#710 - Jim Kwik - 10 Hacks To Improve Your Memory, Focus & Attention

26:39And I was like, it's gotta be Spider -Man because he had this big Spider -Man tie. And without a pause, he goes in his iconic voice with great power, comes great responsibility. And we all know that. I guarantee you, all your listeners know what word was coming. And I switch words still to this day, maybe because I had a few head injuries, few too many head injuries as a child. When I read sometimes I'll switch them, I hear it. And I was like, you know, you're right. with great power comes great responsibility. And the opposite is certainly also true. With great responsibility comes great power.

27:11When we take responsibility for something, we have great power to make things better, right? With these choices that we make every single day. And so yeah, I think agency is very important that you are 100 % responsible. And I also have this belief that everything, Everything reformed as this word, everything is figure outable. You have agency and you could figure it out with enough commitment and creativity. I feel like we grossly underestimate our own capabilities. When I say people fight for the limitations, I get to keep them. I hear it on a regular. I'll be on stage and before I go on, people grab me invariably and say, I'm so glad you're here.

27:54Can we do your talk? You're the memory expert and I'm telling you. I'm too old. I'm just too stupid. I have a horrible memory. And that's the context where I say, hey, stop. If you fight for limitations, you have to keep them. I tell them that your brain is this incredible supercomputer in your self -talk is a program that will run. So if you tell yourself, I'm not good at remembering names. You all remember the name of the next person you meet because you program your supercomputer not to. I believe that if people truly understood how powerful their mind is, they wouldn't say, think, or even feel something they didn't want to be true.

28:26And again, I'll stipulate that, yes, you have one negative thoughts not going to ruin your life, obviously. But just like you need that one donut, her muffin's not going to ruin your life. But if it does, it's that tone of those donuts every day, every single day, it would definitely have it some kind of effect. And so I think we have to stand guard to the doors of our mind and realize, again, that we're, you know, that thoughts we don't have to believe everything that we think. And then we can also adjust what we think. You know, people say, I'm not smart enough, or I don't have a great memory just, you know, editing it, like, I don't have a great memory yet.

29:01It just feels different. It just lands different. You know, and it gives you some kind of hope to be able to move forward. How does memory actually work, moving beyond the stories that we tell ourselves? Yeah. What are the, what are the nuts and bolts of how memory works? There are three phases to memory. The curves of the encoding phase, there is the storage, and then there's the retrieval phase. And so if people, I believe there's no such thing as a good or bad memory, there's a train memory and there's an untrained memory. And unfortunately, it's not really taught in school. I mean, maybe they took some kind of class in high school or maybe college, but I don't know how practical it is.

29:41You know, one of the things I'm obsessed with, even when I'm listening to podcasts or reading books, it's like, how can I use this? Right? How can I, how can I, when will I use this? Right? Why must I use this? How does this relate to what I already know? I feel like so many people learn passively, right? And the human brain, I don't think it learns best through consumption because we're consuming all the time and so many people's lives, you know, you talk about mental masturbation, so many people just get addicted to just, you know, novelty and they're just buying books and they sit on the shelf unread and become shelf health, not shelf health, that whole dangerous spiral.

30:21But the whole idea is you learn something so how you could apply it. If somebody isn't consistently doing something and they're procrastinating, they're self -sabotaging, it's usually a mindset or motivation issue. But going back to memory, I'm always thinking like, hey, I want to make this more sticky. So how can I encode it by not just hearing it? Maybe I could see it and use more of my nervous system. Maybe I could tap into some of those feelings. right? You have that middle brain where you have like the seahorse looking part of your brain called hippocampus, which is primarily function is memory attached to it is this little almond -shaped part of your brain called in the amygdala, which is like a switching station for a motion.

31:03And it's interesting that you know where memory is being processed, it's also connected with emotions. I think information today, it's everywhere, right? So it's very forgettable. It's not, it's very ordinary. But information was tied with emotion and visualization becomes uh, unforgettable, right? When you hear it, feel it, see it, then you're recruiting more of your nervous system and you're more likely to be able to retrieve it. The storage part is interesting because we teach people methods like a mentally filing system, you know, something like memory palaces, you know, back in the ancient Greeks.

31:46So we write, limitless expanded, and I pull on and draw on, you know, neuro -nutrition and neuroscience and adult learning theory. Also though ancient wisdom, you know, I just feel like, what did people do before there were books? What did people do before they were like the internet? How do they remember things before there was a printing press? And how do they pass on history and information around campfires? And one of the techniques was a storage device. I mean, where you use locations that you're very familiar with, like maybe your home, your school, your office, the mall, maybe parts of your body, your car.

32:24And just taking the information that you want to remember and placing it intelligently around those locations, because as hunter and gatherers, we didn't need to memorize lots of numbers or lots of words. what do we need to remember where things are, right? Where the clean water is, where the fertile soil, where's the enemy tribe, all the survival, right? And so even when people forget someone's name, they tend to ask themselves questions like, where, where do I know this person from? Right? Because again, the context gives you the content. They've done studies where they put, they'll submerge people with breathing apparatus underwater and give them things to remember.

33:03like maybe something simple like lists of words, and then they'll take them out of the pool, and they'll test them, and see how many they recall. Very simple. And then they'll sort of merge them back under the water and test them, and in which environment do you think had greater recall? Right? It was underwater. And we could probably guess that, but the idea here is when you're studying something, the environment also is getting anchored to that information, and helps you to greater retrieve it. So if you, like, you know, when we were talking about before, if you are on stage and you got the opportunity to rehearse and practice and review your information and study on in that same context, you're more likely to be able to access more than information because unconsciously the light, the smells, everything gets anchored to the information.

33:53Now, that's not possible for a lot of people. Like maybe you could prepare in the board meeting there and then perform there also, or studying class and then performing class, but it's not usually the case. So even something simple is giving yourself a trigger. I know you've done episodes about habits and triggers, having a prompts for certain behaviors. You could bring the environment with you. You could take a certain, I mean, one of the most out of the five senses, smell is definitely the one most closely connected to human memory. maybe smell is the most closely associated sense to human memory.

34:31Right. I mean, I think there's all and maybe there's a reason for that, right? If you smell poison, it could save your life or food is rotten, you know, it is able to recall that that's part of your survival. And we all have this, I'm sure there's a fragrance or food that could take you back to when you were a kid. We all have those things. And the idea here is so going back to how the environment gets anchored to your study and your recollection, you could actually bring it smell. Like I always say you're preparing for your talk and you want to remember all the different points when you're live on stage, while you're preparing, you could have a unique cologne or essential oil or chew, they say chewing gum could potentially help with your memory, but a specific flavor.

35:16And then it's, but it has to be unique, so it's not diluted, in terms of learning. And then when you wanna be able to perform, use that same essential oil or, you know, scented lip balm, gum, whatever it is, and that'll help trigger all the information and data that you were rehearsing. And so, but the storage part is interesting because using your body or using your microwave, like imagine you're in your kitchen and you go clockwise around your kitchen and say, okay, you know, if I'm gonna, The first place is the microwave, the second place is the stove top, the third place is the refrigerator, four place going around.

