How To Fix Your Brain - Jim Kwik

Jim Kwik is a world-renowned memory expert, podcaster and New York Times Bestselling Author. Mastering a new skill, language, or instrument can be an intimidating task. However, Jim has found hacks which can dramatically elevate the learning process. This has the potential to transform a conventional learning approach into a simple journey toward peak brain performance. Expect to learn if modern people's brains are actually broken, the biggest lies we are told about how to learn, how memory actually works, where people go wrong when trying to improve their recall, how you can increase your reading speed, ways you can get into a flow state more easily, the strategies you need to know to access a limitless brain and much more... Sponsors: Get 10% discount on all Gymshark’s products at https://bit.ly/sharkwisdom (use code: MW10) Get 20% discount on Nomatic’s amazing luggage at https://nomatic.com/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM) Get $150 discount on Plunge’s amazing sauna or cold plunge at https://plunge.com (use code MW150) Extra Stuff: Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ Buy my own productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom #memory #learning #jimkwik - 00:00 Are Modern Brains Broken? 09:10 Brain Performance During Stress 18:55 Seeing Heroes as Normal People 24:31 How to Help Someone Overcome Nihilism 29:11 How Does Memory Work? 39:23 Importance of Your Brain Diet 43:53 The Power of Spaced Repetition 47:52 Why Exercise Supports the Brain 49:44 Brain Nutrients & Supplements 58:36 How Your Social Group Impacts Brain Health 1:03:32 Your Brain Needs a Clean Environment 1:07:53 Optimising Sleep For Brain Function 1:14:11 Learning New Things & Meditating 1:19:49 Prioritise Information You Want to Keep 1:25:36 Strategies to Stay Focused 1:33:49 Expanded Edition of Limitless - Get access to every episode 10 hours before YouTube by subscribing for free on Spotify - https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn or Apple Podcasts - https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Get my free Reading List of 100 life-changing books here - https://chriswillx.com/books/ Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic here - https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/

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

• 0:00Chris Williamson?

  Are modern people's brains broken, in your opinion?

• 0:05Speaker 01

  Broken is a big word, and I definitely can identify with being broken with my traumatic brain injury when I was a child and my learning difficulties and people teasing me, calling me broken. And I feel like our minds are under assault for sure, you know, with technology. I don't think that's like technology is the reason, but certainly the technology can amplify the issues of distraction and forgetfulness and this kind of overload information anxiety. And it's an interesting world, you know, the amount of information is doubling at dizzying speeds, but I feel like we're not really prepared. I don't know a lot of people who aren't struggling right now with forgetfulness or distraction, maintaining their concentration.

• 0:51Speaker 01

  It feels like taking a sip of water out of a fire hose nowadays, just to kind of catch up and keep up. Yeah. How are you doing with this data deluge?

• 1:00Chris Williamson?

  It's interesting because obviously I consume so much for the podcast, you know, prep for the guests and other reading and then my own reading and then the useless consumption of everything from social media to YouTube when I'm watching, when I'm trying to eat my lunch and stuff. It's a mixed bag because there are so many amazing insights that I really value and yet coming along for the ride is this kind of ambient distraction, almost like this habituated ADHD thing that comes in where I just find myself task switching, even though I don't need to. So, you know, from you've spent forever studying the brain, both for yourself and from a professional perspective.

• 1:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43Chris Williamson?

  How many of the problems that people are dealing with when it comes to focus and attention are an inbuilt endemic part of being a human? And how many do you think are novel and can be laid at the feet of the modern world?

• 1:59Speaker 01

  Well, things are, were definitely simpler for our brains as hunter and gatherers. Right. We're, we wanna, we wanna be able to survive and that that's a big prerogative. We wanna be able to reproduce. We wanna be able to know where all the, the fresh water is and the enemy tribe and the, and you know, where the fertile soil is. Nowadays, though, every day, I feel like people are just really, they're sprinting just to catch up. Right. New technology, new people, new ideas, fast changes, endless updates. You know, it's happening in our careers and school and business industry and literally every, every person's daily life. And so people feel a little overwhelmed by the growing,

• 2:40Speaker 01

  like the data clutter, you stressed out by all the knowledge that you must absorb and process and read and, and recall, you know, the, the nature of my work is really, how do you stay on top and, and deal with all that?

