Jim Kwik Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life

Jim Kwik: Part of the big book is, it's filled with these quick starts exercises. So you can't go more than a 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.

Jim Kwik: 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? I would actually challenge everybody, and I would say, one thing you could do right now, a small, simple step.

Jim Kwik: 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. I'm at Jim quick. You set the spelling, right? K W I K 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 this show, a signed copy of the book.

Srinivas: 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 who started movements, built thriving businesses, written bestselling books, and created insanely interesting art. For more, check out our 500 episode archive at unmistakablecreative.

Srinivas: com.

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Jim Kwik: Jim,

Srinivas: welcome to the unmistakable creative. Thanks so much for taking

Jim Kwik: the time to join us. Oh, it's so good to be back. Thank you for having me.

Srinivas: 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.

Srinivas: So no pressure at all. But 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 insight and 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 learned from one or both of your parents that influenced and shaped who you've become and what you ended up doing with your life.

Jim Kwik: 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 the power of myth and the the hero's journey.

Jim Kwik: 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 to live with his great aunt, to, with, to, with his aunt, who was my great aunt, who I saw, I thought, as a grandmother.

Jim Kwik: Didn't speak the language, didn't have any money didn't have the education. We grew up in the back of a laundromat that my grand, that my mother worked at. So it was, there were some struggles for sure where I really feel like I won the lottery was in their example.

Jim Kwik: 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, you know, both my parents my mom also lost her mother at a very early age.

Jim Kwik: 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.

Jim Kwik: And I remember. When I would mow the lawn and or mow lawns and I would skip over some part like behind a tree where nobody else could see, but my dad would make me go back and cut that grass and not because I would tell him that nobody could see it. He was like, no, but you can see it. And it was one of those so kindness, discipline, hard work.

Jim Kwik: Yeah. 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's doesn't, measure up to par. Yeah.

Srinivas: You're of Asian descent, and I think we, we maybe touched on this last time.

Srinivas: 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? Career wise, are they typical Asian parents of go become a doctor or engineer? And if you had siblings, like how did that advice differ?

Jim Kwik: I have two siblings. They're both younger. 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 having that pressure. My, my parents wanted they wanted me to grow up more. More here culturally and 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, to not to please them, but to make them proud, meaning that I was very cognizant of.

Jim Kwik: Both of them had multiple jobs and and while they were doing that, my grandmother raised me, my great aunt, if you will. And so I was very, 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.

Jim Kwik: But I, I wanted to make their sacrifice worth it. Yeah.

Srinivas: 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's common for most immigrants.

Srinivas: I think I feel that to a large degree, even with the work that I'm doing here. And I'm also in 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 like thinking, Oh, wow, I would love to be able to get to that just so I can be able to give back to them in the way that they've given to me.

Srinivas: Whereas I remember when my, when I was younger, I used to think, Oh, I'm like, I never want the life that my parents have. I want to be way richer than they are.

Jim Kwik: Interesting. Yeah. Yeah, I feel I, I had that pressure to make them proud because I had such on the other side of it. I've had severe learning difficulties.

Jim Kwik: 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.

Jim Kwik: I'm going to, 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 to make them proud. And it wasn't just, it wasn't a financial thing for me. It was to be an example also to my younger brother and sister.

Srinivas: So one thing I guess what I wonder is, for anybody who was 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 that you want

Jim Kwik: to do.

Jim Kwik: And this is very topical, because as you read in the book, what, 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. Unlimiting. Unlimiting is an active process of removing limits that hold us back, and one of those limits could be the, that other people's expectations and their opinion matter more than they do meaning that I feel like a lot of us.

Jim Kwik: 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, it's, I spent 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 it was challenging, especially when I was going, labeled the boy with a broken brain by one of my teachers and everything.

Jim Kwik: 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. That's something she just said 60 seconds earlier. And so those are the kind of things that's left an impression and put me on my path early on. And, 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 our doctors and more importantly, their patients and their caregivers to give them strategies on how to mitigate and just optimize our ability to remember and focus.

Jim Kwik: But I also, when I'm in those places I learned so much because, in, in my culture, we really have. And built into it is this almost reverence for older the previous generations and there's so much wisdom there. And I really I soaked that up going, learning from, I believe the life we live or lessons we teach and everybody could teach me something, especially people who have been on this planet longer than I have.

Jim Kwik: But what I also get besides that wisdom and the opportunity to give back is I hear a lot of regret. And and the regret usually comes in the form of somehow we shrunk our lives to fit into a box where, 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.

Jim Kwik: 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 if we were to do this thought experiment, Where we're, 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 I would come from that place.

Jim Kwik: 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 but it wasn't complete when I was.

