The Brain Rules by John Medina has long been on my reading list and I finally got around to it. The book is constructed around 12 “brain rules”, each of which covers some aspects of the brain we know for sure. The we know for sure-part is important, because there is no shortage of books that speculate on what the brain does and how it does it, whereas all the “rules” in this book are backed up by numerous scientific studies. Perhaps surprisingly we don’t know much about the brain, but even more surprising is that what we do know is not being taken seriously.

For example, there are many aspects of how the brain works that are in direct conflict with how we try to use it – there is very compelling evidence that if we made the ideal learning or working environment, they would be pretty closely exactly the opposite of how schools and work environments look today. In the name of cost-effectiveness, we are implementing strategies that are directly opposing to proven methods of actually improving learning and working. I find that appalling.

One rule is about attention. The lack of true multitasking capabilities has been recently brought up in other fora like New York Times as well. The simple truth is that the human brain cannot multitask – we are biologically incapable of processing multiple attention-rich inputs simultaneously. We must jump from one task to another and the task-switching takes a remarkably long time. Speaking of the task switching process, Medina explains:

Incredibly, these four steps must occur in sequence every time Eric switches from one task to another. It is time-consuming. And it is sequential. That’s why we can’t multitask. That’s why people find themselves losing track of previous progress and needing to “start over”, perhaps muttering things like “Now where was I?” each time they switch tasks. The best you can say is that people who appear to be good at multitasking actually have good working memories, capable of paying attention to several inputs one at a time. Here’s why this matters: studies show that a person who is interrupted takes 50 percent longer to accomplish a task. Not only that, he or she makes up to 50 percent more errors.

Yet, the modern office is purpose-built to promote interruptions.

The attention-chapter also covers other truths, such as the attention span that we have – including many examples on how to overcome the fact that our attention span comes in 10-minute segments in, say, a presentation.

Other chapters explain, among other things, the importance of physical exercise and sleep, the importance of repetition to recalling and impacts of stress on how the brain works. In the chapter on sleep, we also return to the now-famous study that showed a simple nap can improve the performance of people by 34%. Yet, how many companies encourage or even condone their staff sleeping for half an hour during the day? Not many. Yet, if you sleep for 25 minutes and if it results in even a 25% performance improvement over the rest of the working day, the time “lost” will be more than recovered through improved performance.

And then there are the lessons on learning – and how learning in a unisensory environment is vastly inferior to a multisensory one (thanks to what is called the supra-additive integration – ironically, just reading the book is a unisensory experience so expect to forget a lot about it unless you take notes etc);

The groups in multisensory environments always do better than groups in the unisensory environments. They have more accurate recall. Their recall has better resolution and lasts longer, evident even 20 years later. Problem-solving improves. In one study, the group given multisensory presentations generated more than 50 percent more creative solutions on a problem-solving test than students who saw unisensory presentations. In another study, the improvement was more than 75 percent!
[..]
All explanations about multisensory learning also deal with a counter-intuitive property lurking at its mechanistic core: extra information given at the moment of learning makes learning better. [..] Stated formally: it is the extra cognitive processing of information that helps the learner to integrate the new material with prior information.

The Brain Rules also touches on the topic of reality – in that none of us really perceive reality but the reality we see is just our opinion of it, and that we are all hallucinating all the time; in short, the trust we place on our eyes to serve us a faithful, up-to-the-minute, 100% accurate representation of what’s actually going on is sorely misplaced.

The Brain Rules is certainly an interesting and even fun read. In addition to fascinating explanations on many interesting aspects of the brain, it provides many bits of practical and useful advice how you as an individual can make sure your brain works as well as it can. Like already mentioned, it also highlights major deficiencies in the way things are done in societies today that are just plain wrong in light of science – tackling these issues will take a bit longer than making sure you have enough sleep and exercise, but need to be resolved at some point anyway. The pinnacle of idiocy perpetrated by corporations globally is the destruction of productivity and performance in the name of increasing productivity and performance – and the refusal of school systems to change or even explore new strategies is also nothing short of stupid. Meanwhile, I’m sure you can glean a few interesting and useful bits of information by looking at The Brain Rules and implementing what you can.