• 2:52Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I've, I've noticed, uh, executive function. So your ability to kind of project, manage yourself and, and what's happening is increasingly

• 3:04Chris Williamson?

  like the vanguard of my life, right? You know, it really is. It's like the, it's the absolute front lines of what's going on because there is so much different inputs and so many different things to do. And oh, I could go down that rabbit hole and I could have this conversation with this person and maybe I'll do this thing. And, um, there was a point, probably like, uh, June of 2011, where the amount of information that people wanted and the amount of information that was available around about balanced. And for almost all of human history, there was less. And then it got to, I don't know, at some point in the last sort of 50 years, it, it hit equilibrium. And then very quickly it just blasted straight through. So previously, the, uh, smart thinker was somebody who was able to scout for information and actually find

• 3:49Chris Williamson?

  information, whereas now the most important tool, I think, is someone who's able to discern appropriately. And they're able to triage and they're able to, uh, titrate whatever it is that's needed. You know what I mean?

• 4:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's definitely a filtering issue and a prioritizing issue also as well. I mean, we have unfeathered access to the world's information. They say that with our phones, we have more access to information than President Clinton did when he was in office and we're just carrying it around with us. And I don't know if the human brain really evolved to to to deal with that onslaught, with all the context switching of social media, with all the rings and pings and dings and app notifications, all the social media alerts. It's a it's a it's a different animal nowadays. And I think more than ever, we need to really invest in our brains to upgrade our brains. We we hear about upgrading our technology all the time.

• 4:43Speaker 01

  You get the newest iPhone and you upgrade your apps and your software, your television, whatever. But not a lot of talk about upgrading the most important technology that has created all the technology, you know, which is which is the brain. And so that that that's the nature. I feel like a lot of people also don't know a lot enough about their brain. It's not really taught in school. There's no owner's manual. It's not not really user friendly, but it controls everything. I think we're we live in the millennium of the mind. I don't think any of the listeners solely, it's not like it was hundreds of years ago where it was really our our value in society was our brute strength. Today, it's our brain strength, right? It's not our muscle power as much as it is our our mind power, our our ability to learn, to unlearn, to to relearn also.

• 5:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was doing a program that I just did a Google Talks. And I remember when I first doing trainings at Google, helping with mental fitness, there is this quote from Eric Schmidt, who was then chairman and said the amount of information, I'm paraphrasing, the amount of information that's been created through the dawn of humanity to the year 2003, which was only, what, two decades ago? How long does it take to create that amount of information today? You know, and the answer was like 48 hours. I mean, we're we're drowning in it. You think about all the the podcasts, right? And the social media, YouTube, there's just so much information. But how we learn it and read it, understand it, you know, that hasn't changed a whole lot. You know, we live in an age of autonomous electric cars, spaceships that are going

• 6:11Speaker 01

  to Mars, but our vehicle choice in comparison, when it comes to our own personal learning, is more like a horse and horse and buggy. So I feel like we could really, you know, do well by upgrading some of these uh these mindset and these methods.

• 6:24Chris Williamson?

  What do you wish more people knew about how the brain works, you know, functionally? Like there's, there's, you know, interesting stuff to do, the pituitary and the hypothalamus and blah, blah. But when it comes to the nuts and bolts of how people use their brain and what they want it to do, if you were to give a bunch of headlines, you had a bunch of billboards out there that you could maybe put some things on to remind people, what, what would be the lessons that you wish people knew about the thermodynamics of their own mind?

• 6:50Speaker 01

  So stress response probably is, is up there. I don't know if it'd be the top one, but it's invisible for a lot of people because we're so used to it. It's like a fish in water, not recognizing the water because it's always present. We know that chronic stress could potentially shrink the human brain, puts you in fight or flight, you know, the cortisol, the adrenaline. And I feel like it, you're in yours, it keeps you in your survival brain and hold, maybe you're held hostage from your executive functioning, from your ability to solve problems, uh, from your own creativity, you know, chronic stress will shrink the brain, chronic fear. And we live in a society with marketing and media where it's perpetual fear. And, uh, you know, if it bleeds, it leads and it's very intelligent.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  Uh, it's working exactly how it's designed to work. But I think that there's also this, the analogy is like, there's this algorithm, just like there's an algorithm with social media, whatever you engage with, you see more of, right? And you, you engage in all the entrepreneur stuff or the cat videos you like and share and comment, you get more of it in your news feed. But I feel like if we're, whatever we engage with, with our mind also, if we're looking at what's threatening and scary, what could harm us, uh, like in the news, then, you know, whatever we engage with, we tend to see more of it all the time. And chronic fear will actually suppress your, your immune system, which is, uh, is a big issue nowadays because you can't turn on, you can't go on social media or the news

• 8:17Speaker 01

  without seeing something that's, you know, life threatening. And it feels like it's happening local, even if it's happening more, more, more global. Whole area of science called psychoneuroimmunology, you know, it's where we're more susceptible to colds, the flus, the viruses. So I think. Having even just coping mechanisms to deal with stress. You know, some people do body work. Some people get to do mindfulness training or meditation, or they use a float tank or these bio hacks. But I feel like we're under a lot of undue stress and that locks up our nervous system. And, you know, it's, it's hard to learn. If you're, if you're wired for survival and you're in, that's your, your mindset.