Jim Kwik: And when I was supposed to turn it in to my publisher, I asked myself this question. This question was, will 100% 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, when I talk about lies in the book and it's an acronym, like everything I teach is always a mnemonic or something that's easy to just capture and store.

Jim Kwik: Share. But lies for me stands for a limited idea. Entertained. It's not necessarily true that, 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, 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 they're, if their mindset is, I'm not smart enough, then they're still gonna be stuck in that box.

Jim Kwik: And I think 1 of the things that keeps us in that box is that this feel this failure, this fear of making mistakes, the fear of looking bad in front of other people and, and it shrinks, what we're willing to take on, how we're willing to risk. And I, I think it's Seth Godin who said that if failure is not an option, then neither is success.

Jim Kwik: And, we learned at some point in our life, probably in the area of childhood that, 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. And we shrink Uhhuh down.

Srinivas: Yeah. It's funny cuz I just finished writing a blog post about risk titled The Essential Skill We Should Have Learned In Childhood That Impacts Everything.

Srinivas: . And I was like, how is, it's, I interviewed an economist named Allison Schrager about this, and it really, it, 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.

Srinivas: 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, something that you said in the book, you say that we convince ourselves that the circumstances we're in the least we've accepted and the path we're on is who we are and who we will always be.

Srinivas: But there is another choice. You can learn to unlimit 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, how do we do this? How do you overcome those? And what are your thoughts on this whole idea of risk?

Srinivas: I just want to talk this out because I've not got to

Jim Kwik: 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 can 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.

Jim Kwik: Even when they're first learning how to walk, they could fall countless times, but they didn't. 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, we'll take a coding class or karaoke or, a salsa class or something, and then we'll get to have an experience and then we won't pursue it anymore.

Jim Kwik: And so these lies have to be, go through a process of unlimiting. And 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.

Jim Kwik: And, 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

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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 5% of the room. And so how do you reframe these limiting beliefs?

Jim Kwik: And so I take people through the seven ones that consistently come up in my experience. And we have a lot of data just because we have students and 195 countries online for our programs. And, obviously our, we have our own podcasts, we get a lot of feedback. It's very simple formula.

Jim Kwik: That's pretty, it's pretty logical. 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, because it's invisible, we can't address it.

Jim Kwik: And so some of the beliefs we talk about in the book are things like the things we've talked about that intelligence is fixed. 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.

Jim Kwik: Like we use all of our body. And so I, the second key to it, after you're aware of the actual and you name it. The limiting belief, the lie, limited idea you entertain is number one is just to do your research and get the facts, is it really true that you are bad at learning or bad at leading or bad at public speaking?

Jim Kwik: You know what evidence is there to support that? And then we go into the, I do a lot of, it's pretty heavily cited. I didn't want this book to be. Too much science, because I want this to be able to reach and be very practical for everyone that's reading it. And so we introduced a lot of doubt into the system in terms of, is this true?

Jim Kwik: Is this really something that's accurate? We. have some stories, some anecdotes, a little bit of research to prove to the contrary, or you're getting the facts. And then from there we go to the third stage, which is creating a new belief that they could have adopted. So instead of something like intelligence is fixed explaining that, and then it.

Jim Kwik: Giving them another option to acquire something like intelligence is fluid, or we use a hundred percent of our brain, a lie would be something like knowledge is power because we've heard it so many times. And I haven't even found myself saying it, but in actuality, just knowing something doesn't really make a marked difference in our life unless we're utilizing it.

Jim Kwik: And so the contrary would be, Knowledge times action equals power, and so those changing those things like mistakes are failures, 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.

Jim Kwik: 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.

Jim Kwik: 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, that we might feel inherently worthless. Like when I was labeled that, that boy with a broken brain, it's not something that I, it was installed through my environment, through expectations, through experience.

Jim Kwik: And and so it's, I don't believe it's that, certainly we make mistakes don't make us. And so a new belief is something like there is no failure. It's only failure to, to learn something.

Srinivas: So we know a lot of you have been listening to us for years and it means the world to us. What we do here at the unmistakable creative wouldn't be possible.

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Srinivas: And it costs less than you spend on a cup of coffee every month for the school teachers and people in our education system. Prime is completely free to help you with this transition to teaching online. We've packed it with a ton of value and actionable content, and we hope you'll check it out. Just go to unmistakable creative.

Srinivas: com. Again, that's unmistakable creative.com/prime. One thing I wonder is, speaking of, knowledge times action, could we take an existing belief that I have? Cause I was thinking about this as you were saying this, and I was I remember this was something that came up in 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.

Srinivas: One of the things I say, and 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, 10 years later, there are people whose audiences are far bigger than mine who started way after I did.

Srinivas: And that belief I had never occurred to me how often I say that until I came across this section in your book.

Jim Kwik: And there's consequences to that having any kind of beliefs because all behavior. Is belief driven and now I'm curious when you say those words, do you really feel like it's true or do you feel like I do?

