The Unmistakable Creative Podcast

Life of Purpose: Jim Kwik | Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life

Join us for our Life of Purpose series this month as we revisit some of our most impactful episodes. Dive deep into expert insights and practical strategies on health, performance, and community, helping you achieve personal and professional fulfillment.

In this episode of Unmistakable Creative, we are joined by the renowned brain and memory expert Jim Kwik. Prepare to have your mind blown as Kwik shares powerful strategies to upgrade your brain, accelerate your learning, and unleash your full cognitive potential.

Kwik, a world-renowned memory coach and author, delves into the science of brain optimization and learning techniques. He reveals how to improve your memory, focus, and productivity, empowering you to absorb and retain information faster than ever before. Kwik's insights are not just about memorization; they encompass a holistic approach to brain health and mental performance.

Through captivating stories and practical tips, Kwik demonstrates that anyone can unlock their brain's true potential. He provides actionable steps to overcome learning obstacles and cultivate a growth mindset. This episode is a must-listen for students, professionals, and lifelong learners looking to enhance their cognitive abilities and reach new levels of success.

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Duration:: 1h 32m
Broadcast on:: 15 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

As you probably noticed this month, we're bringing you our "Life of Purpose" series and revisiting some of our most transformative episodes, tune in to explore expert insights and practical strategies on help, performance, and community well-being, all aimed at helping you achieve personal and professional fulfillment. If you sign up for the newsletter, you'll not only get recaps of the key ideas in each interview, but at the end of the series, you'll receive our free "Life of Purpose" ebook. What you have to do is go to unmistakablecreative.com/lifepurpose, again, that's unmistakable This guy's not the limit, our mind is the limit. The limitless resource that we have on planet Earth is human potential. There is no limit to our creativity, there's no limit to our imagination, there's no limit to human determination and our ability to come together. So I would love the education system to embrace more of that. So independent of if you're applying it towards a periodic table or Spanish or Mandarin or anything, it's just you have skills and you get adapt because ultimately it's human beings or adaptation machines. It's just, you know, how can you learn how to learn those subjects and those skills? I'm Srini Rao and this is the unmistakable creative podcast where you get a window into the stories and insights of the most innovative and creative minds, started movements, built driving businesses, written best-selling books and created insanely interesting art. For more, check out our 500 episode archive at unmistakablecreative.com. Jim, welcome to the unmistakable creative, thanks so much for taking the time to join us. Oh, it's so good to be back. Thank you for having me. Yeah. So we have you, as you've noted, back here for a second time and anytime we have somebody back for a second time, it's because it says a whole hell of a lot about how amazing they were the first time. So no pressure at all, but, you know, we had such a fascinating conversation last time and you have this new book out called Limitless, which is filled to the brim with so much valuable inside of information. But before we get into all of that, I want to start by asking you, what is one of the most valuable things that you learn from one or both of your parents that influenced and shaped who you've become and what you've ended up doing with your life? That's a great question. So Limitless is a book about while the subtitles upgrade your brain, learn anything faster and unlock your exceptional life. The book really is about superheroes, and I believe the journey that we're all on. I model it after Joseph Campbell's, how he popularized the power of myth and the hero's journey. And so I talk about superheroes a lot and my parents really are my superheroes. Might sound kind of cliche, but it's in my dad. He moved to the United States when he was 13 years old. He had lost both his parents at that age. They couldn't afford to feed him there, and he came to the States to deliver this great aunt with his aunt, who was my great aunt, who I saw. I thought that was a grandmother. Didn't speak the language, didn't have any money, didn't even have the education. We grew up in the back of a laundry mat that my mother worked at. So there were some struggles, for sure, where I really feel like I won the lottery was in their example. My parents, they're not certainly the wealthiest or the most academically inclined or the health and wellness most spiritual, but they're amazingly just good people. They're hard workers and they're extremely kind. And so with my dad, it was one of those things where both my parents and my mom also lost her mother at a very early age. And so family became most important in our life, and that was like a mantra growing up in terms of our values, how important, because they were shaped by their loss of family members early on. I would also say that we were all working at a very young age and doing a lot of chores. And I remember when I would mow the lawn, or mow the lawns, and I would skip over some part behind a tree where nobody else could see, but my dad would make me go back and cut that grass, not because I would tell him that nobody could see it. He was like, "No, but you could see it." And it was one of those, so kindness, discipline, hard work, values, relationships. So those were all things that really shaped who I am. I honestly believe that anything that's good, that's come out of me, came from my parents and then I own everything that doesn't measure up to par. So I mean, you're a vision descend, and I think we may be touched on this last time. First off, do you have siblings, and if so, what was the advice that your parents gave you in terms of making your way in the world as an adult like career-wise, with a typical Asian parents, of like go become a doctor or engineer? And if you had siblings, how did that advice differ? I have two siblings, they're both younger, a brother and a sister. So I'm the oldest, and I didn't grow up with traditional tiger parents playing the piano and going to extra schools and having that pressure. My parents wanted me to grow up more here culturally, and they didn't impose everything was they loved us unconditionally, and that was really an advantage for me that I felt like I could go, but I felt an incredible amount of pressure inside to not to please them, but to make them proud, meaning that I was very cognizant of how much they sacrificed for us. Both of them had multiple jobs, and while they were doing that, my grandmother raised me my great aunt, if you will, and so I wanted a lot of my pressure growing up with my learning difficulties, from my head injury, and all of that was self-imposed. They never made me feel like I had to perform, but I wanted to make their sacrifice worth it. So you mentioned feeling this profound sense of obligation to your parents for making something of the opportunity that they've given you and making their sacrifice worthwhile. And I think that that's common for most immigrants. I think I feel that to a large degree, even with the work that I'm doing here. And I'm also in sort of that first generation where our generation isn't doing better than our parents. I look at the life my parents lead now, and I'm thinking, "Oh, wow, I would love to be able to get to that just so I can be able to give back to them and the way that they've given to me." Whereas, I remember when I was younger, I used to think, "Oh, I never want the life that my parents have. I want to be way richer than they are." Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I had that pressure to make them proud because I had such on the other side of it, I've had severe learning difficulties, and so everything was magnified for me. And so I had to study harder to get less results as my peers in school, all through elementary, middle school, high school even, and those are very formative years where you're shaping your personality and your values. And so I was always working hard, and that was my purpose. In the book I talk about motivation and a formula for motivation, I really felt it, and it was always present for me wanting to make them proud. And it wasn't just a financial thing for me. It was to be an example, also, to my younger brother and sister. So one thing, I guess what I wonder is for anybody who's feeling that like in the way that I do, how do you overcome that sense of sort of obligation or the pressure? Because obviously, on the one hand, that pressure can motivate you, but it can often also be the very thing that gets in your way of the ability to do the things you want to do. So is it very topical because, as you read in the book, when I talk about Limitless, it's not just a book about accelerated learning and speed reading and learning languages and remembering people's names. It's also a book of unlimited. Unlimited is an active process of removing limits that hold us back, and one of those limits could be that other people's expectations in their opinion matter more than they do. Meaning that I feel like a lot of us are fueled, as I was, by meeting other people's expectations or opinions, and they don't learn as quite or perform, maybe because they feel like they're in a box or they put themselves in a box. Because sometimes, you know what, I spend a lot of time in senior centers working, visiting elderly, and one of the reasons why is because I feel like to be able to give, to be able to polish off memories, a part of the reason why is because of losing my grandmother and watching her go through dementia was challenging, especially when I was going, you know, label the boy with the broken brain by one of my teachers and everything at the same time. I would be with my grandmother a lot and she would call me by my brother's name or somebody else's name or repeat herself as something she just said 60 seconds earlier. And so those are the kind of things that left