Jim Kwik: How to Protect Your Brain Health, Memory, and Focus in the Age of AI | Mental Health | E414

11:11Hala Taha:or something like that.

11:12Jim Kwik:But Seinfeld talks about common things. They had an episode where they parked the car. The whole episode was just trying to find the car.

11:20Hala Taha:We've all been there.

11:21Jim Kwik:But yeah, I feel bad for your friend. That's embarrassing.

11:26Hala Taha:It's embarrassing. And it made her feel like she wasn't important, that he must be like talking to so many girls or that she wasn't a focus.

11:34Jim Kwik:Or he didn't care.

11:35Hala Taha:Or he didn't care.

11:36Jim Kwik:Yeah.

11:36Hala Taha:So I'd love to understand when we remember things, whether it's people's names or their kids' names or a story they told us in the past, how does that improve our networking and relationship?

11:47Jim Kwik:I think it's huge because it's, you know, they say success is what you know. So we teach people how to, you know, know that faster, right? Read it faster, learn it faster. It's who you know. So remembering them is very important. But it's also who knows you. And I feel like today, especially it's helped so many people with their confidence. Like when you know you can walk into a room and retain a lot of the information from conversations and people's names, you walk in different because in psychology, they have a confidence-competence loop that the more confident you get, the more confident you are.

12:20Jim Kwik:And I think being confident in your memory and your ability to recall information, especially in this expert economy, you know, where nobody listening to this as an entrepreneur, aspiring entrepreneurs paid, you know, for their brute strength, right? It's your brain strength. It's not your muscle power today. It's your mind power. It's not like we're working on fields and, you know, in the agriculture age or industrial age, moving things in factories. It's our ability to come up with new ideas. And a lot of creativity comes from memory also, from remembering things, you know, being a generalist, knowing, you know, a good amount about a lot of things, but then connecting those dots, you know, to innovate, you know, like a phone, like what Steve Jobs did, right there's a camera and there's a calculator and there's a there's a their phone and all this other things took you know different things created something brand new and entrepreneurs that's what we're doing we're innovating you know all the time um but i would say that uh remembering names is very important because you need to be able to stand out and when you have you have a what i call quick recall and you're able to recall information well people feel like that you were thinking about them right that you remember their conversations that they that you that they were important.

13:27You know, there's a, what's, what's the quote?

13:29Jim Kwik:People don't care how much you know until they know much you care. Like how are you going to show somebody as an entrepreneur and care for their health, their family, their finances, you know, whatever you have to offer them. If you don't care enough, just remember things about them. Totally. You know, so, you know, cause even if you don't remember like that kind of thing, nothing, you know, past that would count.

13:47Hala Taha:And you just lose trust so much. Like if you don't remember what you were supposed to do for your client or what you talked about on the last call and what you're supposed to implement. Like you could lose trust so fast if you can't retain.

14:00Jim Kwik:Absolutely. And people want to nowadays want to work with the best. And I think, you know, to be able to stand out before you sell anything, you sell yourself. Right. But absolutely. Like if you remember people's conversations and what they said and their preferences and the problems that they're dealing with, the things that they value in life, the things that they're proud of, the things that keep them up at night, then people feel like you're just thinking about them all the time. I can't see a situation where that wouldn't be helpful for an entrepreneur. Absolutely.

14:29Hala Taha:Yeah, Bam, I genuinely feel ahead of the curve with AI for the first time because last year, I felt like I couldn't see the value from it. I would use AI and it would give me back dumb responses. And I was using ChatGPT like a search engine to draft an email here or there, but I wasn't using it effectively. So I went to MindStone's AI Breakthrough Weekend with my business partner, Kate. I learned so many foundational skills that I use every day at Yap Media. Everything that I touch now involves AI. And Mindstone gave me the tools to actually make AI effective rather than just feeling like it was a bunch of hype.

15:03Hala Taha:And in fact, I built an app in 15 minutes at this retreat. And when I came back, me and Kate were like, we've got to put our team through this training. And so Mindstone has this AI competency program. It's a four-week totally online training that's super affordable. And we put the entire team, 60 people through this program. The productivity and the efficiency increase at Yap Media has been absolutely incredible. They've got their own proprietary tool called Rebel. It connects our email, our Slack. It attends all of our meetings and takes notes. And then it basically acts as like a second brain.

15:36Hala Taha:You can use any tool that you want, Claude, ChatGPT, whatever. It's the actual foundational principles of how to use AI correctly. That's what it teaches you. And if you guys want to experience Mindstone and take their four-week AI competency program, Yap listeners get 10 % off at experience.mindstone.com slash Yap. That's experience.mindstone.com slash Yap.

15:59Hala Taha:Hey, Yap fam. This commercial is for my ladies. I don't know about you, but I hate wearing a bra. But sometimes you have to wear a bra, like under a t-shirt. And when I have to wear a bra, I choose Honey Love. Honey Love does not make you choose between feeling supported and feeling comfortable. Their bras are wire-free, but still give you that lifted, flattering, secure feeling. You still get cleavage. And I've especially been loving their new crossover contour bra. It has light foam pads that create a smooth, contoured shape under your clothes. And I'm also obsessed with their shapewear. Now, shapewear is so hit or miss.

16:31Hala Taha:I've got a whole drawer full of shapewear that I don't use. I'm sure you can relate. But I always grab their superpower short. Honey Love has great sculptwear. It's breathable. It smooths you under your clothes. It doesn't feel like I'm squeezing into something that doesn't fit me and I can't wait to take it off at the end of the day. Plus, Honey Love is female founded and designed by women. And you can tell because every detail feels thoughtful. Treat yourself to the most advanced bras and shapewear on the market. Use our exclusive link to save 20 % off at honeylove.com slash profiting. That's honeylove.com slash profiting.

17:01Hala Taha:And after you check out, they'll ask you where you heard about them. And please support our show by telling them that Young and Profiting sent you. Experience the new standard and comfort and support with Honeylove. Go to honeylove.com slash profiting for 20 % off.

17:17Hala Taha:Yeah, fam, I am a perfectionist. I always want to make sure that I'm putting out the best offer possible to the world. So when I launched my LinkedIn masterclass and mastermind, I poured my heart and soul into the content, and I knew that this was going to be transformative for all of my students. But I didn't know how to launch a website. I didn't know how to handle payments. I didn't know how to launch a payment plan. a subscription. I didn't know how to answer their questions in the middle of the night when they're trying to check out. But I left it all to Shopify. Shopify makes it so easy for us entrepreneurs to launch our e-commerce storefront.

17:50Hala Taha:They've got all these templates and AI tools. They make payment as easy as just one click. Shopify has been the best business partner for me over the past five years because they're so innovative. They're always thinking of new features from how to make sure that your cart doesn't go abandoned to having things like chatbots and helping you implement chatbots on your store. So please stop reorganizing your business plan for the 17th time. Build a storefront. Put the offer out there. All you need is the idea and Shopify can handle the rest. If you're serious about hearing your first start your free trial at shopify.com slash profiting today.

18:24Hala Taha:You heard that right. Start your free trial at shopify.com slash profiting.

18:28Jim Kwik:That's shopify.com slash profiting.

18:30Hala Taha:Okay, I want to do something really fun. So you are incredible at recalling anything, names, words, whatever it is. So I thought it'd be fun to list off 10 random items.

18:44Jim Kwik:Okay.

18:44Hala Taha:And then in, you know, 10 minutes or so, I'm going to ask you to recall those items.

18:49Jim Kwik:Yeah. Can people watching or listening try it also?

18:52Hala Taha:Yeah. Because in the meanwhile, I'm going to ask you how we can remember things better.

18:57Jim Kwik:Yeah, it'd be great if people at home could also go through the list and then take their time and try to remember it. Don't write it down. I would challenge everyone not to write it down. I believe there's no such thing as a good or bad memory. There's a trained memory, an untrained memory. So yes, listen to this, memorize it. Let's memorize it all together. Don't write it down. And maybe I could give some tips later on how people could remember that.

19:22Hala Taha:Yeah, and then you guys can rewind and go back and see if you can actually remember it after learning. Yeah.

19:28Jim Kwik:Oh, we'll go through the list later. That'd be fun.

19:30Hala Taha:Okay. One, pink flamingo.

19:33Jim Kwik:A pink flamingo.

19:35Hala Taha:Two, Tesla key.

19:37Jim Kwik:Tesla key?

19:38Hala Taha:Three, blueberry muffin.

19:41Jim Kwik:Blueberry muffin. Oh, you're making me, you're making me. Blueberries, by the way, are great brain food.

19:46Hala Taha:Four, golden microphone.

19:48Jim Kwik:Golden microphone.

19:50Hala Taha:Five, broken iPhone.

19:52Jim Kwik:Broken, a broken iPhone?

19:54Hala Taha:Yep.

19:55Jim Kwik:You came up with these randomly?

19:56Hala Taha:Yes.

19:57Jim Kwik:Okay. I'm giving people a little bit of time to come up with theirs.

20:01Hala Taha:Six, red high heel.

20:03Jim Kwik:Red high heel. Just one or two?

20:07Hala Taha:Just one.

20:08Jim Kwik:Okay. Red high heel.

20:09Hala Taha:Seven, brain-shaped balloon.

20:12Jim Kwik:Brain-shaped balloon? It literally is random.

20:17Hala Taha:Eight,$100 bill.

20:20Jim Kwik:$100 bill?

20:21Hala Taha:A Benjamin, yes.

20:22Jim Kwik:Okay.

20:23Hala Taha:Nine, mini treadmill.

20:25Jim Kwik:treadmill a mini treadmill yes for a mouse for a mouse okay 10 diamond notebook 10 is diamond notebook how many do you think you could do well i've taught people how to memorize like pi to like thousands of digits but it's it's all it's all it's it's it's all the same thing it's the same principle but i just but um yeah so everybody who's listening just do the best and notice also not only just, you know, how many you remember when we come back to the list, also think about how you remembered it. Like what was your strategy, you know, for that?

21:01Hala Taha:What is that process? Like, how are you remembering things?