Jim Kwik: I do feel like

Srinivas: it. So 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 that I actually always leave out when I say that. 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, like bigger, 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.

Srinivas: But yeah, I think part of it is it's like, Oh, there's always this feeling of 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. It just it's this cascade of all these other shoulds that come from that one thing.

Jim Kwik: It's interesting. 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 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 I'm 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, they diagnosed me correctly that I had very severe sleep apnea, where I wasn't breathing.

Jim Kwik: I stopped breathing about 214 times a night and each time was for a count at least 10 seconds. So the doctors, we were like, 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 and I later found out, and my parents have it both also, and so do my brother and sister.

Jim Kwik: Not as severe as mine, but that's my Killy's heel. That's my, my, 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 by pulling, not having normal sleep, be able to compete and be able to stack up as well as everyone else in class.

Jim Kwik: And that took me all through high school and, for early college and then on top of it. And when I launched my career shortly after that, I was flying everywhere. So you know, time zones and sleeping in foreign places and if you, when you're a memory expert, you wake up in a hotel and you don't remember what city you're in, there's a challenge, right?

Jim Kwik: And even these times over the past, a decade and a half going to three continents and one week. And so it really. And, it intensified already, 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 the UPPP, which is where they cut out your uvula, your soft palate, your tonsils, and very was very painful, but it made a difference.

Jim Kwik: And with all these things, my sleep jumped to about four and a half to four, 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, 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 the likes.

Jim Kwik: Built his, sleep sanctuary and all that, but that's a lot to say in that I found myself also saying that I can't write a book and do 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 Reaching 10 times as many people because of that situation, and so I, I completely get it because I think all of us have it in some form.

Jim Kwik: If we're willing to I probably 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 make things, bring things to the conscious level to make changes. Because you wonder why you procrastinate.

Jim Kwik: You wonder why you self sabotage. You wonder why you defend your limitations. And I, and you, and this is me having taught this for three decades still, 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.

Jim Kwik: And I always say, stop. If you fight for your limitations, you get to keep them. And, 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 play, they would give me sympathy, right?

Jim Kwik: They would give me an understanding. Also wow, Jim's achieved, 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, some kind of secondary gain on that and maybe unconsciously I was reinforcing that process. So I would do it more.

Jim Kwik: And then that belief kept me from sleeping, meaning that I wanted to be consistent with it until I got to the point where we all do where. There's a shift and, that's part of the motivation formula that I give. It's just, there's a shift in, is this giving me the results that I want? While, I do get some kind of gain as many as people go to friends and they talk about, their challenges, they get, they're not as apt to change it or make a positive, empowering change for themselves because they are getting there.

Jim Kwik: They are. Becoming significant because of their problem or they're bonding with that person because they people feel bad for them, or something like that. And what I've learned to do is to reframe these things and be more cognizant of it because I was like, I started in my mind saying all the excuses people realize that if even I have these sleep issues that.

Jim Kwik: It's. That 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.

Jim Kwik: And my art of impact, and that's why I do it. I also could say that I'm not as motivated to while people see my feed with a lot of celebrities, it's that is more of my, my team. Being fully transparent us on our mission to be able to positively impact, billions of brains because I had the broken one.

Jim Kwik: Our mission is to leave no brain left behind, 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 wouldn't. Go into a bookstore and purchase, one of our books or, because they just, it's not what they do, but if they see a celebrity saying, oh, I listened to this podcast or I said, I'd subscribe to this.

Jim Kwik: Then it would reach people that I really wanted to reach. And 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.

Jim Kwik: 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. We've talked about this in your previous episode that, 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.

Jim Kwik: You don't want to be called on. I always sat behind the big kid in class because I, you don't want to be invisible and I want to shrink down. But at a certain time, I just, I 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.

Jim Kwik: I think we all do, right? And so I found the gift in it and those two struggles, public speaking and learning the universe as a sense of humor, because that's all I do for a living is I public speak on this thing called learning. But when I asked this question where was the gift in my lack of sleep?

Jim Kwik: It was, it forced me. To lean into what I teach so I could be productive and I could perform, at a high level, despite of having a finite amount of energy. And then what was the other gift? The other gift is, it forced me to be very clear of my commitments. So everything became when you have a finite amount of time or energy or temperament, you don't overcommit to things.

Jim Kwik: 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. 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.

Jim Kwik: But then also it's I still maintain that same filtering system. Right now, there's no 1. I'd rather be talking to no 1. No 1 rather. I'd be like, right now at this time, because all my decisions are based on just being fully. Aligned with my purpose and so those are 2 gifts and then I get from there.

