JIM KWIK: Unlock Your Brain’s Full Potential

26:34So I want to go back to something you just said that my jaw just dropped. You just glossed over it like, you know, every day I go get the mail at the end of the driveway. So you said you read how many books a week typically? Three to five now. I mean, when I, yeah, at most I was reading a book a day for about four years. Wow. Okay. To do three to five books a week, how much time does that take? And I think I'd love for you to make the case that it's possible for even busy people to do some version of that. Even if people weren't a fast reader, like, so let's break this down. An average book, depending on the stats you look at, has approximately, on Amazon, I did an average, and the medium, actually the medium was 64 ,000 words.

27:20Now, probably a little bit more than that, but the average person reads approximately, let's say, 200 words per minute on the low end. If you divide 64 ,000 by 200 words a minute, that means it takes 320 minutes to get through one book. Now, that sounds like a lot, but if you break that down into seven days, that's 45 minutes a day of reading. We'll get you one book a week, 52 books a year. And 45 minutes is a lot, but an hour is, what, 4 % of our day? So it takes discipline. It takes scheduling. It takes a commitment to doing so. It may be 20 minutes in the morning and 20, 25 minutes in the afternoon or evening.

28:02You could break it down. Now, if you triple your reading speed, you could do that in 15 minutes a day, which is very, very doable. Now we're motivated. Right, right. So if it gets below that threshold where it's just, I believe, inch by inch, it's a cinch, yard by yard, it's too hard. But if you break it down to its component parts, it's very doable. Because the average person reads, what, two, three, four books a year? And somebody who's reading a book a week, 50-plus books a year, I feel like has a huge advantage, especially if they understand they'll be able to retain and execute and implement what they're reading.

28:41And I also want to just say, even though I have said knowledge is power, we all know that it's potential power only because power won't use it. My general guideline is for every hour I spend learning something, I just feel compelled to spend an equal hour putting it into play, putting it into action. And there's this Chinese proverb that says, what I hear, I forget. What I see, I remember. What I do, I understand. What I hear, I forget. I heard the name, I forgot the name. What I see, I remember. I saw your face, I remember the face. And what I do, going back to the power of practice, practice makes progress.

29:16And I feel like we don't know it unless we could do it. But also, I think also people don't read because for most people, since they haven't had training since they were six years old, they're not very good at it. like reading with have you read something katian just forgot what you just read oh yeah you get distracted or or you think about other things or you fall asleep or you know and you know if you're not good at something like i'm not very good at golf um so i don't play it often right because it's not fun for me because i'm not that capable yet and so i feel like when people improve there's in psychology there's that confidence competence loop the more competent you get at something the more confident you get at it and the more confident you get at something more you're going to do with that activity.

30:01So you get better and it's just a positive feedback loop. But I would say the important thing is, you know, I have a to read list. I think it's important to schedule it. I think one of the most important productivity performance tools we have is our, our calendars. You know, you schedule your parent teacher meetings or investor meetings or doctor meetings, but I don't think we schedule our implementation, our own personal growth. you know, as much. And if it's not on your calendar, at least for me, it just doesn't get done as easily. Absolutely. Okay. Well, I love that. And I'm so motivated by the way, if you're thinking to yourself, I have got to get what this man has, you want to pick up the limitless book and this is an expanded edition.

30:47You can get it anywhere, you know, better books are sold.

30:57You know, if we were talking to somebody that was a fitness coach, you know, we'd be saying, okay, what's the best things, you know, the four or five things we could do to optimize our physique or our physical prowess? What are the similar kinds of things for mental prowess? Yeah. Yeah. Let's do it. So there's the software and there's the hardware. And so for me, how to remember languages, how to remember, I have a lot of actors or TED speakers memorize their speeches or scripts, you know, how to focus. These are the things you have. These are the things you do. And the benefit of taking a noun and turning to a verb is it gives you your agent.