an impression and put me on my path early on and when I'm working, when I'm at these senior centers, I would not only talk about brain health, like I'll teach at the Cleveland Clinic Center for Brain Health and work with their doctors and the more importantly, the patients and their caregivers to give them strategies on how to mitigate and just optimize our ability to remember and focus. But I also, when I'm in those places, I learn so much because, you know, in my culture, you know, we really have built into it, so this almost reverence for older, you know, the previous generations and there's so much wisdom there and I really, I soaked that up going, you know, learning from, I believe, the life we live, our lessons we teach and everybody could teach me something, especially people who have been on this planet longer than I have. But what I also get besides that wisdom and the opportunity to give back is I hear a lot of regret and the regret, regret usually comes in the form of somehow we shrunk our lives to fit into a box where, you know, it's like we didn't date the person that we wanted to date because of how people would look at it or we pursued careers because it was expected of us not necessarily that it was our passion or our purpose and it's challenging because I feel like we have this life here and we got one life but we're not, we should be running towards our dreams like we're on fire and yet when we're taking our final breaths and it's not a fun conversation to have but we're to do this thought experiment where we're, you know, with close to our mortality, we feel it at those, at that stage of our life, none of really our other people's opinions and our fears, none of that's really going to compare or matter compared to what's going to matter is how we lived and laughed and loved and learned and I would come from that place right now working backwards and so I feel like that's one of the biggest challenges I wrote this book. It originally was a book on methodology meaning this is how you speed read and this is how you do critical thinking and this is how you focus and concentrate in turbulent times but it wasn't complete when I was supposed to turn it in to my publisher. I asked myself this question and this question was will a hundred percent of the people who read this book cover to cover will they get the results they were hoping for and my honest answer was no, they wouldn't and that was hard to come into terms with because after teaching this for over 28 years, almost three decades, there's these patterns that I realized that knowledge, you know, when I talk about lies in the book and it's an acronym like everything I teach is always a mnemonic or or something that's easy to just kind of capture and store and share but lies for me stands for a limited idea entertained. It's not necessarily true that, you know, you're not smart enough or you're too old or you can't learn this but it's these ideas that we choose to give energy to, you know, I'm not creative, right? I'm not X and so people can learn the methods of, you know, how to do these things but then if their mindset is I'm not smart enough then they're still gonna be stuck in that box and I think one of the things that keeps us in that box is that this failure, this fear of making mistakes, the fear of looking bad in front of other people and it did shrinks, you know, what we're willing to take on, you know, how we're willing to risk and I think it's Seth Godin who said that if failure is not an option then neither is success and, you know, we learned at some point in our life probably in the area of childhood that, you know, when you make a mistake whether it's you're in a reading circle and you pronounce words differently than you're supposed to, we associate that, you know, and we shrink down. Selling a little or a lot. Shopify helps you do your thing however you chit-ching. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. 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For JD power 2023 award information visit jdpower.com/awards only at a sleep number store or sleep number dot com. This is an ad by BetterHelp. How often do you compare yourself to others? It's easy to envy friends lives on social media, but comparison is the thief of joy and in reality nobody has it all together. Online therapy can help you focus on what you want, not what others have, because your best life is better than the idea of someone else's. Stop comparing and start living with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com to learn more and save 10% off your first month. That's better H E L P dot com. Well, it's funny because I just finished writing a blog post about risk titled the essential skill we should have learned in childhood that impacts everything. And I was like, how is, you know, I interviewed an economist named Elishan Schrager about this. And it really, I'd been processing this idea for almost six months. I was like, wait a minute, there is literally nothing in this life that you get without taking a risk, whether it's a first date or a good grade. Every one of those involves risk. And somehow we're actively discouraged from taking risks. Like, basically, our risk taking capacity is drilled out of us with age. Which I think makes a perfect segue to talk about, you know, something that you said in the book. You say that we convince ourselves that the circumstances we're in, the ways we've accepted, and the path we're on is who we are and who we will always be. But there is another choice. You can learn to unlimited and expand your mindset, your motivation, and your methods to create a limitless life. And you actually offered three key tips to overcoming a belief that puts us in this place. So one, you know, how do we do this? How do you overcome those? And what are your thoughts on this whole idea of risk? I just kind of want to talk this out, because I'm not going to talk about it. No, this is wonderful. I love geeking out over this, because I feel like it's the most important conversation because again, people could know what to do, but they won't do it for fear of looking bad. And we talk about how children are such wonderful learners. You know, even when they're first learning how to walk, they could fall, you know, countless times, but they didn't, you know, after the 17th time, they don't say, okay, forget about it. I'm just going to crawl the rest of my life. But sometimes as adults will take a coding class or karaoke or, you know, a salsa class or something, and then we'll get an experience. And then we won't pursue it anymore. And so these lies have to be go through a process of unlimited. And so, you know, what I focus on is I focus on seven lies in the book that are just, I feel like generally widely accepted, but they really are BS. They're just our belief systems. And those are the things that could keep us back. And, you know, you've heard these, I've heard these anecdotal stories where if you go into a group of five, five year olds and say, how many artists are in the room, they'll all raise their hand, they'll follow up maybe a decade later, how many artists are in the room, and then it's like 5% of the room. And so how do you reframe these limiting beliefs? And so I take people through the seven ones that consistently come up in my experience. And, you know, we have a lot of data just because we have students and 195 countries online for our programs. And, you know, obviously, we have our own podcasts, we get a lot of feedback. It's very, very simple formula that's pretty logical. You know, we go through a process of reframing beliefs. And it's, we, it's, we start with first naming that belief because it's hard to change something that you don't realize is there or it's unconscious. And they don't, you know, it's because it's invisible, we can't address it. And so some of the beliefs we talk about in, in the book are things like the things we've talked about that intelligence is fixed, you know, from birth. And so you take a test when you're seven and that's your potentiality when you're 77 or something like that. I believe that we use maybe 10 or 20% of our brain when we use actually all of our brain is more accurate like we use all of our body. And so I, the second key to it after you are aware of the actual and you name it, the limiting belief, the lie, limited idea you entertain is the number one is just to do your research and get the facts. You know, is it really true that you are bad at learning or bad at leading or bad at public speaking? You know, whatever evidence is there to support that. And then we go into the, you know, I do a lot of, you know, it's pretty heavily cited. I didn't want this book to be too much science because I want us to be able to reach and be very practical for everyone that's reading it. And so we introduce a lot of doubt into the system in terms of is this true? Is this really something that's accurate? We have some stories, some anecdotes, a little bit of research, to prove to the contrary where you're getting the facts. And then from there we go to the third stage, which is creating a new belief that they could adopt. So instead of something like intelligence is fixed, explaining that and then giving them another option to acquire something like intelligence is fluid or we use a hundred percent of our brain, you know, a lie would be something like knowledge is power because we've heard it so many, many times and I even found myself saying it. But in actuality, just knowing something doesn't really make a mark difference in our life unless we're utilizing it. And so the contrary would be, you know, knowledge times action equals power. And so those changing those things like mistakes are failures, you know, and not wanting to look bad when we know that everybody has gone through that process that failure is not the opposite of success. It's part of success and that mistakes doesn't mean failure. Mistakes are a sign that you're trying something new that you might think you have to be perfect, but it's not about comparing ourselves to every person that's out there and just reminding people that they are not their mistakes and making a mistake doesn't mean something about you as a person other than you're willing to try and risk, right? And it's easy to jump to the conclusion that we're inherently less than because I think a big fear that we all struggle with is being enough, you