Jim Kwik: I can honor that and then just and I can move on, just do something to better, and so so reframing for, what I've done with being a creator because I never care. On myself as much of a marketer is just if you see yourself as a creator, maybe a reframe like what we're talking about, the three step process is that you see yourself as a maker.

Jim Kwik: You see yourself as a creator. And I see that as also in a powerful ability to enhance your marketing because you can create amazing marketing, amazing art. And then, also reconciling, part of this cocooning that everyone's going through right now. I use that. Thank you. Very specifically, because I feel like we're going through a metamorphosis.

Jim Kwik: 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, a hundred miles, you're just going really rapidly fast. Rarely do we have a moment to check in with ourself to say are we going in the right direction?

Jim Kwik: Are 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 are my actions, are

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my daily actions getting me closer or fulfilling those values?

Jim Kwik: And if they're not, it probably explains why we could take a step towards something and not follow through or take, 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, they're on, maybe they're on purpose, but they're, for some reason.

Jim Kwik: And then I think comparison also https: otter. ai What do they say? Comparison is a thief of joy. It's ingrained in us because of social media. As we're scrolling through, we always unconsciously have this, potentially this digital depression. If meaning that sometimes, we know this cognitively and intellectually, we know we're looking at the highlight trailer of everyone else's life.

Jim Kwik: So 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. But I think true happiness comes from coming back to feedback that if we fuel our lives with the expectations or opinions or comparison and we're even good and bad, even positive praise also that we're going to eventually run out of gas if it's coming from externally.

Srinivas: Wow. It's 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.

Srinivas: Let's actually get into tactical components of this. Because I think that you provided methods. And I think it is funny, like the sheer volume of acronyms. I was like, wow, your brain definitely works in a way that I realized you found all these different ways of dealing, with whatever issues you have that are fascinating and incredibly effective.

Srinivas: I don't want to go into focus because we've just done so much around that with, people like tell Newport and all the other people that have been here. But before we get into You studying memorization and reading, I do want to briefly touch on something that you said about the education system.

Srinivas: 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 system is the equivalent of a horse and carriage.

Srinivas: And you yourself said last time you were here that if Rip Van Winkle woke up, the only thing he would recognize after 100 years of sleep is our education system. 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 Yeah.

Srinivas: What, if any, has been the response from the education system to your work? Have they said, we need this, like, why aren't you the secretary of education instead of Betsy

Jim Kwik: DeVos? One of the kindest blurbs that we got for the book was from Sir Ken Robinson, who I re I really admire.

Jim Kwik: 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 And 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.

Jim Kwik: You know 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.

Jim Kwik: While I have spoken at various universities from Caltech to Harvard and we have an enormous huge. Following base or student base who are educators, I have a huge amount of respect for teachers. My mother became a schoolteacher for decades when I was going through these challenges.

Jim Kwik: She recently retired, but she did it because she didn't know how to help me. And so she made that a focus and wanting to help other children along the way. It's just a system issue because at a system systemic issue just like a lot of. Thank you. 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, when you think about the gaps, it's, it's not just, I think learning how to learn should be paramount in school.

Jim Kwik: Learning how to think. 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 people are graduating there.

Jim Kwik: They still have to constantly learn. I think it's the greatest advantage is learning how to learn because Change is going to 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 random world full of rings and pings and dings and social media alerts and app notifications, how do you maintain your concentration?

Jim Kwik: And then third one, besides digital delusion to 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. We lost the ability to remember one conversation we just had or something we just read or, or a name, something simple.

Jim Kwik: 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 delusion distraction and dementia, digital deduction. I'm just defining as they're doing these studies with kids and they're not, 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 like what to think.

Jim Kwik: 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 a bad thing. I'm not saying any of these things are bad. I don't want to memorize again.

Jim Kwik: 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 overwhelmed, it's wonderful that we have all these opportunities and apps and, but the other side of it is just distraction and so technology is not good or bad.

Jim Kwik: It's like fire. Fire could cook your food or it could. Burn down your home is just how we choose to use it. And I only ask people is that I'm not, 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, technology is a tool for us to use.

Jim Kwik: But when yeah. 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 those, these are all muscles and it's use it or lose it.

Jim Kwik: And so I feel like teaching people how to learn how to think in school is, and then also, social intelligence, emotional intelligence, creativity, we even began before everything that's going on right now in the economy and 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.

Jim Kwik: When I talk about being limitless, I think the limitless resource that we have on planet earth is human potential. That the sky is not the limit. It's our mind is the limit and 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.

Jim Kwik: 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 could adapt because ultimately it's human beings are adaptation machines. It's just, how can you learn how to learn those subjects and those skills?

Srinivas: It's funny you mentioned 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 the fundamental difference between walking into a bookstore and just looking around and Going to Amazon.

Srinivas: And honestly, 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 only found out about him because he was in the bookstore. Like I stumbled up on his book and there's, I, I think that bookstores are made for browsing.

