experience matters

Book Review: Brain Rules by John Medina

Joel Stanley | Critical Mass Chicago

What is any organizations’ true competitive advantage? Vision, values and process are all necessary, but fundamentally what makes one company different than another is the people. People are always our most important resource…so, in our ultra-competitive fields, are we equipping our people to perform to the best of their abilities?

The following are 8 brain rules – concepts of how our brains work that directly impact how we work best. These are taken from and all credit is given to John Medina’s excellent book, “Brain Rules”. These 8 rules provide insight on how we can align ourselves and our work to how we’re wired as people (with the added bonus of scientific backing behind mid-day naps).

1. Exercise Boosts Brain Power
The human brain operates best with proper oxygen flow. One of the most interesting scientific findings of the past few decades is that an increase in oxygen is always accompanied by an uptick in mental sharpness. Exercisers outperform non-exercisers in tests that measure long-term memory, reasoning, attention, problem solving as well as ability to reason quickly and think abstractly.

Basically, fit employees are capable of mobilizing their God-given IQs better than sedentary employees.

The most productive business day (and meetings within that day) would include walking.

2. We Don’t Pay Attention To Boring
Better attention always equals better learning. But, research has shown you have about 10 minutes of an audience’s attention before attention starts to wane.

You must do something emotionally arousing at each 10 minute mark to regain attention…and it has to be relevant and interesting (random jokes won’t work). Inserting information/data that is unusual, unpredictable or distinctive are powerful ways to harness attention.

3. The Brain Cannot Multitask
The brain is not capable of multi-tasking. We can talk and breathe, but when it comes to higher level tasks, we just can’t do it. This doesn’t bode well for our always-connected culture, specifically at work.

The biggest problem comes from task switching, which is basically being interrupted from whatever is your primary focus. Research has shown that it takes someone 2x as long to complete a task if you are interrupted and you make 3x more errors as well. An error for a 4 year old means 2+2=5, an error for those of us in professional world means sub-optimal output. Whether it be in a new business pitch, creative presentation or strategic recommendations, we can’t afford those mistakes.

4. Repeat To Remember
We usually forget 90% of what we learn within 30 days. The human brain can only hold about seven pieces of information for less than 30 seconds. If you want to extend that, you’ve got to consistently re-expose yourself to the information.

Repetition is key in remembering ‘effortful’ information (kinds not easily remembered, as opposed to remembering first kiss – that’s ‘automatic’). Here’s the easy solution: 30, 60-90. Repeat information within 30 seconds to get information to working memory, then repeating within 60-90 minutes to get it into long term memory. Without repetition, your brain resets.

5. Sleep Well, Think Well
When we’re asleep, the brain is not resting at all. It is almost unbelievably active! It’s possible that the reason we need to sleep is so that we can learn.

3 things you should know about sleep:

• Loss of sleep hurts attention, executive function, working memory, mood, quantitative skills, logical reasoning, and even motor dexterity.  Sleep deprivation is thought to cost US business more than $100B/year.
• Napping is normal.  Around 3pm the part of your brain that wants sleep is locked in an epic struggle with the part that wants to stay awake.  It can be nearly impossible to get anything of value done around this time and fighting it keeps the gnawing tiredness for rest of afternoon.  NASA instituted a 26 minute nap and improved pilots performance by 34%.  What other management strategies will improve performance by 34% in just 26 minutes?
• “Sleeping on it” works.  Research shows the sleeping brain tries to solve problems you tackled during the day, allowing the mind to wander for approaches we may not have thought of while awake.  It also appears to repeat patterns that occurred during day, basically trying to commit what you learned that day to long term memory and weeding out what’s not important.

6. Stress Makes You Dumber
Your brain is built to deal with stress that lasts about 30 seconds. The brain is not designed for long term stress when you feel like you have no control. Stress damages virtually every kind of cognition that exists and severely hampers your ability to concentrate. The CDC estimates that 80% of medical expenditures are now stress-related and stress causes companies to lose $200B/year

Also, you have only one brain. There’s no firewall between personal issues and work productivity. The same brain you have at home is the same brain you have at work or school. The stress you are experiencing at home will affect your performance at work, and vice versa.

7. Vision Trumps All Senses
We are incredible at remembering pictures. Hear a piece of information, and three days later you’ll remember 10% of it. Add a picture and you’ll remember 65%.

Reading is inefficient for us because our brain sees words as lots of tiny pictures, where we have to identify certain features in order to read them – which takes time. So if you want an audience to quickly understand and remember your presentation, toss out the old, 100 words-per-slide PowerPoint and create presentations that incorporate images with text as supplement. In memory tests where people are shown hundreds of photos, they can remember 90% three days later — and 63% after a year.

8. We Are Natural Explorers
The desire to explore never leaves us, regardless of our age or environment. Recent research has discovered adult brains are as malleable as babies, so we should be life-long learners. We are naturally curious and one of our best attributes is ability to learn through a series of increasingly self-corrected ideas.

One of the best examples of this in action is Google. For 20 percent of their time, employees may go where their mind asks them to go. The proof is in the bottom line: fully 50 percent of new products, including Gmail and Google News, came from “20 percent time.”

We at CM Chicago brainstormed around all of these rules and came up with some great ideas on how we as individuals, teams or as an office can institute changes to help us align better with how we’re wired.  Here are a few:

• Laptop friendly treadmills/exercise equipment
• Engage audience with questions every 10 minutes in presentations
• Specified rooms for 25 minute naps
• “No Meeting Fridays” or  simply “No interruption” times during the day

Any others?

Joel is the Account Director for CM’s Moen account.