This is a comprehensive summary of the book Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School by John Medina. Covering the key ideas and proposing practical ways for achieving what’s mentioned in the text. Written by book fanatic and online librarian Ivaylo Durmonski. Members get full access and a printable of this summary.
The Book In Three Or More Sentences:
Our brains are marvelous machines. Yet, most of us have no idea how they actually work. This is the goal of the author, John Medina, in his book with a ridiculously long title, Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School. He investigates and examines a huge pile of studies to form a 12-section guide that aims to introduce us to the main operating mechanisms of our grey matter. By doing so, professor Medina wants to expose us to better ways to process information which can potentially help us improve our lives, especially at work and school.
The Core Idea:
Once you realize what are the main needs of our brains, on an atomic level, you’ll better understand why sitting in a chair for 8 hours straight seems like an impossible feat and why we doze off in the middle of a presentation. Our brains evolved to survive in the wilderness, not in cubicles. By getting to know our fundamental desires, how our brains actually work, and what they need to thrive, we can better tackle the problems we face in the modern world.
Highlights:
- Add a dose of emotion to what you’re trying to teach to make it easier for others to learn.
- We need to expose ourselves, again and again, to important information if we want to remember it for longer.
- Stress and the lack of control, hurts people emotionally, not only physically.
5 Key Lessons from Brain Rules:
Lesson #1: Exercise Can Boost Your Brainpower
We associate workouts with nice abs. Morning runs with a healthy lifestyle. Tabata sessions with online influencers. But there is more!
Physical exercise can also boost your brainpower.
Yes, in addition to shaping your body and fitting into last year’s jeans, regular physical activities can also improve your cognitive skills and help you become a better decision-maker.
How is this possible?
To understand this, we need to observe for a moment the requirements for human life to be preserved. Our survival requires the following three things: food, water, and fresh air. That’s basically it.
However, these three have different consequences for our bodies.
As mentioned in the book, “You can live for 30 days or so without food, and you can go for a week or so without drinking water. Your brain, however, is so active that it cannot go without oxygen for more than 5 minutes without risking serious and permanent damage.”
Or in other words, oxygen is a vital ingredient for our bodies and a couple of minutes without this precious element can cause instant death.
How is this related to physical activities?
Simple, when you move, you improve your oxygen consumption. The more and the better your consume oxygen, the better your brain operates.
The scientific explanation is rather complex and I prefer to refrain from adding even more complexity to it. But in one sentence I can say that blood flow increases when we move regularly which helps us make new blood vessels. These new blood vessels improve the overall performance of our body – including how fast and well we think.
So, workout doesn’t only improve your physical fitness, it also makes you smarter.
Besides, we have only recently started driving cars and flying to other countries. Before that, taking into account the timeline of our whole existence as a species, for the majority of our time we walked. So, if you’re not regularly moving your body, you’re preventing it from doing what it was designed to do – move.
“A lifetime of exercise can result in a sometimes astonishing elevation in cognitive performance, compared with those who are sedentary.” John Medina
Hey there, sorry to interrupt…
Since you’ve come this far, it seems that you are passionate about pursuing depth over distraction. I am too! And while what I’m about to say next probably won’t quite excite you, I have to say it…
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