Fat Guy Radio

So I decided to start a new category, Life Hacks, that don’t necessarily fit into the weight loss/fitness category of most if not all the posts here at Fat Guy Radio. This first post is about a book called Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School. Geoffrey Grosenbach of the Ruby on Rails podcast recently did an interview with the author, John Medina. There was little Ruby or Rails talk in this interview. It mainly focused on the topics in the book.

The first topic he brings up is that if you were going to create a uniform for school age children to wear, it would be gym clothes. The premise being that the brain works best if the body is stimulated first. Children, actually everyone, should exercise before sitting down to learn. I shared this information with my wife and she had a personal story that solidified this theory in my mind. She said that before any standardized test that she administered to the children of her class, they were 4th graders, she would have them do 15 to 30 minutes of physical activity. She would also feed them a miniature sized Snickers and orange juice. The children in her class always did extremely well on these tests.

A second topic, that I identified with was the difference between what he called larks and owls. Larks being those that are early to bed and early to rise. The owls are those of us that would be much happier working until 3am and then sleeping in until noon. I identify with the owls, but start time at work is 7am. Ouch. I still tend to stay up until at least midnight or slightly later because I feel most productive. How much more productive would I be if I had the opportunity to work at those “owl” hours?

The speaking style of John Medina is very interesting, if not downright strange, but at the same time it is very hard to not listen to him. He’s strange, but engaging. I’m personally buying this book to get all the details of each of the 12 principles. Check out the links below to hear the two parts of the interview. Click on the image above to head to Amazon to purchase the book.

John Medina Interview Part 1
John Medina Interview Part 2

Peace,
Russ