31:33It just reminds you of your agency, right? You don't wake up and say, I hope I have creativity. I have focus. I have motivation to do X. These are the things you have because then that's like hope, right? We don't know. Hope's not a great legal strategy. These are things you do. And when you turn into a process, then you have power to be able to make things better, right? And so focus for me is a process. Remembering is, so you don't have a memory. There's a three-part process for memorizing something. You don't even have energy. There's a process. It's a verb where you could generate energy, you know, having to do with your sleep and your diet and your exercise and so on.

32:07Okay, so let's unpack this. One of the quick tips I would recommend for reading faster and improving reading focus is very simple. And sometimes I find that the simple things, because it's so simple and easy to do, sometimes people don't do it. So one of the things, and I'll give people a challenge. And they could post it on social media and tag us on it, all of us on it, so we get to see it, see how effective it is. But you need a baseline, right? Like how you know if it's going to work unless you test it. Because ultimately the person listening, I think, really is the expert on themselves. And so you could trust, but you could definitely validate and verify it.

32:48I would recommend everybody start here. Pick up a book, put a mark in the margin, and just read how you would normally read for 60 seconds. And when you're done, put a finishing mark in the margin. And then count the number of lines you just read in 60 seconds, right? It gives you a baseline, a base rate. And then, you know, in order to be able to manage it, you have to measure it. And then what I want you to do is pick up where you left off, time yourself for 60 seconds, and just do one simple thing different. Just underline the words as you're reading it. It doesn't matter if you're on a screen, if you're on a Kindle, just don't touch the screen.

33:17Don't touch the actual paper on the book. But just going back and forth, margin, margin. With your finger? With your finger or a pen or a highlighter or a mouse on a computer. but you're not actually writing on it or touching the book itself. You're just right above it, right? And you're just going margin to margin, not skipping anything. Because traditional speed reading, the reason why people get a gist is because they're taking their finger and going right down the page or making S forms or Z forms, but they're missing big chunks of information, right? Here, you're not skipping anything. You're just going forward, going back, back and forth.

33:49Do that for 60 seconds, and then put a mark in the margin, and then count the number of lines you just read. And for almost everybody listening, that second number will be about 25, 50 % better. Wow. Okay. Now, it doesn't sound like a lot, 25, 50%, but little things add up. 50 % would save you 20 minutes on every hour. I mean, just think, if everyone could just double their reading speed, the average person is processing information approximately, depending on what you look at, about four hours a day. You think about the information you're processing through research or reading or emails, social media, whatever, proposals, about four hours a day.

34:29If you could just double your reading speed, you save two hours a day. Two hours a day over the course of a year or even one hour a day over the course of a year is 365 hours. How many 40-hour work weeks is that? Nine, more than nine weeks. Two months of productivity you save just saving an hour a day on something ubiquitous like reading. So the reason we do so much, you know, we serve half of the Fortune 500 companies, we work a lot corporate is because, you know, if someone's getting four hours a day spent reading, that means half of their salary is being paid to read, right? And so we get that time can be better spent towards something else.

35:07So underlining the words as you read, because what it does, it helps you with a number of things. One of the obstacles effect of reading is regression, that back skipping we do unconsciously. Have your friend just stopped rereading words or rereading whole lines back to them. So when they have these sophisticated technology where they could shine a light in your eyes and they could show you where the person is looking, right? They use this in ads so they could see product placements, see where people's eyes unconsciously go. They put their product or brand in a line of sight, but they do that for reading.

35:39And you can see a lot of times people read and it's very sporadic. They go forward and then back and then forward and back. And there are these fixations that they call fixation is a stop. It's like an eye stop. And think about it, like if you're reading a book and there's about 10 words per line in the average book, that means their eyes fixate, you know, the fixation 10 times, it stops. And now if you relax your eyes, you're able to take more in, maybe see the word to the left and to the right of the original word, then you see three words in one fixation. So kind of like when you're driving, it's like if you're in heavy traffic, you're like, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, as opposed to maybe somebody who could take three or four words in one glance and maybe only make two or three stops across the page.

36:25So the focus, they call it a visual pacer, using something to help you to focus. It prevents you from back skipping. It also helps your focus because, okay, so here's the reason you use a visual pacer. First of all, children use it. We have a 17-month-old who's starting to read, and he naturally is pointing at the words until maybe some education systems tell you not to use your finger. Now, children naturally organically do it. It's kind of interesting. We do it too. So nobody usually reads with their finger, but when I ask you to count the number of lines you just read in 60 seconds, everybody's going using their finger pointing, it's visual pacer.

