Your Limits Are Learned (And They Can Be Unlearned) with Brain Coach Jim Kwik

This might sound familiar: you read a full page, get to the bottom, and realize you absorbed none of it. There's a stack of books beside your bed you fully intend to finish. And the only phone number you can remember is your own. Jim Kwik says none of that means something is wrong with our brains. It’s that we were taught what to learn, but rarely ever taught how to learn. Jim would know. A well-meaning teacher called him "the boy with the broken brain" when he was nine, and for years he believed it. He's spent the three decades since proving otherwise — as a top brain coach, a leading expert on memory and accelerated learning, and the bestselling author of Limitless. His new book, Limitless Daily, offers 366 daily upgrades to help you focus, remember, and think better. In this episode you'll learn: ➡️ Why reading faster can actually improve comprehension ➡️ The free technique that stops your mind wandering mid-page ➡️ How to prompt your own brain the way you prompt AI ➡️ What your "dominant question" reveals about your personality ➡️ Why school teaches us what to learn but never how to learn ➡️ What digital dementia is + how to spot it in yourself ➡️ Why focus is a muscle, not a personality trait ➡️ The one thing AI will never be able to do for you I asked Jim an entirely selfish question about how to actually get through the unread books next to my bed, and got an answer that goes far beyond discipline. Jim explains why the technology making us more capable is quietly making us less able. And by the end, we landed somewhere neither of us expected: AI could have given Jim every piece of advice that changed his life, word for word. But it wasn't the advice that changed him. It was that a living, breathing person cared enough to give it. This… is A Bit of Optimism. + + + This episode is brought to you by SAP. Bring it with SAP GROW. The AI Cloud ERP for any size business. Learn more at https://SAP.com/GROW + + + If you want to buy Jim’s new book, Limitless Daily, head to: https://limitlessdaily.com Want to check out Jim’s other work like his best-selling book Limitless? Go to: https://jimkwik.com + + + Chapters Chapters 00:00:00 The Boy With the Broken Brain: When Labels Become Limits 00:00:25 The Power of Adult Words on Children 00:06:51 The Freshman English Failure: Rock Bottom Before the Breakthrough 00:09:54 The Breaking Point: Collapsing in the Library 00:14:26 The Intervention: A Mentor Who Saw Potential, Not Limits 00:15:16 Accidental Careers: When Your Work Becomes Service to Others 00:20:48 110 People Showed Up: The Accidental Beginning of a Career 00:25:02 30 Books in 30 Days: The Student Who Saved Her Mother's Life 00:26:19 Service Over Success: Why Purpose Matters More Than Profit 00:31:31 Grow Givers vs Go Getters: Growing So You Have More to Give 00:32:23 Why Smart People Can't Finish Books 00:34:24 Your Brain Is Bored, Not Broken 00:38:49 The Visual Pacer Hack That Changes Everything 00:40:23 Ask Better Questions: How to Prime Your Brain for Learning 00:44:55 Focus Is a Muscle: Training Attention in the Age of AI 00:46:00 Why AI Will Never Replace Bedside Manner 00:49:11 It Was Never About the Information, It Was The Power of Being Seen + + + Simon is an unshakable optimist. He believes in a bright future and our ability to build it together. Described as “a visionary thinker with a rare intellect,” Simon has devoted his professional life to help advance a vision of the world that does not yet exist; a world in which the vast majority of people wake up every single morning inspired, feel safe wherever they are and end the day fulfilled by the work that they do. Simon is the author of multiple best-selling books including Start With Why, Leaders Eat Last, Together is Better, and The Infinite Game. + + + Website: http://simonsinek.com/ Leaderful: https://simonsinek.com/leaderful Podcast: http://apple.co/simonsinek Instagram: https://instagram.com/simonsinek/ Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/simonsinek/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/simonsinek Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/simonsinek + + +

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  One day I was being teased in class, a teacher came to my defense. She said, "Leave that kid alone. That's the boy with the broken brain." So that, that label became my, my limit. Adults have to be very careful of their external words because they often become a child's internal words.

• 0:13Simon Sinek?

  Yeah. I'm curious what it was that, that broke the narrative and helped you recognize that you indeed, you know, weren't broken.

• 0:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 0:22Simon Sinek?

  But in fact, were quite the opposite. You're limitless. Too many of us are still walking around with a self-belief that came from our childhood. When we were young, somebody may have told us that we were bad at math or that we were lazy. Whatever it was, we still say those things about ourselves today. That label became part of our identity. Worse, those labels become our limits. That's why I wanted to talk to Jim Quick, because that's exactly what happened to him. When Jim was five years old, he suffered a brain injury and it delayed his ability to read by three years.

• 1:02Simon Sinek?

  When he was nine years old, a well-meaning, but probably short-sighted teacher called him the boy with the broken brain. The problem was that label stuck and Jim believed it. That label became his identity and it held him back in all kinds of places in his life, until he learned how to overcome the label. Today, Jim is a leading expert on memory and accelerated learning. He's the bestselling author of Limitless and his new book, Limitless Daily, offers daily upgrades to transform our lives. This is the great irony. The boy with the broken brain has spent over three decades teaching people to read faster, remember more and think better.

• 1:45Simon Sinek?

  This episode covers a lot of ground and we come to some amazing conclusions by the end. But at a high level, what it's about is that difficult times can define us, diminish us, distract us or develop us. We get to decide. If you like this episode, please remember to subscribe. This is a bit of optimism.

• 2:13Simon Sinek?

  This episode is proudly brought to you by SAP. The best companies all have something in common. They have figured out how to build a culture in which their people feel cared for. They invest in relationships, in curiosity and in helping their people grow. And the results speak for themselves. People want to work there for a long time and the companies themselves become powerhouses. To learn more about SAP Grow, head to sap.com/grow. The one and only Jim Quick. I can't believe it's been this long since we've done a podcast together. I did yours a million years ago.

• 2:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:51Simon Sinek?

  Like you were one of the OG podcasters.

• 2:54Speaker 00

  We did a few episodes.

• 2:55Simon Sinek?

  You were doing it before there was a thing called podcasting. Now everybody's got a podcast.

• 3:00Speaker 00

  I saw on Facebook memories, like those nine years ago, somebody's placed you and I on stages and it has 38 million views and was talking about our devices and how just you need to talk about having the phone.

• 3:11Simon Sinek?

  You and I were talking about that a long time ago.

• 3:13Speaker 00

  This was, yeah, it's timely now especially.

• 3:16Simon Sinek?

  I know, it's true. We were, we were making some serious predictions back then.

• 3:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:20Simon Sinek?

  And you have no gray hair. My hairline is definitely receding.

• 3:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, that was, that was, that was a special time.

• 3:28Simon Sinek?

  Your career, I mean, you're known for memory and learning, but I'm so curious how our career progresses. You know, when, start with why I first came out.

• 3:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:38Simon Sinek?

  People called me the Y guy, right?

• 3:40Speaker 00

  The Y guy.

• 3:40Simon Sinek?

  Everybody knew me as the Y guy. I didn't come up with that. And I was so afraid of being stuck in one thing. What have you learned about learning over the course of, how many years have you been doing this?

• 3:53Speaker 00

  I am turning 53, so it's 34 years.

• 3:57Simon Sinek?

  34 years?

• 3:58Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, that's a very medical question, you know, learning about, about how I learn.