know, and that we might feel inherently worthless. Like when I was labeled that, you know, that boy with a broken brain is that something that I, it was installed through my environment, through expectations, through experience. And so it's, I don't believe it's that, you know, certainly we make mistakes, mistakes don't make us. And so a new belief is something like there is no failure. It's only failure to learn something. One thing I wonder is, you know, speaking of, you know, knowledge times action, could we take an existing belief that I have? Because I was thinking about this as you were saying this and I was, I remember this was something that came up with my mind. So I'll give you the belief just for the sake of a practical example. And I'll give you my reason for this. One of the things I say, I've realized, I say this very often to people is I say, I'm not a great marketer, but I'm actually a good creator and I'm much more committed to mastery than marketing because I suck at marketing. And I always say, yeah, that's why, you know, 10 years later, there are people whose audiences are far bigger than mine who started way after I did. And that belief, I had never occurred to me how often I say that until I came across this section in your book. And there's consequences to that having any kind of beliefs, because all behavior is belief driven. And no, I'm curious when you say those words, do you do really feel like it's true? Or do you feel like it's working? Well, I do. I do feel like it's true to some degree, partially because I have seen people who started after us. Now keep in mind, the circumstances are different to their variables in there than I actually always kind of leave out when I say that. So, for example, if a person has 100,000 people on an email list and they start their podcast today, of course, they're going to be, you know, like have a bigger audience than ours right off the bat because of the fact that they have this one component that actually is much bigger. But yeah, I mean, I think part of it is it's like, oh, there's always this feeling of like, oh, for how long I've been doing this, we should be bigger. We should have sold more books like, you know what it is. I mean, it's just kind of right. It's just like cascade of all these other shoulds that come from that one thing. It's interesting. I mean, I feel like it's, I've done the same thing. I talk about for the first time really publicly in the book, my sleep challenges. And I, for 10 years, I've overcome a good portion of them of recent, but for the prior 10 years to that, for the first five of those 10 years, I slept about 90 minutes to two hours a night and not straight, like deep sleep, very interrupted where it wasn't until five years into it that I had a very comprehensive overnight sleep study at a clinic where they, you know, they diagnosed me correctly, that I had very severe sleep apnea where I wasn't breathing. I stopped breathing about 214 times a night, and each time was for a count at least 10 seconds. So the doctors, you know, we were like, in no wonder you're not sleeping. It's like somebody coming in 200 times a night and putting a pillow over your face. And, and so, and I've later found out that my parents have it both also, and so do my brother and sister. Not as severe as mine, but that's my, my Achilles heel. That's my, my, you know, my kryptonite, if you will, because it also got amplified back in school when I would pull all these all-nighters. So at a very early age, because I was compensating for my learning deficiencies, you know, by pulling, you know, not having normal sleep, be able to, to be able to compete and be able to stack up as well as everyone else in class. And that, that took me all through high school and, you know, for early college. And then on top of it, when I launched my career, shortly after that, I was flying everywhere. So, you know, time zones and sleeping in foreign places and, you know, if you, when you're a memory expert, you wake up in a hotel and you don't remember what city you're in, you know, there's a challenge, right? And, you know, even these times over the past, you know, a decade and a half going to three continents and one week. And so it really, you know, it intensified already, you know, a challenge that I have. And so after that, then I got properly diagnosed and I got treatment, CPAP, dental device, and then I had a very painful surgery called U-triple-P, which is where they cut out your uvilla, your soft palate, your tonsils, and in the very, very, it was very painful. But it made a difference. And with all these things, my sleep jumped to about four and a half to five hours, but I was still waking up post. And they still didn't understand it. And that's when I leaned into, you know, everything else from people in our peers that you and I have had on our shows that teach our sleep experts and biohacking experts and built this, you know, sleep sanctuary and all that. But that's a lot to say in that I found myself also saying that, well, I can't write a book and do all as well as I should because I have this weakness, right? I have sleep challenges and I would use it as an explanatory schema to explain why I wasn't as successful, why I wasn't, you know, reaching 10 times as many people because of that situation, you know. And so I completely get it because I think all of us have it in some form if we're willing to kind of, you know, a big part of the book as you're aware of is self-reflection and building self-awareness because I believe it's a superpower that it's hard unless we bring things to the conscious level to make changes because you wonder why you procrastinate, you wonder why you self-sabotage, you wonder why you defend your limitations. And this is me having taught this for three decades still, you know, have my own personal struggles with it because people come to me all the time and say, Jim, I have a horrible memory, Jim, I'm too old and Jim, I'm not smart enough. And I always say, stop. If you fight for your limitations, you get to keep them, right? But I'm not but I'm not auditing myself and self-coaching myself realizing that I was using my lack of sleep and maybe I was reinforcing it because I would get a secondary gain out of it because people would give me sympathy, right? They would give me an understanding. Also, like, wow, Jim's achieved, you know, able to impact so many people and he's doing this on two hours of sleep. Isn't that amazing? And then I started getting, you know, some kind of secondary gain on that and maybe unconsciously I was reinforcing that process, so I would do it more. And then that belief kept me from sleeping, meaning that like I wanted to be consistent with it until I got to the point where we all do where there's a shift and, you know, that's part of the motivation formula that I give. It's just, there's a shift and is this giving me the results that I want? You know, while it, you know, I do get some kind of gain, as many as people go to, you know, friends and they talk about, you know, their challenges, they get, you know, they're not as apt to change it or make a positive empowering change for themselves because they are getting there, they are becoming significant because of their problem or their bonding with that person because, you know, they people feel bad for them, you know, or something like that. And so what I've learned to do is to reframe these things and be more cognizant of it because I was like, you know, you know, I started my mind saying all these excuses, people realize that if you even have these sleep issues, that, that it's not, it's not serving me, it's not serving the greater good of the impact that I want to be able to make because I'm much like you. I feel like I am a creator and I didn't get involved in entrepreneurship to start a business. It's not something I'm very passionate about, but I wanted to scale my heart, you know, and my heart of impact and that's why I do it. You know, I also could say that I'm not as motivated to, while people seem my feed with a lot of celebrities, it's, that is more of my, you know, my team being fully transparent on our mission to be able to, to positively impact, you know, billions of brains because I had the broken one, our mission is to leave no brain left behind. You know, our community is very finite, meaning the personal development or whatever you call that, maybe it's a handful of millions of people, but I wanted to reach other people that would go into a bookstore and purchase, you know, one of our books or, you know, because they just, it's not what they do, but if they see a celebrity saying, "Oh, I listened to this podcast," or, "I, you know, I subscribed to this," then it would reach people that, that I really wanted to reach. And it's, it's a long way of saying that I got sick and tired of actually using that excuse and realizing the consequences of what it was costing me by saying that. And I reframed it and I found gifts. I said, "Okay, I can't change what happened in the past, but I could find a gift that came from it. What are the gifts?" Just like with my learning challenges, it was I became a really great learner. What was my gift that came from me being having challenges? You know, we've talked about this in your previous episode that, you know, my, my superpower is being coming invisible. I didn't want to be seen because when you feel like you're not enough and you don't have a lot to offer and you have a broken brain, you don't want to give a book report in front of a class. You don't want to be called on. You know, I always sat behind a big kid in class because I, you know, want to be invisible and I want to shrink down. But at a certain time, I just got, became sick and tired of being that person because it wasn't, it didn't feel like who I was authentically was because even though I said I didn't want to be called on or I didn't want to be seen or I didn't want to be heard, I think we all do, right? And so I found the gift in it and those two struggles, public speaking and learning, the universe has a sense humor because that's all I do for a living because I public speak on this thing called learning. But when I asked this question where, where was the gift in my lack of sleep? It was, it forced me to lean into what I teach so I could be productive and I could perform, you know, at a high level despite having a finite amount