Srinivas: Amazon is made for searching and searching basically is already predetermined in terms of what you're going to get as results because of the algorithms. But Before we let's actually get into some of the tactical components.

Jim Kwik: Can I comment on that? 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.

Jim Kwik: 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?

Jim Kwik: And again, it could be great because if we love cats that's a wonderful thing. The challenge is though, is like our mind has that same algorithm. So for those people who are choosing to, 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 sea between B and D.

Jim Kwik: Life is C between B and D. B is birth, D is death, C is choice, and that's life is a series of 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, overindulge, And who's to say, at that point, it's individual for each person as we engage in negative news, because if it bleeds, it leads, you're going to tune in.

Jim Kwik: But if you really, if 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 the, your conscious mind that has a finite amount of focus.

Jim Kwik: And then that means you can focus on. Possibility opportunity, the things you could be grateful for, also as well, because it will just keep on feeding you that same information. And when we want to be more creative, if we're just being recommended. Just the algorithm on Amazon, all the same books, and we're just reinforcing a lot of stuff from the same perspective.

Jim Kwik: And we never, like you say, browse a bookstore and, where are you leaving room for spontaneity or for serendipity or for new information or to be able to look at counter viewpoints, 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.

Jim Kwik: Because so many people feel like they're burnt out and because of their sleep or maybe their diet or just, financial situation, it all, there's not just one thing, in 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 The process for unlocking your best brain and brightest future.

Jim Kwik: And what I'm talking about here is that people just want the pill. They want that limitless pill, just like the movie that Bradley Cooper took it. And he had this eidetic memory and could learn languages and have this focus and write his book and really fast and have a surge of motivation, but then there's no pill.

Jim Kwik: But there is a process.

Jim Kwik: When you go on a holiday, it's nice to know your Ford has roadside assist. Because if you get stuck with a flat tire...

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Srinivas: Speaking of which let's talk specifically of the process. I think that we, 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.

Srinivas: 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 for brute force, but I got a shit grades in college. And now looking back, I realized 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.

Srinivas: 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. Looking through studying for me. So I just enrolled in Rumi Sethi's 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, but can you go into the sort of 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.

Srinivas: Like even this interview is an example of studying if somebody is listening to it.

Jim Kwik: No, I love that. And study is not, it's not. regulated to just students, right? I, we have five chapters in the methodology section and study becomes as 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.

Jim Kwik: And so let's just state that in in one of the chapters in chapter four, my, 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.

Jim Kwik: Some people, would benefit from bookstores having like 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. And I think the primary reason is because they're not good at it.

Jim Kwik: 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 get invited, there are benefits because my dad plays, my brother plays. And and I would love to do that with them, but when I'm out, I'm not in the, in what I'm traveling, I never get to get good at it because I never get to practice.

Jim Kwik: And 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 can go out there and do that. But I don't do it, but if I could play like Tiger wood, I would be playing all the time. Because when you're confident something, you have confidence and you enjoy it.

Jim Kwik: 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. Yeah. When the child has never taken a class on how to play the piano.

Jim Kwik: And so we're never really taught how to study or how to

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memorize or how to speed read or how to focus. And so these are 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, limitlessbook. com, we give them a 10 day program on how to read the book.

Jim Kwik: It's like an audio 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, the chapter, there's a chapter of the book, chapter four. Literally said how to read and remember this and any other book because I feel Lord, I don't know if you watch Lord of the Rings, but I watched I, I modeled the book after Joseph Campbell's, how he popularized the power of myths and the hero's journey.

Jim Kwik: 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 treasured elixir. I take people, I modeled it so that they could be the hero and I could be, Mr.

Jim Kwik: 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 in Lord of the Rings, they have this phrase saying, this is the the one ring to rule them all.

Jim Kwik: 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 and how to review it.

Jim Kwik: Some basic ideas that are just common sense, but not always common practice are these things like employing review and active recall. So just as you were saying, when you're going through Ramit's program which I also, I recommend I've known Ramit for a long time. I've had him on my podcast as well.

Jim Kwik: When we know that there's a learning curve, but we also know there's a forgetting curve that within. 48 hours, you could learn up, you could forget upwards of 80% of the information that you learn. And that's that's not very, that's not very rewarding to lose and to study something for so long and then forget it two days later.

Jim Kwik: 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 it on 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?

Jim Kwik: And so the process of retrieving it and 1 of the ways we could do that is by learning with the intent of teaching somebody else. What if you went through that program or that book? With the intention of teaching your team.

Srinivas: It's funny you say that I have notion notes specifically doing that for my community manager, Melina, where I'm like, Hey, Melina, check this out.

Srinivas: And I literally read just at a blog post that I worked on for tomorrow based on the first thing

Jim Kwik: 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, it's sharper certainly because you know that there's going to be some kind of consequence where you have to be able to perform.