35:55I'm doing my kitchen is dishwasher and then the fifth place is the sink. And that would be a way of using your memory palace. And then you could go into a Jason room and do the bookshelf and the fireplace and the coffee table, whatever. And then the idea here is let's say you need to give a TEDx talk. You could take the information and turn it into a picture because we most of us tend to think in pictures. If I ask you to tell me about your car, right? Well, I don't want to do this. So tell me, tell me about your car. It's a BMW 123D. It's like a coupé thing. It's blue. It's got Mac Gray, alloys, cream seats.

36:33Amazing. So when you see BMW and blue and Macrey, you don't, you don't see those words, right? When you're saying it, you see, you see an image of it. And, you know, our visual cortex takes up the most real state in the inner brain, which is probably why people are better with faces than they are with names. You see the face, but you heard the name. You go to someone and say, I remember your face, but I forgot your name. You never go to someone and say the opposite. You never go to someone and say, I remember your name, but I forgot your face. So it would make a lot of sense. There's a proverb, a Chinese proverb that says, what I hear, I forget, what I see, I remember, what I do, I understand.

37:09I heard the name. I forgot the name. I heard it on the podcast. I forgot it. I saw the face. You know what you see under you you remember and what you do going to the power of practice Right and rehearsal and study and deep work Then you really truly understand it because I feel like you don't you can't you don't understand unless you could do it That's just a kind of a Principle that I and then behind every principal There's some kind of promise and some kind of a reward and so like let's say you wanted to give a talk in the book I talk about how one third of your your your cognitive performance brain health is predetermined by genetics and biology is pretty accepted in a neuroscience space but that means two thirds is in your direct control and I talk about the 10 levers that would that would move that right and so if somebody wanted to know what those 10 things are and they had to give a Ted X talk next week about it first of all I when I want to learn something faster I learn it with the anticipation and the intention of teaching it and so it doesn't matter what I'm learning even if I'm not really gonna teach it I I intend to teach it.

38:13When someone I'm reading, I'm thinking, how does this relate to me? And when I'm listening, I'm taking better notes. If somebody had to teach it, they call it the explanation effect. When you learn with the intention of explaining to somebody else, you're going to learn it better because you're focused better, you're going to ask more questions, you're probably take better notes. And when you teach it, you get to learn it twice. So people have that perspective as they are listening this conversation, how would I teach this to somebody else? I'll, you know, talk about the 10 keys, maybe that move the needle, science base, and think about it not just like, oh, that's great information, but asking yourself, how can I use this?

38:52How can I apply it? How can I teach it to somebody I care about? Right? Because the number one reason to learn something is how it would have benefit you, but the close second is how it could benefit somebody else. You learn, so you can earn, get some kind of benefit to return. Right? to be able to share it with somebody else. And also when you share it, it benefits you also as well, because you get to be an expert at that subject matter more easily. So you can go through some of these 10 keys. Yeah, dude, I wanna get high level. Let's go through all of them. I wanna get them. Okay, so the first, in no particular order, let's start with a good brain diet.

39:28What do you eat matters, especially for your brain matter? There's area science, there's a chapter in the book on neuro -nutrition. And your brain is only 2 % of your body mass, but it requires 20 % of the nutrients. And it's an energy hog, right? It uses a lot of energy. Ches play has burned some ungodly amount of calories, right? Like the most static sport in history. Extreme, extremely, right? I know a number of them that are just always, you know, calorie deficient, but they're always eating with them without a doubt. Never see a fat chest play. This is true. And so another reason why you want to be mentally engaged, right?

40:06We hear a lot about physical fitness, which obviously relates also to your mental performance as well. And it'll be a talk about that because that's one of the 10 things. But going back to neuro -nutrition, certain foods, and then I'll stipulate this with, I'm not a doctor, I'm not a nutritionist, but you know, and go get a food sensitivity test, right? Do a nutrient profile because not everything is for everybody. I really do believe everyone's bio -individual. Generally though, avocados, the monon citrate of fat, your brain is mostly fat, is fatty. So what you eat matters, again, for your brain matter, blueberries.

40:42And I put this on my body. So I always remember when I'm at the store, I use this as a memory palace, my body. So I imagine the avocados using it as a scalp conditioner, like guacamole, or, if I'm blueberries, right, or mulberries. A lot of the berries, they're brain berries. They're full of antelix and it's very neuroprotective. Blueberries coming out of your nose. And when you're doing it, you imagine that you're a child because children are such fast learners because they're playful and they use their imagination. That's something you remember people's names. I mean, I don't love people made fun of your name growing up, but certainly with the last name, quick.

41:19I got a lot of the ones of a lot of jokes, but that's how kids remember, right? They say, you know, Tony Tony, Boba, I mean, like they make the rhymes, they make it fun. Yeah, so imagine you're eight years old and blu -ray is coming out of your nose. Broccoli is a brain food, high in vitamin K. The sulphur vein in broccoli is very good for your brain, especially if you sprout them, it tends to be like even 10 times more sulphur vein, which potentially could help with BDNF, the brain derived neurotropic factors. But imagine broccoli stuck in your teeth. So something simple, like if you want to remember, of olive oil, you know, maybe you know about the Mediterranean diet, you're cleaning your ears with olive oil or wearing olive earrings, whatever.

42:00Eggs is probably one of my favorite, you know, foods, good protein. The yolk is high in and colline, which needs to acetyl colline, which is good for cognitive health and memory. So eggs right in your throat and you're token on a hard boiled egg. So those are just like, you know, things that I would just think about and maybe people like kale and spinach, great, make them your shoulder pads. You hear about certain fish and you have to be careful with fish with the mercury and some of the toxins. If you had a clean source, sardines, imagine you're a collar, you have a necklace made out of sushi, you know, salmon sushi or sardines.

42:34And use your senses. Imagine what that would smell like. And if you can't imagine it, imagine you can imagine it, right? Because you're your imagination. What is it? Dinesite said, imagination is more powerful than knowledge. Right? Knowledge is what is. this imagination is what could be, right? We're recruiting more of those visual feelings, everything. And then finally, on your fingers, imagine some turmeric. The curcumin is anti -inflammatory. Imagine you can't get this gold powder off your fingers. And then walnuts, we hear all the time, the vitamin E, almonds, imagine them coming out of your belly button.

43:10Very simple. And then imagine your bottom. Well, everyone's favorite of us, super brain food, dark chocolate, which people can use in their own imagination, whatever they want. You mentioned that, not just about nutrition, but the new version of the book has got some advice when it comes to new tropics. Yeah, that's going to be one of the 10 things, is definitely supplementation. So that'll be coming up in a few. So everybody, imagine like your first place, imagine my home, right? you're at the microwave and all you have all these brain foods there and you're taking it out and you're putting it on your body Right, and and I bet you even an hour from now one of the ways to encode is to do space repetition, right?

43:54and Rehearsal review it in an hour later and also the retrieval practice is so very important So I mentioned it's encoding make an emotional make an visual storing We have a place to put it the microwave right or your nose and then the retrieval active retrieval helps tremendously improve your memory. Even something like asking your, you have to read something or listen to his podcast, quizzing yourself, right? Sounds so simple and common sense, but common sense is not always common, common practice. You know what my favorite strategy for doing that was for a good while I was training on a morning time with a training training partner and I would tend to read, I usually read for about 15 minutes on a morning as part of my morning routine and I would always try and just explain one thing that I'd read that morning.