of energy. And then what was the other gift? The other gift is, you know, it, it forced me to be very, very clear of my commitments, you know, so everything became when you have a finite amount of time or energy or temperament, you don't over commit to things, you only do the things. Even now, and that's still, even now I'm sleeping much better. And I talk about what I do in the book specifically because I think energy is an important part of motivation. I still am trained to, to, to do everything that I teach because I'm number one, want myself to benefit from it because I've went through years of suffering and struggling, but then also it's, I still maintain that same filtering system. Like right now there's no one I'd rather be talking to, no one, no one rather, I'd be like right now at this time because all my decisions are based on just being fully, you know, aligned with my purpose. And so those are two gifts. And then I get from there, I can honor that and then just, and I can move on, you know, just do something to better, you know. And so, so reframing for, you know, what I've done with being a creator because I never, I never thought myself as much of a marketer is just, if you see yourself as a creator, maybe a reframe, like what we were talking about, the three-step process is that you, you see yourself as a maker, you see yourself as a creator. And I see that as also at a powerful ability to enhance your, your marketing because you can create amazing marketing, you know, amazing heart. And then, you know, also reconciling, you know, part of this cocooning that everyone's going through right now, I use that very specifically because I feel like we're going through a metamorphosis. There's a change of cycle. And while the beauty is in the butterfly, the growth happens in the cocoon. And part of that, what we could do while we're cocooning is when you're going 90 miles an hour or 100 miles, you're just going really rapidly fast. Rarely do we have that moment to check in with ourselves to say like, are we going in the right direction? Are we, we're climbing the ladder of success? Is it leaning on the right wall? And so using this time to clarify what's most important to me in my life and my career and my relationships and my impact, and then asking a secondary question like, are my actions, you know, are my daily actions getting me closer or fulfilling those values? And if they're not, it probably explains why we could take a step toward something and not follow through or take, you know, a step back and constantly be out of alignment. And so I feel like what you have described, what I have described, I think everyone has that area of their life where they feel like they're in a box, where they, you know, they're on, maybe they're on purpose, but they're, you know, for some reason. And then I think comparison also is, what do they say? Comparison is the thief of joy. It's, it's ingrained in us because of social media as we're scrolling through. We always, I'm consciously have this, you know, potentially this digital depression, if we're meaning that sometimes, you know, we know this cognitively and intellectually, we know we're, we're looking at the highlight trailer of everyone else's lives that's really filtered and the grass is maybe not greener there, but it's the grass is greener where you water it, but sometimes online, there's a lot of artificial turf, there's a lot of filtering that makes it look green, you know, but, but I think true happiness comes coming back to feedback that if we fuel our lives with the expectations or opinions or comparison, and we're even good in that, I mean, even positive praise also, that we're going to eventually run out of gas if it's coming from externally. Selling a little? Or a lot? Shopify helps you do your thing, however you chit-ching. 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And we've got a special offer just for unmistakable creative listeners. If you use the code unmistakable at the link incogni.com/unmistakable, you'll get an exclusive 60% off an annual incogni plan. That's a huge saving and a small price to pay for peace of mind. So don't wait, take control of your personal data within cogni today. Let's reclaim our peace and put an end to those spam text messages and other data privacy issues once and for all. Wow, it's kind of funny to even hear you talk about this. I'm like, wait a minute, I'm saying that I'm bad at marketing and I literally wrote a book about standing out in the world like the thing I got a book deal for. So it's ironic that I even believe that. Let's shift gears a little bit. Let's actually get into tactical components of this because I think that you provided methods. And I think it is kind of funny. Like the sheer volume of acronyms, I was like, wow, your brain definitely works in a way that I realize you found all these different ways of dealing with whatever issues you have that are fascinating and incredibly effective. I don't want to go into focus because we've just done so much around that with people like Hell Newport and all the other people that have been here. But before we get into sort of studying memorization and reading, I do want to briefly touch on something that you said about the education system. And you and I talked briefly about this last time. You were here, but you say that education hasn't changed enough to prepare us for the world that we live in today in the era of autonomously driven electric cars and vehicles capable of taking us to Mars, our education just in the equivalent of a horse and carriage. And you yourself said last time you were here that if Rip Van Winkle woke up, the only thing he would recognize after a hundred just asleep is our education system. I mean, clearly, this has been going on for long enough. We're in a student loan debt crisis like we've never seen before. Sadly, in most cases, even a Berkeley computer science degree, which is one of the most elite universities in the world, is outdated by the time you graduate. What if any has been the response from the education system to your work? Like, have they said, we need this? Why aren't you the secretary of education instead of Betsy DeVos? So one of the kindest lurbs that we got for the book was from Sir Ken Robinson, who I really admire. Many of you are familiar with him. He's got the number one TED talk of all time, and he was knighted for the work he did in education and creativity. And so I feel a huge sense of responsibility because of what I went through in the education system, meaning that I struggled. I feel like primarily because school taught us what to learn, what to focus on, what to read, what to think, what to study, what to remember, but not how to do those things. So those are the chapters of the methodology part of the book is how to focus, how to learn, how to study, how to read better, how to remember things, and how to critically think. I feel like it has been embraced at a ground level, and that's been my approach. You know, while I have spoken at various universities from from Caltech to Harvard, and we have an enormous and huge following base or student base who are educators. I have a huge amount of respect for teachers. My mother became a school teacher for decades. When I was going through these challenges, she recently retired, but she she did it because she didn't know how to help me. And so she made that a focus and wanting to help other other children along the way. It's just a system issue because that a systemic issue, just like a lot of, whether it's healthcare or other areas, it just hasn't changed as much as everything else has. And so if I could teach anything in school, I mean, when you think about the gaps, it's not just, I think, learning how to learn should be a paramount in school, learning how to think. I mean, there's this area I talk about in the book about digital, even before what's going on in the world right now, these three supervillains and these four supervillains. I would even say there's now five, but digital deluge, too much information, exactly what you're saying. Half-life information is getting shorter and shorter, and people who are graduating, they still have to constantly learn. I think it's the greatest advantage is learning how to learn, because changes can be the constant. So that's why in the book, we talk about speed reading and study, digital distraction, which we talked about in your previous episode about the power of focus, because in a world full of rings and pings and dings and social media alerts and app notifications how to maintain your concentration. And then third one, besides digital deluge and digital distraction, is digital dementia, where we're using our smart devices as external memory storage devices, and we don't have to remember things, and granted, I don't want to memorize 300 phone numbers, but it should be concerning and we've lost the ability to remember one, where a conversation we just had, or something we just read, or a name, something simple. And then the last one that's topical for this one is digital deduction. And it's a term that I just coined, because I wanted to come up with something that was a D, and because it's just like deluge and distraction and dementia, digital deduction are just defining as they're doing these studies with kids, and they don't have the analytical ability of previous generations, because when they're growing up on technology and technology is not only teaching them whatever it's teaching them, it's also teaching them what to think. And so we don't have to, in a world where we're already overwhelmed, we want shortcuts, and I'm not just talking about fake news, I'm just saying that everything is saying is recommended to us automatically, and I'm not saying it's bad thing, I'm not saying any of these things are bad, I don't want to memorize again, it could be, or I don't want to be able to, it's great that we have access to unfettered access to all the information, but the other side of it is there's overwhelm, it's wonderful that we have all these opportunities and apps, but the other side of it is distraction, and so technology is not good or bad, it's like fire, fire could cook your food, or it could burn down your home, it's just how we choose to use it, and all I ask people is that I'm not anti-technology, I'm just saying use it consciously, because when we're picking up technology out of