Jim Kwik: So you have to prepare. So active recall is important. This habit also that is closely related is this area of space repetition. I talk about in the book, how cramming really It has a lot of downsides and cause 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.

Jim Kwik: And one of the challenges is your brain really likes to, to to space out information. And that's an area called spaced repetition or, it's like an interval training for your brain, simple, but highly effective way of deliberately tapping into how your brain works. So if you separate, you first learn something and then all of a sudden the next day there's a dip.

Jim Kwik: If you review it the second day. You get to keep more of it and then it gradually slips and gets to, 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.

Jim Kwik: You actually build on it because you're building it on a strong foundation. And 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.

Jim Kwik: A lot of people I noticed that will approach their studies, they'll put on that online program or that podcast, but they're not really. Managing their state and I, 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.

Jim Kwik: And remembering that we control our state because again, limitless is about getting your agency back, getting, realizing that we are, we have more control than we often think and give ourselves credit for, then how do you change your state? You change it through at the very least, you could change it with your mind and your body.

Jim Kwik: Meaning that your psychology and your physiology, that your questions, if you feel bored, you can ask yourself more empowering questions instead of like, why do I have to do this? Or saying something to that effect. It can be, how can I learn this and enjoy the process? How can I make this more enjoyable?

Jim Kwik: How can I make this more fun and playful? How can I learn it so I can teach it to somebody in a way that and, get them in a curious mode. Even when we're learning from a professor, let's say that person is, that you're on, doing the online program with is really boring, you can even get more curious and say, how is this guy boring everybody at the same time?

Jim Kwik: If I wanted to, if I wanted to write a book on that, how would it bore people? How would 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.

Jim Kwik: Part of it is their conditioning. And part of it is their posture, that they're slumped over and they're not getting oxygen to their brain. And then it's, so all learning is state dependent. Another hack that I teach in the book. And I'm just doing this more from memory, so it's one of the benefits of 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 is our sense of smells, the olfactory.

Jim Kwik: And probably because as it was a survival, 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 research to suggest certain smells actually help to promote concentration rosemary supporting memory peppermint or be able to support.

Jim Kwik: focus and concentration. But even if you don't, you can, people could look into some of the research that we cited in the book, even just having a 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.

Jim Kwik: For example, if you're taking a test, if you could study in that room, 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, or doing a Ted talk in that location will help you.

Jim Kwik: 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 when you need to perform, you use that same one. It'll help you to trigger it. When I say using your senses and not just your sense of smell, you can use your sense of your auditory your sense of hearing, meaning that there is certain music that we talk about in the book.

Jim Kwik: that helps to that 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, 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.

Jim Kwik: Like classical music, like from the from the Baroque era, like Vivaldi, Bach, Handel. Having that in the background to learn languages has been shown to be very effective. And then the 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.

Jim Kwik: different methods of whole brain note taking. And, I'm a fan of mind mapping created by Tony Buzan, which is more the challenge with they found that the one of the worst ways of taking notes is having everything verbatim, like a full transcription. Yeah. And that's not as useful as having. And I'm a big proponent and advocate for handwriting notes.

Jim Kwik: And I realize, again, I love technology because technology could help you when it's digitized, it can help you store it. It can help you to share it certainly easier, but I've noticed that when I was reading some studies writing this book that by handwriting, like you could type, as fast as people could, pretty much speak, but you can't write that as fast.

Jim Kwik: And it forces you to filter and be more active in your learning and say, is this important or how's 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. And something that's on page one and so you don't see how things are connected.

Jim Kwik: So mind mapping where you take the main idea and you put it right in the middle and you use color and kind of comes out like spokes of a wheel or branches of a tree trunk. You can see

Srinivas: hundreds of books and interviews mind mapped. It's this is why, I've always said verbatim transcripts of a podcast are utterly useless.

Srinivas: Like I've never been willing to provide them mainly because I'm like, look, I'm like, fine, if you want them, we can get them. You have, 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,

Jim Kwik: they're worthless.

Jim Kwik: Very much and that's what research has found that one of the best ways of taking notes is through keywords and key ideas and seeing how things relate to each other. And so we, we teach various methods of taking notes and mind mapping is one of them very simple way for people.

Jim Kwik: If that's too creative, quote unquote, for some people using symbols and colors 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.

Jim Kwik: And on the left side, you capture information 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, the, how to remember names and how to speed read and how to, 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, things like, how am I going to use this?

Jim Kwik: How does it run? relate to what I know, how why must I use this? How am I going to teach this to somebody else? And 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.

Jim Kwik: Which is why I love your show.

Srinivas: Yeah. Wow. It's funny. I don't want to spend a lot of time on reading 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.