• 4:02Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 4:03Speaker 00

  I mean, can I give a little context for why I do this?

• 4:06Simon Sinek?

  Sure.

• 4:06Speaker 00

  Or is that, when I add events and I'm teaching learning, people assume that I was just kind of born with this knowledge or this ability or this talent for memory or something else. And that's definitely not the case. As you know, I had a traumatic brain injury when I was five. So I was in kindergarten, took a really bad fall, rushed to the emergency room. And where it showed up was in school, where I spent most of my time. I had migraines every day, poor focus, poor memory. It took me three years longer to learn how to read. You know, it's one thing to injure your brain, it's another to injure your heart and your mind, you know, because I felt like I was broken.

• 4:37Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, kills your confidence as a kid, right?

• 4:39Speaker 00

  My self-esteem, my self-confidence, I would just clearly wasn't like the other kids. When I was nine years old, I had a defining moment where I was being teased. My last name really is Quick. I didn't, it's my father's name, my grandfather's, not like a stage name. But I was called Slow and a lot worse. One day I was being teased in class, a teacher came to my defense. She said, "Leave that kid alone. That's the boy with the broken brain." So that, that label became my, my limit. Cause I, you know, adults have to be very careful of their external words because they often become a child's internal words.

• 5:07Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 5:08Speaker 00

  I remember even thinking it all the time. Like this was a revelation for me. I didn't know I was broken. Every time I was in pick for sports, which is all the time, I would say, "Oh, I'm broken. I have a broken brain." Or when I didn't do well in school, which was all the time, it was just like, "I'm the broken kid." That was a challenge and it wasn't just short-term. It was all through middle school, junior high, high school. And I was still motivated because my parents, they immigrated to the United States. My dad lost both his parents when he was 13. So we put a high value on family because of, you know, what he instilled. Going through that loss, you know, we live in back of a laundromat that my mom worked at. They all had many jobs. My grandmother was raising me.

• 5:46Simon Sinek?

  Was there a human being in your life that helped you overcome those feelings of limitation?

• 5:53Speaker 00

  I mean, my parents certainly aren't the wealthiest or the most educated or the most health-conscious or they never had a green juice or done a yoga class. But they were just really good people. So I was very blessed. I felt like I won the lottery there. I feel like anything that I've done well in my life, I, you know, I credit to them. And where I fell short, it's all, definitely all on me.

• 6:11Simon Sinek?

  So you had love?

• 6:13Speaker 00

  I did, yes.

• 6:14Simon Sinek?

  Those internal stories that teenagers or kids tell themselves.

• 6:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:19Simon Sinek?

  Those can last an entire life. And the way people hold themselves back because of an old story, of an old narrative.

• 6:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:27Simon Sinek?

  There's still, adults still dealing with it in therapy now. I'm curious what it was that, that broke the narrative and helped you recognize that you indeed, you know, weren't broken.

• 6:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:38Simon Sinek?

  But in fact, were quite the opposite. You're limitless.

• 6:41Speaker 00

  There were certainly people that helped me along the way. One of the pet peeves I have is like online, like when people say self-made this or that, I just.

• 6:48Simon Sinek?

  Doesn't exist.

• 6:49Speaker 00

  And I've never seen a case of that. I remember when I was a freshman in high school and I was, I was failing high school English. That was tough. They had to pull my parents out of work and had one of those awkward conversations after school. The teacher said, "Your son's failing my class, is not going to pass and might be held back." I was so embarrassed because I'm the oldest of three siblings and I want to be a good role model, you know, for my younger brother and sister. So I begged and pleaded and he offered, she offered me extra credit. I had to do a book report on Albert Einstein. So I promised my parents, I promised the teacher and she was caring. So she was, she was there. I have such a respect for, my mother became a special education teacher to help me with my, my challenges.

• 7:32Speaker 00

  She recently retired out of New York Public School System. I promised, I said, "I'm going to really do this. I'm going to show people what I could do, make my parents proud." Cause I never been able to do much. Cause I didn't lack the effort. Like I would work three times harder, but I just wouldn't be as smart. And there was only one other Asian in my, in the school system. But he was a year older and he was just class valedictorian, head of the debate team, head of the math team. Scored a 1590 on his SATs, was so upset, had to take it again to get it perfect.

• 8:01Simon Sinek?

  You were failing all the stereotypes.

• 8:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:02Simon Sinek?

  He was, he was keeping them alive.

• 8:04Speaker 00

  And he was like, "I made that part of the bell curve possible because I was on the other side." But I feel like maybe set also a benchmark for people's cognitive bias in the school. But I felt a lot of undue pressure, not that people really cared about me. So I'd spend every day in the library, this is before internet, just researching Albert Einstein. Found out he had some learning challenges, which was interesting.

• 8:23Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 8:23Speaker 00

  Which is maybe why this teacher put, pointed me in that direction. But I remember weeks later, I'm so excited because I've never worked so focused and so hard on something ever. The day it was, it was due, my, my father surprised me and had it like professionally bound. This was like a symbol of like, I was so excited. I never got excited to go to school. But this day, I was just skipping on air and I couldn't wait to hand it in and. In class, I'm just, I can't wait. Like, I'm just like really happy. And then towards the end of the class, the teacher looks at me and says, Jim, we have a surprise for everybody, class. Jim, come to the front of the room and present your book report. And I just, oh, my goodness, I didn't realize I had to talk about it.

• 9:00Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 9:00Speaker 00

  Like, my mouth is getting dry just thinking about it. My challenge, besides learning, was public speaking. So I'm pointing out how bad it really was. Let me give you one more example, and then I'll, I'll, I'll show you the intervention. I was so nervous that I looked at the teacher. I said, I didn't do it. I lied. And you could see the disappointment in her face because she really cared. And after the class let out, and I'm the only one there, I remember going, standing up, going to the door to leave their classroom, reaching in my backpack, pulling out the book report, and I threw it in the trash.

• 9:31Simon Sinek?

  Whoa.

• 9:31Speaker 00

  Yeah. And I felt symbolically, it was, but that's how bad it was, like, my fear of insecurity and self-esteem and not want to be seen. I couldn't read. I taught myself how to read by reading comic books. Something about the illustration is brought to life. But my superpower is being visible, right? I didn't want to take up space because I don't want to be bullied. I don't want to be called on in class. I would sit behind a tall kid, so I'd be unseen. But the intervention was, uh, I was fortunate enough to get into a local college. And I thought freshmen meant I could make a fresh start. And I took all these classes. I'm like, I'm gonna do it again. And I did worse. And I was ready to quit. And so the intervention came when I was ready because I didn't know how to tell my parents. So a friend said, hey, I'm going home to see my family for the weekend.

• 10:15Speaker 00

  Why don't you come with and get some perspective? And I find, Simon, that when you change your place or your people around, you get a different point of view. And family's pretty well off. Beautiful home on the water, and father's walking me around before dinner saying, just the property, and says, innocent question, but the worst question you could ask me at the time, said, Jim, how's school? And I just break, like, I'm pretty introverted and reserved. I just start bawling in front of this complete stranger because I have so much just pent up. Tell my whole story about broken brain. I'm ready to quit school. And he's like, Jim, why are you in school? You know? What do you want to be or do or share? And I didn't have any answer. No one's ever asked me that question before. I just thought it's just, you know, what you do.