37:09And the reason why is our eyes are attracted to motion. If something ran across your room, you wouldn't no longer look at me. As a hunter-gatherer, you have to look at what moves because it's your survival. If you're in a bush hunting lunch, like a rabbit or a carrot, depending on what people's lunch is, if the bush next to you moves, you have to look because number one, it could be lunch, or number two, you could be lunch. We're hardwired to look at what moves the most. And so when you're underlining the words, your eyes are attracted to the motion and you're pulled through the information as opposed to your attention being pulled apart.

37:43The other thing though is it's how your nervous system is set up. Certain senses work very closely together. I don't know if the two of you ever tasted a fresh piece of fruit, not something that's been sprayed in wax and sitting in a store for six months, but right off the vine, farmer's market. Have you ever tasted a great tasting peach before? I have some at my house right now. It's peach season here. Likewise. It's here too. And you're not actually tasting the peach because your tongue's not capable of tasting what a peach tastes like. You're actually smelling the peach. But your sense of smell and taste are so closely linked in your nervous system that your mind can't tell the difference.

38:22It knows the difference when you're congested and you can't breathe through your nose, food tastes more bland, right? Just as your sense of sight and your sense of smell and taste are so closely linked in your nervous system, so is your sense of sight and your sense of touch. So people literally using their finger while they read will say they feel more in touch with their reading, right? And even with our son, I take my keys, I say, look at my keys, look at my keys, naturally, in order for them to see it, he has to touch them. In fact, if someone loses their sense of sight, how do they read? They use Braille, their sense of touch.

39:00So I would encourage everybody, a takeaway from this that could save you hours and hours that you could put towards things that matter more is using your finger while you read. And then the second thing that would help you not only for your focus, I know that Tubi talk about this, it's just asking more questions and better questions. You know, your brain primarily is a deletion tool. We're trying to keep information out. Like even as I'm talking to you, I'm trying to keep like our dogs are outside on the beach like barking. I could hear them from here. I'm trying to delete it, right? Because at any time there's so much information.

39:38If we let it in, we would be overloaded and overwhelmed, right? We would go insane. So what do we allow in? are the things that matter to us. And one of the filters is that part of our brain is a reticular activating system, RAS, right? And how we hijack it, one of the tools is asking questions. So when we ask a question, we shine a spotlight on something we weren't, we were deleting, right? An example is I have a younger sister and years and years ago, she would send me emails and postcards of a very specific breed of dog. It was a pug dog. And I don't know why she's doing it. But I realized her birthday was coming up and she's a really good marketer and she's seeding a gift, right?

40:17But the funny thing happened, the two of you, like I started seeing these pug dogs everywhere in my neighborhood. I would go to the grocery store and the person in front of me is checking out at the cashier holding a pug dog. I'd be jogging in my neighborhood and I swear, there's this guy walking six pug dogs. And my question for everyone listening was, did those pug dogs just magically teleport and manifest into my neighborhood? No. They were always there, but my brain was deleting it because it wasn't important to me until I started asking the questions. So my question for everybody here is when they're reading, what questions are they asking?

40:52Because if you have questions about how can I use this, why must I use this, how does this relate to what I already know, and so on, then when you're reading, you're like, oh, there's a pug dog, there's a pug dog, there's a pug dog, right? And those questions give you focus, and the focus leads to comprehension and better retention. And then if you ask questions that nobody's asked before, you'll get answers nobody's ever gotten before. So I feel like even when you're meeting somebody for the first time, you want to remember their name, try asking yourself why. Like, why do I want to remember this person's name?

41:23Maybe to show the person some respect or create a business contact, a referral, a sale, practice these things I learned on this podcast. Because again, reasons reap results. If we don't have a reason to remember something, we're probably not going to. And so I think a couple of ideas to improve our reading ability is your visual pacer. If you want greater speed, use your finger while you read. If you want better comprehension, ask more questions. So at the beginning of every chapter of Limitless, you'll see I have three priming questions. So that way there's a target when they're reading. So good.