21:04Jim Kwik:I mean, even in high school, we learned like memory is just three stages. You encode it, you store it, and then you retrieve it, you know? And if there's a break in any one of those, you're not going to get the remembrance that, you know, that you desire and that you really deserve. You know, I really, you know, for people that are connected to my work, they know that I had a brain injury when I was five years old. Because of it, I had learning disabilities. My mother became a special education teacher to help me with my challenges. I had migraines every day. It took me three years longer to know how to read.

21:38Jim Kwik:And so, you know.

21:39Hala Taha:They called you the boy with the broken brain? That was...

21:41Jim Kwik:Yeah, that was my, and that was all through school. through, it wasn't just like elementary school, it was middle school, junior high, high school. I just, I worked hard, you know, I came, you know, from immigrant parents, you know, we live in the back of the laundromat that my mom worked at. You know, we worked hard, but I just didn't get the grades. You know, it's just, it's a challenge. But I realized, you know, after this might, been doing this for 34 years, it's not how smart you are, it's how are you smart. It's not how smart you are, it's really how are you smart. And we all have different intelligence.

22:13Jim Kwik:And that intelligence, even in a world of AI, it's not fixed, you know, like your shoe size, it can be trained, but school again, teaches you what to learn and what to remember, what to think, but not how to. So, you know, I focus on this thing called meta learning, which is a science and art of learning how to learn, which I again, think it's the best thing that all entrepreneurs could focus on. Because once you can learn how to learn faster, you could read three times faster, understand more from it, you know, remember something in a fraction of time that normally takes people, you know, hours, then what can you apply it to?

22:44Jim Kwik:You could apply it towards money, right? You could, you know, that subject or skill, Mandarin, martial arts, music, management, you know, marketing, everything gets so much easier once you can learn how to learn.

22:54Hala Taha:Yeah.

22:55Jim Kwik:It's like the biggest advantage.

22:56Hala Taha:So you've got this strategy, I think, related to memory specifically called MOM.

23:01Jim Kwik:Yes.

23:01Hala Taha:Can you tell us about that? Yeah.

23:03Jim Kwik:So it's also interesting. I wrote Limitless, you know, in like less than two months. we donated proceeds to charity we built schools in Ghana, Guatemala, Kenya for girls who don't have access girls and boys who don't have access to education and then we provided healthcare because a lot of people are sick so they couldn't go to school or in clean water also we donated to Alzheimer's research for women women are twice as likely to experience Alzheimer's

23:28Hala Taha:than men, twice as likely

23:31Jim Kwik:I lost my, when I was going through my challenges when I was seven because my parents were always working um my grandmother uh raised me and uh she passed when I was seven to Alzheimer's so in memory of her but um so I bring this up I mean everybody has their kind of their origin story but my struggles became my strength you know that adversity can be an advantage that would challenge comes change like I don't know how one one strong person that had an easy life you know and entrepreneurship is not necessarily an easy path I think it's extremely worthwhile you do it right and I'm a big fan of, I've been an entrepreneur my whole life.

24:10Jim Kwik:I feel like, you know, be able to solve problems, be able to move the economy, be able to create jobs and yeah, really, really, really, really good things. But when it comes to mom, I wrote it in Greece, most of it, that memory is the largest chapter in Limitless because I found out there was a goddess of memory and she was the mom.

24:28Hala Taha:A goddess of memory?

24:29Jim Kwik:There's a goddess of memory and she's the mother, the mom, to the nine muses of science, literature, and art. So all of science, literature, and art, their mother is the goddess of memory. So fascinating. And then I got curious about, like, what did people, like, I base our strategies based on the latest, you know, the neuroscience of how people learn and remember. And also I wanted to know, like, historically, what did ancient civilizations do? Like, what did they do in ancient Greece to remember things before there was a printing press?

25:01Hala Taha:Mm-hmm.

25:02Jim Kwik:Right? They had to remember things. Mom has three principles to quick recall, the M. Let's apply that towards names in business. Let's say someone listening or watching, they have trouble remembering names, but we had a briefcase here or a suitcase of$1 million cash. I know you have an international audience, whatever. They put a lot of money, tax-free. If you just remember the name of the next stranger you meet, who's going to remember that person's name for$1 million? Everyone.

25:32Hala Taha:Everyone.

25:33Jim Kwik:So as a memory coach, my job is to call people on their BS, their belief systems, right? It's not true you can't remember a name. It's the first M stands for motivation. Like a lot of people aren't feeling or presencing like how important it is to remember someone's name. So a simple hack is just like, you know, before you meet somebody, you even open up your mouth, you know you're going to talk to them soon. Just why do you want to remember this person's name? So it's like, why do I care? Yeah, it's like, and then come up with a couple of answers. Like maybe it's to show the person respect. Maybe it's to make a sale.

26:08Jim Kwik:Maybe it's to get a referral. At the very least, maybe it's to practice what they learned on this podcast. You know, without a reason, you won't remember because reasons reap results. And so I just feel like if you don't feel it, you're not going to remember it, you know, because it's not relevant to you. So that alone, I think, is very important. The O in mom is observation. A lot of people aren't forgetting the name. they're just not even listening. You know what I mean? Like at events that you go to, sometimes you're with someone, but you know that? They're looking over your shoulder, you know, your shoulder to see who else is in the room.

26:43Jim Kwik:Or maybe we're guilty of talking to somebody, they're talking, but we're thinking about what we're going to say.

26:48Hala Taha:Or like for some reason, self-conscious about like your outfit or something.

26:52Jim Kwik:Something like that. Yeah, exactly. And so like, and so we're not even present. And so the art of memory is the art of attention, you know and so i remember years ago i was um i was i went to a charity event it was like 2 000 people and i get assigned to a table so i go to my assigned table i'm the first one there and then um you know a few minutes later uh force whitaker the oscar winning actor sits next to me and then richard branson sits down and ashton kutcher and his uh twin brother which i didn't and Clinton sits right next to me. And I had met him a few years earlier and we had this brief conversation, but he sits down and he remembered my name.

27:33Hala Taha:Wow.

27:34Jim Kwik:And, but then I was like, yeah, I said the same thing. Wow. And then I was like, oh, of course he was told who he was sitting with, right? Sorry. He picks up the conversation that we started three years earlier and nobody was privy to that conversation. Wow. And I was like, you know, I'm the memory. I need to know how you're doing this. You know, I think genius leaves clues when somebody does something magical. There's a method behind the magic. And he's telling me this story about his grandfather in Arkansas in the living room telling stories to the kids. But after he would tell the stories, he would do something very specific and different.

28:06Jim Kwik:He would go to each child and quiz them to see if they were paying attention. and and it was more than that but when he explained this to me i felt this kind of ease and also unease where have you ever been with somebody and they're like talking you feel like you're the only person that exists yeah they're like they're so present yeah and politics aside you know most people would say clinton you know strong charisma great communicator you know uh you know a great uh you know or he's got an incredible memory and i think this powerful presence that he has with people, his incredible memory, his powerful presence comes from being powerfully present.

28:46Jim Kwik:And it's not reserved, right, to just an elite few. Anybody could train that, but we have to really just be with somebody, you know.

28:55Hala Taha:And that makes you a good leader. Like, it's no wonder people want to follow him because he builds so much trust with the people around him by just recalling information about them.

29:04Jim Kwik:That's huge. Because it's also like, even if you do this mental experiment and write down or if you can't write something down in your notes, picture the word listen in your mind. And if you do the little brain scramble, like a little brain exercise and move the letters around, it also spells another word perfectly.

29:23Hala Taha:Silent.

29:24Jim Kwik:And I think that's the key. A great book, Dr. Stephen Covey, I mention a lot of books, Seven Habits Highly Effective People. But one of the habits is seek first to understand, then to be understood. But in order to understand, we have to be really present you know, with the person.

29:40Hala Taha:I love that.

29:42Jim Kwik:Yeah.

29:42Hala Taha:I love that story about Bill Clinton. Okay, let's go back to that list. Let's see if you remembered that list, one through 10.

29:49Jim Kwik:Yeah. And people could also check themselves also. Was it a pink flamingo?

29:56Hala Taha:Yep.

29:57Jim Kwik:And then it was the Tesla key.

30:01Hala Taha:Yep.

30:03Jim Kwik:Blueberry muffin. I call blueberries brain. This is insane. I call them brain berries, you know, without a doubt. A golden microphone.

30:10Hala Taha:Uh-huh, that's correct.

30:11Jim Kwik:And then you have your broken iPhone. And you have that big red, what do they call those women's shoe? The high heels?

30:22Hala Taha:Yep.

30:22Jim Kwik:Yeah.

30:23Hala Taha:Well, it was one high heel.

30:25Jim Kwik:Yeah, one. Absolutely, there's one. And then there's a big brain balloon. Was that a brain balloon?

30:33Hala Taha:Brain-shaped balloon, very close.

30:35Jim Kwik:Yeah. and the$100 bill correct and then you have that really small little treadmill for the mouse

30:43Hala Taha:yep

30:44Jim Kwik:and then you have mini treadmill

30:46Hala Taha:yeah yeah

30:47Jim Kwik:and then you have your diamond notebook

30:49Hala Taha:wow yeah wow

30:51Jim Kwik:but this is the thing and we could have done it for 20, 30, 300 words because once you know how to do something you just do it it just takes more time you know an episode you know just like if I pass a microphone in an audience and people share their names and memorizing their names, you know, 30, same thing you do for 10 names, you do for 100 names. It just takes more time because everyone has to introduce themselves. What are you doing?

31:14Hala Taha:Are you visualizing it? Yeah, and then, like,

31:16Jim Kwik:once you understand your memory works, you could, you know, you could even, if, like, you know, we're here in Austin and I'm here pretty frequent, you know, if we see each other at a restaurant 30 days from now, let's say, you could say, Jim needs to remember that list and also remember most of that list without even rehearsing it once. Wow. You know, Or I'll do it backwards and go diamond notebook, mini treadmill,$100 bill, brain-shaped balloon, and the red high heel. That's really big in my mind. But once you understand how it works, then you can work. And this is the kind of stuff, don't you wish this had been so useful back in school?