Srinivas: 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 email. I was like, Hey, here's a PDF.

Srinivas: 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 met and I don't think it's a coincidence that literally Ryan holiday, Stephen King, like every author that you've talked to who has written extraordinary books, swears by physical books.

Srinivas: And what does that mean? What is your research showing about that in particular?

Jim Kwik: I'm the same way. So for personal preference for me, I I like print books. Just like I like hand note taking. I, one of the reasons why it's similar. And I love just like audio. I love podcasts and I love audio books, but reading a book is different than listening to a book.

Jim Kwik: It's funny cause I hate audio books despite being, yeah. And so I don't want to. That's it's interesting. I love, I think people have preferences on how they consume, like to consume information. The studies on audio books and compared to physical print books people get more out of physical print books than audio books.

Jim Kwik: 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 audio book while you're driving or working out or cleaning the house. And so part of it has distraction.

Jim Kwik: I also think listening to stuff and I'll get your question in a moment is so when you're listening, it's a little bit more passive and, but when reading you're much more active and it's engaging 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 toward the better readers tend to read print books.

Jim Kwik: Now I'm the 1st to agree, though, when I'm traveling and I'm a very active reader, but when I'm traveling for 2 weeks, it's not very practical for me to carry 12 books with me. 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.

Jim Kwik: 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 digital device, highlight things and do other things for me, it helps me to be able to. To physically, I think we're physical creatures and that their sense of sight and our sense of touch are very intimately linked in our nervous system.

Jim Kwik: And also, and then another

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preference for me is I don't like looking at screens more than I need to. I feel like we are buying a screen all the time and it's just, and there are effects that we maybe might not be aware of just looking at. Electric, electrical advice just constantly. And so I like to give my eyes 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 then, and having that kinesthetic.

Jim Kwik: Yeah. Connection to it as opposed to something that's digital.

Srinivas: Oh, I absolutely will be ordering the physical copy of your book after this conversation Like I like I said, I got the kindle version specifically so I could get through it for our content 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.

Srinivas: Let's talk about memory briefly it's 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 correct 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.

Srinivas: You and I were talking about this earlier. I think some of what he's 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 I don't think what he's saying is that we want to outsource human memory.

Srinivas: 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 realize 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.

Srinivas: 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 just, if I did, I would be literally super human. I've gotten to talk to Elon Musk's ex wife, but I'm not building Tesla. So let's talk about his memory.

Srinivas: And I guess the question then becomes like, how would I take all this information that I've gathered from a thousand books and all these people I've interviewed and channel it into my own life?

Jim Kwik: So that's a great question. And this is something that I teach at places like Google where their mission is to organize all the information.

Jim Kwik: And I got. People have asked me even in those trainings Jim, why do I have to remember information that we have a search engine for? And I completely get that idea. And for me, there's a couple of reasons why, first of all, and then how, and I'll 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 we lost half 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 sea between B and D comes down to choice and decisions that we can only make good decisions based on the information we currently have inside of us.

Jim Kwik: And so if we lost half of that information, we wouldn't be able, we'd be at a, we would have a handicap for sure. And, but if we were able to retain more of it, 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.

Jim Kwik: I refer to it more like a muscle. Than anything else that you want to be memory fit, brain fit and that if we, 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 as external memory.

Jim Kwik: 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. There's a mental toll. So I like to challenge myself and be had the strongest memory because that's The thing I want to do.

Jim Kwik: So when I'm older, that I still have that resilience, that mental fitness and it's engaged and I have still the ability to remember things. I want to remember overall. Yeah. Now how to be able to take the thousands and the hundreds of books and hundreds of conversations you've had with individuals.

Jim Kwik: 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.

Jim Kwik: And I don't have clarity on and I haven't decided on, 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.

Jim Kwik: Now, my, 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 power. One of the things that I, another question I ask is how can I teach this to other people?

Jim Kwik: Because the primary reason to learn anything is. For me, number one, it 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. I went from below normal to above normal and I started to tutor and one of my first students, she read 30 books in 30 days on health and wellness, saved her mom's life from this.

Jim Kwik: 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, classes.

Jim Kwik: So I would have to learn all this information, consolidate it, integrate it, get rid of the things that just wasn't give me the return. Cause I'm not. I'm not emotionally attached to any specific methodology or ideology. Like some people like really focused just like in anything in marketing, they focus on this one, discipline and that's their way or in health, they focus on this one thing.

Jim Kwik: And for me, it's like in the book, you notice that I, one of them, I highlighted Bruce Lee for a couple of pages. And he really integrated. He didn't just focus on an old style Wing Chun, right? And he saw the limitations there and he wanted to, he wasn't married to any dogma. And he would pull from, Western boxing, from fencing and learn and integrate and get rid of the things that didn't work.

