One of my favorite sayings is that there’s nothing more practical than a good theory, and recently I came across a book chock full of recent scientific theory and findings about how our brains work best. Now this may seem like a strange topic for a guy who focuses on microISVs, but any trick, theory, finding or technique that lets me leverage me gets my attention - and it should get your’s.

“Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School” [aff.] by John Medina is such a book.
I first heard about this guy when I heard Geoffrey Grosenbach’s interview of him on the Rails Podcast (Part 1 and Part 2). Poor Geoff sounded a bit overwhelmed by Medina - this guy knows how to interview!

So why should you care as a microISV, or even as a developer? What if you could improve how you code, how you learn new technology, how you design applications, how you think by about 30%? And you don’t have to spend a dime!

Medina has collected recent peer-reviewed brain research to deduce 12 rules we now can say are true, proven facts about the human brain. These aren’t the final end all - this is what we can now say are true.


Now I’m not going to go over each and every rule here; just the six of those rules that most directly relate to how we as developers do our work:

#1- Exercise boosts our brain power. A lot. Put aside all the medical benefits of not looking like the Pillsbury Dough Boy - exercise improves mental function. Specifically aerobic exercise. If you want to improve how your brain works, move.

#4 - There’s two things of note here: first, human brains are incapable of multitasking and that because of the cognitive cost of switching, attempting to do so will take 50 percent longer with 50 percent more errors. If there is one behavioral pattern robbing us of our productivity, this is it. If you want to boost your productivity, stop multitasking. Period.

Second point - peer reviewed studies have nailed this: every 10 - 15 minutes during a presentation, if you want to keep your audience’s attention, you need need to emotionally arouse your audience. If you’ve ever watched a really good presentation, you’ll notice this pattern; if you need to present your business idea to your peers or VCs or whoever, you need to build this into your calculations.

#5 - The more elaborately we encode short term information at the moment of learning, the stronger the memory. Short term memory is just that - about 30 seconds. If you don’t have an overall game plan for how you move all that information into long term memory, if you don’t have in place strategies that more strongly encode that information, you will retain less.

Case in point - learning a new programming language/technology. Twenty five years ago, back during the last Ice Age when I started programming for a living, I learned each bit via books. I’d read the text, typed the exercise, took notes, underlined text - and it stuck. The increasing velocity of information we have to keep up has sanded down what most of us do to retain new information. Underlining your screen is a no-no, who has time to type the code example in? You do - if you want to retain it.

#6 - If you want to get the full value of what you study doing just two things will greatly improve your retention and your ability to learn. First, break up those marathon sessions into 25 minutes segments on subject A, 25 minutes on B, then another 25 on A and so on. Segment and interleave. Second, every third or fourth day review the facts you learned in the prior 72-96 hours. For extra credit, and value, follow up with review every six months and annually. If all this review sounds like a waste of time, it’s not - it’s what cements that knowledge in our heads so we have it when we need it.

#7 - Four points here: first, sleep is when your brain processes, reviews, repeats and rehearses information. Second, humanity lives on a spectrum between people who think best early and those who think best late in a day. About 10% at either extreme. For example, I’ve always been an atypical programmer - I do my best work between 4am and 10am. If you are a lark or an owl - stop fighting it. Finally, mid-afternoon we are at our dullest - and a big carb-laden lunch only makes it worse. Now you can fight biology, but you lose. Instead, a 26 minute nap will improve your post nap performance 34%. And a 45 minute nap will give you a similar boost for about six hours. Finally - want to solve a tough coding problem or design issue? Sleep on it.

#8 - Our brains have evolved to handle short term stress - not long term stress. Chronic stress in the workplace, and especially in your personal life, are brain killers. Like working for a company mired in office politics and always pushing you to do more faster. Like knowing you could write software you really cared about, if only you could do it for yourself. Something to think about if you’re still on the fence about starting your own microISV.

Like I said at the start of this long post, there’s nothing more practical than a good theory - except peer-reviewed science that you apply - today - to improve what you do. You can learn more by buying the book - the dvd is worth it - or by visiting http://brainrules.net.