Boost Your Brain Power

Knowing how your brain works sets you up for exceptional performance. Dr. John Medina’s book, Brain Rules, reveals scientific studies that directly apply to radio and podcast performers and management.

Here are Medina’s most actionable brain rules for peak performance:

ATTENTION

We don’t pay attention to boring things.

Medina says, “Introductions are everything!” Our brains must have an attention-getting headline to begin each content segment, presentation, or meeting so that an audience will pay attention. In media, we call them “hook headlines.”

3 Essential Elements of Hook Headlines:

1.    The headline must trigger an emotion: fear, laughter, happiness, nostalgia, or amazement.
2.    It must be a crisp, understandable, brief narrative or anecdote to arouse curiosity.
3.    Your headline must be relevant to the audience.

Attention multitaskers: Your brain is wired sequentially, so giving your full attention to more than one thing at a time is impossible.

MEMORY

Repeat to remember.

Not only does repetition help us remember, but it also works with an audience. Cramming or constantly repeating a message in one segment doesn’t work. Allowing time between repetitions enables the brain to process and remember.

•    Spacing the messages out more often, rather than repeating information about an appearance in one live segment or promo, will help information stick with listeners. The same concept applies to commercials.

SENSORY INTEGRATION

Stimulate more of the senses at the same time.

Engaging stories deliver A-level content. In RLC’s storytelling seminars, Jeff and I emphasize the importance of sensory details to paint pictures.

Our senses work together. Cognitive psychologist Richard Mayer’s sensory experiments to test memory divide one group with sound, one with sight, and the third with a combination of the two. The multisensory group always has better recall.

•    Animate your stories with pictures by incorporating sensory language (see, hear, smell, taste, feel). 

•    When it applies, include the use of smell in your stories. Medina notes, “Smells have the unusual power to bring back memories.”

•    Audio in the form of sound effects and audio clips in your stories will enhance the listener experience.

SLEEP

Sleep well, think well.

This research revelation got my attention: Sleep deprivation impacts our mental abilities more than being drunk!

Medina notes, “Sleep loss hurts attention, executive function, memory, mood, quantitative skills, logical reasoning, and even motor dexterity.”
The author also details studies revealing the importance of a midafternoon nap. He says our brains don’t work well during this period, which he calls the nap zone. 

•    Naps boost cognitive abilities by as much as 34%, according to one NASA study.

EXPLORATION

We are powerful and natural explorers.

Medina believes the greatest Brain Rule of all is curiosity. Curiosity is the driving force behind creativity. It pushes us to ask, “What if?” and explore possibilities beyond the obvious. 

•    Smart companies take the power of exploration to heart by giving employees 15-20% of free time to work on creative ideas. At Google, 50% of new products, including Gmail, Google News, and AdSense, came from the company’s “20% time.”

•    Personalities who are curious with callers and guests get more entertaining stories and juicy information. 

Photo by Milad Fakurian on Unsplash