Jim Kwik: And that's what I did for this book. The idea of consuming thousands, three decades of information, thousands of books. The financial investment alone, people don't have to go through, I put what works and field 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, from the very beginning in journals.

Jim Kwik: And it's nice to see, your thought process and, I integrate all these thoughts together. So if I needed to put something together, whether it's memory focus, I'm pulling from so many interviews and so much personal experience. And then. Recording it and then teaching it. And it was interesting process.

Jim Kwik: I don't know how you were with the book, but taking all this research and putting it into 300 pages and when it, and then expanding it from just to do that myself to motive. And then adding just on methodology, but mindset and motivation to two other areas I feel keep you from. It's still in that box.

Jim Kwik: I felt like I had to consolidate three books 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 not just take notes, but I make notes. And so that's my creative process. 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.

Jim Kwik: My goal is integration. When all mindset, motivation and methods cross over that sweet spot, her inspiration, ideation and integration come together is that area of integration and integration like integer or integral means you're whole. And I wanted to come from that place where everything is aligned and I'm not fighting with myself.

Jim Kwik: 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 clear and impactful. Yeah. Wow.

Srinivas: I feel like I could talk to you for because like I said, having read the book, we could have done like literally one episode for a chapter.

Srinivas: I hands down one of the most tactical books I've come across in a long time which is why it was very You know, it was, I was literally hounding you for those who don't know. I must've sent Jim two or three emails to be like, yo, can you come back to the podcast? So I really appreciate you coming back.

Srinivas: 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?

Jim Kwik: So I've always loved the title of your show. For me, unmistakable really is, as it is defined, I would imagine I haven't looked this up, but as not able to be mistaken for something else.

Jim Kwik: 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, our talents, our skills, having the curiosity to know yourself.

Jim Kwik: And then the 2nd part of being unmistakable is once, yourself, 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, these processes and they get a night, 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, going full circle to how we started the conversation, especially in a world where, sometimes we dim ourselves to be able to fit into a box of other people's expectations and in other people's opinion.

Jim Kwik: 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 that'd be yourself.

Srinivas: Where can people find out more about you, your work the book and everything else that you're up to?

Srinivas: So

Jim Kwik: a limitless book is the place 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. book, make it the most read book on their shelf. And to, to that end, when people go to limitlessbook. com, there's a 10 day audio video companion course that I gift you.

Jim Kwik: 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 Ms, 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.

Jim Kwik: 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 four sections to the hero's journey main sections, and I'm going to spend one week per section and showing everybody how to read it.

Jim Kwik: 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 2 bonus chapters, also a limitless model applied towards businesses. So for you entrepreneurs out there, whether you have 3 people or 300 people, how to create limitless organizations and learning organizations.

Jim Kwik: 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 limitless book dot com.

Jim Kwik: 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 a page or 2 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.

Jim Kwik: 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 could do right now, a small, simple step, is to take a screenshot of this episode and tag us both in it.

Jim Kwik: And post it and share your 1 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 right? K. W. I. K. 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 this show a signed copy of the book.

Jim Kwik: So that would be it. Limitlessbook. com and our podcast is quick brain. So you could just search my name on our podcast, on your podcast app and and social media. Sweet.

Srinivas: 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.

Srinivas: This has been, as I expected, packed with so much value and

Jim Kwik: insight. I appreciate you so much. Thanks for making space for this. And then, I think, especially now, It's so important. Another reason why I appreciate your show would be some besides the through line of like creative, I think the future belongs to the creators is the world we're in right now.

Jim Kwik: 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 the things that's out there because while viruses and fear is contagious, so is positivity. So is performance. So is wisdom. So is kindness. And that stuff is free. So sprinkle that stuff everywhere.

Jim Kwik: But thank you everyone for participating.

Srinivas: Amazing. And for everybody listening, we will wrap the show with that. Did you know that every Sunday, our community manager, Milena sends out 10 key takeaways from episodes just like this one. All you have to do to receive it is sign up for our newsletter.

Srinivas: Just visit unmistakable creative. com slash newsletter, and you'll get them delivered right to your inbox. Again, that's unmistakable creative. com slash newsletter. Did you catch our recent pilot episode of How They Met Each Other? If you enjoyed hearing the stories of how couples met, then we've got some great news.

Srinivas: We're working on making a full season of the show, but we need your help to make it happen. If you want to hear more episodes of How They Met Each Other, just text the code LOVE to 33777. By texting us, you'll let us know that you're interested in hearing more episodes, and that'll help us secure the support we need to bring you a full season of How They Met Each Other.

Srinivas: So don't wait, text LOVE to 33777 now, and stay tuned for more updates on how they met each other. Thanks for listening, and don't worry, we're not going to spam you, we promise, we just need your email address so we can gauge the level of interest in the show and keep you updated on our progress.