42:02And then the other thing, the question is forced focus, right? It forces you to be present as opposed to maybe disempowering questions like, how come I can't learn this? Or why does this always happen to me? Or this end rule. And then this cycle of negative momentum. That's really what we're doing in the Full Focus Planner. When people are using the Full Focus Planner and they open it up to the daily page, they're asking themselves, what are the three most important things I must accomplish today? Which is very different than how am I going to get all this stuff done? That's a very different kind of question.

42:35Same thing when they're doing a weekly preview and they're looking back and they're looking ahead and they're doing that on a quarterly basis annually. I mean, I think that's such a breakthrough. I have another question that I want to explore just a little bit, the mind-body connection. And I want to give you a scenario that happened to me just this week. I was in Chicago for a workshop that I go to once a quarter. and the night before I was very agitated because I was attending a meeting that was a lot of conflict involved. So I couldn't go to sleep. I only slept five hours and normally I get about eight, seven or seven and a half to eight.

43:10Got five hours. The next morning I woke up and I felt like I had sleep deprivation induced dementia. I literally could not, and I don't even know if that's a thing, but I couldn't remember stuff. My short-term memory was gone. I could hardly talk. And it was the craziest thing. But then I got a good night's sleep. Everything's back to normal. Yeah. What's happening there? Sure. So sleep is so very important for the brain. I mean, you just illustrated when you get a poor night's sleep, how's your focus the next day? How's your ability to solve problems? How's your mental energy? How's your memory?

43:44Three things for the brain. When you sleep, you consolidate short to long-term memory. And so people have a long-term, anyone listening has long-term memory issues, you might want to get a sleep study. Your doctor, you don't, no longer do you have to go into a clinic. They could send it to you. You could do it at home. It's pretty simple and straightforward. The second thing that happens when you sleep, the sewage system in your brain kicks in and you clean out the beta amyloid plaque that could lead to brain aging challenges. So I lost my grandmother to Alzheimer's when I was seven. And she used my, this is my parents' work a lot.

44:20She was like everything for me. So we donated all the proceeds, my author proceeds to Limitless to Alzheimer's research for women. Women are twice as likely to experience Alzheimer's than men, yet most of the research is done on men and treatments on men and also to build schools in Ghana, Guatemala, Kenya. But we're very passionate about scaling people to have, again, better brains and better learning. I would say also when you sleep, you dream. And people don't realize, they might not realize that a lot of things in culture were created in dream states. Like Mary Shelley came up with Frankenstein in her dream.

45:01Paul McCartney came up with the song Yesterday in his dream. A chemist came up with a framework for the periodic table in his dream. And my question for everybody here is like, what do you, because your brain doesn't shut off at night. In some ways, it's more active and integrating, which is learn and long-term memory and cleaning out your brain. And what are we dreaming at night that could be very significant to solving problems that we're focused on during the day? That's why in the morning, I write down my dreams. I have this process that just help us remember our dreams because I feel like there's a lot of treasure there also as well.

45:35How cool. Yeah. But sleep is so very important. My favorite sleep ideas that really move the needle. And there's a whole chapter in there. Direct sunlight first thing in the morning, 10 minutes. Not through the glass window because that could filter out some of the spectrum of light. And the reason is your eyes are the only part of your brain that's outside of your skull. And it helps to reset your circadian rhythm so you sleep better that evening. And number two, I'm very sensitive to caffeine. So I have to be careful past noon personally. I would say most people have an alarm to wake up, I would highly recommend use that same alarm to go to sleep.

46:10Meaning your brain loves a rhythm, your sleep loves a schedule, even on the weekends. If you go to sleep at the same time and wake up at the same time, you'll get better sleep overall. And then the big ones, we would know thousands of years ago, it'd be time to sleep because the environment would tell us there'd be a decrease in temperature and decrease in light. So cooler, you know, darker, you know, the better. And what's hard is like, you know, when you're on your screens, because that produces light and it fools our mind into thinking it's still daylight. And so that's why I don't like touching my phone the first 30 minutes of the day.

