Brain Rules 12 Principles for Surving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School

Brain Rules 12 Principles for Surving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School by John Medina

This book is a series of twelve chapters on different principles on how to make your brain function better. Many of the ideas are practical common sense; get plenty of sleep, exercise regularly, avoid stress, and repeat things to remember things better. This is not a book of magic formulas. The ideas are sound and all have been documented multiple times to be true.

Not every principle is completely obvious. For example, if you teach using more than one sense, you get better results, and every person learns differently because their brain is wired differently. He also refutes the idea that people lose their ability to learn as they age.

Many of the examples from his personal life about his toddler were entertaining. Some of the practical ideas like making sure a coffee aroma was the first thing you smelled when you went into Starbucks coffee shop were interesting.

Where this book was not so great was in the style. I found his writing to be very prescriptive. It reminded me very much of The Elements of Style; short terse sentences, easily understandable words, uniform paragraph structure, and precise grammar. I thought the writing could have been more descriptive with higher level vocabulary and a more varied sentence and paragraph structure.

There was also no bibliography at the end of the book. John Medina asks you to go to http://brainrules.net to get the bibliography. I found this to be not that encouraging. There is an index. Another problem is that he gives the names of people in his field, but does not list the books they have written in the body of the text. This is disappointing.

Read this book for the content and ideas, but not the citations, style, or writing.

Daily Thoughts 1/9/2010

Read the Cooperatives Literature 1918

Daily Thoughts 1/9/2010

I watched the half hour dvd which came with the book Brain Rules by John Medina. It was a summary of 12 rules to make your brain work better. Most of it made sense; repeat to remember, combine senses to make a more powerful presentation, exercise to think better, sleep to think better, take a nap in the afternoon, and other maxims. It challenged the idea that cubicles and classrooms were the best place to learn. The humor was a little silly. There were little factual bits like Starbucks makes sure that the coffee aroma is the first thing which you smell when you come into their stores. This is the first popular science hardcover I have seen with a dvd that came with the book. I have seen other books with audio samples.

I think this will be more common as it becomes cheaper to produce discs and put them in books. The other book which I read with a disc was I Can Make You Thin which has a hypnosis cd that comes with it. Paul McKenna has another book with a hypnosis cd included, I Can Make You Sleep. Both of these have sold a lot of copies of books.

I ended my account today for Myspace. It has become a space that seems to be focused on music and pop culture two things which are not my strong points.

Right now, I am at my local library. I took a walk to stretch my legs and now am sitting at the computers. I'm not taking anything out today.

Tomorrow, I am going to the Morgan Library as part of the New York Librarians meetup group. There is a Jane Austen exhibit. http://www.meetup.com/NYLibrarians/calendar/12133220/