Thinking Smarter

I first heard Dr. John Medina in an interview on New Horizons in Education with Boise State University president Dr. Bob Kustra.  You can listen to that interview here.  Dr. Medina mapped out 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home and School.  The first brain rule is Exercise Boosts Brain Power. 

The human brain evolved under conditions of almost constant motion.  From this, one might predict that the optimal environment for processing information would include motion.  That is exactly what one finds.  Indeed, the best business meeting would have everyone walking at about 1.8 miles per hour.

Researchers studied two elderly populations that had led different lifestyles, one sedentary and one active.  Cognitive scores were profoundly influenced.  Exercise positively affected executive function, spatial tasks, reaction times and quantitative skills.

So researchers asked:  If the sedentary populations became active, will their cognitive scores go up?  Yes, it turns out, if the exercise is aerobic.  In four months, executive functions vastly improve; longer, and memory scores improve as well.

Exercise improves cognition for two reasons:

•  Exercise increases oxygen flow into the brain, which reduces brain-bound free radicals.  One of the most interesting findings of the past few decades is that an increase in oxygen is always accompanied by an uptick in mental sharpness.
• Exercise acts directly on the molecular machinery of the brain itself.  It increases neurons’ creation, survival, and resistance to damage and stress.

How true this is, riding to work, exercising during lunch or simply walking around the office helps clear my mind, allows me to reflect on the days expected outcomes and increases my focus for the day.  Who knows, we may find that standing or even walking at 1.8 miles per hour during meetings is the next method to increase output for smarter thinking. 

Dr. Medina also touched on the term multi-tasking and argues the point that it is impossible to do given the generic definition.  The experiment proposed was of particular interest.  What if businesses designated parts of the day that are interruption free?  Create a two hour interruption free zone every day and see if this increases productivity.  Then compare the results with a typical day full of interruptions and see if two hours uninterrupted is more productive in the amount of time to complete a task.  You could measure in the amount of time to complete the task or measure the amount of errors.  If results are favorable, businesses need to determine how employees architect their day.

There are a number of actionable items from his book that can benefit the business and education systems in order to think smarter.