44:42Dude, I got to tell you about, I learned this story about World War II, I learned this story about what happened in the space landing or whatever, whatever. And that was like an absolute turbocharged hack because not only was I doing the retrieval thing, like memory is repeated, retrieval not repeated exposure. And it was also doing the teaching thing, right? So I had to simplify it and especially given what I do, it's all about, it's not just having an idea of the concept, it's also being able to display it, right, in a way that sounds cohesive and sort of slick. So, yeah, that was a good hack for me.

45:18Teacher is having a partner about what you've read this morning. Absolutely, and I feel like even parents could do that with their kids instead of saying, have a school, and what are they going to say, good, right? But asking them specifically what they learned and going in micro and giving them examples again because it gets them to actively retrieve so you have to light up that same cognitive web and that's really what that memory is every single time it's reinforced and you actually recreate the memory. And so by having that representation and describing it it just makes them more sticky. They say neurons that fire together, they wire together.

45:55We have what 86 billion neurons and each of them have potentially out like to have like 10 ,000 different connections So there are more connections in the that your brain can make and there are stars in a known universe, right? I mean, this is what this is the power that we have access to but I feel like we we're only using a small Potentiality of it but starting with a good brain diet is is a good place to start and then imagine that the microwave You put it on your body and then test yourself and teach it to somebody else You walk over to the second place if you're in my home and we're gonna have like a dinner together and We go over the stovetop and the second key that I was talking about the 10 keys for limitless brain is I got this from Dr.

46:36Daniel Aiman the famous brain doctor Psychiatrists he's written like 40 books on the brain change your brain change your life He talks about killing ants is good for the brain and ants stands for automatic negative thoughts That's exactly what we've been talking about, how your self -talk, you know, becomes your reality, thoughts or things, that all behaviors believe driven. If you think you can or think you can, either way you're right, right? Henry Ford said that all the self -help kind of cliches, but there's like with every cliché, there's some form and nugget of truth there. So killing ants, automatic negative thoughts, and while I'm going through this, people could rate themselves zero to 10.

47:14Like zero to 10, how good is my diet? Because on the other side is the processed foods, the fried foods, high sugar foods, right? that's on the spike, your good glucose and so on. But on scale is zero to 10, kind of rate yourself. Because everyone wants to know like, what's the one thing? Everyone wants to like the magic pill. But there's not. There's a process of these 10 things. So the second one's killing ants. So just imagine on the stove we're roasting ants. We're killing ants, right? And so that's very simple. You can't forget it. It takes more time to turnly describe it than it does to picture it.

47:43And a picture is worth a thousand words. So there's a lot of descriptives there. And then walk over to the third place, which is the, in my case, happens to be a refrigerator. And this is exercise, right? We know that, especially strength training, right? It's been, it's been strength training, right? It's for somebody, so many benefits, right? BD &F, which we talked about, brain derived, nootropic factors, which is like fertilizer for the brain, help support neuroplasticity and neurogenesis, neurotransmitters, you think about the dopamine, the serotonin, the endorphins that you get from working out, potentially systemic decrease in inflammation.

48:23It helps also with insulin resistance. I mean, so many benefits from physically working out. And I don't just mean that, but when you're rating yourselves, the R10 is moving throughout the day. You know, we're talking about, if we're talking about evolutionary science, the brain, the primary reason we have a brain is to control our movement. You know, and as your body moves, your brain grooves. So it's not just a mind -body connection. There's certainly a body, mind, connection. And that's one of the, we have a 10 month old, right, and he's learning how to crawl. When they say crawling for children is so important because it stimulates different parts of their brain.

48:56Even the act of learning how to juggle, there's a study done in Oxford University that jugglers actually have bigger brains. By the act of learning how to juggle, you could actually create more white matter. And this could be something simple. Like where you're rolling up socks and just doing it over a table or a bed, making very simple watching a YouTube video, starting with one, then moving, graduating to two and three. I'm not talking about like, you know, flaming swords or electric saws or anything like that. But, you know, zero to ten, how much are we moving? So imagine you're open to the refrigerator and you're doing your favorite exercise inside that.

49:31Your personal trainer's there, you're doing your whatever. Your soul cycle, your burpees, your your crossfit, whatever, but it's in the refrigerator, all right? And that's to remind you of exercise. The fourth one is what you're alluding to. Let's go over to the fourth place, which for me again is the dishwasher. And those are your nutrients, your brain nutrients. I would always prefer people get it from their diet. That's my personal preference. And again, who am I to give people, I think ultimately we're talking about agency, that people should really, you know, test it themselves, right? You could trust, but then you validate and test with your own personal experience.

50:14I would always prefer people get it from food, but if they're not eating eggs, then maybe they could supplement with colon. Right? It's a nutrient, a nutrient found in foods like eggs and soybeans, and it plays a vital role in brain health, right? And acetylcholine, which is neurotransmitter, and you could harness that power, right? Some people want to supplement. They're not getting it from the fish. Maybe they want to supplement omega -3 fatty acids, particularly DHA, right, which is crucial for brain health. It's a It's a structural component of the brain and it plays a key role in memory. It plays a key role in brain function I don't know if you're a very big supplement guy Yeah, I work with a company called Maric Health and they're really great for blood work and they've got me sort of vertically integrated into a whole bunch of stuff based on my system.

51:07Omega three esters, I've been taking which are like pharma grade, Omega three's. We actually have this, this isn't out yet, but by the time that this episode happens, it will. So this is a drink that I've been working on with a friend for over 12 months now. And that is half a gram of cognizant, which is a branded cytokoline. it's a version of Alpha GPC, Rodiola Raseya, which is stress -induced fatigue reduction, Panax Ginseng, Natural Caffeine, Nushuga, Eltheneine, Bividamins, all of that stuff. And I did four episodes in 27 hours in LA last weekend. Dude, the only way that I was able to get through that was adrenaline and the right amount of this.

51:54And I think that I think there's definitely a place for acute performance enhances for mental cognition because how many are like what are we going to do? Increase my egg consumption for two weeks in the buildup to that. So I'm like, oh, yeah, my citer -colling response is really great because I'm 30 eggs a day for the last two weeks or something. And I'll get your address once we're done. I'll send you some cases of this. I'll be really enjoy it. And yeah, I'm a big fan of it. I've been playing around with Neutropics for a long time. I found some stuff, here's an anti -neutropic, actually. I got put on an anti -colonurgic about two years ago, just like a normal, very boring thing from the doctor.

52:31But dude, it was like someone had just half the ram that I had in my brain. I couldn't remember the name of places, my thoughts felt sluggish, and I'm very, very tuned into the texture of my mind, right? Like the nimbleness, same with you, I'm sure. So the nimbleness of my thoughts, my ability, especially for recall and then not just recall, but all of the little nuances and I'm telling the story and I have to remember to pause here and so on and so forth. And dude, it was just like walking through mud or some of those. I can't see you in that state because you're so good at tracking even when some of the conversations you've had with mutual people that we know like Alex, like maybe lose his place and you pick it up exactly where they leave off.