31:56Jim Kwik:Yeah. If you learned it in school, how easy it would remember the periodic table or whatever we had to remember, history or anything. and, you know, but imagine applying something that for something that's random and not really that interesting to something that you are interested in. That's very relevant to your life. You're going to remember it even easier because it, you know, has a point.

32:17Hala Taha:Yeah, bam, I genuinely feel ahead of the curve with AI for the first time because last year, I felt like I couldn't see the value from it. I would use AI and it would give me back dumb responses. And I was using ChatDBT like a search engine to draft an email here or there, but I wasn't using it effectively. So I went to Mindstone's AI Breakthrough Weekend with my business partner, Kate. I learned so many foundational skills that I use every day at Yap Media. Everything that I touch now involves AI. And Mindstone gave me the tools to actually make AI effective rather than just feeling like it was a bunch of hype.

32:52Hala Taha:And in fact, I built an app in 15 minutes at this retreat. And when I came back, me and Kate were like, we've got to put our team through this training. And so Mindstone has this AI competency program. It's a four-week, totally online training that's super affordable. And we put the entire team, 60 people, through this program. The productivity and the efficiency increase at Gap Media has been absolutely incredible. They've got their own proprietary tool called Rebel. It connects our email, our Slack. It attends all of our meetings and takes notes. And then it basically acts as like a second brain.

33:24Hala Taha:You can use any tool that you want, Claude, ChatGPT, whatever. It's the actual foundational principles of how to use AI correctly. That's what it teaches you. And if you guys want to experience MindStone and take their four-week AI competency program, YAP listeners get 10 % off at experience.mindstone.com slash YAP. That's experience.mindstone.com slash YAP.

33:47Hala Taha:Hey, YAP Bam. This commercial is for my ladies. I don't know about you, but I hate wearing a bra. But sometimes you have to wear a bra, like under a t-shirt. And when I have to wear a bra, I choose Honey Love. Honey Love does not make you choose between feeling supported and feeling comfortable. Their bras are wire-free, but still give you that lifted, flattering, secure feeling. You still get cleavage. And I've especially been loving their new crossover contour bra. It has light foam pads that create a smooth, contoured shape under your clothes. And I'm also obsessed with their shapewear. Now, shapewear is so hit or miss.

34:19Hala Taha:I've got a whole drawer full of shapewear that I don't use. I'm sure you can relate. But I always grab their superpower short. Honeylove has great sculptwear. It's breathable. It smooths you under your clothes. It doesn't feel like I'm squeezing into something that doesn't fit me, and I can't wait to take it off at the end of the day. Plus, Honeylove is female-founded and designed by women. And you can tell because every detail feels thoughtful. Treat yourself to the most advanced bras and shapewear on the market. Use our exclusive link to save 20 % off at honeylove.com slash profiting. That's honeylove.com slash profiting.

34:49Hala Taha:And after you check out, they'll ask you where you heard about them. And please support our show by telling them that Young and Profiting sent you. Experience the new standard and comfort and support with Honeylove. Go to honeylove.com slash profiting for 20 % off.

35:05Hala Taha:Hey, Young and Profiters. When I think back to the early days of Yap Media, I was way too scrappy. I'm talking about working out of coffee shops, bouncing between public Wi-Fi networks, and hotspotting from my phone just to get through on a client call without the connection dropping. But looking back, it was actually adding a lot of unnecessary stress because you realize pretty quickly your business is only as strong as your connection. It's how you run meetings, serve clients, and keep everything moving. And that's exactly why I wish I had AT &T Business back then. They're built for small business owners who need their internet to work without second guessing it.

35:39Hala Taha:And once you've had that kind of reliability, you get real peace of mind. You can show it fully, close deals, serve your clients, and focus on growing your business without any of the stress. You need a provider that is as serious about your success as you are, like AT &T Business. Built to work. Get AT &T Business at business.att.com.

35:59Jim Kwik:That's business.att.com.

36:02Hala Taha:I remember in fourth grade, a Spanish teacher told us the countries and capitals of Central America and South America. Until this day, I can still say like Caracas, Venezuela, Bogota, Colombia, Ecuador, and I could just list them all off. But I couldn't tell you the capitals and states of America. Yeah, yeah. You know, because I didn't learn it in that way. So what are you exactly doing? Like, what are you doing to recall that?

36:29Jim Kwik:And I'm curious, because I would love wherever you're consuming this, maybe you could post a comment or something to see how well people did. Yeah. You know, like if people are willing to share. I could teach you 20 different ways to memorize that list.

36:42Hala Taha:Okay.

36:42Jim Kwik:You know, and after a while, like I can, I remember names without trying because once you know how to type, you know how to type, right? Once you know how to drive a car, you know how to drive a car, you know, maybe it takes a few weeks or 30 days. Once you know how to tie your shoes, you know how to tie your shoes. Memory is a skill, you know? And so once you know how to do it, you know, you could, you start to, and your confidence goes up and you could just do it more and more and you challenge yourself. But, you know, I could teach 20 different ways of remembering this list. One way that people wanted to is make a story out of it if they wanted to, right?

37:15Jim Kwik:They could start with the pink flamingo, right? And then all of a sudden, pink flamingo is going into a Tesla car and forgot their key. So they can't be able to get through it. And out of the sunroof comes all these blueberry muffins. Like imagine putting all these blueberry muffins inside of a Tesla car, a car without a key, right? That'd be kind of silly. And then all of a sudden somebody in the shopping, in the parking lot is, is on a screaming on a, on a, on a golden microphone, right? As, as an, as an example. And then they realize that, you know, saying, where's the key, whatever. And they realize like, here it is, but it's about a broken iPhone, right?

37:55Jim Kwik:And really easy, like right in their back pocket on the thing. And even just doing that, And I'm just making this up. This is not what I did. But just what it is, is first of all, it's a great exercise in creativity.

38:06Hala Taha:Yeah.

38:07Jim Kwik:Right. Entrepreneurs, I think, need to be very creative because I think the future belongs to creators. Second of all, when I mentioned there's no such thing as a good or bad memory, there's a trained memory, an untrained memory. This is training your memory, right? And so once you train your memory, you start remembering other things because you're training your attention, your imagination, your story information. And then you can work backwards from the story also as well. If you want to add, you know, the red high heel, you can put that into the story also as well. And imagine that red high heel, you know, that's coming from the iPhone or whatever.

38:40Jim Kwik:Imagine on the broken iPhone, there's an image on there of that red high heel, but the screen is broken, right? And then imagine it comes out of the phone tied to, you know, a brain-shaped balloon going up in the sky. And you bribe somebody$100 to get that balloon for you. And so you're attaching$100 to it. And somebody is going to go get that balloon. But maybe it's like a little mouse going on a little mini treadmill going towards it. And I think if it makes you laugh, it makes it memorable. Because emotion helps, right? Yeah, emotion helps a lot. And so that little mouse is on the treadmill now, obviously making a lot of traction.

39:22Jim Kwik:you know and then you know from there he's taking some notes in his you know his diamond his diamond notebook yeah um and that's just one way but there's certainly a lot of other ways but and as i go through it and i just talking about it some people listen and not be able to do it because they just listen but if they actually went through and imagined that little story and made up their own which is even better if you make up your own um that would be something that's really simple to do. And then by the way, those 10 things could have been cues or keywords for a speech, you know, as an example.

39:55Hala Taha:Oh, that's really smart. Like so that you can remember your talking points.

39:58Jim Kwik:Yeah. Like, like imagine like you, you, you chose that pink flamingo because it represented a key idea. They say a picture is worth a thousand words in a talk or an art toaster at a wedding or something like that, you know, or certain feature, you know, then it gets, you know, or maybe you want to talk about, you know, something that's embodied around Tesla, around energy, you know, technology, innovation, whatever it happens to be, and use that as your second point for your speech.

40:25Hala Taha:Yeah.

40:25Jim Kwik:You know, and then maybe going there to, you know, a recipe or healthy eating or blue, you want to remember blueberries as a good brain food.

40:33Hala Taha:Are you visualizing it in your brain or are you like, are you visualizing the words themselves or like what the words represent?

40:41Jim Kwik:People could do either one. Everybody's a little bit different. It's not how smart you are. It's how are you smart. Everyone learns a little bit different. Some people can't visualize as well, or they don't think they can. And so those people could get more of a feeling for it and maybe hear the words or maybe in different tones or tonalities or voices. Same thing with remember someone's name. You want to meet somebody named Matt, you can imagine them using their time. Imagine you're at a networking event or you're at a conference. You meet somebody and it's really fast. Someone says, hi, my name is Matt.

41:12Jim Kwik:And you just imagine using their ties like a doormat. And it's so silly. You would never do that. Yeah. And, but what it does is it overcomes what I call the six second syndrome. You know, somebody tells you their name, you have six seconds to do something with it. Otherwise it's gone, right? The handshake breaks, name just falls right to the floor. Yeah. This is giving you some mental glue to be able to store the information. And then, you know, later on when you're saying goodbye, you see this person there. Oh, I remember that tie. What was I doing? I was wiping my feet like a doormat. What's the person's name?

41:44Jim Kwik:Matt. And then this is a way, remember I said you encode, you store, you retrieve. This is a way of encoding it in a way that's memorable. And it's stored right on the person because the tie is the reminder, you know, as an example. But once you know the person's name is Matt, then the picture disappears. It was a means to an end.

42:02Hala Taha:Just to remember his name.

42:03Jim Kwik:Because the opposite is what most people did to memorize those 10 words. They would go pink flamingo, Tesla key, blueberry muffin, golden microphone, and so on. Repetition. The problem with repetition is it takes time. Like repeating someone's name 50 times takes time.

42:21Hala Taha:So are we just kind of creating a mini story around each word?

42:26Jim Kwik:Yeah. I mean, you think about how people remember things through history.

42:30Hala Taha:Yeah.

42:31Jim Kwik:I mean, you think about the parables from the Bible. like stories and you think about why we use stories in business right because they they're vivid and people could see themselves inside the story and we're so they did uh they did a study called the baker baker paradox you know imagine we're in the studio and somebody walks in did this with a focus group somebody walks in and say hi my name is mr baker and then that someone that would leave somebody else would come in and say hi i am a baker right somebody else come in saying hi, I'm Miss Taylor. Somebody else comes in, hi, my name is Miss Taylor.