boredom, or just out of pure habit, and the technology is a tool for us to use, but when technology is using us, then who becomes this tool, and digital deduction is just, we're not having to use our analytical ability, or critical thinking, we don't have to do those things, and so I feel like these are all muscles, and it's use it or lose it, and so I feel like teaching people how to learn, how to think in school is, and then also social intelligence, emotional intelligence, you know, creativity, we even began before everything that's going on right now in the economy in the world, is jobs are going to automation, they're going to artificial intelligence, and what's not going to be as easily outsourced to a machine is creativity, you know, I mean, when I talk about being limitless, I think the limitless resource that we have on planet earth is human potential, you know, that the sky's not the limit, it's our mind is the limit, there's no limit to our creativity, there's no limit to our imagination, there's no limit to human determination and our ability to come together, so I would love the education system to embrace more of that, so independent of if you're applying it towards a periodic table or Spanish or Mandarin or anything, it's just you have skills and you get adapt, because ultimately it's human beings are adaptation machines, it's just, you know, how can you learn how to learn those subjects and those skills? Well, it's funny you mentioned sort of, you know, things are being recommended to us, I think this is one of the things that I've found really somewhat frustrating about the whole COVID experience, because this is a one thing I started to realize was how often with the fundamental difference between walking into a bookstore and just looking around and going to Amazon, and honestly, you know, I have discovered so many people that I would have never spoken to here, like I got to interview Andrew Yang, a presidential candidate, I don't know about him because he was in the bookstore, like I stumbled upon his book and there's, you know, sort of, I, you know, I think that bookstores are made for browsing, Amazon is made for searching, and searching basically is already kind of predetermined in terms of what you're going to get as results because of algorithms, but before we let's actually get into some of the tactical components of this, can I comment on that? Yeah, please go ahead. It's really pervasive, because again, a lot of this book is about taking the invisible and making it visible, because when you make it mine, you're conscious of it, then you could potentially change it for what is not right or wrong, it's just what serves you. And so you think about algorithms on social media, Facebook or Instagram, you're scrolling through, if we engage with every cat post, we like it, we comment or we share it, that algorithm is going to show us a lot more cats, right? And again, it can be great, because if we love cats, that's a wonderful thing. The challenge is though, is like our money has that same algorithm. So for those people who are choosing to indulge in the news, and I'm not saying, again, this is all choice, there's a quote in the book from a French philosopher that I put in there, that's very paramount, saying life is the C between B and D, life is C between B and D, B is birth, D is death, C is choice. And that's life, here's the choices, but when we choose to indulge, maybe some people could feel like maybe it's a little bit too much, and the reason why it could be a challenge, and I'm not saying again, know what's going on so you can make good decisions, but if we overindulge, and who's to say, you know, what that points individual for each person, but as we engage in negative news, because if it bleeds, it leads, you're going to tune in, but if you're really, then that same algorithm that you're engaging with, just like you're engaging with cats on Instagram, you're engaging that, your mind will just show you more of that, let's just call it darkness, but what happens is you don't have your conscious mind that has a finite amount of focus, and then that means you can focus on possibility, opportunity, the things you could be grateful for, you know, also as well, because it'll just keep on feeding you that same information. And so, you know, when we want to be more creative, if we're just being recommended, just the algorithm on Amazon, all the same books, then we're just reinforcing a lot of stuff from the same perspective, and we never, you know, like you said, browse a bookstore, and, you know, where are you leaving room for spontaneity, or for serendipity, or for new information, or to be able to look at counter, you know, viewpoints, you know, to be able to challenge yourself, and people don't do it, though, because they lack the mental fortitude or energy, because we're just exhausted, because so many people feel like they're burnt out, and because of their sleep, or maybe their diet, or just, you know, financial situation, I mean, at all, there's not just one thing, you know, the opening of the book is "Our Forward" is written by Dr. Mark Hyman, and he says, "In it, there's no genius pill, but Jim gives you the process for unlocking your best brain and brightest future, and what I'm talking about here is that people just want the pill, and they want that limitless pill, just like the movie that probably Cooper took in, and he had this idetic memory, and they're languages, and have this focus, and write his book, and really fast, and have a surge of motivation, but then there's no pill, right, but there is a process." Yeah. Well, speaking of which, let's talk specifically of the process. I think that we did a pretty good job talking about reading last time. I think the thing that I do want to actually go into this time, and this, of course, is for very selfish reasons, is studying in particular, because I think that you pointed out that often we actually were never taught how to study, and I realized that I wasn't, because I think I got through high school, and I got really good grades in high school, good enough to get into Berkeley through brute force, but I got shit grades in college, and now looking back, I realize it was because nobody taught me how to study. I had a friend who literally would never go to class, and he got straight A's, and I realized now why it was, and it was because he knew how to study, and the way I want to do this is with a practical example, kind of looking through the studying framework. I just enrolled in a room, he set these call to action course because I wanted to become a better copywriter, and it's funny because I literally did exactly some of what you said this morning in terms of active recall because I just finished reading your book. Can you go into the five or six habits for studying that we could use regardless of whether we're in college or not? Because we're studying stuff all the time. Even this interview is an example of studying if somebody is listening to it. No, I love that, and study is not regulated to just students. We have five chapters in the methodology section, and study becomes, is the second chapter after focus and concentration, which you've covered a lot on your podcast. Study is not just, our education doesn't stop when school stops, and so let's just take that. In one of the chapters, in chapter four, my goal in writing this book, I remember coming back, was for people to get results, and that is my primary drive because I feel like people buying a book, that skill set is different than somebody reading a book and studying in that book, meaning some people, which I would say the majority of people, are very good at going online or going into a store and purchasing books. Some people would benefit from bookstores having shopping carts because they buy so many books, and I get it. But then they'd sit on people's shelf and become shelf help, not self help, because people aren't actively reading it and studying it. I think the primary reason is because they're not good at it. Just think about, I don't play a lot of golf because I'm not that good at it. I would love to do it because I can invite their benefits because my dad plays, my brother plays, and I would love to do that with them. And when I'm traveling, I never get to get good at it because I never get to practice. Maybe that's my self talk, but that hasn't been a priority. But it is going to be a priority for me in the next couple of years when we could go out there and do that. But I don't do it, but if I could play like Tiger Woods, I would be playing all the time. Because when you're confident something, you have confidence and you enjoy it. Well, going back to study, a lot of people were never taught to study. It's like the equivalent of a parent looking at a child and say, focus, or memorize, or study. That's the equivalent for me looking at a child and saying, play the piano. When the child has never taken a class on how to play the piano, and so we're never really taught how to study, or how to memorize, or how to speed read, or how to focus. And so these are the processes. And so my goal with this book is to make it the most read book that people own, meaning that when people go buy the book, at our site, limblessbook.com, we give them a 10-day program on how to read the book. It's like an audio and video course on how to read and remember, because I want people to finish it. And we do a book club afterwards for everyone for free, because I want people to read it and study it. In fact, there's a chapter of the book, chapter four, literally says how to read and remember this. I don't know if you watch Lord of the Rings, but I modeled the book after Joseph Campbell's, how he popularized the power of myths and the hero's journey. And so you notice when you open it up, that color stages of call to adventure and initiation, and taking people through meeting a mentor, and crossing this threshold, and going into this ordeal, and the reward, and resurrection, and returning with the treasure to Lixara. I take people, I modeled it so that they could be the hero, and I could be Mr. Miyagi or Yoda kind of thing. But I say that because in the book, teaching people how to study Lord of the Rings, which is just like Star Wars or Harry Potter, Wizard of Oz, there's a template for the hero's journey. And Lord of the Rings, they have this phrase saying, this is the one ring to