• 9:00Speaker 01

  You're not in it, you know, your, those creative juices aren't, aren't flowing. Right. And I feel like we're not using all that potentiality that, that our mind has.

• 9:09Chris Williamson?

  I've got an interesting story about this. So I'm currently doing my first live shows. Uh, stepping out on stage, it's 90 minutes of solo talking. All of the events were sold out in under 60 minutes. 2000 people across the U, the UK and Ireland. And then we're doing 1500 people in Dubai. And then I've got a US and Canada tour coming up with James Smith at the end of the year. Anyway, I know the stuff that I'm talking about, right? I know this stuff implicitly. I came up with the ideas. It's all bro science, bro philosophy stuff that I've come up with, right? And it's stories from where I've been and who I've spoken to and all the rest of it. And the first time that I did the show, I was so nervous backstage that when I went out, it was like somebody had just put blinkers on my mind.

• 9:54Chris Williamson?

  And I'm trying to access the stories that literally I created, right? I made these things myself. Yeah. And somehow I can't access the things that I had. Now thankfully I had a comfort monitor and it could, you know, keep on prompting me. But without that, if you just said, okay, and now talk to me about the lonely chapter and talk to me about the tall girl problem and talk to me about blah, blah, blah. I, I just didn't have access to it. And that is a very acute version of this, right? Everyone knows, everyone knows you, you, the nerves kick in, something happens and you go, my performance isn't where it was supposed to be. Morgan Housel taught me about this guy, Archibald, Archibald, somebody, somebody. Let me check my notes from yesterday. What was the fucking guy's name?

• 10:38Chris Williamson?

  This dude, this dude in the 1900s, early 1900s, Archibald Hill. He studied how quickly people could run. And he was able to predict based on VO2 max and lactate threshold and all this stuff. He could predict how quickly they would do a mile or whatever distance around a track, unbelievably accurately. But it had basically zero predictive power when it came to competition races. And this was highly criticized. It's like, hang in a second. I thought you've got this formula and it only works in one context. Well, yeah, because when you take them out of that context and into a competition, all bets are off. All rules are out of the window. It's a different predisposition. Their adrenaline, their cortisol, all of this, the amount of sleep that they had last night. He told me this story about the greatest

• 11:23Chris Williamson?

  downhill skier, a female downhill skier ever, this lady. And maybe she was Canadian and she would throw up before every single race that she did.

• 11:34Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 11:34Chris Williamson?

  Elite athlete, right? And you've optimized your hydration and think about your sleep. And just before you step out on stage, you throw up and you go, okay, all of that stuff was totally out. But look at what she does in training. In training, she doesn't throw up. So I just think, yeah, the, um, the ability for fear, stress, overwhelm, especially acutely, to just completely wreck our performance is, it's wild. And I've felt that firsthand and I'm now worked out for me a process that I can go through before a live show so that I don't feel like that. But without that tool, I was just at the mercy of the winds of my fear and stress.

• 12:15Speaker 01

  And I think a lot of listeners have their stages, right? You know, if you're, if you're on stage and you switch contexts, there's that phrase in that content is king, right? Or content is queen. But if content is, is king, then I think context is, is the kingdom, right? And all, all learning and performance is context dependent without, without a doubt. And it's also state dependent, you know, practicing in the environment that you need to be able to perform in those kinds of conditions. And even if it's not the external environment, the internal environment is mirroring, or using it, the power of your imagination to be able to replicate that and rehearse on a regular. Yeah, I, my biggest challenge

• 12:57Speaker 01

  besides learning growing up was public speaking by far. I mean, this wasn't even-

• 13:01Chris Williamson?

  You really chose the right career, didn't you? As an expert in learning who often does public speaking.

• 13:06Speaker 01

  This is, this is, this is my lot in life for sure. It's, um, but it's, it's a testament that, and I'm sure this resonates with a lot of listeners that, that with challenge comes change, right? With our struggles, they can become strengths. Because I had my learning difficulties and I was labeled broken, I- I would be terrified of public speaking because I just never knew the answer. It took me three years longer to learn how to read, so it was very embarrassing. I think that's those circles where those reading circles, I think a lot of fear of public speaking came from that, right? Where you pass around the book and you had to read out loud a paragraph or a page. And that was like the worst for me. I mean, even just thinking about it, my stomach like I get nauseous. I mean, I can't tell you how many times and I could relate to these performers where

• 13:50Speaker 01

  they're just throwing up and vomiting. And so I was in the nurse's office all the time and it was all self inflicted for sure. I mean, part of it might have been strategic to get out of class. So I wanted to be called on and I wouldn't have to give that book report in front of the class, but that it was terrifying. I never knew the answer. My, my superpower back in school was being invisible. I mean, it was, it was shrinking down. I mean, even my physiology, I was always like, you know, collapsing. So I would take up less space in the world so I wouldn't be noticed. And, you know, at that time I didn't really want to be seen. I mean, probably I did, right? I mean, everyone wants to be seen. They want to be understood. They want to be heard. But, you know, my coping mechanism was just avoidance. It was just, it was just hard. And so, yeah, you're right.