43:06Jim Kwik:And then they did that repeatedly. And then all of a sudden they said, okay, which ones do you remember more of the names? And do you think they remember the name or the occupation? Probably the occupation.

43:23Hala Taha:Yeah.

43:23Jim Kwik:And part of it is because when somebody says they're a baker - You imagine them like cooking and stuff. There's a story. Yeah. You probably know they wake up very early to be able to make their bread. So there's a whole picture and image, and it makes it more memorable than a word that's abstract.

43:39Hala Taha:Does it help if you're meeting somebody at a networking event, like, okay, that's Hala the podcaster, or that's kind of just attaching something else to it?

43:48Jim Kwik:The more connections you make, like some people will go, instead of seeing Matt, you know, so like Mark, I use a marker, put a checkmark right on their forehead, and I'll just always remember that. And if it makes me laugh or smile, then, you know, people could say it's very, you know, childlike. But, you know, who are the fastest learners? Like kids. They could learn musical instruments, languages, everything. And they make fun of names all the time. I mean, I know as a kid, my name was, you know, Quick is my real name. It's not like a stage name. I didn't change it. It's my father's name, my grandfather's name.

44:18Jim Kwik:But people made, you know, Nestle Quick or they call me Slow. But that's how kids learn, you know, naturally. So I'm not saying when I, for David, I use a slingshot for David and Goliath, right, to the nose. Now, I'm not sharing this with David, right? Yeah, you don't want him to know. That's just what you're doing. But some people could just, FDR would do this. He would walk around his office, President FDR, and his strategy was he wouldn't picture, turn the name into a picture, like Carol, singing Christmas carols, or Mary, getting married, or something like that. And some names you come up with something that sounds like, Like, have you ever forgot someone's name and you start going through the alphabet?

44:54Jim Kwik:It does start with an A, a B.

44:56Hala Taha:And then you get it eventually, usually.

44:58Jim Kwik:Or you get really nervous when you get to like W because there's not many letters after that. But imagine a letter could remind you of the name. Imagine something even that is like even stronger, you know, like Carol, Christmas Carol. Like that's going to have more retention for sure. But FDR would be very, very good with names. He could go around his office, remember everyone's name. and how he reportedly did it was instead of putting a picture like David, you know, like the statue or whatever, he would imagine like the name right on the forehead, you know, and you can almost, people can look at me right now in the camera and see Jim or they could say, wow, Jim has to go to the gym and lift weights or whatever happens to be.

45:40Jim Kwik:It just gives you more to remember than just, you know, a random word.

45:44Hala Taha:Well, that was so impressive that you remembered that entire list. Like I'm like shocked. I wasn't sure if you were going to be able to do it, but of course you are.

45:53Jim Kwik:But imagine being able to do that for what you read.

45:55Hala Taha:Yeah.

45:56Jim Kwik:You know, like this is, again, random words that don't mean anything, you know, important to me. But imagine it's something you're studying that you want to learn, that you are interested in. You know, then it's even more exciting because you could use that information. Yeah, I totally agree. Or names or anything else.

46:11Hala Taha:I definitely want to get better at that. So what would be the best place? Like, we obviously can't go through every hack. Where can people learn from you, like specifically about getting better at memory? Would it be Limitless? Yeah.

46:22Jim Kwik:Limitless has one of the largest chapters, you know, in the book. It's in 50 different languages. I'm sure people could find it somewhere or the audio book. You know, we go in even deeper in it and like have a conversation at the end of every chapter, you know, in like podcast format. You know, and we have the largest online, we have the most popular memory program in the world. So people, it's not hard to find. You just search my name, you'll find it.

46:45Hala Taha:You have a new book, Limitless Daily, that's going to be out pretty soon. I'm so excited about this book. I don't even have a copy. No, no. We only get to talk about it at a high level.

46:52Jim Kwik:It is so amazing. I think here's like one of the most powerful, you know, brain hacks anybody could do. I love the science. So Limitless I wrote in a couple months, right? You know, it was my first book. I had 30 years of content. It was just really easy. Limitless took me a full year. And I started writing as an entrepreneur. one of the things you need to do to be able to, uh, is to really manage your time, right? Manage your focus. And what uses up a lot of time and energy is switching from tasks, like multitasking. Uh, cause we're not actually multitasking, we're task switching. And every time you think you're, you're on Slack and then do social media, you jump to this and that, um, we, we, number one, we lose time because it could retain, it could take anywhere five or 10 minutes to regain your focus, you know, on the new task.

47:40Jim Kwik:So we lose time. We're actually not gaining it. Second, we make more mistakes. I get to train some of the most amazing doctors worldwide. And do you know, like surgeons who try to multitask during operations will make more surgical errors, right? I mean, think about texting and driving, right? There's going to be more accidents. You can't do two cognitive activities well, you know, because you're switching tasks. And then finally, you use a lot of energy, you know, when you're trying to multitask. You use a lot of blood glucose. Some people struggle with brain fog or mental fatigue in the afternoon.

48:12Jim Kwik:Check on that. But focus is your superpower. And the challenge is, is like, think about the words we use. Like there's a financial part to focus. Like you pay attention.

48:25Hala Taha:Yep.

48:25Jim Kwik:Right? Like what if tomorrow morning, all of you entrepreneurs, every single time you put your focus to something, you had to take out your credit card or debit card or Apple Pay and you had to, you know, put it into Facebook every single time or Instagram or anything. Like you would treat your focus different. Totally different. Right. And so, you know, instead of like wasting that currency, that money, you know, you would invest it. And so how are you investing your focus? How are you saving and protecting your focus? You know, like you would do, like you would do money. And so that's one thing.

48:58Jim Kwik:But I think one of the biggest things people could do for an entrepreneur, it's not about time management, because that's the only thing that's equal. Not everybody here, everybody here watching, like we all have different incomes, we all have different networks and connections. We all have different levels of education, whatever. What's consistent? 24 hours in a day. It's not even about time management. It's about mind management. It's about priority management. So the most important thing is to keep the most important thing, the most important thing, right? Everything I filter through, even in a world of AI, you know, as opportunities come or challenges or whatever, like for me, it's, this is my filter.

49:35Jim Kwik:If it's not a heck yes, then it's a heck no, right? So I'm like right now, there's nowhere else I'd rather be, like because I'm right here, because like it was a yes, right? And so I could appreciate that so I'm fully present. I'm not like somewhere else. The other thing is I filter, like I think that if this doesn't help me grow, glow, or flow, I say no. It doesn't help me grow, like grow my brand, grow my business, grow my personal development. If it doesn't help me flow, like be more effective. And if it does help me glow, like maybe feel good, then I say no. And I know like in the beginning, especially for entrepreneurs, right, you have to feed your business until it feeds you back.

50:13Hala Taha:Yeah, you got to take, you know.

50:15Jim Kwik:Right. And if you want to, but I do really believe you want your business to grow or your bank account to grow, then we need to grow, especially, you know, our learnings.

50:23Hala Taha:And focus. Focus to me is probably the number one underrated secret of being successful. And I meet a lot of younger people who are, or even older people who are struggling and like unable to kind of like take off on their career and like make something of themselves. And I actually believe it's because they never focused on one thing really hard for long enough.

50:47Jim Kwik:And because also we live in a world of distractions. So people's focus, especially with short-form content and everything, and I'm not even judging that because we use that, right? Technology allows this to happen, all of this, and be able to share our message and our impact at scale. So it's so very important. But what I'm saying is we could train our focus. And you could train your focus like a muscle. You could train your memory to be present. And that shows up as an entrepreneur because the enemy there is distraction. There's so many things, shiny objects for an entrepreneur. Entrepreneur ADD, it's a challenge.

51:24Jim Kwik:But here's the hack. If you want to win the day, you have to win the first few minutes of the day. And what I mean by that, and when we train your focus, when you wake up, there's a process that you go through called sleep inertia. Sleep inertia is the transition between the sleeping state to the waking state. And there's certain things that come online. Your alertness comes online, your conscious awareness, your attention comes online, and your working memory, which is like your short-term memory, is not even full yet because you haven't inputted anything in yet. That time is that short window for when you wake up.

52:01Jim Kwik:Here's what happens. The mental input that you bring in at that time has a disproportionate effect on the rest of the day. So what I mean by that is that first few handful of minutes, first thing in the morning, has a disproportional effect on things like your mood for the day, what you're going to focus on the day. So the things that you look at first is going to determine a large disproportionate influence on what you're going to see and focus on. Also, how you frame situations. So we go through situations throughout the day, difficulties, demands, whatever, and whether or not we're having and more of an empowering framing on it, like this is a good thing or bad thing or useful thing or look for an opportunity, a lot of it is preset first thing that morning.

52:47Jim Kwik:Now, what do most people do first thing when they wake up? They grab their device, right? Yep, they're looking at their phone. And I just saw this Facebook reminder from over eight years ago. Simon Sinek and I have a video, has 37 million views on Facebook. And it was just talking about the effect of our devices, especially first thing in the morning. if we're that impressionable. Because what happens is you pick up your phone and that window, which has a disproportionate effect on the rest of the day, what are you wiring your brain for? Distraction, number one. Every like, share, comment, cat video, ring, ping, ding, app notification, whatever it is, is that dopamine flood, right?

53:24Jim Kwik:Which you didn't have to earn, which is a whole conversation around motivation. And then you wonder why you can't focus later that day. Because the first thing you did was flex your distraction muscles. But the second thing it wires your brain for, which is almost as dangerous, to your productivity and performance, peace of mind, even your profitability as an entrepreneur, you're training your brain not only to be distracted, but also be reactive. Like you ever pick up your phone first thing in the morning and you get a message and it hijacks your mood? Totally.

53:51Hala Taha:Or it hijacks the hour. Yeah, exactly. You just don't get what you're supposed to get done.

