Brain Rules (Non-Fiction 299pg)

Brain Rules
 -- By John Medina
(Score - 9/10)

This book looks at 12 aspects of how brain research can help us redesign our approach to everyday life, including exercise, sleep, study and the likes.

There are 12 chapters in this book, all highly entertaining, and all looking at everyday questions at a molecular level such as - Why is exercise good for us and How does stress cause heart attacks

See more at www.brainrules.net

Rule 1 - Exercise boosts your brain power
> Our brains were built while we were walking large distances - 12 miles a day! That's how the brain likes it.
> To improve your thinking skills, move!
> Exercise gets blood to your brain, bringing it glucose for energy and oxygen to soak up the toxic electrons that are left over from the reaction of blood absorbing glucose (its an almost violent reaction). If left alone, these electrons can cause severe damage to the cells, especially in the soft tissue of the brain. This is what leads to stroke - when enough blood does not flow to the brain and therefore brain doesn't get enough oxygen, these free electrons already start to cause significant damage starting within 5 minutes or so. Exercise also stimulates the protein that keeps neurons connecting. 
> Aerobic exercise just twice a week halves the risk of general dementia. Its cuts the risk of Alzheimer's by 60%.

Rule 2 - The human brain evolved too
Going from four legs to two to walk on the Savannah freed up energy to develop a complex brain.

Rule 3 - Every brain is wired differently
We have a great number of ways of being intelligent, many of which don't show up on IQ tests. No two people's brains store the same information in the same way in the same place. What you do and learn in life physically changes what your brain looks like - it literally rewires it.

Rule 4 - We don't pay attention to boring things
The brain's attentional "spotlight" can focus on only one thing at a time: no multi-tasking. 
We are better at seeing patterns and abstracting the meaning of an event that we are at recording details.
Emotional arousal helps the brain learn. 
Audiences check out after 10 minutes, but you can keep grabbing them back by telling narratives or creating events rich in emotion every 10 minutes. 

Rule 5 - Short Term Memory - Repeat to remember
You can improve your chance of remembering something if you reproduce the environment in which you first put it into your brain. 
Most of the events that predict whether something learned will also be remembered occur in the first few second of learning. The more elaborately we encode a memory during its initial moments, the stronger it will be. 

Rule 6 - Long Term Memory - Remember to repeat
Most memories disappear within minutes, but those that survive the fragile period strengthen with time.
Our brain gives us only an approximate view of reality, because we mix new knowledge with past memories and store them together as one.
The way to make long term memory more reliable is to incorporate new information gradually and repeat it in timed intervals. 

Rule 7 - Sleep well, think well
The brain is in a constant state of tension between cells and chemicals that try to put you to sleep and cells and chemicals that try to keep you awake.
The neurons of your brain show vigorous rhythmical activity when you're asleep - perhaps replaying what you learned that day. You consolidate learning when you sleep and your recollection is better when you wake up the next day. 
People vary in how much sleep they need and when they prefer to get it, but the biological drive for an afternoon nap is universal. 
Loss of sleep hurts attention, executive function, working memory, mood, quantitative skills, logic reasoning and even motor dexterity. 

Rule 8 - Stressed brains don't learn the same way
Your body's defense system-the release of adrenaline and cortisol (both released from glands on top of the kidney)-is built for an immediate response to a serious but passing danger, such as a saber-toothed tiger. Chronic stress, such as hostility at home, dangerously deregulates a system built only to deal with short-term responses.
Under chronic stress, adrenaline creates physical scars in your blood vessels that can cause a heart attack or stroke, and cortisol damages the cells of the hippocampus, crippling your ability to learn and remember. 
Individually, the worst kind of stress is the feeling that you have no control over the problem-you are helpless.

Rule 9 - Stimulate more of the senses
Our senses evolved to work together-for example, vision influences hearing-which means we learn best when we stimulate several senses at once.
Smells have an unusual power to bring back memories maybe because smell signals bypass the thalamus and head straight to their destinations, which include that supervisor of emotions known as the amygdala.

Rule 10 - Vision trumps all other senses
Vision is by far our most dominant sense, taking up half of our brain's resources.
We learn and remember best through pictures, not through written or spoken words. 