• 14:34Speaker 01

  Life has a sense of humor because those are my challenges. Now all I do is public speak on this thing called learning. But, you know, I think adversity can be an advantage. I don't know one strong person that had an easy life, right? And so I feel like, you know, certain things come into our lives, just like the hero's journey. I opened Limitless Expanded with Joseph Campbell's, like the stages of the hero's journey, because I want people to feel like that they are the hero. They are the, the Dorothy or the Luke Skywalker. If they, if you're, you know, taking on the, the big bad witches or the, the, the, the, the Death Star, those kinds of things, finding a mentor and coming back and returning with

• 15:16Speaker 01

  some, some gems, some golds and that they could share with the rest of the world.

• 15:21Chris Williamson?

  What do you think are the biggest lies of learning?

• 15:24Speaker 01

  Goodness. Yeah, lie for me, I use a lot of acronyms because they're shortcuts for, you know, these mnemonics we used back in school like Holmes for the Great Lakes here on Ontario, Michigan, Erie Superior. There was like these mental shortcuts or so for lies for me is a limited idea entertained. I feel like it's, you know, a lie. It's that's what a lie is, you know, we talk about, you know, various things in the section on mindset that can hold us back because if you want to achieve something, a lot of people want to go right to the methods. And I'm definitely guilty of that. But I think so many people, including a lot of your listeners, they know what to do, but they're not always doing what they know. And if they sabotage, it's usually a mindset issue because they're buying into these lies. Like one of them could be genius is born,

• 16:09Speaker 01

  right? And it's been my experience, the past 30 years of just coaching is that genius, while there's certain traits, certainly if you're, if you're, if you're born with a certain height or, you know, certain attributes, you certainly have an advantage in today's marketplace and in the world in competitions. But also I think genius could certainly be built, right? I think when somebody exhibits something that there's that looks like magic to the rest of the world, it there's a method behind it, you know, and I think part of genius is pattern recognition, you know, seeing the invisible that makes this possible. And for me, it's always a combination

• 16:49Speaker 01

  of mindset, motivation, methods to kind of create this, this momentum in your life by kind of unlimiting these areas. And yeah, so some of the, one of them would be genius is born as opposed to being built. I talk about this, this, this story. I guess we learned through stories and you're an amazing storyteller. You know, always, always listen, watching your YouTube and just really observing you at a meta level, your style. But there was this one where There was this king and and they had this performer and this performer was doing a,

• 17:27Speaker 01

  you know, it was basically it had magic, right? And the the counselor was like, hey, and this is genius is born. It is not born, it's built. And the king was really upset by that because the king really wanted to buy in that, you know, people are born with genius, you know, with this amazing talent. And so to punish the counselor, he put him in the basement of the the kingdom and and just to add salt to the wound, he gave them like two little piglets to to live with, right? Like be be with your own kind kind of thing. And while this counselor was there, he would take the piglets and hold them underneath his arms and then run up and down the stairs.

• 18:07Speaker 01

  You know, you know, every single day, multiple times a day. And one day, the king, you know, weeks and weeks, weeks, maybe months later, thinks about the the counselor and says, hey, bring the counselor, you know, back to my throne room. I want to say, you know, see how he's doing. And he comes and he's he's he's jacked. I mean, because and because these piglets eventually, you know, got bigger and and he got stronger because of it. And and he in front of the whole kingdom, he was like, look at this magnificent specimen, you know, gene, you know, it's this is. And and of course, the vice counselor said the same thing he said before, that genius is not born, it is built. You know, through dedication, through training, through through deep work.

• 18:50Chris Williamson?

  Well, that story, that story must very much resonate with you, you know, somebody who the setbacks with regards to learning and public speaking and so on and so forth. To now being someone who specializes in precisely the thing that you were the most terrified about. And i- if I was talking with Dan Bilzerian last night and he the he didn't have that on your bingo card for me talking about.

• 19:12Speaker 01

  I didn't.

• 19:14Chris Williamson?

  And um, he was saying how his.