53:55Jim Kwik:That's sleep inertia. They call it attentional priming. Like your mood, that could last for you for hours. Like you have one voicemail message or an email from an angry client or a WhatsApp or Slack or whatever. And all of a sudden, that's your focus for the day. And what is it doing? It's reactive. Like Brendan Burchard has this quote, you know, your inbox is nothing but a convenient organizational system for other people's agenda for your life. So you're fighting fires, right, all of a sudden. So how are you going to build an extraordinary day, you know, which leads to weeks, months, years, you know, the life that you want if you're on the defense?

54:33Hala Taha:Yeah.

54:34Jim Kwik:As opposed to proactively saying, these are the three things I need to win. So the book you mentioned is called Limitless Daily. I wrote one page a day, 366 entries. And I wrote it for my two young kids for when they're adults. And it has one power idea, right? And the science behind it, because I like the psychology of the neuroscience behind it. And it's written in a very inspiring, fun way. And then one implementation that they could do in less than one minute. And then it has a new identity statement of who you're becoming, right? All on one page. And so the idea here is in that sleep inertia window, right, where you're attentional priming, you could read this book.

55:18Jim Kwik:And then all of a sudden, you have a disproportionate advantage throughout the day. That's so good. And what I did was I would wake up and write. I would think about, what am I facing today? And any of the themes that everyone can relate to, procrastination, maybe lack of focus today, imposter syndrome, frustration, overload, too much opportunity, whatever it happens to be. And I write on that and I research the science behind it. I give them one tactic they could do. So in five minutes, first thing in the morning, it sets you up to win and be more limitless that day. So it's LimitlessDaily.com is where people find out more information.

55:53Hala Taha:So cool. I can't wait for that book.

55:55Jim Kwik:Oh, I can't. It is like my best work. That's going to be so good.

55:58Hala Taha:Attention is really the new IQ. Attention is really what's going to differentiate people with all this technology and all this AI. It's really about focus and honing your focus. I was reflecting about that, even with like, let's just take the example of me studying for a podcast and how that's evolved over the years, right? when I first started my podcast, I had more time. I didn't have two companies. And I would study 20 hours per guest. I would listen to all their books. I would listen to all their interviews. I would take a whole week and study them. There was no video. So it was audio only.

56:32Hala Taha:So I could have like lots of notes and like I'd prepare like crazy. Then like as I had a company like that had to change. And I had a team that would help me. Now I use AI and I upload transcripts. I upload PDF books. I have like an app that helps me. And I was going so crazy with the AI that like, there was a period of time where like, I'd come to the interview and I'd be like, I just spent three hours using AI to prepare for this interview, but I don't feel prepared. And it was just like really interesting. And then I had to say, okay, what am I doing wrong? And now I've created a new process where I do this stuff with AI, but then I put it in an app that I can listen to it.

57:19Hala Taha:And I make sure that I do it before the interview so that in the morning of the interview for like while I'm getting ready and stuff, I'm just listening to everything to actually absorb what I did. Nice. You know? So that sort of helps, but I still feel like, how do I, like, I'd love to hear your opinion on collaborating with AI. And how to make sure we're not outsourcing too much with AI.

57:43Jim Kwik:AI is interesting, right? AI scales and it amplifies, but it only scales and amplifies what we bring to it, right? And so I feel like AI, there's a whole fear and concern around that AI will replace us. that's a different conversation. But if it's, I feel it will replace people who aren't using AI and also learning their own, building their own human intelligence, right? But I feel like the conversation is not so much will replace us, but I definitely will reveal us. Because if it's amplifying and scaling, what is it amplifying and scaling? If an entrepreneur brings chaos and confusion to AI, it's going to magnify and amplify chaos and confusion, right?

58:23Jim Kwik:As opposed to an entrepreneur's bringing clarity and discernment, it'll give them, it'll scale that also. Like AI is no longer a competitive advantage because everybody has access to it. We all have access to it, right? Somebody could use AI to write a great social media post. Wonderful. Somebody else could use AI to build the next billion dollar venture, you know? And so it's, it's the human intelligence that you're bringing to it that determines the performance and the ultimate result. It's like, um, I get to work with a lot of athletes, the NFL, the NHL, the MLB, F1 drivers, right? With reaction time, thinking speed.

58:59Jim Kwik:Like, let's think about it like a race car, a multi-million dollar piece of technology. It's a performance tool. That's AI. But it's the driver that determines its performance, right? Because everybody could have access, you know, all of them have great cars. But it's the driver, it's there. So I feel like my work is, whether I teach focus, memory, flow, habit, brain optimization, sleep, whatever, accelerated learning, speed reading, memory, all the stuff that we have on our online academy, it's meant to enhance human intelligence. I really do believe human intelligence is more important than artificial intelligence because, again, AI could do amazing computation, pattern recognition, right?

59:39Jim Kwik:But ultimately, human beings, they decide what things mean out of data. They decide what to focus on, on that data. but they decide what to do with that data in terms of next steps. So it's the humans that are going to, like, it's like Iron Man's suit. It's like AI, but Tony Stark is just bringing a lot to it that he'll get a bigger result. And so my focus, I feel like in a world of, you know, rapid change, accelerated technology and AI, I just don't want the dependence, right? Everyone's heard about the MIT study where students who are writing essays at college, They, you know, they broke them down to ABC groups, A, ChatGPT.

1:00:21Jim Kwik:They used, B, it was Google. They used Google and C, no technology. And when they tested them, and I'm summarizing this, you know, group A didn't remember anything. Just similar to the experience of podcasts. They didn't remember anything because they didn't have to work for it, right? And also when they scan brains, like the ones that actually did the work, produced it, they remembered. and also not only that, but more of their cognitive networks were just activated, right? And so I wrote about this in 2020 when the book came out, Limitless. I called it Digital Deduction. So digital dementia is a high-relangible technology to remember things.

1:00:59Jim Kwik:Your to-dos, your calendar, your phone numbers. Like nobody wants to remember 500 phone numbers, but it should be very concerning that we've lost the ability to remember one phone number or a PIN number or a passcode or something. Have you ever read a page in a book at the end and just forgot what you just read, right? Like that's the kind of things we want entrepreneurs to be better at. But digital deduction is the high reliance technology to think for us. I mean, even think about GPS. Like there was a time when we need to use our visual spatial intelligence instead of using a piece of technology to tell us where and when to turn.

1:01:29Hala Taha:Now we can't go anywhere without it. Yeah.

1:01:31Jim Kwik:And so that's the dependence on it. So this is the thing. Your brain, like even my shirt says use it, right? Use it or lose it. So the idea here is your brain is like a muscle. It's an organ, but it acts like a muscle. You use it or lose it. But if you put your arm in a cast for a year, it wouldn't grow stronger. It wouldn't stay the same. It would weaken and atrophy. That's digital dimension, digital deduction. So the idea here is I'm all for using technology, you know, but if it's doing all the thinking, so, you know, let it think, but let you, but we should think too, right? Let it help you to remember something, but you should still remember things also, you know?

1:02:04Jim Kwik:And so, you know, the problem is when we grab technology out of habit and without intention or without very, like we give our minds prompts all the time. Like I'm very efficient with AI because I've been giving my HI a lot of prompts like, you know, with the training, you know, the questions that we ask, you know, like questions like, you know, I use this all the time and AI is like, you know, explain this to me like I'm 10 years old, right? That would be a way of summarizing difficult conversations with a podcast guest or summarize this book, certainly, right? Or also, you know, propose questions.

1:02:38Jim Kwik:Like, you know, give me five questions that this person's never been asked for public, you know, about publicly, that my specific audience that we've trained, you know, would really resonate with.

1:02:47Hala Taha:Yeah.

1:02:47Jim Kwik:But it also could be something like, we could take all the principles in Limitless, you know, memory palaces, like, and, you know, space review, you know, it could quiz you, right? It could, every, you could schedule it, it could go be linked to your calendar and just say, let's do space repetition. I want to really understand this master of this subject.

1:03:06Hala Taha:So using AI to actually make sure that you know the material too. I do that too. Yeah.

1:03:10Jim Kwik:It's like literally there's a chapter in Limitless that says, you know, how to use AI to enhance your HI. Taking those principles and translating it to be able to quiz you, to be able to get you to rapid review, to see what you know. To be able to, you could say like, hey, mind map this subject for me, dot, dot, dot. Take notes to be able to show this. And then there's so many other things that you could do with it. And it's literally limitless. My thing is just in a world of artificial intelligence, you don't want human intelligence to become artificial. and not valuable, right? And so I feel like there's certain human qualities that now more than ever, you know, like you can see like online with all the commencement speeches for graduation.

1:03:51Jim Kwik:Yep. And they mention AI and then like the -

1:03:54Hala Taha:People are really upset. And they're booing and they're like all of that. Yeah, there's a really big movement out there where people are really anti-AI.

1:04:00Jim Kwik:Yeah, it could be scary because it's also people are losing their identity, right? If an AI could replace, I was just literally in a car where the, here in Austin, where the Uber driver was just complaining the entire time about these Waymos. They're going around taking the job and all this other stuff. But that's, this is just the beginning of that.

1:04:21Hala Taha:Yeah, it's going to happen.

1:04:23Jim Kwik:And so I feel like AI is a tool that can magnify and multiply, but it only magnifies, multiplies, and amplifies what we bring to it. And so I feel like even more than ever is it important to work on our own intelligence and see what we bring to it.

1:04:38Hala Taha:I totally agree. I mean, like, I feel like we've all been kind of like, like AI has just been sort of thrown at us and we've all had to experiment with it. I think it's good to kind of fail on your own with it like I did because you just like learn the hard way. And then you're able to kind of guide also like your employees of how to use it better. Something that I'm kind of going through right now, I've implemented AI, I have 60 people on my team. And so we do this whole AI training and everybody has this program that basically uses Claude and ingests their email and their Slack, and everyone's, like, using AI really well.

1:05:11Hala Taha:But at the same time, now everything I'm getting feels so AI-generated. And I'm like, you guys need to still use your brains. Like, you know, this is not going to cut it. Like, somebody on my team sent me a sales deck that I completely had to redo this weekend because it just was so obvious. And, like, she's so smart. And I'm like, this is not the advice that you would be giving. and like, this is way too AI. And she's like, well, it really wasn't. And I was like, it was like, cause I can tell, right? So what kind of human intelligence, like what are the characteristics that we should really focus on?