• 10:55Speaker 00

  And when I go to answer him, he takes like a notepad out of his back pocket and rips out a couple of sheets, made me write it down. And I honestly didn't, you know, it was hard exercise, but I really started dreaming about who I am and what I wanted to do, what motivated me. And when I'm done, I start folding in the sheets to put in my back of my pocket, thinking the extra is over. And he just reaches out and grabs it right out of my hand, and he starts reading it. And I'm freaking out, right? I'm an 18-year-old kid, and this guy's obviously pretty successful, and he's looking at my dreams, things I haven't shared with anybody, or maybe even acknowledged myself. And he says, you're, you're this close to everything on that list. And he spreads his index fingers about a foot apart. And I'm thinking, give me 10 lifetimes, I'm not gonna crack that list.

• 11:37Speaker 00

  And then he takes his fingers, honest truth, and puts them to the side of my head, meaning inside, in between, there's a key. And he takes me to a room of his home that I've never seen before. It's wall-to-wall, ceiling, floor, covered in books. And then I've never read a book, so it's like being in a room full of snakes. But what makes it worse is he starts grabbing snakes off the shelf and handing them to me. And I start looking at them, and there are these titles of some amazing men, women in history, like Napoleon Hill, Dale Carnegie, some of the icons. And he says, Jim, you know, I want you to read one book a week. And I was like, there's no way. I'm fighting for my limitations. At events, all the time, people will come to me and say, I'm too old, I'm not smart enough. And I always say, stop. If you fight for your limitations, you know, you get to keep them. But I'm, I'm fighting for my limits. I'm like, can't do it. And I say, I have too much schoolwork.

• 12:20Speaker 00

  And he whips out that Mark Twain quote, don't let school get in the way of your education.

• 12:24Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 12:24Speaker 00

  And I was like, wow, that's really brilliant and clever. But I still can't promise because then my word, you know, as my parents raised me, if I'm gonna do it, no, I'm gonna do it. And then he's very smart. He still has my, like, my dream list, my bucket list, and he takes it out, and he starts reading every single thing, line by line, out loud. And something about hearing your dreams or things that you want in a little person's voice, encanted out in the universe, it just messed with my mind, my spirit, something fierce. And honestly, a lot of things, Simon, on the list were things I wanted to do for my folks, things they can never afford to do. Even if they had the money, they wouldn't do it for themselves. And, you know, with that purpose, I agreed to read the books. So fast forward to the end of the story is like, I'm back at school. I piled books I have to read for midterms, piled books I promised to read.

• 13:08Speaker 00

  I already couldn't get through pile A. So what do I do? I don't have time, so I don't eat, I don't sleep, and I don't socialize, I don't actually, I don't do anything for weeks. And then one night in the library, I'm just living at the library, I pass out. Two o'clock in the morning. I remember like it's yesterday, I fell down a flight of stairs, I hit my head again, and I woke up in the hospital two days later. Hooked up all these IVs. I was the scariest moment of my life. I was down 117 pounds. I just thought I was not worth anything. It was the darkest time of my life. And then a nurse came in, and I said, there has to be a better way than to put a bow on it. Nurse came in with a mug of tea. I drink a lot of tea. And on it was a drawing of Albert Einstein, like, the artistic piece. And had that quote we've all heard, and something of like, the same level, thinking it's created problem, won't solve your problem.

• 13:52Speaker 00

  And it made me ask a new question, like, what's my problem? Well, I have a broken brain. How do I fix it? And, you know, I'm a slow learner. How do I learn better? I thought, school. And I asked the nurse for a course bulletin. I looked at all these classes, and there are classes on what to learn, like math, history, science, vanish. But there are really classes on how to learn or how to think and how to do it. So I mean, I put that as my focus, but, you know, that, that, that was a mentor that just, those little things made a big difference. If you're gonna map out, like, Joseph Campbell's hero's journey, like, that, that person was like a Yoda to me.

• 14:25Simon Sinek?

  The, what I find so interesting about that is well-intended people tell you what you can do. And he didn't do that. You told you what you want to accomplish, and he simply said, so?

• 14:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:39Simon Sinek?

  Because he held this beautiful, safe space for you, where he didn't make you feel dumb or stupid or broken. He made you feel capable, possible, you know, all of these things. You wanted to do him right. You know, in part, it was for you, but in part is because you wanted to do right by him.

• 14:56Speaker 00

  I find that motivates me a lot. You know, I feel even why I do what I do is just, I feel moral impetus because I'm still that kind of shy kid. I feel, still feel that.

• 15:06Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 15:06Speaker 00

  Even when you went on stages or in front of people or in, on media. I feel like shame on me if people are struggling the way I did, and I didn't do something to be supportive of that.

• 15:16Simon Sinek?

  You, you know, you and I are very similar in the sense that our work comes from the solutions we found to solve our own problems.

• 15:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:24Simon Sinek?

  And because it worked for us, we shared it with the people we loved, and it turns out it worked for them. And then obsession and passion follow shortly because you realize there's something magical here. And this is where I think the work is driven by service, you know? And both of our careers are accidents. Neither of us imagined what we would be doing.

• 15:45Speaker 00

  I never went to a career fair or guidance counselor mentioning that this was an option.

• 15:48Simon Sinek?

  Nothing I'm doing in my life now was on any bucket list, dream list. It wasn't on any plan. I love it when people say, what's your plan for the next 10 years? I'm like, ha, I'm not gonna start now. But to your point, you know, there are dreams of impact. They're not goals.

• 16:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:06Simon Sinek?

  They're not like, I'm gonna, you know, make a million dollars, you know, be my own boss. They're not goals.

• 16:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:12Simon Sinek?

  They're like, I want to be a cog in a big machine, but I want my cog to matter. You know? And you've seen the power, you know, from your parents to the teacher, who probably knew what she was doing when she assigned you Einstein, to your friend's dad, who didn't have to do any of that. It's not that deep, meaningful relationship. He wasn't your lifelong mentor. It was an intervention that he probably didn't even realize he was making. You know? And this is what I think is so profound about these relationships is they're, they're very often small. And I think, you know, if you look at this day and age, people are going through the world looking for the big thing to help them or looking for the levers, you know?

• 16:53Speaker 00

  Because sometimes when something is so big and abstract.

• 16:55Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, and big is impossible. Big is intimidating. I can't do big either. You know, I also, like, you show me something huge, and like, where to begin? I'm like, I don't know. But I can do small things.

• 17:05Speaker 00

  And, and small things matter, right?

• 17:07Simon Sinek?

  Small things and small relationships and small impacts and small interventions, all of these things are remarkable.

• 17:11Speaker 00

  Yeah. And it's great to recognize that great things all had small beginnings. Like, every, every professional was once an amateur, right?

• 17:20Simon Sinek?

  The groups of people I used to speak to were seven, eight, nine.

• 17:25Speaker 00

  I remember, I remember those days.

• 17:26Simon Sinek?

  You know?

• 17:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:28Simon Sinek?

  Those are the audiences I spoke to, you know, where I made no money. I just wanted to say yes and hone my craft.

• 17:41Simon Sinek?

  We'll be right back. But first, we want to share an ad with authenticity, brought to you by SAP. It's increasingly rare that anyone wants to stay at one job for very long these days, especially young people. And the reason is simple. Too many companies prioritize profit over their people. David Robinson has been at SAP for over 20 years. I wanted to know what SAP was doing to build a culture that inspired him to stay for so long and still love his job. I also wanted to know what he's doing to inspire the next generation to do the same. One of the things you and I bonded on is you and I are both naturally curious people. How do you foster curiosity on your team?

