Quotes by John Medina

The problem in today’s economy is that people are typically starting a family at the very time they are also supposed to be doing their best work. They are trying to be productive at some of the most stressful times of their lives. What if companies took this unhappy collision of life events seriously? They could offer Gottman’s intervention as a benefit for every newly married, or newly pregnant, employee.

If you wanted to create an education environment that was directly opposed to what the brain was good at doing, you probably would design something like a classroom. If you wanted to create a business environment that was directly opposed to what the brain was good at doing, you probably would design something like a cubicle. And if you wanted to change things, you might have to tear down both and start over.

The trick for business professionals, and for educators, is to present bodies of information so compelling that the audience does this (encoding) on their own, spontaneously engaging in deep and elaborate encoding.

If you are trying to get information across to someone, your ability to create a compelling introduction may be the most important single factor in the later success of your mission.

Public speaking professionals say that you win or lose the battle to hold your audience in the first 30 seconds of a given presentation.

The more personal an example, the more richly it becomes encoded and the more readily it is remembered.

The more handles one creates at the moment of learning, the more likely the information is to be assessed at a later date. The handles we can add revolve around content, timing, and environment.

WE DO NOT SEE with our eyes. We see with our brains.

The brain pays more attention to the gist than to the peripheral details of an emotionally charged experience...present information in a logically organized, hierarchical structure.

The brain acts like a muscle: The more activity you do, the larger and more complex it can become. Whether that equates to more intelligence is another issue, but one fact is indisputable; What you do in life physically changes what your brain looks like. You can wire and rewire your brain with the simple choice of which musical instrument---or professional sport---you play

The brain cannot multitask...The brain naturally focuses on concepts sequentially, one at a time...This attentional ability is, to put it bluntly, not capable of multitasking.