rule them all. I don't know if you remember that, the one ring to rule them all. And I went limitless to be the one book to learn them all, the one book to learn them all, and because I teach people how to read it and how to study. So let's jump into this. Besides the things that I talk about in this, in the how to read this book, and I talk about acronyms like Faster, and how to review it, some basic ideas that are just common sense, but not always common practice, are these things like employing review and active recall. So just like as you were saying, when you're going through a remeats program, which which I also recommend, I've known reme for a long time ahead of my podcast as well. When we know that there's a learning curve, but we also know there's a forgetting curve that within 48 hours, you could forget upwards of 80% of the information that you you learn, and that's not very rewarding to study something for so long and then forget it two days later. And so we know that by employing things like active recall, meaning talking about the material to other individuals, because it's not just, we don't know if it's in there, by actively recalling it and putting out a paper or speaking about it, we know it better. Because how do we know if we've encoded it and stored it, if we can't retrieve it. And so the process of retrieving it, and one of ways we could do that is by learning with the intent of teaching somebody else. Like what if you went through that program or that book with the intention of teaching your team or your spouse? It's funny you say that. I have notion notes specifically doing that for my community manager, Molina, where I'm like, hey, Molina, check this out. And I literally adjusted a blog post that I have worked on for tomorrow based on the first thing I learned in that program. And that's amazing. And then that helps you to be able to learn it better because you personalize it, you take better notes, your focus is much more sharper, certainly, because you know that there's going to be some kind of consequence where you have to be able to perform, so you have to prepare. So active recall is important. This habit also that is closely related is this area of space repetition. You know, I talk about in the book how cramming really has a lot of downsides. And because we've a lot of us, I don't know if you were one of those people, but I know most people I talked to who didn't study consistently what they did was the night before, the day before, they would just go at it for seven, eight hours straight. And one of the challenges is your brain really likes it to space out information. And that's an area called space repetition. Or you know, it's kind of like an interval training for your brain, simple but highly effective way of deliberately kind of tapping into how your brain works. So if you separate it, you first learn something. And then all of a sudden, the next day there's a dip, if you review it the second day, you know, you get to keep more of it. And then it gradually slips and gets to, you know, and then you review and again helps to keep it up to a high level until you get to the point where a threshold where you get this aha phase where it's just you don't lose it, you actually build on it. Because you're building it on a strong foundation. And so you actually start retaining more of it because you've consolidated short to long-term memory and other things. Other things that's very important for learning better is this habit of just being in that curious state. A lot of people I notice they will approach their studies. They'll put on that online program or that podcast, but they're not really managing their state. And I, you know, big part of the book is state management, meaning that all learning is state dependent, that if you learn something in a board lethargic state, that's the state that it gets encoded in, meaning that information by itself is very forgettable, but information when it's combined with some level of emotion makes it more unforgettable, if you will. And remembering that we control our state, because again, Limitless is about getting your agency back, you know, getting realizing that we are, we have more control than we often think and give ourselves credit for. And how do you change your state, you change it through at the very least, you could change it with your mind and your body, meaning that your psychology and your physiology, that your questions, if you're a field board, you can ask yourself more empowering questions instead of like, why do I have to do this, you know, or saying something to that effect, it can be, you know, how can I, how can I learn this and enjoy the process, you know, how can I make this more enjoyable, how can I make this more fun and playful, how can I learn it so I could teach it to somebody in a way that, that, you know, get them in a curious mode, even when we're learning from a professor, let's say that person, his, that you're on doing the online program with his really boring, you can even get more curious and saying, how is this guy boring everybody at the same time, you know, like if I wanted to, if I wanted to correct or write a book on not how to bore people out, I do about doing it, but it gets you more engaged. So manage your state, which also includes your body. A lot of people, they get tired when they read, again, they associate, they use reading as a sedative to fall asleep, because part of it is their attitude, part of it is their conditioning, and part of it is their posture, you know, that they're slumped over, and they're not getting oxygen to their brain, and they're, it's so all learning a state dependent. Another hack that I teach in the book, and I'm just doing this more from memory, so it's what I was writing it, is using your senses, meaning that we know that the strongest sense out of the five senses is when it comes to your memory as our sense of smells, the olfactory, and probably because as it was a survival, you know, you need to know when food is rotten or potential poison or something like that. I think everyone could remember a fragrance or a food that could, you could smell and it could take you back to when you're a child, because it triggers you, and then so there's been some, some research to suggest certain smells actually help to promote concentration, rosemary, supporting memory, peppermint, or be able to support focus and concentration, but even if you don't, you know, you can, people could look into some of the research that we cite in the book, even just having unique smell as your reading gets coded to the information, because the environment is part of the learning process, and you could maybe, we know that when you study something in the environment, you need to perform, so for example, if you're taking a test, because studying that room, you know, you'll do better because unconsciously you're going to anchor a lot of the environmental triggers to the information that'll help you actively retrieve it, same thing if you need to do a Broadway play by rehearsing, you know, or doing a TED Talk in that location will help you, and for most part that's difficult to do, but if you could bring the environment with you in the form of smell and you're studying something and you have a unique lip balm or gum or essential oil, and then when you need to perform, you use that same one, it'll help you to trigger it. When I say using your senses, not just your sense of smell, you could use your sense of your auditory, your sense of hearing, meaning that there is certain music that we talk about in the book that helps to, it could be particularly valuable to learning and putting people into an alpha state, which is that relaxed state of awareness where we're a lot more suggestible, where our critical mind's not in there chattering away saying, you know, am I doing this right, is this true? And so we talk about music that puts you in that relaxed meditative state, specifically music that has about 60 beats per minute, like classical music, like from the from the Baroque era, like Vivaldi, Bach, Handal, having that in the background to learn languages has been shown to be very effective. And then things like just taking notes better, most people aren't taught how to take notes very effectively, and so we did a section in the book of a study on different methods of whole brain note taking, and you know, I'm a fan of mind mapping created by Tony Busan, which is more the challenge with, they found that the one of the worst ways of taking notes is having everything forbade them, like a full transcription, and that's not as useful as having, and I'm a big proponent and advocate for handwriting notes, and now I realize again, I love technology because technology could help you when it's digitized, it could help you store it, it can help you share it, it's certainly easier, but I've noticed, when I was reading some studies writing this book, that by handwriting, like you could type, you know, as fast as people could, you know, pretty much speak, but you can't write that as fast, and it forces you to filter, and be more active in your learning, and say, is this important, or how is this relate, and so you're going to take notes better that way, but also having 30 pages of outline doesn't necessarily serve you, because something on page 17 can be more important than something that's on page 1, and so you don't see how things are connected, so mind mapping, where you take the main idea, and you put it right in the middle and you use color, and it kind of comes out like spokes of a wheel, or branches of a tree trunk, you can see hundreds of books and interviews mind mapped, it's kind of, this is why, you know, I've always said verbatim transcripts of a pod test are utterly useless, like I've never been willing to provide them, mainly because I'm like, look, I'm like, fine, if you want them, you know, we can get them, we put them behind a paywall, and at the same time, I'm like, by themselves, they're, the raw transcripts by themselves are not useful, even in going through them myself, I found that, wow, okay, if I go through and I highlight and I bold certain things and do what Tiago Forte calls progressive summarization, they become a thousand times more valuable, but by themselves, they're worthless. Very, very, very much so, and that's what research has found, that one of the best ways of taking notes is through