• 19:18Chris Williamson?

  His story, you know, his success, particularly with women, but also in other areas of life as well, that he wasn't particularly funny. He's five foot nine. He's not particularly good looking. Most of his face is hidden by a beard. He wasn't particularly anything really. He wasn't super smart in school. Like he kind of got through the tests that he needed to just about, et cetera, et cetera. You know, in terms of raw materials and incredibly like mostly average guy, pretty intelligent, I guess, but mostly average guy with a very extraordinary outcome. And he was saying about how he feels like the story he has, at least from a female success perspective, should be something that other men find empowering or inspiring. Because look, like I'm not fucking

• 20:03Chris Williamson?

  Brad Pitt. I'm not six foot five. I'm not like this, you know, super good looking dude. I didn't have, I wasn't super funny. I wasn't a stand up comedian. I didn't have any of the things, you know, in terms of raw materials coming to this. And um, yeah, I think normal people doing extraordinary things is spectacular, but for the most part, everybody was normal at some point. There are crazy outliers, right? And a lot of the things that make people outliers are the very, very hidden things. Their predisposition for conscientiousness, their ability to deal with resilience in hard times that, you know, those sorts of things, the kind of more like soft hard skills, I guess. But yeah, man, I, I always think about the journey that people got to do

• 20:47Chris Williamson?

  something absolutely spectacular. And over the last few years, since spending time around, you know, outlier people in every different industry, they're so normal, like they're so incredibly normal. And they're still riddled with the same, you know, self doubt and uncertainty and lack of esteem and all the rest of it, desire for validation. Almost all of them are. And you think, oh, well, that's like an oddly normal thing for this very extraordinary person to have. And that's, that's comforting, I think. Like to see that the gods are mortal is comforting.

• 21:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, it certainly makes it relatable, you know, without a doubt to know that these people are flawed. I talk a lot about superheroes because I mentioned I couldn't read. I taught myself how to read by reading comic books. And I don't know what it was. You know, my uncle gave me a comic book when I was a child and I would just look at it and I would read these comic books, even if the words didn't make sense. I'd be underneath the covers, you know, of my bed with the flashlight. And something about the illustrations really brought the story to life and gave words the meaning. And when I started to understand the words, it was very comforting because I would escape. You know, we had, we didn't, you know, my parents immigrated to the States and we didn't have a lot of resources. We certainly, the

• 22:06Speaker 01

  education money, you know, that kind of thing. But, but yeah, it would allow me to escape because I was, you know, being bullied in school and that that's not fun for anyone who's gone through that. I had a lot of self doubt, but I would use it as inspiration. And these superheroes offered hope. They offered like, wow, these people are helping other people. And, and they were flawed too. Like Spider-Man and, you know, Iron Man was an alcoholic and a lot of people had issues. A lot of them were orphans. Superman, Spider-Man, Batman. I mean, you just think about the beginnings of their superhero, their origin

• 22:46Speaker 01

  stories. They had a lot of tragedy. And yeah, it's a matter of, there's a quote in Limitless that from a French philosopher, there's this life is a letter C between B and D, right? B is birth, D is death, life, C, choice. And we're constantly making these choices about who we're spending time with. What are we going to do? What are we going to eat? You know, where we're going to put our focus. But also, choices on what things mean. Like the meaning we're associating to what's going on. If this is here to, to hurt us, or this is here to prepare us. And I think that meaning as part of the mindset, what affects what you believe is possible, what you believe you're capable of, maybe even what you believe you deserve. And it becomes this internal thermostat.

• 23:30Speaker 01

  Where a lot of times we're acting like a thermometer, where we're just reacting to the environment, right? We react to politics, we react to, you know, global wars, we act to how people treat us, we react to the weather. But I feel like the people who have, you know, more agency and a level of sovereignty, they feel like, you know, they could be a thermostat, they could, they don't not reacting, they could gauge, they know what the temperature is. But then they also said, they have a vision, they set some kind of standard, they set a temperature and then the environment reacts to it. And if I was to go back to that child, I would, the two beliefs I would instill in, in like my nine-year-old self would be like, hey, you're 100% responsible for your life, right? You can make excuses, you can complain,

• 24:12Speaker 01

  and probably some of it is true. But so what? Like, what's the difference? It doesn't make, it doesn't change the situation at all. And it wastes a lot of time, wastes a lot of energy. And the, and the truth is, we can't be upset, you know, by the results we didn't get from the work we didn't do. And there's just a truth to it. And sometimes we're our worst enemy.

• 24:31Chris Williamson?

  You said on a podcast I listened to recently, if you fight for your limitations, you'll keep them. If you argue for your limits, they're yours.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:39Chris Williamson?

