest that time in a good sleep.

Number six stress, stress is the secret killer when it comes to your productivity because most of the time we don't feel its presence before it's already too late. stress can come from different sources and it might involve issues like health, money and relationships. you should be managing your stress as much as possible because stress can kill brain cells and even reduce the size of the brain.

Remember that little stress can help you to take action while too much stress has a negative effect on your brain and your overall health.

I hope you are satisfied with this article and by using these strategies you'll be able to maximize your brain's potential and become more productive.

Final note: This book does a tremendous job of distilling scientific research on how the brain works and presenting it in a neat, organized manner. Each chapter is self-contained in that it covers a single topic and the research around it.

This book is also an attempt to disabuse people against what are mostly urban myths and plausible-sounding theories of brain development, peddled by marketers with noble and not-so noble intentions.