key words and key ideas and seeing how things relate to each other, and so we, you know, we teach various web more methods of taking notes, and mind mapping is one of them in a very simple way for people, if that's too creative, quote, unquote, for some people, using symbols and colors and, and that kind of expression, then something that's more linear that I would think is much better than what top people traditionally take notes is just something I call capture create, where you take a piece of paper and put a line right down the middle, and on the left side, you capture information, and on the right side, you create, meaning that on the left side, you take notes, and on the right side, you make notes, so you're taking notes or capturing, you know, the how to remember names, and how to speed read, and how to, you know, how to study, those are the things you're capturing, but on the right side, if your mind's going to go somewhere else, instead of it being distracted, and your imagination going somewhere else, put it on the right side, and write your impressions of the things you're capturing, you know, things like how am I going to use this, how does it relate to what I know, why must I use this, how am I going to teach this to somebody else, you know, and then, then you have more of a whole way of taking notes, and I really do believe that we don't learn solely just by capturing or consuming information, the human brain doesn't primarily learn through consumption just being lectured to, the human brain learns a whole lot better through creation and creativity, which is why I love your show. Wow, it's kind of funny, so I don't want to spend a lot of time on reading, not only because we talked about it last time, but there is something I do want to ask you because of the fact that yours is one of the rare moments, and only because I knew we were doing the interview, and I wanted to make sure that I actually read the book beforehand, where I had to, I was forced to read the Kindle book, which I personally can't stand Kindle books, like I absolutely hate digital books, because I find them hard to read, like I didn't publish this with emails, like, hey, here's a PDF, and I was like, no, I need you to send me a physical copy, and of course, with the coronavirus situation, I've been forced to adapt, I noticed that I can read faster, but I actually don't prefer it, because I know that I definitely don't retain, I don't think it's a coincidence that literally Ryan Holiday, Stephen King, every author that you talk to who has written its extraordinary books swears by physical books, and what is your research showing about that in particular? On the same way, so for personal preference for me, I like print books, just like I like hand note-taking. One of the reasons why it's similar, and I love just like audio, I love podcasts, and I love audiobooks, but reading a book is different than listening to a book. Well, it's funny, because I hate audiobooks, despite being an interesting, yeah, and so I don't want it, and it's interesting. I love, I think people have preferences on how they consume, like, to consume information, the studies on audiobooks, and compared to physical print books. People get more out of physical print books than audiobooks, and one of the reasons why is because I would imagine, as the research suggests, is because if you're listening to it, you're probably doing something else, meaning you're probably listening to the podcast or audiobook while you're driving or working out or cleaning the house, and so part of it has distraction. I also think listening to stuff, and I'll get your question in a moment, it's also when you're listening is a little more passive, but when reading you're much more active, and it's engaging in a different part of your brain. Going back to, for me, I see, because we have a lot of students, that the ones that really succeed, and again, for we've been doing this for a long time, and we have speed reading students in every country in the world, that people tour the better readers tend to read print books. Now, I'm the first to agree, though, when I'm traveling, and I'm a very active reader, but when I'm traveling for two weeks, it's not very practical for me to carry 12 books with me, and on planes and everything, so when forced to, again, technology is very convenient. For me, it's something that's physical that I could hold, and I know you can hold the screen. It's the active. I have a very active note-taking, and so I use a lot of symbols that I can't that don't easily translate to screens of me, even though you can, with your visual device, highlight things, and do other things. For me, it helps me to be able to physically, I think, we're physical creatures, and that their senses site and our senses touch are very intimately linked in our nervous system, and also, and another preference for me is I don't like looking at screens more than I need to. I feel like we are bombing a screen all the time, and it's just that there are effects that we maybe might not be aware of, just looking at an electrical device just constantly, and so I like to get my eyes or a rest, but there's something visceral about, as you've mentioned, whether it's Ryan or Steven or yourself, of turning through pages and having that kinesthetic connection to it as opposed to something that's digital. I absolutely will be ordering the physical copy of your book after this conversation. Like I said, I got the Kindle version specifically so I could get through it for our interview, but I want to make sure I have a physical copy so I can read it again, because I just know the retention is different. Speaking of retention, let's talk about memory briefly. It's kind of hilarious because my roommate and I joke that he often says he's like, "You remember more about my life than I do." He's like, "You corrected my stories of my memories." And I was like, "Yeah, but you tell them to me." And so I think we're in this very interesting place with memory where you have people like Tiago Forte who talk about building a second brain, which I find invaluable in terms of my ability to process information. You and I were talking about this earlier. I think some of the work he's done around personal knowledge management has been really a godsend for me and a lot of people, and yet the idea of a second brain is, again, I don't think what he's saying is that we want to outsource human memory, but I think he's making a point of, "Okay, there are certain things. We shouldn't have to keep in our memory. We should just have accessible." But to your point, there is profound value to memorization. I realized I'm an encyclopedia of all sorts of weird shit from 700 interviews, from everybody from criminal justice experts to bank robbers to drug dealers to people like yourself. It's a very bizarre skill set to have. I really wish I could figure out how to take everything I've learned from all these people, and if I did, I would be literally superhuman. I've gotten to talk to Elon Musk's ex-wife, but I'm not building Tesla. Let's talk about his memory, and I guess the question then becomes, "How would I take all this information that I've gathered from 1,000 books and all these people I've interviewed and channel it into my own life?" That's a great question. This is something that I teach at places like Google, where their mission is to organize all the information, and I got people that have asked me even in those trainings like, "Jim, why do I have to remember information that we have a search engine for?" I completely get that idea. For me, there's a couple reasons why, first of all, and then how I don't get to the how, but why we want to do it, is because if we lost half of our memory, we know we wouldn't be as effective as if we lost half of the words or understandings or expertise or more people's name, whatever, we wouldn't be able to perform as well, because ultimately going back to life is the C between B and D, comes on the choice and decisions, that we can only make good decisions, and based on the information we currently have inside of us. If we lost half of that information, we would be able to have a handicap for sure, but if we were able to retain more of it, the important information, then we could be able to perform and make better decisions. The other reason why is because your memory is like a muscle, I refer to it more like a muscle than anything else, that you want to be memory fit, brain fit, and that if I put my arm in a sling for six months, it wouldn't grow stronger, it wouldn't even stay the same. It would atrophy, and that's what digital dementia is. This new term in healthcare where we're so dependent on our smartphones has external memory. So that being said, I just like how I don't want to take a lift to go five blocks when I could walk at her, take an elevator when I can do the stairs, there's a physical toll, same thing as a mental toll. So I like to challenge myself and be having the strongest memory because that's the thing I want to do. So when I'm older, that I still have that resilience, that mental fitness, and it's engaged, and it has to have the ability to remember things I want to remember overall. Now how to be able to take the thousands and hundreds of books and hundreds of conversations you've had with individuals, I like having external devices and journals because I feel like writing it down and consolidating it. For me, I have notes on all these things, and I have very specific questions that I'm looking to ask and answer. And so when I'm going through a podcast, there are these white spaces and information I just don't know, and I don't have clarity on, and I haven't decided on, you know, what's most useful and practical for me. So I'm going in with the intention of answering those questions all the time and looking for those answers. So they are very conscious and very mindful of those because a lot of people will read things and forget what they just read because they don't have an intention or they don't know what their outcome is. Now my outcome always is to ask these three primary questions, how can I use this? Why must I use this? And when will I use this? And that drives a lot of my learning from taking knowledge and turning into real, real power. One of the things that I -- another question I ask is how can I teach us to other people because the primary reason to learn