• 18:18Speaker 02

  Well, it's almost showing others what curiosity looks like in action. You know? It can be as simple as like, hey, I'm curious, and then, you know, follow up with a question. It's contagious. It creates curiosity across the team.

• 18:29Simon Sinek?

  I think that to foster curiosity on a team, a leader has to work to remove the fear of failure, or the potential embarrassment or humiliation or punishment that may come with things not going well.

• 18:41Speaker 02

  Hundred percent. It needs to be a safe place. You need to demonstrate that through a kind of encouraging people to experiment, to take risk, and then not to penalize them when that risk-taking doesn't lead to the outcome we want, because it does lead to learning.

• 18:53Simon Sinek?

  And to celebrate the wins when they're new, when they're new and different.

• 18:57Speaker 02

  Correct. We, we tend to over-index in criticizing the failure or showcasing what did not work, so we never make that mistake again, but we don't celebrate the successes.

• 19:12Simon Sinek?

  I remember learning the confidence as well.

• 19:15Speaker 00

  Learning the confidence.

• 19:16Simon Sinek?

  Learning the confidence. You know, like, I remember I was supposed to do an event and they invited me and it was in the early days and so like, I wanted to spread my message and they promised me an audience of 100 people, I don't know, right? And I showed up and like 30 people were there. And other people would get angry that you promised me 100 people, there were only 30 people, you're wasting my time, you know? And he came up to me and he says, I'm really sorry, I hope for a bigger audience. And I sort of like made this little joke, I said, no, no, no, don't worry about it. I just feel sorry for the 70 people who didn't come. You know, because they missed out.

• 19:47Speaker 00

  Were you always like that?

• 19:48Simon Sinek?

  No, I was making a joke.

• 19:50Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 19:50Simon Sinek?

  No, I was being, I was just being snarky. I was probably jacked up on caffeine and adrenaline, you know? But it sort of stuck with me that what mattered was my message, not the size of the audience.

• 20:01Speaker 00

  I had a, almost a 180 experience. When I first learned this, I felt like happy, my grades improved, my life started to improve, and my confidence also, my identity, that really started to shift. But I was really upset that there were simple things that I could have done to be better, right? That I suffered and struggled all this time. And I think adversity can be an advantage, like with struggle comes strength. I don't know one strong person that had an easy life, right?

• 20:27Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 20:28Speaker 00

  So with that challenge comes a certain level of change. And yes, I did take my message, turn to my message, but how it happened, I couldn't help but help other people because I was upset that I went through it and there were little things I could have done to not have to struggle like I did. And so friends said, because I was tutoring them at school, said, well, hey, why don't you get some people to tutor and practice? And I'm like, okay. I didn't know, how do I get those people? And then when I had that thought, I was walking down the hallways, I saw a classroom not being used. I said, okay, next week at this time in this room on this day, I'm going to put like five or 10 people in there for free and teach them for a couple hours what's working and then maybe one or two wants to be tutored.

• 21:05Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 21:06Speaker 00

  And accept my help. And I said, okay. So I go back to my dorm room and I take out a, you know, eight by 11 with a Sharpie and I write, free speed reading, memory tips, get better grades, less time, Thursday, 7 PM, that classroom, right?

• 21:18Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 21:19Speaker 00

  The next morning, I make some photocopies on the way to class, put them on just some bulletin boards, not a lot. Fast forward to the next Thursday, I'm walking down the hallway and I'm just thinking in my mind, what am I doing? I just hope five people, like, believed in this, that this was like a thing, that want to hear like my, what's working. And I turned the corner and there's like a crowd of people outside the classroom. God honest truth, I said, I hope whatever is going on and soon, so I could do my thing, right? And I can't even get in because there's this really tall guy in the doorway and I'm like, what's going on inside? And he looks down at me, he's like, there's a speed reading class. God honest truth, I was like, wow, what a coincidence. What are the chances there's another speed reading class in the same room in the same night as mine? And I push my way in and as you can imagine, there's a crowd of people, people standing in the back, everybody seats taken, and there's no one teaching, right?

• 22:04Speaker 00

  It's hard to see what you don't believe, right? It takes my slow brain all this time to realize why they're there and who they're there for. And I do a head count and instead of five or 10 people, there's 110 people. Now, remember, I'm an 18-year-old kid, I look like I'm 12, dressed in t-shirts, shorts, there's a lot of upperclassmen, teaching assistants.

• 22:23Simon Sinek?

  And the last time you had to do a public speech, you pretended you didn't do the work.

• 22:26Speaker 00

  I literally have never spoken in public.

• 22:28Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 22:29Speaker 00

  And so I'm freaking out, like, or most people are nervous of it. I'm like, I can't breathe, so I leave. Like, I leave the room, the classroom, because I can't even speak. And I'm embarrassed, right? I go to this fountain, because I can't even go back to my dorm room because my friends will tease me and everything else. And I just start trying to get myself together, be mindful and kind of meditate, get my bearings. And I hear this voice inside my head and it's my mom's. I won't tell you exactly what she said, but it's the effect of, you promised all these people, you're going to help them, you're disappointing them, you're disappointing me, kind of message. And I'm doing this walking meditation back to the dorm room and I swear, I stop and I take one step back to the classroom. And isn't that instructive?

• 23:13Speaker 00

  Like, one step in another direction, if you're going this way and you go this way, you end up in a completely different destination.

• 23:18Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 23:19Speaker 00

  And I go in the classroom and I don't even remember what I said, other than apologizing. And I just talked for two hours. I don't know, like, have you ever been in a place where it just kind of flows through you?

• 23:29Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 23:30Speaker 00

  At the end, I come out of this trance and I don't even remember what I said, but I was like, hey, if you're interested, I just need about 10 hours to teach you what I'm doing, maybe a couple hours a week for the next five weeks. I used to teach tennis back in school and I got $30 an hour at this, you know, that's this racket club. And I was like, you know, this is what I tutor and do this, I'll be in the student center tomorrow noon if you have any questions. I swear, Simon, 100 people just get up and all of them leave. Like, nobody talks to me. And now I'm in that classroom by myself, 10, 11 o'clock at night, quiet, and I feel like totally confused and I'm completely exhausted. Because whenever you face like a big fear, like mentally, emotionally, physically, I fall asleep right on the carpet and it's the best sleep of my life.

• 24:15Speaker 00

  I get woken up the next morning by the class coming in at 8 o'clock in the morning and I'm down on the carpet drooling on myself. I freak out, I go back to my dorm room, shower, go to breakfast, go to class. 12 o'clock comes, I was like, oh, I promised to be in there. I go there, I hope one person just believes in me. And that same crowd is waiting for me there. And at the end of two hours, 71 of those 100 kids signed up for a course that didn't even exist. And now I'm not even 19 and I have $21,000 cash in my backpack. And I just think about my mentor, because I didn't know what to do with it, and I was feeding my mind and not letting school get in the way of my education and supplementing my education.

• 24:54Simon Sinek?

  That's amazing.

• 24:55Speaker 00

  With what I do. And the caveat on this, one of those 71 kids, she was a freshman, she read 30 books in 30 days.

• 25:02Simon Sinek?