  Given that there is one of the pandemics that didn't come from a virus, kind of like a pandemic of nihilism or apathy, or at least limiting belief beliefs, or believing, what would you say? Somebody has kind of got themselves into a routine of despondency and externalizing of the locus of control and not believing that they can maybe make the progress that they do. What do you say to them to try and drag them out of that?

• 25:14Speaker 01

  Well, for, for each person, I mean, I would want more, more, more context with that person and more, more connection. I mean, you're really good with social dynamics, which is, you know, really shows up in your conversations with people. I would, I would say. Reminding people that they have agency is not, it's one thing to know it intellectually, it's another to like embody it, right? That, you know, our world is a reflection of our choices. And, you know, giving people examples certainly potentially could help getting them to, even with children, right? Like if somebody, if a child, let's say you're trying to really be really strict with their diet and they go to a birthday party and they eat this food, you know, instead of like criticizing them for them, just like having them self-aware, realizing and just asking them, how do you

• 25:58Speaker 01

  feel, right? And what caused that? And so they could see like cause and effect. I feel like we all play a role in sometimes in our own misery. And the challenge is, you know, when, the story I tell is when I got to spend some time with Stanley, right? The creator of so many, co-creator of so many Marvel superheroes. And we're going out to dinner and, you know, I just have this time with them solo and I was just like, hey, I'm dying to know, like, who's your favorite superhero? You've created everybody, right? The Avengers, the Fantastic Four and so on. And he looks at me, he's like, Iron Man. And he says, Jim, who's your favorite superhero? And I was like, it's gotta be Spider-Man because he had this big Spider-Man tie.

• 26:42Speaker 01

  And without a pause, he goes in his iconic voice, with great power comes great responsibility. And we all know, I guarantee you, all your listeners know what word was coming. And I switch words still to this day, maybe because I had a few head injuries, too many head injuries as a child. When I read, sometimes I'll switch them or hear it. And I was like, you know, you're right, with great power comes great responsibility. And the opposite is certainly also true. With great responsibility comes great power. When we take responsibility for something, we have great power to make it, to make things better, right? With these choices that we make every single day. And so, yeah, I think agency is very important, that you are 100% responsible.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  And I also have this belief that everything, Marie Forleo has this word, everything is figure-out-able, right? You have agency and you could figure it out with enough commitment and creativity. And I feel like we grossly underestimate our own capabilities. When I say people fight for the limitations, they get to keep them. I hear it on a regular. I'll be on stage and before I go on, people grab me invariably and say, I'm so glad you're here. Can we do your talk? You're the memory expert and I'm telling you, I'm too old. I'm just, I'm just too stupid. I have a horrible memory and that's the context where I say, hey, stop. If you fight for your limitations, you get to keep them. You know, I tell them that your brain is this incredible supercomputer and your self-talk is a program that will run.

• 28:11Speaker 01

  So if you tell yourself, I'm not good at remembering names, you won't remember the name of the next person you meet because you programmed your supercomputer not to. I, I, I believe that if people truly understood how powerful their mind is, they wouldn't say, think, or even feel something they didn't want to be true. And again, I'll stipulate that yes, you have one negative thought's not going to ruin your life, obviously. But just like eating that one donut or muffins not going to ruin your life. But if you ate dozens of that, tons of those donuts every day, every single day, it would definitely have some kind of effect. And so I think we have to stand guard to the doors of our mind and, and realize again that we're, you know, that thoughts, we don't have to believe everything that we think. And we could also adjust what we think.

• 28:55Speaker 01

  You know, people say, I'm not smart enough or I don't have a great memory, just, you know, editing it. And like, I don't have a great memory yet. I, it just feels different. It just lands different, you know, and it gives you some kind of hope to be able to, to move forward.

• 29:08Chris Williamson?

  How does memory actually work? Moving beyond the stories that we tell ourselves?

• 29:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:12Chris Williamson?

  What are the, what are the nuts and bolts of how memory works?

• 29:15Speaker 01

  There, there are three phases to memory. There's the encoding phase, there's the storage, and then there's the retrieval phase. And so if people, I believe there's no such thing as a good or bad memory. There's a trained memory and there's an untrained memory. And unfortunately, it's not really taught in school. I mean, maybe they took some kind of class in, in high school or maybe college, but I don't know how practical it is. You know, one of the things I'm obsessed with, even when I'm listening to podcasts or reading books, it's like, how can I use this, right? How can I, how can I? When will I use this, right? Why must I use this? How does this relate to what I already know?