53:15I did it at dinner the other night. We were talking about something and someone left some loop open. And I was like, it was 10 minutes later. And I read, it was some story about a cat. And I really wanted to know about this cat. And I was like, dude, tell me about the cat. And he was like, oh yeah, you're in podcast mode. And I was like, I just want to know about this fucking story about the cat. But no, yeah, you're right. It's very scary to have, it was almost like having a cute temporary dementia. And it was do I absolutely do not wish that on anyone. So yes, make sure that you get your cooling foods in, make sure that you get your full energy system working nicely.

53:53You know, alpha GPC is a fantastic solution cognizant, which is in this in new tonic is an activated version of that, which is great. Round about around about half a gram of day seems to be the effective dose that's been pretty well studied. So yeah, I think it's a good place to stop? Yeah, the ones I was talking about were more brain supplements. I separate that from nitropics in the book, but the Colleen supplementation, the DHAs, your B vitamins, right? Especially vitamin B6, B9, folate, B12 is vital for brain health. Magnesium is vital for everything, right? Every physiological function, learning, especially for your brain, learning memory, certainly for your mood.

54:36Some people supplement with that in different forms of it, like L3 and A, you know, for various things, for rats. Glyson A. I've been playing around with, I can't remember the brand. It's this huge, big white tub that Marik sent. It's like fat thing. But yeah, my sleep, my sleep latencies improved an awful lot since, since talking, since taking that. So yeah, the simple stuff seems to be the ones that work. And that that's what I look for. Like, even right now, I'm drinking some green tea. So it has the, you know, althianine, which is an amino acid that's found in green tea. It's, you know, obviously very popular and atropic.

55:16It also promotes relaxation without the drowsiness and enhances brain function. You mentioned bacopa, you know, which is an herb in aeravetic medicine, which can improve cognition and memory. Rodeola, you mentioned also, which is a Scandinavian herb, which has been shown to to help reduce mental fatigue and improve. Doing it stinked, you know that it's going extinct at the moment? I did not. We're having a nightmare. So the formulation for this that we spent ages putting together to be evidence -backed research based all the rest of it. And we decided to put something in which is, I get protected by this.

55:54So the price of it's just gone through the roof, but it would be really cool. I would love to do like a regenerative thing with the drink, for every one plant that we use, we plant two more types of. That would be cool. Yeah, but I'm a huge fan. The rodeo thing, this amazing study that was done on nurses. So they gave, for 28 days, they gave efficacious dose of rodeo loracea, which is the same one we've got in there, to nurses working in the National Health Service in the UK, we found that they made fewer commission errors under stress. And it's what's technically referred to in the literature as a reduction in stress -injuiced fatigue.

56:34It just for me made a really big difference because your ability to stay on task and to stay focused is, we said it at the very beginning, like context often is a primer ahead of everything else. And if the context that you're in is I am stressed, I can't deal with this. This is getting to me, et cetera, et cetera. No matter how much you're perhaps done, I keep just got this huge ceiling that comes down on top it. Okay. So I think we're in your dishwasher at the moment? Yeah, so we're putting all these supplements there. You could put the, what probably one of my favorite ones is creatine. How awesome it is.

57:09So good. Obviously, a lot of people associated it to working out. It's just found in higher levels in meat and fish. But it plays a huge role in energy metabolism, especially for improving cognitive function, especially tasks that require short -term memory. And so, and everything else that we talked about that were in the foods, like the turmeric, the curk human, right? You can supplement with that. Some people make, if I make, if I don't do the tea, sometimes I'll have some kind of lines main mushroom, which is potential neurotropic protective effects, which is, this maybe, it has been shown to be able to stimulate the synthesis of nerve growth factor, which which could enhance cognition and potentially even lower inflammation.

57:58Caffeine, obviously a powerful one, especially if you added with the L -thienine. So for me, I could get the energy without the jitters. I'm very, very sensitive. Some people like Grinkinko also for blood flow. We actually put all this, we're going to actually take the what's in the book and people could go to brainnutrition .com and see kind of the where, what I get. you know, in the ones that are human studies, both for supplementation and also the nitropics. But that output all those bottles of supplements in the dishwasher. All right. And then that's number four. Number five is we're at the sink.

58:39And what I believe is very important that we've talked a lot about on our podcast is the social networks. Having a positive peer group has been shown to be good for your brain because who you we've heard this a million times, right? Who you spend time with is who you become or the average of five people We spend most time with if you're on nine broke people be careful because you're in probably be number 10 We have these things called marinarons where we're just we're always imitating people around us unconsciously usually and I always tell people to watch You know, we the things we're marrying and imitating are usually the W and watcher words We tend to say the same language pattern same slang as the people that and that we spend time with the A and watch are the actions of the behaviors because it has less to do, like if you smoke has less to do your biological networks or your neurological networks and more your social networks.

59:24If your friend's smoke that's definitely more of an influence to you on than your biology and then the T is our thoughts. We tend to have the same recurring thoughts as the people around us. See as character. We tend to maintain the same level of character, integrity and you know moral standards as the people around us. And then finally, the age and watch are habits. Right? You've heard this phrase, where first you create your habits, then your habits create you. And you know, we talk a lot about morning routines and evening routines. I've enjoyed a lot of the things that you've talked about about it also as well.

59:58So positive peer group is so important. We only people encourage us to challenge us, to call us on our stuff, to cheerlead for us. And if you haven't found that person, be that person. Right. It's also an opportunity to have someone to teach to, right? Not everyone. has a sub -stack or a podcast or a YouTube channel where they're teaching random people on the internet, but you have the opportunity to be around people who are curious and who are going to teach you about new things. Dude, some of the conversations I've had in between sets in the gym have been some of the best things that I've ever done.

1:00:32My house may clearly has a podcast called The Lift Companion where he goes and trains in the gym and the podcast is about what happens in between the sets. And it's awesome. It's really, really fun. And you realize that you have this really lovely periodized, or we're going to talk for a moment, you know, 60 seconds, 90 seconds during the rest period that someone's going to train, then the other person's going to train, and then we're going to come back to it. We're going to do another 90 seconds. And it's this really lovely rhythm actually to talking about something. I very much enjoy it. Any excuse to go into the gym more and excuse it as a learning.

1:01:08Yeah, absolutely. And there are certain brain types that we talk about in the new book. These are cognitive types. It's an assessment that I put together. I did the test. I did the test. Oh, no. Yeah, we could talk about that a few minutes after these 10 things, but like elephants are highly empathetic and they love that, especially the community. They love collaboration. They're the ones that keep everyone together and they have high levels of empathy. So they would really, you know, those are wonderful people to have in your life also as well Because sometimes learning is not so low. It's social for sure, you know book clubs and having accountability partners at work out, you know, buddies All that's really important But just imagine your positive peer group at the sink and we're all just like washing dishes or something like that And that that helps you to anchor it so then when you're giving your TED talk you can go through and just walk to the microwave And you're like, oh all the brain foods, right?

1:02:01And you can probably have some of the people listening if they weren't multitasking when they're listening, they probably remember that their avocados and blueberries and broccoli and olive oil and eggs and so on all over their body. And then on the stovetop, you're killing roasting ants and then you open up the refrigerator and people know that there's movement and exercise, your body moves, your brain grooves, you go to the dishwasher and you have about your nitropics there and then there at the sink and your positive peer group. And then you walk into the other room and wonder if the rest is really fast, super fast so that we get that closes the loop.