  Wow.

• 25:03Speaker 00

  Now, this changed my life, because I thought this was a one-off, right? She read 30 books in 30 days, I want to find out not how, but I want to know why.

• 25:09Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 25:10Speaker 00

  Right. And so I want to start with why. I wanted to find out, you know, because a lot of people know what to do, but they don't do it, right?

• 25:14Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 25:15Speaker 00

  And I find out her mother was diagnosed, oh goodness, I get terminal cancer, was given just two months to live by doctors. And the books she was reading were books that saved her mom's life.

• 25:26Simon Sinek?

  Wow.

• 25:27Speaker 00

  And that's what I said. Six months goes by, I get a call from this young lady and on the phone, she's crying profusely. I don't know how much time goes by, but when she stops, I find out they're tears of joy. And her mother not only survived, but is really getting better. Doctors don't know how or why, they're calling it a miracle, but her mother attributed 100% to the great advice she got from her daughter, who learned it from all these books.

• 25:47Simon Sinek?

  Wow.

• 25:48Speaker 00

  And in that moment, Simon, I realized like two things. I realized that if knowledge is power, then learning is our superpower. Because our lives are a reflection of like the decisions we make, right? Life is letter C between B and D, or B is birth and D is death, life is choice.

• 26:03Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 26:04Speaker 00

  You know, but basically, I believe that these difficult times can define you, these difficult times can diminish you, distract you, or develop you, right? We decide. And so that was a choice and she did it. And so I realized that, you know, we have a choice each day. But the other thing I realized was that my Dharma, my mission.

• 26:21Simon Sinek?

  I learned this a hard way, that true purpose is not visions and dreams and all of this stuff, but true purpose is the opportunity to serve those who serve others.

• 26:31Speaker 00

  I like that.

• 26:33Simon Sinek?

  The thing that feeds my soul more than anything else is not helping some company make money that does nothing for me, you know? When I talk to people who've devoted their lives to service, you know, military, arts, doctors, nurses, teachers, you know, when I get to help people like that, they're always the most joyful, most rewarding experiences I have. And you know this, you know, we live these weird lives now and where people will stop us on the street and say, thank you, because they were able to help somebody else.

• 27:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:06Simon Sinek?

  Those are the ones that get me. You helped me start my business. I mean, those are amazing and I'm grateful that my work can have that impact. But when I hear about how, just like your story, your work taught me something, showed me something, whatever it is, whatever the impact is, that I did something for an employee, that I did something for a friend, that I did something for somebody who was in pain. And I always say the same thing, thank you for sharing that story, that inspires me to keep going.

• 27:31Speaker 00

  I love that.

• 27:32Simon Sinek?

  And I think we live in a very, we live in a very selfish world, you know? Our nation over-indexed on individualism. We came up in a generation that was about, you know, greed is good.

• 27:43Speaker 00

  Right.

• 27:44Simon Sinek?

  And what can you do and how much can you make and that we're supposed to be competing against each other, which is nonsense.

• 27:50Speaker 00

  Very finite game.

• 27:51Simon Sinek?

  Very finite game, yeah. And it might be fun at times, but it's not fulfilling.

• 27:56Speaker 00

  Right.

• 27:57Simon Sinek?

  It's not inspiring. You meet these people who've had tremendous quote-unquote "success," you know, traditionally defined, and yet they're bored, they're not happy, they're lost.

• 28:14Simon Sinek?

  And if they stop doing that thing that made them quote unquote, successful, their identity was stripped away from them, you know?

• 28:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:22Simon Sinek?

  Because they've defined themselves by their title or some award they won 20 years ago, you know, CEO of Oscar nominated, Oscar winning. So your, your identity is defined by a position or a past achievement, which is now history.

• 28:37Speaker 00

  It's interesting to work with people that are transitioning from like, let's say professional sports into their next game or, or military.

• 28:44Simon Sinek?

  Yep.

• 28:45Speaker 00

  Right. So the work even with, not only helping with TBIs and concussions, but also skill acquisition in that even then identifying like the principles and the processes of the passion that made them extraordinary, the discipline, the growth, learning to be able to apply that towards another game. Because they lose their identity.

• 29:03Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 29:03Speaker 00

  Like, what do you do when you train your whole life 24/7 for this?

• 29:07Simon Sinek?

  Our favorite CEOs, and this is not an anti-business, this is a very pro-business message. Jim Senegal, you know, who was the CEO of Costco. I mean, he was like dogged about serving his customer, you know? Or you have Jesse Cole is the founder and CEO of, of the Savannah Bananas. Dogged about giving back to his customers, his guests. Walt Disney, dogged about creating an experience for people to escape the stresses of their lives, to come to this place where they can leave their stresses behind and come into this magical world. All of these people, they were driven by service and they operated in business.

• 29:44Speaker 00

  Right.

• 29:44Simon Sinek?

  But they were driven by service.

• 29:46Speaker 00

  The business was more of an expression of that service.

• 29:47Simon Sinek?

  The business was the expression, it was the manner, the thing that they found. But they were insanely service oriented. And when you're that service oriented, you also take care of your own people. Because if you have a service orientation, you can't not. Those guys, even though they did make tons of money and they did have, you know, success by traditional terms, none of them defined their own success by those things. My, my friend and mentor, Bob Chapman, he said, you know, we define success by how we touch the lives of people. You know?

• 30:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:15Simon Sinek?

  Like, don't ask me how my company's doing, ask me how my people are, you know? And so service isn't one of these corny things. It's not something you volunteer on the weekend.

• 30:23Speaker 00

  Right.

• 30:24Simon Sinek?

  You know, I do that, I like that as well. But that is not the compensation or the balance for the, the life you live during the day, which is a taking life. You know, it's the same mentality is like, I'm going to get rich. And then once I have my millions, then I'm going to give to charity. You know, it's like, hmm, or.

• 30:41Speaker 00

  Right, right, right.

• 30:42Simon Sinek?

  Or, and it's so much more fulfilling to give time and energy to another human being than to simply giving money.

• 30:48Speaker 00

  Not a thousand percent. You learn to earn, to return. The business could certainly be a force for good.

• 30:53Simon Sinek?

  A hundred percent business can be a force for good.

• 30:55Speaker 00

  Absolutely. So these people could do well by doing good.

• 30:57Simon Sinek?

  And you use the business as the tool to serve, to serve people, to serve customers, to serve employees, to serve communities. And that doesn't mean taking the profit and then giving it away. That means the physical structure of the business is built to serve.

• 31:10Speaker 00

  When people are studying biomimicry and like using certain principles for energy or something like that, then nature kind of figured it out. And it seems like a lot of nature gives back to the ecosystem, serves a purpose also.

• 31:22Simon Sinek?

  That's what makes an ecosystem, an ecosystem, right?

• 31:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, doesn't overuse resources, you know, also as well. But if it gives back or it becomes extinct, right? I feel like even in this, there's this self-improvement trap where people are always trying to like optimize for, for everything. But it's also feel like there's a paradox there because if it's, you know, self-improvement potentially could be good to grow until it's not, right? Where it's just self-rejection or people are motivated because they have to win in order to prove something to themselves or they are a certain kind of people or to be happy. I feel like we grow to give. I have this term that's called grow givers. I feel like, because back in, it was like go, go getting, right? Just getting, getting, getting. But then you could turn it upside down. You could go and give and give and give, but then you're depleted.