1:05:46Hala Taha:And we talked about attention and memory, which I think just being charismatic is gonna help people in the future. What else in terms of human intelligence, HI should we be concentrating on?

1:05:57Jim Kwik:So what makes us human in a world of AI? I think this is the conversation. I think we're living in the conversation of our time. right now, is how do we become deeply human in an age of AI, right? Where everything feels artificial or there's that AI slop that you're referencing, like this feels like AI and people can detect it, right? I think where we're going to lean into a number of things. Curiosity, right? Curiosity sparks wonder. It asks better questions, not only of AI, but of ourselves also as well. I would say leadership is huge. You know, our ability to influence and impact people around us, to inspire them.

1:06:39Jim Kwik:I think that's critical. That's a human quality. I would say, let's say emotional intelligence. So very important because I think EQ is so important for interpersonal. Like EQ, leadership is maybe external. Emotional intelligence, self-reflection, right? To be able to look within, to be able to reflect instead of react, and to have some kind of emotional regulation, you know, to be able to have, you know, that with others. Adaptability, very, I think it's human beings, that's our superpower, ability to adapt. I think in a rapidly changing world, our ability to learn, unlearn, relearn, to be able to adapt, learn new skills that everything is figureoutable is so very important.

1:07:25Jim Kwik:You know, also, also as well. These are things that are, that I would love for people to lean into, into, into more.

1:07:32Hala Taha:Yeah.

1:07:33Jim Kwik:You know, it's not always taught, you know, I mean, you could think about, you know, you can make, even make an acronym. You make a word like human, you know, H is heart for the emotional intelligence, you know, part, and you can kind of make like a whole thing, but it's just, whether you use acronyms and mnemonics or like these stories, there are things that I feel that, again, that it's what we bring to the AI that would make it. Just like it's in technology, it's always been like that with technology, right? But my thing is not to be dependent on it, meaning that an elevator is a form of technology.

1:08:06Jim Kwik:If your office is on the fourth floor, your apartment's on the fourth floor, yeah, an elevator is very convenient, but then you don't get your steps in. If you take a lift to go to the bank eight blocks away, very convenient, it's a form of technology, but then we don't get our steps in, right? And so I feel like every day we can make it every moment we have a chance because we can make a new choice. And so I like the balance of using it. But don't let it use you and not let our own gifts kind of atrophy.

1:08:34Hala Taha:I want to bring it back to something that you just mentioned where you saw these commencement speeches. And when people bring up AI, they start to boo. I was actually pretty shocked because for the last like two years, I've been talking about AI on the podcast. And I'm kind of in this like entrepreneurship bubble where we embrace AI, we're excited about AI, we see the opportunity. And of course, there's some bad things with the environment for sure that they need to figure out. But I saw so much social content where people were just like bad mouthing Mel Robbins, who I love, and Reese Witherspoon and all these folks for telling women to start using AI.

1:09:11Hala Taha:and kind of making people know that women are less likely to use AI and why women really need to lean into it so we don't get left behind. And there was so much pushback from women who don't want to use AI and refuse to use it. And it just made me feel really sad because I just feel like all these people are going to be left behind because they think they're doing the righteous thing by not using AI. When in reality, I think that's going to really hurt them in the future. I personally feel that way. How do you feel about that?

1:09:42Jim Kwik:The environmental concerns are, you know, that is, I mean, that could be a whole podcast on itself. So, you know, if we, if we have the conversation, if we separated that, you know, we'll talk about it. Technology has always been a tool like the internet, right? Like a, like a smartphone. We can't put it back into the box, right? The genie is out of the bottle. So it's, it's going to be here. It's, it's a challenge. just like with anything that we use, you know, obviously it'd be better if it was, you know, net, you know, net zero, you know, in terms of the impact that the imprint it has on the environment.

1:10:20Jim Kwik:So that aside, you know, I feel like, yeah, some people are, I mean, think about the unknown, right? The unknown in the mind, the nervous system wants to protect itself, right? And doesn't want to waste a lot of energy. anything that's new, like starting a business or talking to that person, you know, that fear that we have, that amygdala kind of fight or flight response is to kind of protect us, right? It's to kind of keep things efficient, stable, because change, what people don't talk about in the entrepreneurial space is that change is scary, right? And it could be AI, right? It could be the environment, it could be politics, political change, it could be market change, in demand, supply, all these different things, you know, threats, competitive threats or whatever.

1:11:04Jim Kwik:Change can be scary. Growth can be hard. It's hard to build two businesses to do what you've done with the podcast for the past eight years. People don't see what goes on behind the scenes. But nothing is as scary and hard as being stuck somewhere you don't belong. And so I don't know who needs to hear this, but I think life is hard for one of two reasons. Either we leave our comfort zone, we take our business next level, we ask for the investment, whatever it happens to be, right? or life's difficult because we stay in our comfort zone, then life gets very, very difficult. You know, and AI is very disruptive.

1:11:38Jim Kwik:You know, it changes people's, it's not even just a different of workflow. It's also challenging and threatening people's identity. Yeah. Like who they are, right? Like if somebody, as I'm using a random example, like if somebody's an artist, right, and AI is doing all this stuff, or someone's an attorney and you can't have access to all the legal advice you need, or a therapist, or you name it. Like, it can be very threatening when we've spent our whole life preparing for, you know, to be this person. This is who we are. And if a machine could do that, you know, what does that make me? You know, much less our self-confidence and self-esteem or self-worth in a world of being relevant.

1:12:20Jim Kwik:So that could be a friction for people adopting this. You know, also, I also feel like, you know, I'm leaning into human intelligence, you know, regardless of what I've always done that, regardless of the technology, whether it's AI or something else, you know, as it evolves, just because it's, it's our agency, you know, like I really do believe even the book, when people see it, it's, it's purple. And by the way, I have 5 ,000 books and like, I, there's no purple books. So from a mind standpoint, like, you know, I want to stand on shelves, but also when people, it was stand on people's minds.

1:12:54Jim Kwik:um also purple psychology uh the words that always came up in color psychology sovereignty agency like an entrepreneur yeah um you're taking responsibility for their you know the direction of their life and their um and uh wisdom so i think part of it is the unknown that people are threatened to i think also not those unknown of what's happening outside but you know their identity and self-perception is is also trending and and certainly there are other concerns like you know I go back to the environment for sure. So I think it's great that people could voice their concerns and we have dialogue about this, right?

1:13:31Jim Kwik:Discourse about it. This is what, and it's the challenging, like I also was surprised when people started sending me those commencement videos because the other thing is with this algorithm, I rarely see people that I follow on social media. I'm not on social media a whole lot. Yeah. But I rarely see the people I follow. I just see whatever I engage with. So we all are training that algorithm. To show us what we want, yeah. Yeah, so there is an echo chamber there. So like in entrepreneurship, everyone's a pro-AIs, everyone's an AI expert and so on. And then, but you know, a lot of people, that's not where most people are living, you know, certainly.

1:14:03Jim Kwik:But I'm sure people felt the same way about cars.

1:14:07Hala Taha:They did.

1:14:08Jim Kwik:You know, and assembly lines, you know, and they will about, you know, self-driving cars and everything else.

1:14:15Hala Taha:And we just got to adapt. And that's the key. We just have to adapt.

1:14:18Jim Kwik:And that's what human beings, when they lean into it, that's why I think all learning is all adaption. Your ability to adapt, you know, in new environments, to be able to learn, unlearn, relearn new skills, new ideas, new systems, makes us valuable, you know, today. And not everyone will do it, but that's the opportunity for people that do. So, you know, I look at AI like a lot of tools, you know, it's using it. I see it in some more than artificial intelligence, augmented intelligence. It's a partner for us to use. And you can use it in, I mean, there are limitless ways to be able to use it, you know, for us.

1:14:56Jim Kwik:And it also levels the playing field, you know. I mean, I wish when I got started three or four years ago, there wasn't even the internet, you know, in mass. It's the easiest time to be an entrepreneur right now. My goodness.

1:15:05Hala Taha:You can build your whole team with Claude.

1:15:07Jim Kwik:I remember building our first course program in 2006, 2007. like it was like you know how much camera equipment everything else i had to do oh my goodness a website was tens of thousands of dollars back then you know and so yeah it's exciting time so i'm i'm i'm more of an optimist you know for for things but i'm also a realist you know so we do the best we can with what we have you know and hopefully you know leave the

1:15:32Hala Taha:world a better brighter place so i want to ask you one last question this is around brain rot so So brain rot was the word of the year by Oxford in 2024. I was reading some stats and millennials in Gen Z spend about five hours a day on their phone on average just for entertainment purposes. So not just screen time for school and work. For Gen Z, I think that's like eight hours if it's just screen time. But five hours a day for entertainment. And that worries me because that's a lot of time. Like you can't focus or build something if you're spending five hours a day doom scrolling. And I just think it's a major problem.

1:16:16Hala Taha:I also think task switching is a major problem. I find myself even like using two computers and like running an AI prompt and then doing something else, checking my AI prompt. And then I realized like this is probably not effective, right? Right. So just help us understand as we close out this interview, how can we retain our focus in this era of just so much distraction?

1:16:39Jim Kwik:Yeah. What I'm going to say is going to be really simple and I'm not even suggesting it's easy, but, and take this with a grain of salt, whoever's listening to this, like an entrepreneur or any individual, you can't be upset by the results you didn't get from the work you didn't do. And if you're spending eight hours doom scrolling and rotting your brain and then have the audacity to complain that, oh, I went through this course or I listened to this, I have this mentor and a coach and you're not doing it. Like, I think people need to work into the results speak for themselves. And I've gone through this path.

1:17:12Jim Kwik:We have a number of businesses, you know, and I advise some of the biggest ones. And I'm just saying every day we have a chance because we have a choice. It is still a choice. But if we repeatedly doom scroll and we know we're doing it, then it is a choice. Right. And so I'm not saying we've all watched Social Dilemma and we know that there are billions of dollars being put into these platforms with the top neuroscientists, behavioral scientists that make this addictive. Right. And we've all heard stories about a lot of these founders that they want to let their kids on these platforms, you know, and we know that if there's not a product there, then we are the product that they're selling to advertisers.