1:02:33I know you do talk about the Zygarnic effect in the psychologist, whose last name happens to be Zygarnic and she's at a cafe, the story goes where she sees everyone, all the wait staff deliver the orders and take everyone's order and not write any them down and which is pretty magnificent. I love it when someone does the wait to come up and he's got his hands behind his back. It's almost a flex. They know what they're doing. Oh yeah, oh yeah. And I'm still as much as I know about memory, I'm just like, oh, please write this down, because we'll mess this up and have to wait again. But the psychotic effect is basically, they were retained that order until they are delivered, because the brain doesn't open loops, right?

1:03:16And Netflix and all these binge shows, they're really good at keeping open loops to keep people coming back, right? And we want to close this loop for everybody, so they're not raging on YouTube and stuff. Number six, so go into my second room and the first, the six places going clockwise is the sliding glass door and So I just want you to remember the six key is a clean environment clean environment We find that your external world is a reflection of your internal world and you know You clean your desk or make your bed or maybe you're on your computer and everything's the right folder You tend to have clarity of thought And when I say clean environment also going back to like you know, when you ingested that toxin that kind of threw you off, there are a lot of neurotoxins in our environment.

1:04:04It could be off -gassing from furniture or from your carpet. And so, you know, having clean air is important whether you have the windows open or you have an air purifier, I would include a clean environment even the light sources, right? And so many offices and schools, they use the fluorescent lights and that's probably not your eyes are only part of your brain outside of your skull. When you have visual fatigue, it leads to mental fatigue. They probably fill offices in schools with that because it's ultra cheap, also as well, but clean environment from the lighting, from the water, from the air, and also just organize, recondo your mind.

1:04:46You get zero to ten, kind of rate yourself how clean your environment is. Now some people say a messy environment is good for creators, but that's probably as true because it stimulates. Yeah, but also think about this way like walking into any artist's studio. Right. What have you got? There's a torn up novel over the far side and cigarette ends and there's a magazine and that you know that's not the environment in which you want to do your tax return. Your tax return is in the office next door. It's nice and clean, it's clinical, it's sterile, focused. But you also don't want to try and do your next ideation in this room that's bereft of any inspiration for you.

1:05:23Yeah, absolutely. And also, keeping track of where everything is, could also be some undue memory or RAM that you're doing just consciously keep track of everything. It's a lot easier to put your keys in the same spot every single time, so you don't have to think about it going back to storage, right? encoding story and then you could achieve it because it's always in the same storage place. So you have a mental, a physical file folder, not an actual file folder, but a place that you store it in also as well. And you've, you've talked about this like regulating certain activities for where you thrive.

1:05:54Like you're not going to work in your bed because you're going to get at that angst and you're executive functioning and then you wonder why later on you can't sleep there, right? Because of all, all that state is being the emotional state is in that activity is me anchored to the environment like we talked about some energy underwater. It's not just the information, it's the feelings that are being anchored. And so like even something simple, like we use your iPad to watch Netflix and that your entertainment system, don't, don't do work on it, right? I mean something something simple like that.

1:06:24I really struggle to read on my phone for that reason, you know, there's a great tool called Send to Kindle for Google Chrome. And it's just a, just an extension. It's an Amazon like official application and you press one button and the web page becomes fully optimized for Kindle and delivers to your device if you've got a tape a white or an oasis or something and it turns your Kindle into a read later app but the alternative for me was to use try and use pocket or something which it'll all like I can't remember that other one everyone uses and and like I'm going to read it on my phone I'm like no I'm just if I'm on my phone I'm in task switching, messaging, executive function mode.

1:07:04If I'm on my Kindle, all I'm thinking about is, ah, like, if I bet, if I try on my whoop, I bet. As soon as I pick my Kindle up, I just get parasympathetic activation. 100 % that happens. The device that's in my hands primes the way that I feel. With without a doubt, you know, for me, I'd read most of my non - you know, print. It's just my I'm looking for any opportunity and to not be on a screen But without a doubt our devices get anchored the same way as our environment So yeah, I would say number six and think about the the door is just clean environments So just imagine we're just cleaning the glass and we're just cleaning the environment around the door Which happens to be the sixth place the seventh place is the radiator so I have a radiator there And I would just say the seventh key is sleep So just imagine you're sleeping on the radiator and that would be very uncomfortable, right?

1:07:59You feel the heat and But sleep obviously for your brain is so very important probably the number one thing It's something that I struggle with for a long time I have I was I had undiagnosed obstructive sleep apnea severe where I stopped breathing 250 times a night and I was only sleeping a couple hours a night for five straight years And doctors didn't know how or why. And this has misdiagnosed for something else. And I eventually had a surgery at UCLA, where they took out my uvula, soft palate, tonsils. So it was very painful. It took very more airflow. And my sleep jumped up to like four hours.

1:08:35But it'd be like 250 times a night is a lot. Because each time counts as 10 seconds. So that's what an episode was. So it's like, the doctor was saying, no one, you're not sleeping. It's like somebody coming in and putting it pillow over your face a couple hundred times a night. And so I had a lot of anxiety around it. Now you see path and dental devices and all these things, but optimizing your sleep because specifically for your brain, because when you get a good night's sleep, how are you performing next day? How's your ability to solve problems? How's your focus? How's your mental endurance?

1:09:03How's your memory? When you sleep, you can solid a short to long -term memory. So you have long -term memory issues. Maybe do a sleep study yourself. You could get it easily done at home. You know, most doctors could describe that. But it's also where you clean out the sewage system kicks on in your brain that can literally, you know, because if it's not taken care of, it can lead to brain aging challenges. I lost my grandmother to Alzheimer's when I had my two years after I had my brain injury when I was five. So that's why I'm just very passionate about brain health and my inspiration was my desperation.

1:09:34But we've heard all the great brain hacks as well as chapter in here on how to optimize your sleep. We've done many episodes on it. My favorite ones and I know your audience knows this, but I just want to say maybe say it in a different way Just to remind them because are they doing it right if because I know sleep is a big sleep loss is a big challenge Direct sunlight for seeing the morning right the researcher circadian rhythms caffeine I can't do past to a clock in the afternoon because at the half -life I'm extremely sensitive to caffeine so I just want to kind of kind of pull that back a little bit And then just realize that your brain loves the schedule.

1:10:11Everyone has an alarm to wake up. I really would have alarm to trigger you, phasing to sleep. Otherwise, it becomes 11 o 'clock, 12 o 'clock at night. And you know, we're not prioritizing our sleep, but your brain loves the schedule even on the weekends. And then as hunter -gatherers, we would go back to like, you know, why we are the way we are. We would know it'd be time to sleep because our environment would tell us, there'd be a dip into environmental factors, temperature and light, right? So the colder, now we're so cold, you're free, it's distracting keeping you up and you're shivering, but also, you know, darker.

1:10:44And sometimes we want to get off those devices also, because they can mimic, I get full your mind and the thing is still daylight, right? I read this a couple of weeks ago, which is just a nice, again, mnemonics and memes and easy ways to remember stuff, the 321 rule of three hours before you go to bed, No more food, two hours before you go to bed, no more liquids, one hour before you go to bed, no more devices. The most difficult one, embarrassingly, is the one hour before bed, no more devices. So, it was so, like, acculturated to using them that you think, what am I going to do for that hour before I go to bed if I'm not using my devices?