46:44And then the last 30 minutes of the day, it's just kind of non-negotiable. That's a good rule.

46:59Well, Jim, I feel like we could talk to you for a day and a half about this, and I hate to cut it off, but I know you have a hard stop. So we have a quick lightning round of questions to ask you. The first one is what's your biggest obstacle right now in getting the double win, winning at work and succeeding at life? So we have a 17 month old. You could just put a period right after that. Yeah. Five hours of sleep would be, would be a blessing. Uh, right, right about now. Um, yeah, it's so that, and I don't see it as a balance. Like it's so like the words I affect me a lot. So for me, balance feels, um, like, uh, if you look up balance is equal weight, you know, and I feel like not every, my life is not equal weight.

47:52Like I don't want to spend an equal amount of time in the gym as I do on my mission. And, you know, like if you look at like an orchestra, not every instrument or person contributes this equal amount, but they come together and there's a science and an art to it and create a symphony and there's harmony. And so that's what I'm striving for. I think what gets in my way besides a growing family would be I want to do so much. I feel like this moral impetus to help as many people as possible. And sometimes when I allow myself time to self-care or do something else, I feel like am I not doing enough?

48:37So that's an internal struggle. I think a lot of people will relate to that. How do you know when you've gotten the double win? Not perfectly, because none of us ever get it perfectly, but how do you know? I could tell you exactly what works for me. Instead of touching my phone first thing in the morning, I do a mental exercise I've done forever. I keep my eyes closed when I wake up, and I just do a thought experiment. I imagine myself coming back to bed, and my wife asked me how my day was. I was like, today was amazing. Today was incredible. We really crushed it today. And then I asked myself what had to happen in order for me to feel that way.

49:16And I come up with, this is interesting for double one, I come up with three things personally and three things professionally. And those six things, and they don't have to be huge things, become my target. And those are my six things I focus on for that day. Beautiful. I love that. Yeah. Because I feel like in sports, and I don't watch a lot of sports, you know when it's time to celebrate because the scoreboard tells you. We don't think we create that for our days. And I'm not going to, like your to-do list has 300 things and that's, yeah, that's not giving me the, I focus on the thing. I think the most important thing is not about time management, it's about priority management, it's about mind management.

49:54And the most important thing is to keep the most important thing the most important thing. Yeah, well said. So I came into that. Okay, last question. What's one ritual or routine that helps you do what you do? Okay. Besides that thought experiment I do about the kind of the three and the three in the morning, I just want to make sure I get my meds in every day. Meds. And they're not pharmaceutical. It's just an acronym. M is meditation. I need that 10 minutes or 20 minutes to disconnect, to reconnect. And that's very important to me. That's like my time. The E is exercise. Movement is key for the brain.

50:34When you move, as your body moves, your brain grooves. And so when you exercise, you create brain-derived neurotropic factors, BDNF, which is like fertilizer for neuroplasticity. And you also create dopamine, serotonin, endorphins, these neurotransmitters that are so important for cognitive health. The D is my diet. So one more ritual is just what you eat matters, especially for your gray matter. and there's certain is a whole i have two chapters in the book on neuro nutrition one on diet and one on supplements and there are certain ingredients that have just are neuroprotective for some foods like like like avocados and blueberries i call them brain berries you know wild salmon sardines turmeric eggs if your diet allows a choline it's very good for cognitive health dark chocolate and then also nutrients that have are nootropics that have moved the needle to help me focus to help improve memory.

51:26I have a list. If people don't want to get the book, it's a free one at brainnutrition.com. And I list 30 supplements, ingredients with human studies that have been shown to be good for cognitive health and performance. So that's diet. And then finally, the S in meds is sleep. You know, what we were talking about earlier is so, so very important. So I guess my one thing is meds, but it's really like, it's really four things. So I kind of game that. I love that. It's so practical. And I think it gives us a good track to run on. And you've added so much value in this podcast. I mean, my head's exploding.