• 29:55Speaker 01

  I feel like so many people learn passively, right? And the human brain, I don't think it learns best through consumption because we're consuming all the time. And so many people's lives, you know, you talk about mental masturbation, so many people just get addicted to just, you know, novelty and they're just buying books and they sit on the shelf unread and become shelf health, not self-help, that that whole, that whole dangerous spiral. But, you know, the whole idea is you learn something, so how you could apply it, right? If somebody isn't consistently doing something and they're procrastinating or self sabotaging, it's usually a mindset or motivation issue. But going back to memory, I'm always thinking like, hey, I want to make this more sticky. So how can I encode it by not

• 30:38Speaker 01

  just hearing it? Maybe I could see it and use more of my nervous system. Maybe I could tap into some of those feelings, right? You have that middle brain where you have like the seahorse looking part of your brain called hippocampus, which is primarily function is memory. Attached to it is this little almond shaped part of your brain called the amygdala, which is like a switching station for emotion. And it's interesting that, you know, the where, where memory is being processed, it's also connected with emotions. I think information today, it's everywhere, right? So it's very forgettable. It's not, it's very ordinary. But information when it's

• 31:21Speaker 01

  tied with emotion and visualization becomes unforgettable, right? When you hear it, feel it, see it, then you're recruiting more of your nervous system and you're more likely to be able to retrieve it. The storage part is interesting because we teach people methods like a mental filing system, you know, something like the memory palaces, you know, back in the ancient Greeks. So we write Limitless Expanded and I pull on and draw on, you know, neuro nutrition and neuroscience and adult learning theory. Also though, ancient wisdom, you know, I just feel like What did people do before there were books? What did people do before there were like the internet?

• 32:04Speaker 01

  How did they remember things before there was a printing press? And how did they pass on history and information around campfires? And one of the techniques was a storage device. I mean, where you use locations that you're very familiar with, like maybe your home, your school, your office, the mall, maybe parts of your body, your car. And just taking the information that you want to remember and placing it intelligently around those locations. Because as hunter gatherers, we didn't need to memorize lots of numbers or lots of words. What we needed to remember where things are, right? Where the clean water is, where is the fertile soil, where is the enemy tribe, all the survival, right? And so even when people forget someone's name, they tend to ask themselves questions like, where?

• 32:49Speaker 01

  Where do I know this person from? Right? Because again, the context gives you the con- content. They did, they've done studies where they put, they'll submerge people with breathing apparatus underwater and give them things to remember, like, like maybe something simple like lists of words. And then they'll take them out of the, of the pool and they'll test them and see how many they recall, very simple. And then they'll submerge them back under the water and test them. And in which environment do you think had greater recall? Right? It was, it was, I was underwater. And we could probably guess that. But the idea here is when you're studying something, the environment also is getting anchored to that information and, and helps you to greater retrieve it.

• 33:34Speaker 01

  So if you, like, you know, we were talking about before, if you are on stage and you got the opportunity to rehearse and practice and review your information and study on, in that same context, you're more likely to be able to access more than information because unconsciously with the light, the smells, everything gets anchored to the information. Now, that's not possible for a lot of people. Like, maybe you could prepare in the board meeting there and then perform there also, or study in class and then perform in class. But it's not usually the case. So even something simple is giving yourself a trigger. You know, I know you've done episodes about habits and triggers and having prompts for certain behaviors. You could bring the environment with you.

• 34:18Speaker 01

  You could take a certain, I mean, one of the most, out of the five senses, smell is definitely the one most closely connected to human memory.

• 34:25Chris Williamson?

  Smell is the most closely associated sense to human memory?

• 34:31Speaker 01

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

• 35:16Speaker 01

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

• 35:59Speaker 01

  And that would be a way of using your memory palace. And then you could go into the adjacent room and do the bookshelf and the fireplace and the coffee table, whatever. And then the idea here is, let's say you need to give a TEDx talk. You could take the information and turn it into a picture. Because we, most of us tend to think in pictures. If I asked you to tell me about your car. Right. Well, why don't we do this? So tell me, tell me, tell me about your car.

• 36:23Chris Williamson?

  It's a BMW one twenty three D. It's like a coupe thing. It's blue. It's got matte gray alloys, cream seats.