1:11:18And it's actually a pretty good question. But certainly for me, I find if I sleep, if I eat close to going to bed, my sleep is wildly disrupted. it. Woop did, this is a really cool thing that they do. They aggregate anonymously all of the user data and they look at correlations in journal entries and they know, right? They know what people say that they did and they actually can read the data on the back end. And eating close to bedtime was one of the biggest alcohol and eating close to bedtime were two of the biggest disruptors. Yeah. Yeah, that's been my personal experience also. If I eat, I can't go to bed.

1:11:58If I end up finishing a meal because I'm out with clients or something at nine o 'clock, then I'm pretty much screwed because I'm not going to bed until at least midnight. And now, I'll certainly have that effect also as well, working out sometimes before you go to bed because you want to bring your heart rate down. But I will go into a sauna in the evening because, or a hot bath, especially like an in salt because the magnesium helps you to be able to relax because it's normally trans -derminally. Also when you leave the sauna, you leave the hot bath, your core body temperature drops, which is a signal to produce melatonin, same thing with the lighting.

1:12:33But now with modern conveniences, we don't have to have it drop in temperature or light. We have to take the agency again and make conscious decisions for our sleep hygiene. So that that's and also dreaming also I talked about how to remember your dreams and a lot of that You know like then the book and other things you could do because it's remarkable in that REM state where you do a lot of your brain doesn't shut off at night I'll just offer this as inspiration And a lot of inventions works of our literature came music came from dream states They they say that Mary Shelley created Frank and sign inner dream a chemist create the framework of a periodic the pure octable in his dream.

1:13:13Paul McCartney came out this song yesterday in a dream, and it just lets a lot of stories. He allies how to create the sewing machine in his dream, like these kind of things. But that pre -supposes you're getting good sleep, right? Because not just the quantity of sleep, the quality of your slow brain waves, like the deep sleep and the REM sleep. So, yeah, that sleeping on the radiator. So just imagine that, everyone remembers that. And then you walk over next, we have a China cabinet. And there you want to be able to remember a brain protection, protect your brain. This is a simple one, right?

1:13:46Your brain is very resilient, but it's also very fragile. Having had three head injuries before age 12, and I had this, you know, I had my brain scanned and did all these hyperbaric chambers and just kind of getting blood flow in the areas that were damaged. Just imagine you're headbunning the China cabinet with a helmet, and the helmet reminds you to protect your brain. And then finally, we have like a couch kind of area here and on the couch, you can remember the next thing, which is new learnings. So just imagine you and I, I'm talking to the listeners here on that couch and we have maybe have a white board and we're just putting the words new learnings in your favorite color, right?

1:14:26Because it's so important, just as you keep your way you build your body, right, is through novelty and nutrition and then sleep, right? But same thing with your mental muscles, right? It requires novelty and nutrition and it can even potentially help you to age better Meaning there is a study done with nuns and they wanted to find out there was a longevity study Living 80 90 in above then researchers wanted to find out what was the you know the contributing factors Half of it had to do with their emotional faith and gratitude. I'm summarizing this the other half for their lifelong learners They're always reading having debates conversations and they're suggesting because we had to add to years their life and life to their years.

1:15:04They put this study on the cover of Time Magazine. It was called Aging with Grace, you know. But on scale is zero ten and everyone who's listening has a ten, right, out of ten because they're always learning. That would be key because that's really where the novelty, the newness, right, you make new connections. It could be very supportive. And then, so imagine that on the couch. We're doing new learnings. And then finally, the dining table there, let's say the last one is stress management. All right, We talked about stress and coping with stress. So whatever you do, we talked about how chronic stress can have negative effects on the brain.

1:15:40Maybe it's bodywork on the dining table or you're meditating on the dining room table and just take a moment and just picture that. So the idea here using the storage, we started this with encoding, storing, retrieving, as we've encoded it using visualization and feelings and story. We've stored it in very specific places on our body or you know in my two rooms of my home And then now can you retrieve it? So now you're on stage and you're going and you see the microwave and I'm talking to people really who are listening at home What is that microwave remind you of right what's coming out of the microwave?

1:16:14And what you putting on your body all these brain foods and you probably remember it from Avocado's all the way to the dark chocolate and backwards because when you understand how your memory works You could work your memory and you go over the stovetop and you're killing ants, right? You open up the refrigerator and I'm just kind of making this interactive, the exercising. And then you have your dishwasher and it's filled with those brain nutrients, right? The tropics. And then who's washing the dishes, all your positive friends. And then you go in the other room, the sliding glass door, you're cleaning it because you're cleaning your environment.

1:16:49And then the radiator, what are you doing on it? The behavior is you're sleeping, right? Terminus sleep. and then you go over the China cabin and put it on a helmet to remind you of your brain protection and then you look at the couch, what are we doing? We're learning, always be learning and then finally the dining table, getting massage, you're meditating, managing your stress. So it's just kind of a fun and takes way longer to describe it, but I know I would challenge people to do their own home and then they can put when you're having a conversation with someone, you're doing an interview with somebody, maybe you're not taking notes but you're taking mental notes and you're putting some of the key points that you want to remember in places either on your body or opinion and it's really infinite.

1:17:25It is a limitless amount of places. If you see card counters do that or people like if you see me memorize hundred words or what number, these are, this is a solid strategy to remember facts figures, presentations and so much more. I had a card counter actually Stephen Bridges British guy who has a huge YouTube channel that people should go and check out. It's really cool. And he goes and takes on casinos on tours, like literally like that movie 21. And there's a big player and there's the counters and there's the spotter and all this stuff. Wild. And yeah, he was just like, I'm just a normal guy.

1:18:01I was into maths and magic and then realized that with a bit of training and a bit of work on my memory that I could keep a hold of the count. And I can make, I can take casinos for, you know, 150 or 250 grand over the space of a weekend, which is not a bad owner. But one, the traditional card counting is like math, right? So they have a plus, if you went through it on your pocket, right, plus one minus one zero, and each card has a mount so that he kind of know the probability of a 10 coming up, and you can make your bets accordingly. But how they communicated it in 21 with their partners that were undercover at the table is they would use signals, and they would use an Alphanumeric code where every number has a sound.

1:18:44And this is like a code where like there are 10 digits and there are also 10 consonant sounds in the English language and each one is has something. So if they happen to be, you know, up 15, for example, or in this case they use something different. They use basic association. So they said like, hey, if it happens to be like, like, like, it happens to be a six up and that was about the card counting six can be represented by like a gun, like a six shooter. right? And then people would know like the exact number. They would do, they have nonverbal signals as well. Yeah. Because they didn't want to keep on saying the same thing in case Mike's, Mike's now using AI pick up on the things that they're saying and they can flag that in the back end.

1:19:31So yeah, the, it's a permanent war of evolution between the card counters and the casinos. Yeah. And we just could be a disclaimer also. This is a recreational or purposes only for the listeners. It's not illegal. It's not card counting is not illegal, according to Stephen in the United States, in certain places in the United States. One of the things that I think might be useful, I'm thinking about the use case of what we've gone through so far. Great in terms of optimizing our minds, we mentioned at the beginning that people have gotten awful lot of information that they're either indexing, assuming in one form or another.