1:17:51Jim Kwik:We all know this. And we advertise, so I probably stalk a lot of you with our content and our courses. So it's a tool that could be used for, in our opinion, to be able to impact. So brain rot's a real deal, right? If you're feeding, we just talked about your brain and how it's being wired by our devices. And you could scroll to infinity. And that's fine. Who am I to judge if somebody wants to do that and do that? That's your prerogative. But if there's a gap between where you are and where you want to be, in your business or your bank account or the impact or income or influence, and we're spending a third of our day on those devices without any kind of results, then I would question how much you really want this.

1:18:32Jim Kwik:And I feel I still go back to agency and responsibility. Years ago, I got to introduce two of my superheroes together. It was Richard Branson and Stan Lee. Stan Lee, like the late Stan Lee, who created all the Marvel characters. And they both mentioned each other. they want to meet each other. So we, you know, we go to dinner and I'm in the car and I asked Stan, I was like, you created all these epic heroes. Who's your favorite? And he says, Jim Iron Man. And, and then he said, Jim, who's your favorite? And he had, I posted this on social media and in the backseat, he had a Spider-Man tie. So I said, Spider-Man.

1:19:04Jim Kwik:And within his iconic voice with a pause, he goes, with great power comes great responsibility, right? And maybe because I hit my head too much, I tend to sometimes reverse what I read or see or hear. And I, and I said, you're right. With great power comes great responsibility, Stan. And the opposite is also true. With great responsibility comes great power. When we take responsibility for something, we have great power. So I don't think we have to be super hard on ourselves. I think when we're compassionate, studies done in self-compassion say when you don't beat yourself up, when you're kind to yourself, you're more likely to make a positive change and follow through.

1:19:38Jim Kwik:So it's like you've missed your workout. You don't beat yourself up. You say, hey, I'm human. I had a kind of really hard day. and you're more likely to follow through as opposed to like, you know, be a critic for yourself. Same thing with doom scrolling, you know, and I would say like the first place to change is, is has to start with awareness. You know, you look, you look at your screen time on certain devices and you can't deny that, you know, and then you say, is this getting me the results that I want? And if it's not, then you make a choice and it's your, it's their choice, their responsibility.

1:20:08Jim Kwik:They could either continue doing that and that's fine. That's their choice. But if they're looking to create something that requires time, energy, talent, you know, I would think like, oh, how do I repurpose this into getting what I want? And it's hard. I'm not saying it's changes easy. But if it was easy, like everyone would just have like these businesses and everything.

1:20:29Hala Taha:Part of it is changing your identity around it, correct? Because you are responsible to kind of - It is.

1:20:34Jim Kwik:It's a habit, right? And we don't rise to level our goals. We fall to level of our systems. I'll tell you, like we don't rise to level our goals. We fall to level our standards that we have. Like people said, like, I must make this amount of money, like must, like, or loved ones, like, you know, in jeopardy if they don't, like, we will hit that standard. We fall to the level of our standards, our systems, and our self-image. That's it. And we control all three of them. And so I feel like I'd be working. First you create your habits, then your habits create you. If you're spending eight hours, five to eight hours a day habitually picking up your phone mindlessly, then you need to interrupt that.

1:21:14Jim Kwik:And the best way to do habit design, and we've had James Clear and BJ Fogg and Charles Duhigg, all the best on our podcast. It's environmental design. You can control your environment. And I'm not saying this is easy, but don't have your phone by your nightstand. Put it in your bathroom. The first principle of environmental design is you want to make what's good for you easier and you want to make things that are not good for you harder. Like you're not going to snack. If you don't have the junk food in your home, you're changing your environment. It's not going to make it easy, right? If you take the app and you have to log in every single time into your apps or reinstall it, it's not going to be easy.

1:21:50Jim Kwik:It's not going to be worth it. And that's how you change that. And then your identity changes once your behavior changes because you create evidence that you are the person that you say you are. And I think that's so very important, you know, that you don't see yourself as a procrastinator or whatever it is. You see yourself as somebody who gets things done. And you create evidence, like real world evidence that validates that. But I would say we make a choice. Like there are only four choices you can make, right? Again, life is the letter C between B and D. B is birth, D is death, life is C, choice.

1:22:24Jim Kwik:We always have that choice. That's the sum total of everything. And there are only four choices you can make to make your business better, your brain better, your body better, your life better. Stop something, start something, do less of something, do more of something. That's it. Because the fifth thing is do nothing. That's insanity, expecting different results. So you stop, stop checking your phone first thing in the morning. Start a meditative process, which trains your focus. So you're not going to be as addicted. You can pull your focus back when you need to. Do less of something. Do less binge watching stuff or doom scrolling.

1:22:56Jim Kwik:And do more movement, right? Like it's just, it's so simple. I'm not saying easy. Yeah. But it is so simple. Like we know what to do. We're not doing what we know. Common sense is not common practice. That's why these conversations are so important. Because who's talking about these kind of things, right? that gives people like some insight and some inspiration to say like, oh, I'm going to make a new choice today. And just if you're going this way, you take like every morning, for example, the reason why this book is so important, I think, in that special time was disproportionate time.

1:23:25Hala Taha:That was one of my favorite things that we learned. Yeah.

1:23:27Jim Kwik:Like, because when you wake up, you're getting into an airplane metaphorically and you're, you're going through the day to a destination. Now, like the first thing, like when you get in a plane, they set the course to go to the city. If you're off course, just 1 % over time, over the length of that flight or that 24 hours in that day, you could end up in a different city or country, just a 1 % shift. And sometimes when you get in that plane, you maybe you're the passenger and there's turbulence. What's the turbulence? It's distraction. It's your phone. It's energy vampires. It's other people's expectations, right?

1:24:02Jim Kwik:Shakes it up. Or some people are allowing the plane to be hijacked and you're just taking that person who's leading, just directing your course to wherever they want it to go. You know, my work with this book is like, hey, let's walk to the cockpit together. You're sitting down. You are the pilot of your mind today. And we're going to set the course of where we're going to go. Like, for example, like that window again that you get disproportionate amount of like results for the rest of the day, but the mental input, same thing with physical input. If you woke up and the first thing you did was eat a bunch of junk food and donuts and everything else, first thing you do.

1:24:35Hala Taha:Glucose rollercoaster.

1:24:36Jim Kwik:And then that would disproportionately affect the rest of your day. Your focus, your mood, how you feel about situations because you're in that crummy mood. I mean, think about like the mental diet that you have first thing in the morning. You know, people wouldn't doubt it. So like, why would you start your day with confusion and doom scrolling and violence and leads and leads and like everything, comparison and all the other stuff.

1:25:00Hala Taha:Yeah.

1:25:01Jim Kwik:Right. And but we choose to do that because we're letting the technology use us and then we become the tool. And I don't know. Maybe I'm a little bit passionate about this because I see the effects on mental health, especially for younger generations. They're scoring less in aptitude tests academically also, but mental health is surpassed for the biggest challenge that people are facing.

1:25:27Hala Taha:I think a lot of people in like Gen Z, millennials were like consumed with things like the wars going on, the Epstein files, the aliens now. We're getting like bombarded with all this craziness that seems so important to know about that it's so hard to turn it off.

1:25:48Jim Kwik:Yeah. And again, I'm not who, you know, I'm not any more important to people who say that this is important or not. so people can decide what's important. You know, like for me, I think it's all that could be important. And it is. But there's got to be some kind of stop gap in terms of where you can't possibly.

1:26:06Hala Taha:Because you only have so much mental bandwidth, right, throughout the day.

1:26:09Jim Kwik:And then the result is this burnout, you know, this digital depression, like all the brain rot and everything else like that. So it's interesting. There's this dichotomy, the polarity, where, you know, sometimes you put limits to become more limitless. Just like as an entrepreneur, like, or even writing this book, I had a deadline that I had to hit. So when there's a constraint of time or money or whatever, then you, what does it do? It forces human intelligence. It forces curiosity. It forces concentration. It forces commitment to be able to do that. So a limit makes you more limitless. Go beyond what you normally do because it's just going to fill the space.

1:26:43Jim Kwik:If I had two years to do it, that would take two years, right? But I would say putting borders and boundaries around your mental health, your time, the things that you value, I think is, is that would be my focus because I can't affect, if people choose to put their, their attention to things, I would just say, as long as you're doing something about it, because otherwise, what are we doing? Then we're indulging and getting in the storyline, but if we're not doing something about it, then the net effect is nothing just because we could spend an inordinate amount of time spiraling, you know, in our own mental health and challenge.

1:27:15Jim Kwik:I'm not saying turn a blind eye, but if you're going to do that, then you might as well get, do something with that energy and that knowledge, you know, and it's, it's challenging for entrepreneurs. Other people take approach, like I can't change the personal economy. I can focus on my personal economy. I'm not going to change the healthcare system, but I can focus on my family's health, you know, and, and wellness also. And some people will take that approach, but I think we make the choices and that's the, you know, it is a system of control because this technology could, it will eventually, you know, whether it controls us, but putting borders and boundaries and stop gaps, I think is important, especially around the things you've value, your time, your energy, your emotions.

1:27:51Jim Kwik:You know, maybe there's some people in our lives that might not be nurturing to, you know, us and who we are at this point in time. But yeah, I think there's a lot of important things that are going on. I'm not saying don't focus on them. I'm just saying for what result, you know, but if you're going to do something with it, yeah, please. We need more people are going to do great things, you know, and help us in the situations that we're in, you know, and, but, but I know my energy, my time, for example, is fine. So I'm going to focus on what I could control and where I can impact the most, you know, for things.

1:28:22Jim Kwik:But it also doesn't mean, you know, I like to pay attention. I like to know what's going on. But also there's come a point where I can't pay attention to everything.

1:28:30Hala Taha:Yeah, you don't need to pay attention for five hours a day.

1:28:33Jim Kwik:Right.

1:28:33Hala Taha:Yeah, I feel you. Yeah. Okay, so Jim, this was an awesome conversation. I feel like I could talk to you forever. But I'm going to end the show with two questions I ask all my guests. Okay. The first one is doing something actionable today. So what is one actionable thing our young and profiters can do to be more profitable tomorrow? We did talk about first 15 minutes in the morning and like capitalizing on that. Is there anything else from this new Limitless Daily book?