anything is for me, number one, has how I could benefit. And then when I start seeing results, I can't help but teach other people. And that's how I started this journey over 28 years ago. You know, I went from below normal to normal to above normal, and I started to tutor and one of my first students, she read 30 books in 30 days, All in Health and Wellness saved her mom's life from this terminal cancer diagnosis she was given by doctors. And that's when I realized the power of learning, that knowledge is power, learning is our superpower. But to be very specific, how I feel like I can learn it best and how I was able to accelerate my learning was by teaching it. Now primarily it was through, you know, classes. So I have to learn all this information, consolidate it, integrate it, get rid of the things that just wasn't giving me the return. Because I'm not, I'm not emotionally attached to any specific methodology or ideology. Like some people like really focus just like in anything in marketing, they focus on this one, you know, discipline, and that's their way or in health, they focus on this one thing. And for me, it's kind of like in the book, you notice that one of them I highlighted Bruce Lee for a couple pages. And he really integrated, he didn't just focus on an old style Wing Chun, right? And he sold the limitations there. And he wanted to, it wasn't married to any dogma. And he would pull from, you know, Western boxing, you know, from fencing and learn and integrate and get rid of the things that didn't work. And that's what I did for this book, you know, the idea of consuming thousands, you know, three decades of information, thousands of books, you know, the financial investment alone, people don't have to go there. I put what works and feel tested over 25 years into a book. And so I think that best way I would say is to write it down and record it as I have for years, you know, from the very beginning in journals. And it's nice to see, you know, your thought process. And but, you know, I integrate all these thoughts together. So if I needed to put something together, whether it's memory, focus, pulling from so many interviews and so much personal experience, and then recording it and then teaching it. And it was an interesting process. I don't know how you were with the book, but taking all this research and putting it into 300 pages, you know, when it and then expanding it from just when I've had to do that myself to motive. Right. And then adding just on methodology, but mindset and motivation to two other areas, I feel keep you from, you know, I still in that box about like, I can to consolidate three books into into one and everything I put in there, I needed to be high return because my goal is for people to get the results. But for me, I take ample notes. Now I'm not just take notes, but I make notes. And so that's my creative process. And then I look and then I teach it as soon as I can, because I feel like my goal is not just inspiration or just ideation or even implementation. My goal is is integration. You know, when all mindset motivation and methods crossover that sweet spot are inspiration, ideation and integration come together is that area of integration and integration, like integer or into girl means you're a whole. And I wanted to come from that place where everything is aligned. I'm not fighting with myself. And I thought the best way of doing it is expressing it through the written word and through my my speech. And that way, I would have to really organize it in a way that's that's clear and impactful. Well, well, I feel like I could talk to you for this because I mean, like I said, having read the book, we could have done like literally one episode for chapter. I mean, I hands down one of the most tactical books I've come across in a long time, which is why I was very, you know, was I was literally hounding you for those who don't know, I must have sent Jim two or three emails to be like, yo, can you come back to the podcast? So I really, really appreciate you coming back. So I want to finish with my final question, which I know I've asked you before. What do you think it is that makes somebody or something unmistakable? So I always love the title of your show. For me, unmistakable really is, you know, as it is defined, I would imagine, I haven't looked this up, but is, you know, not able to be mistaken for something else. And for me, I feel like what makes us distinctive and what makes us our uniqueness is our as our story and who we are. I believe that to truly be unmistakable is to have the curiosity to know yourself, meaning that we are all individuals and this process of knowing ourself, knowing like who we are, what we stand for, known as knowing the values that are important to us, the beliefs that support those values, you know, our talents, our skills, having the curiosity to know yourself. And then the second part of being unmistakable is once you know yourself, you know, the curiosity to know yourself is having the courage to be yourself, because some people do a lot of the self reflection and they meditate or they do talk therapy or they go through, you know, these processes and they get this very more clear idea of who they are, but then they don't act in accordance with who they are. And it takes courage to really be who you are, you know, going full circle to how we started the conversation, especially in the world where, you know, sometimes we dim ourselves to be able to fit into a box of other people's expectations and other people's opinion. So for me, unmistakable means like that is your superpower, is your uniqueness. So discover it and develop it and be it. So really know yourself, trust yourself, love yourself, and then be yourself. Amazing. Well, where can people find out more about you, your work, the book and everything else that you're up to? So a limitless book is the place that that everyone's going to, because there's a big gift there. When people were doing something special, I mentioned that we wanted everyone to read this book who make it the most red book on their shelf. And to that end, when people go to LimitlessBook.com, there's a 10 day audio video companion course that I gift you. And so when you're waiting for your book to arrive, which it's available now, you could actually go through it and learn about the three M's, the framework for becoming Limitless and how to unleash your mindset, your Limitless motivation, and some of the methods, including focus, study, memory, and speed reading. So when the book shows up, you're more at to finish that book. That's my goal is for you to finish and apply the book. And we're also going to do a four week book club. And everybody has their book. I'm going to do their four sections to the Euro's Journey, main sections. And I'm going to spend one week per section and show everybody how to read it. We're all going to share how we're applying it. I'm going to teach you how to remember the important parts. And then there's two bonus chapters, also a Limitless model for applying towards businesses. So for you entrepreneurs out there with you have three people or 300 people, how to create Limitless organizations and learning organizations. And then the second bonus chapter is Limitless for kids. So for parents who are listening to this or for educators, we're going to take the Limitless model. And there's a bonus chapter on how to apply it for your children in terms of their mindset, how to motivate them, and also the methods that they could have and maybe should have learned back in school. But that's all at LimitlessBook.com. And I would actually challenge everybody. Part of the big book is it's filled with these quick starts exercises. So you can't go more than the page or two pages without having a quick start exercise that takes less than 60 seconds. And it's all about the science of small simple steps that I believe that a lot of people make things bigger in their mind. And that's why they don't take action consistently. And so you need to ask yourself what is the tiniest action I could take to make progress towards this goal where I can't fail. So the book is filled with those quick starts. And I would say one thing you can do right now, a small simple step, is to take a screenshot of this episode and tag us both in it and post it and share your one thing that you got out of this conversation. Because again, when we teach something, we get to learn it better. We get to learn it twice. And so take a screenshot, tag us both. I'm at Jim Quick. You set the spell at kwik on social media. And then I'll repost some of my favorites. And I'll actually gift one random person as a thank you for listening to the show, a signed copy of the book. So that will be it. Themenlessbook.com and our podcast is Quick Brain. So you can just search my name on your podcast app and social media. Sweet. Well, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us for a second time and share all of your wisdom and insight with our listeners. This has been as I expected packed with so much value and insight. I appreciate you so much. Thanks for making space for this. And then, you know, I think, especially now, it's so important. You know, another reason why I appreciate your show would be some besides the throughlonging of on this big goal, like creative. I think the future belongs to the creators is the world we're in right now. I think we need somebody to encourage us to be able to educate us, to be able to inspire us, be able to counterbalance a lot of things that's out there because while viruses and fears contagious, so is positivity, so is performance, so is wisdom, so is kindness, and that stuff is free. So it's pretty cool that stuff everywhere. But thank you everyone for participating. Amazing. And for everybody listening, we will wrap the show with that. Selling a little? Or a lot? Shopify helps you do your thing, however you chitching. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business, from the launch your online shop stage to the first real-life store stage. All the way to the did we just hit a million orders stage? Shopify is there to help you grow. Shopify helps you turn browsers into buyers with the Internet's best converting checkout. 36% better on average compared to other leading commerce platforms because businesses that grow, grow with Shopify. 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