1:20:03One of the things that I wish someone had taught me before I started the show was about that discerning skill that we mentioned previously. And one of the ones that I've used, which I think is really great, and almost alleviates pretty much all of the stress, that there are certainly things that you have to learn. If you're going to go and be a doctor, you need to learn all of the things in this, and you're going to be testing on all of the things. And if you're going to learn to drive a fogcliffe truck, or whatever it is, there are certain things where you have to learn the entire body of work.

1:20:33But for recreational learning, or for stuff that you're going to use to improve your life, Tim Ferris has an idea called the Good Shit Sticks. And what he means by that is we often castigate ourselves for not remembering things that we weren't interested in remembering, simply because we have this sort of arbitrary sense that I should remember all of the stuff that I listened to, or I should remember most of the stuff that I listened to. But really your job as you listen to podcasts like this or read books or sub -stack articles or whatever it might be, your job is to discern what are the elements of this that are specifically applicable to me and even that as a decision -treat like is you know we can get all up in our head about should I be using that?

1:21:19Am I ever going to want to try and learn to juggle? Maybe I should buy more socks so that I can do the things. It's like ultimately the thing that you listen to on a podcast episode or read in a book or whatever that you can't not take a photo or a screen recording of, you can't not, you can't stop thinking about it. That's the good shit, right? And with that, okay, let's go narrow and deep on that one particular thing. And we can use all of the tools that we've spoken about today to try and help really embed that. But when it comes to the discerning side of stuff, massive overload of information, how is it that I'm going to choose what's useful to me?

1:21:57For me, it's like a, it's the most embodied and natural way of doing it. There's no decision tree, there's no nothing. I'll just be listening to some Morgan House will tell me this story yesterday about the guy that was choosing the working out how fast people could run. And I was like, I can't not remember that, right? Like I'm pretty sure, I'm pretty sure I tried to explain it last night and failed after I'd spoken to him. So all right, that's the thing. I don't know why that's the thing, but that's super important to me. So I'm just going to use that. So yeah, from a discerning perspective, I think the good shit sticks.

1:22:29Yeah. Really lovely, simple rule. I like it. Primarily our brain is more of a deletion device nowadays. We're trying to keep information out because if we let, I mean, what, there's probably a billion stimuli that in our environment or things that we could be thinking that we could focus on. And so for me, it's a reductive process. It's eliminating because, you know, keeping the most important things, keep the most important thing, the most important thing. Right? And so I think questions are the answer in a lot of these cases. You have a part of your brain called the Riticular Activating System, RAS, which determines what we're going to shine us a spotlight on.

1:23:07You know, so you could use that analogy. If you're reading a page in a book, getting to the end of forgetting what you just read, I guarantee you you don't have adequate questions that you're obsessed about because then if you did you be shining a spotlight Say there's an answer there's an answer there's an answer, right? And and we have about 60 ,000 thoughts a day and a lot of those thoughts come in the form of questions And then in questions some people suggest is is part of the act of thinking you're asking and answering questions of yourself You know like questions like what's the best use of this of this moment or you know you're mentioning you know with with Tim's like like how do I, how do we make this easy, right?

1:23:40Or how do we make this more, more enjoyable? Or what's the lead domino, right? These questions, or how do I reach my 10 year goal in six months, right? Where you can't just force it and just work harder. You have to, you know, think differently. And so, you know, I think three questions again that I've, I have obsessed about when I'm listening to a podcast or reading something is things like, how can I use this, right? And then I'll actually extrapolate and say, like, okay, this could be useful. And then that's my filtering system because I was like, I can't really use this, and I'll just kind of set aside this and not important for me.

1:24:11I don't even note take that way. I'll put a line down the page, and on the left side I'll take notes, desire read faster, learn languages, whatever, remember people's names, the kind of stuff that we teach in the book. But then, if my mind wanders, that right brain imagination wanders, it wanders on the right side of the page, and I'm capturing, like, how does this really, what I already know? What questions do I have about this. How am I going to use it? Why must I use it? Right. A real cool feature for the Kindle Obsesses amongst us. If you use highlights, there's actually a bit where you can highlight and then add a note.

1:24:46And you just use the little crappy keypad on the screen. But just a tiny little bit of context is great. Do you use readwise? Do you know what that is? I don't. I know what it is. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Well, just when it resurfaces the highlights from Kindle, it also adds the notes in. So you're not just resurfacing that one particular highlight. It also reminds you of the link of the thing that you made. So it's like networks of information are being sent back towards you. I think that's that's that's cool. I like it. Yeah. I mean, I love digital because it's I mean, when people hand writing notes, it's been shown to help comprehension and retention, but certainly digital note takings a wonderful way to store information, share information and integrate it in other things also as well.

1:25:33Yeah. Yeah. One of the things that's still outstanding, I think, from the tool set that we've spoken about so far, is concentration and focus. Yeah. I think a lot of people have a very negative relationship with their ability to stay focused on task. So what do you usually look to first? What are the big move as the 80 -20s of focus and attention? It depends the context and the behavior of where like when people come to me and say they want a better memory, I hear like somebody coming to a coach and say I want to be better at sports. And like what sport specifically? Because there's different methodologies and strategies and tools depending on their goals.

1:26:17same thing with focus. The people are losing focus when they read. There could be a number of contributing factors. One of them is what we mentioned. They don't have enough questions, so they're not getting those answers. But another, if they're reading and they're losing focus, they're mind -wonders. They get to easily distracted. It could be they're reading too slow. You have this incredible brain and your feet, the supercomputer brain, when you're reading. One word at a time. Metaphorically, we're like starving our mind. And if you don't give your brain the stimulus and craves and needs, it'll seek entertainment elsewhere in the form of distraction.

1:26:52So sometimes you actually don't have the focus because you're reading too slow because it's like driving slow. If you're going really slow in your neighborhood, you're not really focused on the active driving, right? You're thinking about something, you have to do that day, you're drinking your coffee, you might be texting, whatever. You can be five different things when you're going slow. But if you're racing cars and taking hairpin turns as fast as you could go, you're not thinking about the dry cleaning or not trying to text. You're completely focused on two things. What's in front of you and the actual act of driving.

1:27:23And that's the equivalent of I found with reading. We have an online academy. It's the largest online accelerated learning. We got academy in the world. We have students in every country. So we have a lot of data. And we find actually that in general, the faster readers actually have better comprehension because they have better focus. And so speed equals focus. Focus equals comprehension. and comprehension gives you the retention. So I would challenge people that they're learning maybe processing too slow. And if you've sped it up a little bit, you wouldn't have time to distract yourself and focus on other things.

1:27:55And you'd be monotasking as opposed to trying to multitask. And the other part of focus would be on your brain type. And I know you took the quiz. This is something I've been using with coaching clients for years. And I realized just how the personalized medicine based on your genetics or personalized nutrition based on maybe your microbiome, we created a personalized learning based on your brain type. And I realized, and I created this model, and it's a model of framework, to be useful, and explain our way our behavior and the results we're getting, and also the behaviors and results of the people around us.

1:28:35So just the quick of it is, I pulled inspiration from personality types, like Myers -Briggs, Introvert, Extrovert, multiple intelligence theory, learning styles, verbal, audio, kinesthetic, lateral dominance, like left brain, right brain. Anyway, so it's code, CODE. And these are, I use animals because everyone wants to take like a quiz and what game of thrones character am I or what, I don't know, Harry Potter or school, that kind of thing. So it's kind of fun. I don't know, it's maybe take four minutes, did it, like something like that. Yeah, did it on my phone. Yeah, it's it's free. There's nothing to buy and so we are offering this out to the world Because one it's not how smart you are.