52:01I feel like we've scratched the surface and probably the listeners do too. So pick up Jim's book, Limitless, go to his website, check out his courses. Can you give us the URL for that? Yeah. People just, I'm easy to find online. Just search Jim quick. He has spelled right. K-W-I-K. it's my real name, my father's name, my grandfather's name. I didn't change it to do what I do. And yeah, in the podcast app on YouTube or wherever you're listening to this, I just want to thank both of you for having me on your show. I would do this just to be able to connect deeper with you. And I look forward to having you on our show.

52:38And I just want to remind everybody that I believe that there's a version of yourself that's patiently waiting. And the goal is we show up every single day until we're introduced. I'm not talking about hustle. I think actually it's this pendulum. You can stretch, but there's this surrender, there's this force, and there's this flow. But the things that we do, I always tell people life is like an egg. If an egg is broken by an outside force, then life ends. But if an egg is broken by an inside force, then life begins. And great things begin on the inside. And I want to remind everyone who are listening to this, they have greatness inside of them.

53:13They've self-selected. they're on this path to reveal and realize their fullest potential. And it's a real honor to be on this journey with all of you. Thank you so much, Jim. Thanks, Jim. Phenomenal.

53:29Okay. I got to be honest. My head exploded. I know, right? That was so powerful. And I've got so many things I want to do. I feel like I just added 10 things to my to-do list, but at the very top for me is I've got to learn speed reading. Not because I want to read more content, which I do, but I also want to retain more. And so I'm just amazed to think that you can actually do both of those things at the same time. I know. I kept thinking about my kids with their learning challenges that they have and how much his strategies could help them. But I'm also, like many of you, I am a very busy mom with five kids.

54:06until recently, I've been in a home renovation and trying to run and grow a business and a coach. There's so many things going on. I love to learn, but I don't have a lot of time to do it. And I would say that's at the top of my list of frustrations. It's like our daughter for Mother's Day filled out this little thing all about my mom. And it said, if my mom had more time, and she said she would take a nap, which is true, but she would also read even more. And so I feel like I just got time given back to me that I can reinvest in other areas while really fulfilling my potential as a learner. Yeah.

54:38I think it expanded my vision for what's possible. I can read more books. I can recall more information. And the whole memory thing, that also was outstanding because I thought, I really want to convey to people that I'm passionate about this, that they matter, that they're seen, that they're acknowledged. And nothing does that better than remembering their name or remembering facts about them. Yes. But I've, up until now, I've struggled with that. And I even try, like before we have a mastermind or some kind of event, I'm always trying to review the names and everything to get familiar with them.

55:11But there's got to be a better way. And Jim's got that. And I'm excited about what that's going to make possible for my relationships. Yeah, I think so too. And relationships are such a huge part of being a professional. You know, I mean, that's really where the magic happens or where it doesn't happen. And I think this, again, it's another leverage point that we have not taken advantage of until now. And, you know, I mean, at this season of our careers, there's not a lot of things we've literally never heard of before. But like the ideas that he shared, I was like, I've never heard that before.

55:42That is so fascinating. I cannot wait to dig in to the details of the book and see how I can put this into practice. As a professional speaker, one of the things I enjoyed was not only his content, but how he packaged it. Yes. Like he was a master of having very clear frameworks like the meds framework. Yes. And being very pithy in terms of how he said things so that they were memorable. Yep. So that's also an aspiration that he didn't really talk about, but it's an aspiration for me. I want to be more like Jim. And I'm an introvert. You're an introvert. So he shared that. Okay. So my favorite one of those that he shared was breaking an egg.

56:16When he was talking about the egg, you know, what did he say when it breaks from the inside? Well, he said when it breaks from the outside, that's a bad thing. Right. And that's death. Yeah. And when it breaks from the inside, that's a good thing because that's the beginning of life. Yeah. I mean, will you ever forget that? No. No. You can see it in your mind. It's so great. Great metaphor. Well, guys, I hope you'll take one thing from this show today and put it into practice. We'd encourage you to leave us a review, preferably a five-star review, but only if you can do that honestly. But do that for us wherever you listen to podcasts because it will help us to expand the reach of the podcast so that we have a greater impact and get this message of the double win out to the public.