• 32:07Speaker 00

  Because I get to work with a lot of caregivers, a grow giver is someone who grows so they have more to give. You know, and I feel like it's more healthy harmony between, because it gives me a purpose that I could grow. Then the distinctions grow emotionally growing in this way. So I have more to be able to offer to the, to people who could benefit.

• 32:23Simon Sinek?

  So I want to change subjects.

• 32:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:25Simon Sinek?

  And I want to ask you an entirely selfish question.

• 32:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:28Simon Sinek?

  I love the idea of reading.

• 32:30Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 32:31Simon Sinek?

  And I buy books like they're going out of fashion.

• 32:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:34Simon Sinek?

  And I've started a lot of books.

• 32:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:36Simon Sinek?

  And I can't finish them and my ADHD, I get very distracted. Or I'm like, oh, I'll read, but then I don't, you know? And I have the books piled up next to my bed, literally a pile of books next to my bed that don't get read. Right?

• 32:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:49Simon Sinek?

  And when I was a kid, they would do these reading comprehension things where I don't know if you remember the little light that went across the sentence or the words.

• 32:55Speaker 00

  Oh, you're lucky.

• 32:56Simon Sinek?

  Do you remember?

• 32:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 32:57Simon Sinek?

  You know, and they had to take the cellophane off the highest level because no one had ever done it before.

• 33:03Speaker 00

  Right.

• 33:03Simon Sinek?

  For me to do it. And so when I'm locked in and when I'm focused.

• 33:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:07Simon Sinek?

  And the ADHD is my best friend. I could read faster and retain what was going on, literally better than the whole class.

• 33:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:15Simon Sinek?

  Right? But that's not how one reads, which is with a little light going across the words to help me focus. And I'm terrible, even when I'm really well intended. I'll sit down and I'll read the first page and I'm like, oh my God, this book is great. And I'll finish the first, you know, section, not even a chat. I'm loving this book. The next thing I do is I count how many more pages until the end of the next section. I'm like, oh, I can't do 30 pages. Now it feels like work.

• 33:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think a lot of people can relate to having books on their shelf they haven't read yet. And it becomes more shelf help than not just self-help.

• 33:48Speaker 00

  But it's, or the experience where they'll read a page in a book and forget what they just read, how embarrassing. And they go back and reread it.

• 33:54Simon Sinek?

  And when I read, I read incredibly slowly, even though I know I can read incredibly fast. So for somebody with my funny brain.

• 34:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:02Simon Sinek?

  The ADHD brain, can you give me some tips or tricks? That not only help me read at the pace I know that I can. I like magazines and newspapers because they're very short. And so sometimes I have a Kindle that I'll make the type really huge. Those are only three or four words. But again, I don't, I still don't do the reading. So to make me feel like I'm making progress and enjoying myself, so then I'll go back and do more of it.

• 34:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:23Simon Sinek?

  That's where I need your help.

• 34:24Speaker 00

  Let's unpack this. So we know the importance of reading.

• 34:27Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 34:27Speaker 00

  Right. So that doesn't have to be, but for some people listening, maybe they're just not motivated because they don't see the relevance.

• 34:32Simon Sinek?

  I'm bought into the reading.

• 34:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:34Simon Sinek?

  I just wish.

• 34:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, somebody has decades of experience like you do, and you put it into your next book. And somebody could read that book in a few days.

• 34:39Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 34:39Speaker 00

  They could download decades of insight and experience in days. That's a huge advantage. Plus, reading is just great exercise for your mind. I would say visual pacer could help, certainly. This is trainable. I feel like a lot of people don't read as much because they're not getting the benefit either. They're distracted or they forget, or they lose interest and they get bored. And partly it's because they're reading too slow. So like John F. Kennedy, a lot of leaders are readers, right? He was said to have read at something where like 800, a thousand words a minute. You know, where the average person reads about 200 words a minute. He said to have read six newspapers every morning with a cup of coffee. One of his speeches is about 280 words a minute. So he could talk at 280 words a minute, but process at much higher than that. Right? And so he's not saying all the words. So part of it is reducing that subvocalization, right?

• 35:24Speaker 00

  Subvocalization, you ever notice when you're reading something, you hear that inner voice reading along with you?

• 35:29Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 35:29Speaker 00

  Right? Hopefully it's your own voice, it's not like somebody else's.

• 35:31Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 35:31Speaker 00

  But if you're saying the words, it implies that you can only read as fast as you could speak, not how fast you could think. That's why a lot of people could listen to podcasts or audiobooks at faster.

• 35:39Simon Sinek?

  And by the way, when I listen to podcasts, I listen to them at double speed, two times speed.

• 35:42Speaker 00

  And so you can understand at that speed.

• 35:44Simon Sinek?

  Sometimes the speed is too slow.

• 35:46Speaker 00

  Right, exactly. And that's a great testament to, to the, to reading, because if you could understand it that fast, but you can't speak that fast.

• 35:53Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 35:53Speaker 00

  Right? You can't talk that fast. So subvocalization can be reduced, but it's there because of training, right?

• 35:58Simon Sinek?

  Because we're taught to read out loud kind of thing?

• 36:00Speaker 00

  Either we're reading out loud because teachers needed to make sure you're pronouncing the words phonetically incorrectly. And then later on, your teacher probably said, okay, read silently to yourself, requily to yourself. And that's where you associated that external voice and you made it internal.

• 36:13Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 36:14Speaker 00

  And so naturally gifted readers, they don't subvocalize because do you need to say New York City in your head to understand what New York City is? No, they read more on sight, like a stop sign. You don't say to yourself, stop, when you're driving. You understand a hundred percent what it means, but you don't have to pronounce it, right? And 95% of words that we're reading on a daily basis are sight words, words that we've seen thousands of times that we don't have to pronounce to understand it. We see pictures and the pictures are worth a thousand words, that's a lot of comprehension. So when we teach speed reading online, we have students in every country, so we get a lot of feedback. If I ask people to read faster, most people would say their comprehension would go down.

• 36:48Simon Sinek?

  Because they're speaking faster in their head.

• 36:49Speaker 00

  Right. They would say, they would say their comprehension, if I ask, challenge people, everyone here to read a little bit faster, they would feel like their understanding would go down. Now, in actuality, what we've seen is actually the comprehension is up when you're reading faster because your brain is this incredible supercomputer.

• 37:03Simon Sinek?

  So the, the hack here is don't say the words.

• 37:06Speaker 00

  So there's two things. There's a mindset, belief system, because I could teach somebody the behavior. But if their belief is if I read faster, then I'm not going to understand it, they're not going to do the behavior. Right? Because all behavior is belief driven. So there's two hacks that built into this. Number one, the belief we have to unravel is that if you read faster, you won't understand as much. That's absolutely not true because you could listen to audiobooks twice as fast and understand it.

• 37:28Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 37:28Speaker 00

  Right? Here's the reason why is because your brain is this incredible supercomputer. When you're reading, you're feeding it one word at.

• 37:38Speaker 00

  Time, we're both from New York. I can't even talk that slow. But if we were to talk that slow in this conversation, what would everyone who's joining us?

• 37:45Simon Sinek?

  It's boring.

• 37:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, they would, their mind would wander. They would think about other things. They would fall asleep.

• 37:50Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 37:51Speaker 00

  Aren't those similar symptoms what people associate to reading? Their mind wanders, they forget what's going on, they fall asleep, they use it as a sedative.