1:29:00Jim Kwik:Okay, so let's go back to that. Even if you don't read Limitless Daily in that window first thing in the morning, which would be great, a gratitude practice would put you in that state, right? People could list three things that they're most grateful for and come from that place because that'll set the tone for the rest of the day. They'll tend to see things that they're more grateful for, right, and which leads to more opportunities. I think if anyone wants to feel wealthy, just count all the things you have in your life that money can't buy, right? There's so many like things. Like we want to trade, you know, maybe some of your senses or some of your whatever for amount of money.

1:29:32Jim Kwik:And that's a good place to come from, that we are already blessed. If you're listening to this and able to watch this, you're probably more abundant than 99 % of the population. The other thing you could do is like I do this thought experiment where I'll sit in bed and I'll imagine in those first few minutes, fast forward, I'll do this mental experiment where I'll travel through time and I'll imagine myself getting into bed that night. And maybe somebody asked me or my wife asked me like, how was your day? And I was like, today was amazing. Oh my God. And I asked myself what had to happen in order for me to feel that way.

1:30:05Jim Kwik:And I think of three things personally, three things professionally, and they don't have to be huge things. Three things personally, three things professionally. And those six things become my focus for the day. That becomes this, like, I'm getting on the plane. These are the things I'm going to be able to hit because I'm not going to get through that 200 to-do list, right? And none of them are relevant. So I think about things that are lead dominoes that if I did that, it makes everything else easier. You know, I think a lot of the treasure entrepreneurs seek is hidden in the work that they're avoiding.

1:30:37Jim Kwik:I don't know who needs to hear this, but that conversation you need to have or that step that you need to take, that commitment. But I would plan with the end in mind. So, you know, instead of being reactive and then touching your phone, do something with it for a few minutes. And as I mentioned in the book, but you do a gratitude process or think about your three most important things to achieve that day. And I wouldn't just be thinking about the end result. I'd be thinking about, like, I don't even, when I do goal setting, I do something called future episodic remembering, where my goal is so vivid, it's as if I'm remembering it happened, right?

1:31:10Jim Kwik:Like I could, I could, I could imagine it as real as what I had for breakfast this morning, right? So there's, and that's one of the entries in the book, right? And so there's 366 of those and five minutes to just five extra day. But I would also, when you're thinking about that thing, like when you're thinking about goal setting, I would think about not so much, I think people make the mistake of just obsessing about that goal and visualizing that goal that getting that award or having seen that money in their bank account, whatever it is, I'd be obsessing, rehearsing what it took to get you there.

1:31:38Hala Taha:What are the habits where

1:31:39Jim Kwik:it's naturally going to happen?

1:31:41Hala Taha:It's the daily differences that you make, not just the one thing.

1:31:44Jim Kwik:Because your mind, it's so crazy. Like so many people are rehearsing and reviewing through anxiety of the future or worry of future or something that happened in the past. They're rehearsing failure in their mind. They're repeating over and over again what they don't want to happen. And regardless of the laws of attraction and quantum physics, forget about that. We are literally wiring our minds to be able, whatever we do repetitively, we get better at. And so what I'd be thinking about, yes, you could acknowledge that this is the goal. I would be reviewing like the night before that morning of I'm writing, me going to my computer, opening it up and start typing.

1:32:23Jim Kwik:I would be repeating that. So there's zero friction for me to do it because I've just done it a hundred times in my head. Right. Like I don't like I go on stages. I've been on 2200 stages, quarter million people every single year as an introvert, you know, but I practice in my mind like 200 ,000 times. Right. And so I think we want to get really the other technique. The thing I would mention for people watching, besides using that high leverage time window first thing in the morning to do something, then touching your phone or whatever, I would be doing mental rehearsal around the habits that will get you where it's going to happen naturally and effortlessly.

1:33:04Jim Kwik:It's like undeniable that this will happen. If you did this, I'd be rehearsing that.

1:33:08Hala Taha:Okay, my last question to you is, what is your secret to profiting in life? And because I've asked you this a few times, let's put it profiting in life this year.

1:33:18Jim Kwik:When we talk about the treasures of our life, some of them can be financial, certainly. Not everyone measures it based on things. And people sometimes get a depression of comparison online. And I just want to remind people, the grass is greener where you water it. And online, there's a lot of artificial turf. There's a lot of filters being used. So it's not always what we see, that we're comparing our lives to something or somebody else. In terms of profiting, in terms of my professional life, it's all about this book. This book has the potential to reach a lot of people, even millions more. This book, everyone was asking after Limitless, which is dense, like how to learn.

1:34:05Jim Kwik:It's an order's manual for your brain. All the things that you'll learn how to remember things, names and everything else like that, speed read everything in that book. But people are like, how do you break this down into something that's really simple? So that's why this Limitless Daily, right? I think books changed my life. When I was growing up, I couldn't read. I never finished a book cover to cover. My teachers would have been surprised if I read a book, much less wrote books. But it's just a reminder that I don't know one strong person that had an easy life. that diversity can be an advantage for anyone struggling right now with business or something else.

1:34:38Jim Kwik:I would say that what lights me up, I can think of a lot of other ways of making money. I know enough people, but I choose this path because how I measure profit, this whole idea is like a millionaire is someone who's helped a million people, or a billionaire is someone who will be able to support a billion people. My goal for decades has been one billion brains, you know no brain left behind and i'm hoping this book is a big uh leverage point for us to be able to to go on i mean you know quality media like this and and share it with more people who are struggling right now you know whether it's an ai or their identity or imposter syndrome i literally took the biggest issues that people face and we pulled our community also which is sizable and did an entry on each of these things frustration overload procrastination you know Why can't I get myself to do what I need to do?

1:35:31Jim Kwik:Focus, overload, everything. Just did an entry. And it's fun. I think it's a wild ride.

1:35:37Hala Taha:Well, this was such a great way to end the interview. And I'm so excited for Limitless Daily. Like, I'm going to do it every day once I get a copy.

1:35:45Jim Kwik:Yeah, we're going to do a whole 366 challenge. So it's great because everyone has a date and it has all this. So everyone's going to be on the same page. So we'll do lives around it.

1:35:52Hala Taha:When does it come out?

1:35:53Jim Kwik:And it's coming out in September.

1:35:56Hala Taha:Amazing.

1:35:56Jim Kwik:So we're so pumped. So I appreciate the conversation. This was fun.

1:36:00Hala Taha:It was. Yeah.

1:36:01Jim Kwik:Thanks for coming on. Oh, thank you everybody for watching. I count everybody to do one thing. Take a screenshot wherever you're consuming this right now and tag us both so we get to see it and share one thing that you're going to do based on this conversation. Just one thing. Maybe you're going to stop something, start something, do less of something or do more of something. Because one of the best ways of learning anything, you can be public about it certainly, it's for accountability, but it's to teach it to somebody else. That way you put it out there and then your fans, your followers, your family, your friends get to benefit also.

1:36:32So thanks for having me.

1:36:33Hala Taha:Thank you, Jim. Thank you for joining us on Young and Profiting Podcast. Yeah, fam, I just loved having Jim Quick back on the show. And getting to sit down with him in person was truly the cherry on top. Jim has this rare ability to make you feel like your brain is capable of so much more than you've been asking of it. And after this conversation, I genuinely believe that. What hit me the hardest today was something Jim said that I keep turning over in my mind.

1:36:59Jim Kwik:AI scales and amplifies, but only scales and amplifies what you bring to it.

1:37:04Hala Taha:Think about that for a second. Every entrepreneur is racing to adopt AI, myself included. But what if we're bringing to it scattered thinking, poor focus, and a memory we've never trained? Then AI is just going to scale all of that chaos right back at us. The investment that actually matters the most is the one that you make in your own mind first. And speaking of memory, Jim completely reframed how I think about it. Remembering somebody's name, recalling a detail from a past conversation, staying present when someone is speaking to you. These are not soft skills. These are trust-building tools.

1:37:40Hala Taha:Jim told us about a commercial real estate deal worth$50 million that fell apart because somebody called a client by the wrong name twice. Twice! That's the cost an untrained memory does in business. When you remember people, you make them feel valued. And people do business with those who make them feel that way. Finally, I loved Jim's point about the morning. That small window right after you wake up, before you check your phone, is when your brain is most open and impressionable. Jim calls it attentional priming. What you feed your mind in those first few minutes sets the tone for your mood, your focus, and even how you handle challenges for the rest of the day.

1:38:15Hala Taha:Most of us hand that window straight to our notifications, straight to the algorithm, without thinking twice. Reclaiming that time might be the simplest performance upgrade available to any entrepreneur right now. So what are you going to do in those first 15 minutes that you wake up? Your brain is not broken. It's just waiting for you to train it. Now, Jim has a new book coming out called Limitless Daily. It comes out in September. You can pre-order it right now. It is built for exactly that morning window that we talked about. The one powerful idea per day to train your focus, sharpen your memory, and set yourself up to win.

1:38:49Hala Taha:Go pre-order it right now and start treating your mind like the asset it actually is. If you're watching on YouTube, we are pushing hard towards 100K subscribers. So please go subscribe to our YouTube channel right now. It's called Young and Profiting. Go to this video, drop a comment, tell us one thing you're going to do differently for your brain starting tomorrow. And if you want to take it to the next level, if you really love me and you support the show, you're going to go to that YouTube channel, take a screenshot of one part in this video that you love. Tell us what you learned, share it in your story, share it on Instagram, LinkedIn, wherever you want to post.

1:39:22Hala Taha:And we will repost it. We'll share, we'll comment. And I'd love to hear from you. We're also on Spotify video. So check us out there if you like watching your podcasts. And you can find us on all the major podcast platforms, of course. As always, huge thank you to all of our listeners that tune in each and every week, the ones that drop those five-star reviews on Apple Podcasts and ratings on Spotify. You can also find me on Instagram at Yap with Hala, on LinkedIn, search for my name, it's Hala Taha. This is your host, Hala Taha, aka the Podcast Princess, signing off.