1:29:16It's how are you smart? Right and this determines this gives you shine the light on how you are smart So code is an acronym of course for the animals the cheetah are your fast actors, right? They implement really really fast. They're there. They have strong intuition They they love to adapt right the owls are they love logic. They're very analytical and methodical. They thrive when given a space to dissect, to ponder, to analyze things. These are individuals who benefit from deep work sessions, right, away from distractions. You have your dolphins, the D in code, and these are your creative visionaries.

1:29:58They have strong pattern recognition. Some entrepreneurs, their visionary thinkers, They can maybe see a future or an innovation when other people can't quite see it yet. So these are your creatives, these are your dreamers, right? And then finally the E are your elephants and your elephants, I mentioned earlier are your empaths. These are very empathetic. They're high Collaborative souls and they they are the glue that holds like teams together and just to give people a visual take anything in pop air of culture It doesn't matter, like I don't like if you have a favorite show or you know movie that we could draw on whether it's Star Wars or James Bond or Harry Potter or friends.

1:30:39Like we take friends like you see the archetypes everywhere. So like if you watch friends Ross would be an owl, right? He's a scientist. He's a very astute. He studies research, right? You would say that someone like Joey would be the Cheetah, a very instinctual, just just acts, right? You would say Phoebe is the creative dolphin, right, with her music and her art and, you know, the visions and imagination that she has. Maybe Monica would be the elephant, right, brings everyone together, always wants to host all the parties and so on. But you'll see this in everything. You know, James Bond, James Bond would be the Cheetah, right?

1:31:19M who runs MI6 would be the owl, very, very, very logical and methodical. Money penny, her right hand, you know, would be more the elephant. Q who makes all the inventions would be the creative, you know, visionary. So you could go through and you could do Harry Potter, you could do any of this, but also it informs the careers. Like I had our team, which we have a few dozen people around the world. It's remarkable. A hundred percent of our customer service team were elephants because they found their element, right? They're there to be loyal and supportive and empathetic and have your backs, right?

1:31:52Because they're success, you know, is your success and your success is their success. You know, our financial person or CFO is an owl, right? Our CEO, she's a, she's a creative visionary. She has this, you know, positively impact one billion brains, right? And has very, you know, imaginative things of using that. So it's interesting when you understand your brain type because it also can inform your learning. And so when people take the quiz, it's, We created it. I think you sent you up mybrainanimal .com Right. My brain animal and it takes four minutes and you can send it to your spouse and it'll explain their behavior And so you don't have to get like judgmental and everything because that's just how they think and this is how they learn and This is also correlated to how they you know even communicate with people and so it's it's a kind of a fun way to Kind of get to know each other and and stuff because the cheetah tends to be more direct, right?

1:32:44Straight to the point. And speech is very concise, and I know, and now you could overlap other communication and influence models over this, right? To give it make it even more rich, because you have to show you have distinctions that I don't have on this. But, you know, Cheetah's very concise, focus on action, all the very action oriented words, they're very instinctive, they trust their gut, they have strong intuition. They speak it in a way that's very independent. and owls are analytical and methodical. And think about it. An owl would invest different than a cheetah. They would buy different than a cheetah.

1:33:17They would be influenced. They would date different. They would communicate. Owls would be a little bit more patient. Like yourself. Like you do so much research. You are willing to listen. You pause. You reflect before speaking. These are owl traits. I'm not sure what you're talking about. I read the PDF. The PDF was cool because it was talking about, It's nice to be told what you are or a description that makes you feel seen or makes your whatever disposition feel like less of a just weird personal curse. But it's also interesting because it says things like, here are some of the areas that you might want to look out for.

1:33:55Here are some of your potential weaknesses. This is the way that you can communicate better with the elephants in the room and the cheaters in the room and so on and so forth. And yeah, it's cool to I think the quiz was great. The PDF that you guys give afterward also really cool. So people should go and check that out. And you've got new book will be out now when this episode drops as well, newly revised version. There it is. I didn't get it. What's happening? I didn't get that. I got a digital version. Send me that. We're going to send this to you along with the t -shirt. We got your back. I'm fully quick -pilled once I get this.

1:34:30I can't wait. The expanded edition was updated with all the new case studies from previous readers and it also is all about momentum. So we added chapters in there. You know, once you have on the limit, your mindset, your motivation and the methods of speed reading, memory, you know, all the stuff focused, getting in flow habits, all the stuff we could, you know, discuss offline, we talk about momentum, how to create a greater momentum in your life. And we do it through understanding your brain type, right? So I put all the research and examples in there. The quiz is also in the book because knowing yourself will help you to, you know, have less friction in your life and relate with others and influence others better.

1:35:03We also have the tropics section in there, which people could enjoy, because that could actually have more momentum. Talk about learning agility, like in a post -pandemic world, from whether you're working hybrid or remote or an in -person. There's a large chapter on AI too. I'd use AI to enhance your HI, and for me, HIs are human intelligence. It's not artificial for me it's really about augmenting your intelligence and different ways you could use it to accelerate your own learning and earning in life. But yeah, limitlessbook .com. Thank you so much. I've been looking forward to this, and I want to thank you for the work that you do.

1:35:42Can I ask what animal you tested? Owl, okay. That's what I was saying, because even with the questioning, you ask probing questions, get clarity, and often you could play Devils Advocate, and you could test an idea as validity. like I just it's in your very structured, you know, the way the way you speak. And I try to follow you when I'm listening, when I'm working out and everything. And I kind of like, I love the pacing cadence and the way you make ideas, you know, very sticking relevant in people. But yeah, it's been a wonderful pleasure. We have to have you on our podcast too. I'm down. Get me on when you need Jim.

1:36:17And I really appreciate the kind words. I've been a massive fan of your work for a long time. Everyone should go and check out your book. They can go and do the brain quiz. And dude, I'm excited to see what you do next. It seems like there's always more desire for people to improve that brain function. I don't think it could come at a better time than right now. So keep doing what you're doing. Thank you. Can I challenge everyone to do one quick thing? Absolutely. Take a screenshot of this. Remember I said that knowledge is not only as potential power and power and power and what you use when we take a small, simple step and something that everyone can do right now.

1:36:47Yes, you can obviously go to do the brain quiz and stuff like that. But take a screenshot wherever you're consuming this, listening to it or watching it, and tag Chris, tag myself, we get to see it. And just share either your brain animal or one thing you're going to do for a better brain. We went through at least 10 different science -based things that you could focus on. Maybe it's reading a little bit more, adding these brain foods, these nitropics, Chris Azir, or something, you know, prioritizing your sleep. Add that in the post, and that way, and tag us so we get to see it. And I'll actually repost some of my favorites and gift a few copies out to the community, just as a thank you and reinforcing that knowledge times action is power.

1:37:24You know, I truly believe that there's a version of yourself that's patiently waiting in the goal as we show up every single day until we're introduced. So it's an honor to be on this journey with all of you. Hell yeah, Jim Quick, ladies and gentlemen, Jim, I really appreciate you. Thank you.