• 37:57Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 37:57Speaker 00

  Because it's going too slow. As opposed to, let's say you're driving a car going 30 miles an hour in your neighborhood. You're not really focused on the act of driving. You should be, but you're not. You think about the dry cleaning, having a conversation, singing a song, whatever. You'd be five different things because you're going slow. If you're racing cars, F1 driver, are you thinking about dry cleaning? Are you, your mind wandering, you know, trying to do anything else? No, you're focused on the act of driving, you're focused on what's in front of you. So faster readers are like that race car driver because they're skilled. They have strong human intelligence. They're reading with that pace. If you don't give your brain the stimulus it needs, it'll seek entertainment elsewhere in the form of distraction. It'll wander, it'll think about other things.

• 38:32Simon Sinek?

  Play a video game, pick up my phone.

• 38:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, because you're going, exactly, because you're going too slow. And also, it's just easier to, I look forward to books. I don't read frantically fast. I'm never going to go faster than I understand. But I'm never looking how many more pages because I'm getting through it with a certain rhythm and pace and tempo.

• 38:48Simon Sinek?

  So how do I do it?

• 38:49Speaker 00

  So visual pacer could work, all right? But you have to pull yourself through the information because your eyes are attracted to motion, right? If someone ran across, if you're watching this on video, no one would pay attention to either of us. You'd, your eyes through, as a hunter gatherer, if the book, book next to you moves, you have to look. Is that your survival? Number one, that could, that could be lunch.

• 39:06Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 39:07Speaker 00

  Or number two, you could be lunch.

• 39:08Simon Sinek?

  You could be lunch, right.

• 39:09Speaker 00

  Either way, so your eyes are attracted to motion. So when you're using a visual pacer, a highlighter, a mouse on a computer, you know, a pen, your finger, whatever it is, your eyes are being pulled through the information as opposed to your attention being pulled apart. And also, it's how your senses work. Like, have you ever tasted a great peach?

• 39:23Simon Sinek?

  Mm-hmm.

• 39:24Speaker 00

  See, you're not actually tasting the peach. Your tongue's not capable of tasting what a peach tastes like. It's smelling the peach. But your sense of smell and taste are so closely linked, your mind can't tell the difference, unless you're sick. If you're congested, food doesn't taste the same, right? Just as your sense of smell and taste are closely linked, so is your sense of sight and touch. That literally, when people use their finger, they feel more in touch with their reading. And so what I would say is using your finger will help you improve your speed because your eyes aren't going to, the opposite is regression.

• 39:50Simon Sinek?

  Yep.

• 39:51Speaker 00

  Regression is back skipping, rereading words. Some people read whole lines by accident. And if you're wasting all that time, you're not going to back skip when you're pulling your finger across the page or using a highlighter, a pen, or whatever, using a screen, does not touch the screen. There's friction, so I go right above the page. I burn a lot of books up that way. But I would say that drives it being pulled through it.

• 40:09Simon Sinek?

  Do you recommend I use a pen?

• 40:10Speaker 00

  I use, I use a pen because I, I do.

• 40:12Simon Sinek?

  So drag, so drag the pen as fast as I can.

• 40:14Speaker 00

  Not, not touching the page, but right above it, right, to help you focus, right? The other thing that could help you get more out of it is asking, like, just how we prompt AI. We're not prompting our mind with useful questions. Like, if you're reading something and asking yourself questions like, how can I use this? How does this relate to what I know? When will I use this? It keeps you engaged because then you're pulling, it's, your brain primarily is a deletion device, right? We, if we let everything in, we'd go mad, right? We'd be overloaded. We'd go insane. So primarily, we're trying to filter information.

• 40:45Simon Sinek?

  Out.

• 40:46Speaker 00

  Out.

• 40:46Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 40:46Speaker 00

  The things that we let in, there's like a little gatekeeper called your reticular activating system, which everyone, a lot of people have heard about, RES. It's engaged by what's important to you. And usually, what directs that, that spotlight are the questions you're asking, right? So like, years ago, my younger sister would send me postcards and emails, a very specific breed of dog, like a pug dog, right? My question was like, why she keeps sending me these things? And I realized her birthday was coming up and it was like, she's a good marketer. But the funny thing happened, when I started asking the question about this, I would go to the supermarket and I'd be checking out, and the person in front of me is holding a pug dog. I'd be jogging to my neighborhood and somebody's walking six pug dogs. Now, my question for everyone listening, and this is kind of obvious, did those pug dogs just teleport?

• 41:29Simon Sinek?

  No, of course not. It's because.

• 41:31Speaker 00

  But I was blocking it.

• 41:32Simon Sinek?

  Right, yeah. It's in your mind and now you see them everywhere.

• 41:34Speaker 00

  Exactly, because I was deleting them before because it was important. When I started asking the question about pugs, then I started seeing them everywhere.

• 41:39Simon Sinek?

  Like, you buy a car because you think, I'm the only person that has this car. Then all of a sudden, you buy it and everybody has that car.

• 41:44Speaker 00

  And that's why that attentional priming is so very valuable questions because there's a dominant question I feel like we ask all the time. And so if we have 60,000 thoughts today, a lot of those thoughts come in the form of questions. That's how we think, we ask and answer questions. There is a certain one or two questions that we ask more than any other, and it's individual per person. And those questions are determining our focus all the time, right? I walked my friend through her process. We found out her dominant question, she asks hundreds of times a day consciously, probably much more unconsciously, how do I get people to like me? But you don't know anything about this woman, what her career, what she looks like, and nothing. But you probably know a lot about her personality.

• 42:19Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 42:19Speaker 00

  If someone is obsessed, trying to answer, look, shine a spotlight on how do I get this person to like me?

• 42:24Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 42:25Speaker 00

  What, how would you describe their life or their personality?

• 42:28Simon Sinek?

  I mean, they're probably going to show up a bit much.

• 42:30Speaker 00

  They're a sycophant, trying to be a people pleaser.

• 42:32Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 42:32Speaker 00

  Or their personality changes depending on who they're spending time with. She's a martyr because people are taking advantage of her all the time. She's always people pleasing and she's nice, not kind. And so you know all this about her and you only know one question she asks herself. And so it's interesting, as people are listening, like, what do you think your dominant question is? Because that's determined what pug dogs you're looking at, right? That spotlight. I would be asking more deliberate questions to express your interest, activate your RES.

• 42:59Simon Sinek?

  So like, if I finish the first section, then ask a question that I'm hoping to get answered in the second section?

• 43:04Speaker 00

  I, yeah, even, even when I wrote Limitless, I opened with the questions first. Like, so many people, it's backwards. Back in school, it was like, reading comprehension. Read these passages.

• 43:12Simon Sinek?

  And then ask the questions.

• 43:14Speaker 00

  Absolutely read the questions first because then, when you're reading.

• 43:17Simon Sinek?

  And then you're looking for the answers.

• 43:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's an answer, there's an answer, there's, because it's called attentional priming. So attentional priming is where you're seeding the information that you want and you're pulling the information in, it's supposed to try to push it in. Because the brain doesn't learn best through consumption. It learns best through creation and co-creation, right?