Rule 11 - Gender
Men and women respond differently to acute stress. Women activate the left hemisphere's amygdala and remember the emotional details. Men use the right amaygdala and get the gist. 

Rule 12 - We are powerful and natural explorers
Some parts of our adult brains stay as malleable as a baby's, so we can create neurons and learn new things throughout our lives. 

Brain Bugs (Non-Fiction 235pg)

Brain Bugs
 -- By Dean Buonomano
(Score - 8/10)

This book looks at how our neurological wiring has bugs, which leads up to biases, wrong decisions and marketers exploiting us to their advantage. Very objective and the author has reduced complex scientific research to an every-day level.

Here are a couple of examples:
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Read the following list of words:

candy, tooth, sour, sugar, good taste, nice, soda, chocolate, heart, cake honey, eat, pie

Now read them again and take a few moments to try to memorize them.

Which of the following words was on the list: tofu, sweet, syrup, pterodactyl?

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Answer the first two questions below out loud, and then blurt out the first thing that pops into your mind in response to sentence 3:
1. What continent is Kenya in?
     2. What are the two opposing colours in the game of chess?
             3. Name any animal.

Roughly 20 percent of people answer “zebra” to sentence 3, and about 50 percent respond with an animal from Africa. But, when asked to name an animal out of the blue, less than 1 percent will answer “zebra”.

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The Power of Habit (Non-Fiction 285pg)

The Power of Habit

 -- By Charles Duhigg
(Score - 8.5/10)

This book looks at the neurological aspect of habit formation, and how habit patterns can be replaced at this deepest level. Some relevant text from the book:

Toward the centre of the skull is a golf ball sized lump of tissue that is similar to what you might find inside the head of a fish, reptile or mammal. This is the basal ganglia, an oval of cells that is central to recalling patterns and acting on them. When doing something new for the first time, the basal ganglia explodes with a flurry of activity, analysing each sight and sound in an effort to find patterns. The brain has to work at full power to make sense of all the new information. But after a few hours/days/weeks (depending on the complexity) of the same routine, the parts of the brain related to smell, or sight, or decision making or memory go quiet. It is as-if the whole routine is internalized. This is, in effect, the basal ganglia taking over and putting us in a "pilot" mode, which is effectively, the base of formation of habits. The process in which the brain converts a sequence of actions into an automatic routine is known as "chunking". There are dozens - if not hundreds - of behavioural chunks that we rely on every day. Some are simple - you automatically put toothpaste on your toothbrush before sticking it in your mouth. Some, such as getting dressed or making the kids' lunch, are a little more complex. Others, such as the act of backing the car out of the driveway, are remarkably complex.

Thus, habits emerge because the brain is constantly looking for ways to save effort. Left to its own devices, the brain will try to make almost any routine a habit, because habits allow our minds to ramp down more often. But conserving mental effort is tricky, because if our brains power down at the wrong moment, we might fail to notice something important. So our basal ganglia devised a clever system to determine when to let habits take over. It's something that happens whenever a chunk of behaviour starts or end. This process with our brains is a three-step loop. First, there is a cue, a trigger that tells your brain to go into the automatic mode and which habit to use. Then there is the routine, which can be physical or mental or emotional. Finally, there is a reward, which helps your brain figure out if this particular loop is worth remembering in future. At the end of the activity, when the reward appears, the brain shakes itself awake and makes sure everything unfolded as expected.

But this is not enough. For the routine to become a habit, there also has to be a craving for simulation.

Change in organizational habits is easier when there is a crisis. In fact, many leaders induce a sense of crisis or prolong a crisis to be able to drive changes in behaviours that they desire.