• 43:33Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 43:34Speaker 00

  Your creativity, asking, and I think that curiosity is so very important to lean into, especially in an age of AI, right? You know, there's certain things that are very human, right? There's, there's heart, the emotional intelligence, there's the understanding, there's meaning, there's adaptation, there's the nexus of human connection. And so, you know, I feel like in an age of AI, because that's also training people to have more overload.

• 43:56Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 43:56Speaker 00

  More distraction.

• 43:57Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 43:58Speaker 00

  More misinformation, right? Because AI, as an example, I know there's another question, but that's a lot of what people are reading right now. It's exponential and it scales, but only scales, it makes something like, magnifies what you bring to it, right? If you bring chaos to it, it magnifies that. If you bring clarity, it's going to magnify that.

• 44:16Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 44:16Speaker 00

  But it magnifies your own human intelligence. My whole concern, though, is that we're so dependent on AI, then I don't want human intelligence to be artificial, right? So questions would be, whether it's fiction or nonfiction, I mean, when you're reading and getting, you want to get through it more, is the fact that you love it, you express interest, you have a natural curiosity. You want to know what's going to happen and how the authors.

• 44:37Simon Sinek?

  But it's because I know the thing is slow that I don't pick it up.

• 44:41Speaker 00

  And that's the thing.

• 44:41Simon Sinek?

  And I get distracted by, I'm like, ugh, I'll just look at Instagram.

• 44:45Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, part of it also, let's be honest, like, you know, this, this, this year, test scores came back in the US and they were lower this year, both reading and math, right? And part of it is that, you know, potentially suggested that because of how fast the medium is with social media, right? In terms of attention span. So I believe focus is a muscle, right? And it's, you exercise it. And then I would say is like, control, control your focus, flex your focus muscle and, and muscle in the age of attention, where everyone's trying to vie for your attention, right? But you could practice your focus muscle.

• 45:19Simon Sinek?

  This goes back, we have to remember who built AI, engineers, okay? Engineers built AI. Engineers are numbers people, data people, they're good with it, God bless them. But they're not people people. And they, very often, they always leave the people component out. So if I hear another person telling me that AI can do the work of the doctor better and replace your radiologist and all of this stuff, and some of that may be true. Like, there's machines that, you know, where it'll scan your whole body. It'll, it'll calculate the number of moles you have on your entire body, including their size. And then when you go back next year, it'll know if it's got a new mole or if one grew slightly bigger. Your dermatologist cannot do that, right?

• 45:59Simon Sinek?

  So it's quite possible that the technology and the AI will absolutely replace the dermatologist. It's quite possible, at least for some of the stuff that they're going to do. But what everybody forgets is bedside manner. Like, none of us like doctors that have no bedside manner. We're a human being and if we're being diagnosed with a horrible illness.

• 46:19Speaker 00

  Right.

• 46:20Simon Sinek?

  You don't want a computer to just simply spit out the answer of what it accurately diagnosed you with and good luck with the, with the treatment that, you know, you want a doctor to hold your hand and say, I've got some really hard news. And this idea of bedside manner, a human being caring for a human being, aided by the computer, no problem with that. But this idea that AI will replace the people is nonsense because people want people. I want a doctor delivering bad news to me, not a machine.

• 46:47Speaker 00

  AI is not, whether it replaces or not is a different conversation. I would say that a calculator computes better than a human brain can.

• 46:55Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 46:56Speaker 00

  AI could process information infinitely faster than a human brain can. But that, those two devices aren't going to sit in the mud with you.

• 47:05Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 47:05Speaker 00

  When you're going through those challenges, it's not going to help a grieving child. It has no experience of falling in love or breakups or any of those things. And so, yeah, I lean heavy into, into the human intelligence and wisdom over artificial intelligence. And AI is technology. Technology is supposed to just amplify our expression of ourself. My thing with technology is just for that, we don't want to be overly dependent on it. That's the reliance. I thought, you know, digital dementia where technology is remembering everything for you. Your to do is your, your phone numbers. Not that I want to memorize 5,000 phone numbers.

• 47:34Simon Sinek?

  Don't you remember the Iliad? The Iliad was passed down through story over generations. Like, it'd be like, son, it's time for me to tell you the Iliad, you know? And it was passed down because we could remember it.

• 47:48Speaker 00

  Before printing presses and everything, any kind of technology.

• 47:51Simon Sinek?

  And the printing press, then our brains just stopped.

• 47:53Speaker 00

  And not that you want to memorize 1,000 phone numbers, but it should be concerning. We've lost the ability to remember one or a PIN number or the hotel room.

• 47:59Simon Sinek?

  But it is amazing that because the technology existed, my brain decided to go on strike.

• 48:02Speaker 00

  And that's, that's digital dementia.

• 48:04Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 48:04Speaker 00

  The high reliance on technology to remember so you don't have to use it. And I'm, I'm for convenience, but you don't want it to be crippling. So I talk about digital deduction and just think about GPS, right? If you're using a third-party piece of technology to tell you when and where to turn, you never develop your visual spatial intelligence.

• 48:20Simon Sinek?

  You pay no attention.

• 48:20Speaker 00

  Your orientation in space or anything else like that.

• 48:22Simon Sinek?

  You're just busy changing the radio station, whatever.

• 48:23Speaker 00

  Right. And so you don't have to develop it and it's convenient. What my concern is, if your apartment or office is on the fifth floor and you take the technology, which is called an elevator, convenient, very convenient. But then you don't get the work out of the stairs, right? If you have to go to the bank eight blocks away, you take an Uber or a Lyft, convenient, but then we don't get our steps in, right? So I'm all for using any form of technology. It's not good or bad. Fire is a, it's an early form of technology. You could cook your food or you could burn down your home, how it's applied. You know, I think the intentionality is very important that we bring to something that's going to scale. But also, AI doesn't know, it could feign artificial empathy, but it doesn't understand heartbreak.

• 49:04Simon Sinek?

  Or care.

• 49:04Speaker 00

  Right.

• 49:05Simon Sinek?

  It's not the teacher.

• 49:07Speaker 00

  Right.

• 49:07Simon Sinek?

  Who, when you were a kid, gave you Einstein. It's not your friend's dad. The AI might say all those things and it wouldn't have changed who you are. The AI might have given you all the same advice. You should do a book report on Einstein, the AI said. The AI says, hey, write down all your dreams. It's all possible between these two fingers. All of that could have been true and it wouldn't have changed your life at all because it wasn't the information they were giving you that mattered. It was that you felt a human being cared about you and saw you and supported you.

• 49:37Speaker 00

  I just got goosebumps. I call them truth bumps.

• 49:38Simon Sinek?

  And that's how you became Jim Quick. It was human beings who loved you and cared about you and not the answers or the information they gave you. Took a full circle.

• 49:49Speaker 00

  That was beautiful.

• 49:50Simon Sinek?

  It's such a treat to sit down and talk to you.

• 49:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, I've been looking.

• 49:53Simon Sinek?

  It's been a long time.

• 49:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, I would have flown out here just to hang out and I'm glad we could have this conversation.

• 50:04Simon Sinek?

  As always, thanks for listening. And if you liked this episode, please do remember to subscribe to A Bit of Optimism wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts. And remember, new episodes drop every Tuesday. A Bit of Optimism is a production of The Optimism Company, lovingly produced by our team, Lindsay Garbenius, Phoebe Bradford and Devon Johnson. And if you want more cool stuff or just to find out what I'm up to, visit simonsinek.com. Until next time, take care of yourself, take care of each other.