To be able to change habits, the key steps are:
1. Identify the routine - What are the components of your cue-routine-reward cycle?
2. Experiment with Rewards - Rewards are powerful, because they satisfy cravings. But we are often not conscious of the cravings that drive our behaviours. So if we go to drink coffee more times than we desire, is this because we desire caffeine or desire fresh air, or desire the social company and some chit-chat? You can test four or five different rewards, such as taking a walk in the part, or stopping by a co-worker's desk to speak. After each of these activities, jot down on a piece of paper the first three things that come to mind when you get back to your desk. They can be emotions, random thoughts, reflection on how you're feeling, or just the first three words that pop into our head. Then, set an alarm for fifteen minutes. When it goes off, ask yourself: Do you still feel the urge for that cup of coffee?
The reason why it is important to write down three things - even if they are meaningless words - is twofold. First, it forces a momentary awareness of what you are thinking or feeling. And later, it allows you to recall and analyse your thought patterns. And why the fifteen minute alarm? Because the point of these tests is to determine the reward you're craving. If, fifteen minutes after stopping to talk to a colleague, you still feel the urge to drink coffee, then your habit isn't motivated by the craving to seek social company. On the other hand, if you find it easy to work after fifteen minutes have passed, then that means that you've identified the reward - temporary distractions and socialization - that your habit sought to satisfy. By experimenting with different rewards, you can isolate what you are actually craving, which is essential in redesigning the habit. Once you've figured out the routine and the reward, what remains is identifying the cue.
3. Isolate the cue: Experiments have shown that almost all habitual cues fit in one of five categories:
   > Location
   > Time
   > Emotional state
   > Other people (who else is around you)
   > Immediately preceding action
So if you write down these five things the moment the urge of drinking coffee hits you, you will be able to figure out the cue that kicks in the habit.
4. Have a plan: Once you have figured out your habit loop, you can begin to shift the behaviour  You can change to a better routine by planning for the cue and choosing a behaviour that delivers the reward you are craving. What you need is a plan. To re-engineer the habit, we need to be making different choices. And study after study has shown that the easiest way to do this is to have a plan.

The Story of Stuff (Non-Fiction 352pg)

The Story of Stuff

 -- By Annie Leonard
(Score - 8.5/10)

The below excerpt (appearing on page 50 and 51) pretty much captures the essence of the message of this book:
"In fact, all of us on the planet collectively are consuming more resources than the planet produces each year;  we're consuming about 1.4 planets' worth of bio-capacity resources annually ... ... ... Now the extra is running out. ... ... ... If all countries used resources at the rate that the United States does, we would need about 5 planets to sustain us. That's clearly a problem, since we have only one ... ... ... to reduce overall resource use, sustain ecological and community health, and ensure that the resources used are shared equitably. In order to achieve these goals, One Planet Living promotes a vastly reduced materials economy alongside new cultural norms that are proportionate to the resources we have."

The book focuses on each stop of the "Stuff" journey, i.e. Extraction, Production, Distribution, Consumption and Disposal, with issues at each stage of the journey, and a way forward for sustainable living. The biggest leverage is available at the Production stage, because it is this stage that drives what gets extracted and what gets distributed. The plethora of choices that we see on the shelves of the Supermarket are in fact no choices at all. For example, you can only choose from the set of brands that are available on the shelves, but you cannot, for example, choose a T-shirt that guarantees that everything from the cotton growth to production of t-shirt has been done in a way that is just to the community involved at each stage. Those kind of choices are simply not available at this point.

The book also talks about how toxic the environment in which we live is. Everything from sleep mattresses that are treated with flame retardants (i.e. dipped in bromide - PBDE - PolyBrominated Diphenyl Ethers) to our playstations that have Coltan (a conflict metal from Congo) to PVC shower curtains that de-gas (creating the 'new car smell') adds to this toxicity. Some toxins are carcinogens, i.e., these cause cancer - and PVC is one of those.

Finally, it paints a picture of what a changed and sustainable world could look like in 2030 - which includes composting culture, working lesser hours, sharing in a community rather than buying new stuff and disposing and producer responsibility for disposing items at the end of their life-cycle.

The book lists resources such as cosmetics-database (that rates most FMCG brands by their level of toxicity) and Good Guide (which also has an app, and rates electronics, personal items, etc.), which attempts to break beyond the advertisement clutter and rates goods and products on environment, health and societal impact. 

Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus (Non-Fiction 286pg)

Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus

 -- By John Gray, Ph.D.
(Score - 8/10)

The central takeaway of this book is understanding and tolerance of the opposite sex, by laying out how men and women are from different planets, and therefore have different beliefs, different ways of talking, and even different meanings to words even when the words are the same. Agreed that the writing style is not the most lively, but the book is very practical and (from my attempts at trying to implement the concepts) works!

The key messages that I retained from this book are:
> Women need to be cherished.
> Men need to feel trusted/ needed.

I would recommend this as a must-read to gain a better appreciation of relationships with the opposite sex.

Outliers: The story of success (Non-Fiction 304pg)

Outliers - The story of success

 -- By Malcolm Gladwell
(Score - 8.5/10)

In his indomitable style, the author argues that success is rarely about the way it is portrayed in biographies or on TV - which is that a driven individual self-made his destiny and riches. Success is more about how opportunities came by, the social setting, cultural heritage and of course, the ability of the individual to be motivated to take opportunities that come his or her way.

The story starts at a small town of Roseto (Pennsylvania, USA), inhabited exclusively by immigrants who originally came from a single small town in Italy. Almost no one in this town below the age of 65 had heart disease. This was surprising in the USA of the day, and a physician called Wolf started to dig in further to investigate. After ruling out diet, genetics, location and other such factors, Wolf realized that reason Roseto was an Outlier was because of Roseto itself. This was a town where the Rosetans visited each other, stopping to chat in the streets, cooking for one another, going to the same church and following an egalitarian approach where neither the wealthy flaunted their wealth, nor the poor were allowed to fail. Thus, not having heart diseases was nothing to do with the individual - it was about the culture of the place.

The author then moves to Canadian hockey league and proves that most players in the highest elite league were born between Jan-Mar. He goes on to show how the cut-off date of 1-Jan automatically biased the system to select kids who were born between Jan-Mar, since they were physically stronger than the others who were born later. Once selected for the league, these players then got extra training and extra practice, which ensured that they got to be the best. (It takes around 10000 hours of training to master any activity). The result was that even if the system was supposed to be meritocratic, in reality it was biased simply because of the cut-off date. This is the flaw of using an arbitrary cut-off date to determine merit selection. For example, if a school promotes kids to advanced classes based on the ability displayed as of a cut-off date, then invariable kids whose birth-date is closest to the cut-off date stand to gain an unfair advantage.

The author takes up various example, including how nationality of pilots is a good predictor of the probability of plane crashes. He explains this with a concept of PDR - Power Distance Ratio. In individualistic societies such as those of the West, PDR is low - i.e. subordinates are not afraid to present their points of views directly. In high PDR societies of the east, deference to authority is in-built in the culture. The implication is what in emergency situations, where the co-pilot of flight engineer should be clearly telling the Captain of any errors committed, the eastern culture people choose to give indirect hints rather than taking control - resulting in a higher probability of crashes.

The book also talks about the difference in parent styles between poor kids and rich kids. Whereas for poor kids, parents leave the kid to indulge in free play and make up games as they wish, the richer parents show a more direct involvement in the activities of the kid and make the kid aware of his or her entitlements. The result is that the kid is not afraid to ask questions of an authority, and take responsibility for his or her actions.

Finally, the author debunks the myth that Summer vacations are good or even essential. He does this by quoting a study where the California Aptitude Test CAT was administered to students at the start of the school term, at the end and then immediately after they came from Summer vacations. While there was not much difference in the scores at the start and end of the term between poor and rich kids, the rich kids clearly outscored the poor kids in tests when they returned from Summer vacations.This clearly shows that the rich kids kept learning even during summer vacations, possibly because their parents involved themselves much more in the learning process. The author points out that US Schooling has 180 days of school in a year, while Japanese schooling has 230+ days, allowing them to cover more and cover it at a leisurely pace, so that no kid is left behind - thus sustaining the kids interest in the studies. 

Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy (Fiction 1485pg)

Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy
 – Fifty Shades of Grey (514 pg)
 – Fifty Shades Darker (393 pg)
 – Fifty Shades Freed (578 pg)
      - E L James
(Score: 7/10, 6/10, 8/10 for the three books in that order. I especially loved the last section of the last book, which went back to the beginning, and presented the story from another character's perspective. That finish was a flourish!)