• 36:33Speaker 01

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

• 37:16Speaker 01

  And what you do, going to the power of practice, right? And rehearsal and study and deep work, then you really truly understand it. Because I feel like you don't, you can't, you don't understand unless you can do it. That's just a kind of a principle that I, and then behind every principle, there's some kind of promise and some kind of reward. And so like, let's say you wanted to give a talk. In the book, I talk about how one third of your cognitive performance, brain health is predetermined by genetics and biology. It's pretty accepted in the neuroscience space, but that means two thirds is in your direct control. And I talk about the ten levers that would, that would move that, right? And so if somebody wanted to know what those ten things are, and they had to give a TEDx talk next week about it,

• 38:00Speaker 01

  first of all, I, when I want to learn something faster, I learn it with the anticipation and the intention of teaching it. And so it doesn't matter what I'm learning, even if I'm not really going to teach it, I intend to teach it. You know, so when I'm reading, I'm thinking, how does this relate to me? And when I'm listening, I'm taking better notes, right? If somebody had to teach it, they call it, they call it the explanation effect. When you learn with the intention of explaining to somebody else, you're going to learn it better because you're focused, you're going to focus better, you're going to ask more questions, you'll probably take better notes. And when you teach it, you get to learn it twice, right? So like if people have that perspective as they are listening to this conversation, like, how would I teach this to somebody else? I'll, you know, talk about the 10 keys, maybe that move the needle, science-based.

• 38:46Speaker 01

  And think about it, not just like, oh, that's great information, but ask yourself, how can I use this? How can I apply it? How can I teach it to somebody I care about, right? Because the number one reason to learn something is how it would have benefited you. But the close second is how it could benefit somebody else, right? You learn so you can earn, get some kind of benefit to return, right? To be able to share it with somebody else. And also, when you share it, it benefits you also as well because you get to be an expert at that, at that subject matter more easily. So, so you can go through like some of these 10 keys.

• 39:19Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, dude, I want to get high level. Let's go through all of them.

• 39:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Okay, so, so the first, in no particular order, let's say, let's start with a good brain diet. Right, what you eat matters, especially for your gray matter. There's area science, there's a whole chapter in the book on neuro nutrition. Your brain is only 2% of your body mass, but it requires 20% of the nutrients. And it's an energy hog, right? It uses up a lot of energy.

• 39:44Chris Williamson?

  Chess players burn some ungodly amount of calories, right? Like the most static sport in history.

• 39:50Speaker 01

  Extremely, right? I know a number of them that are just always, you know, calorie deficient, but they're always, they're always eating without a doubt.

• 39:59Chris Williamson?

  Never see a fat chess player.

• 40:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is true. And so another reason why you want to be mentally engaged, right? We hear a lot about physical fitness, which obviously relates also to your mental performance as well. And we could talk about that because that's one of the 10 things. But going back to neuro nutrition, certain foods. And then I'll stipulate this with, I'm not a doctor, I'm not a nutritionist, but, you know, and go, go get a food sensitivity test, right? Do a nutrient profile because not everything is for everybody. I really do believe everyone's bio individual. Generally though, avocados, the monoancitrate are fat, your brain is mostly fat, is fatty. So, you know, what you eat matters again for your gray matter. Uh, blueberries and, you know, I put this on my body. So I always remember when I'm at the store,

• 40:46Speaker 01

  I use this as a memory palace, my body. So I imagine uh, the, the avocados, using it as a scalp conditioner, like guacamole or if I'm blueberries, right? Uh, or mulberries, a lot of the berries, they're brain berries. They're full of antioxidants, very neuroprotective. Uh, blueberries coming out of your nose and you know, and when you're doing it, you imagine that you're a child because children are such fast learners uh, because they're playful and they use their imagination. That's how they remember people's names. I mean, I don't know if people made fun of your name growing up, but certainly with last name quick. You know, I got a lot, I was the one of a lot of, a lot of jokes, but that's how kids remember, right? They say, you know, Tony, Tony, Bob, Bambi, like they make the rhymes, they make it fun. Um, yeah.

• 41:30Speaker 01

  And so imagine you're eight years old and blueberries coming out of your nose. Uh, broccoli is, is a brain food, high in vitamin K. Um, the sulforaphane in broccoli is very good for your brain, especially if you sprout them, it tends to be like even 10 times more sulforaphane, which potentially could help with B D N F, uh, the brain derived neurotropic factors. Um, but imagine broccoli stuck in your teeth. So something simple, like if you want to remember olive oil, you already know about the Mediterranean diet. Um, you're cleaning your ears with olive oil or wearing olive earrings, whatever. Eggs is probably one of my favorite, you know, foods, good protein. Uh, the, the yolk is high in, in choline, uh, which leads to acetylcholine, which is good for cognitive health and memory.

• 42:11Speaker 01

  So eggs right in your throat, you're choking on a hard boiled egg. So those are just like, you know, things that I would just think about and maybe people like kale and spinach, great, make them your shoulder pads. You hear about certain fish and you have to be careful with fish, right? With the mercury and, and some of the toxins. But you get a clean source, sardines, like imagine your collar, you have a necklace made out of sushi, you know, salmon sushi or sardines and, and, and use your senses. Again, imagine what that would smell like. And if you can't imagine it, You know, imagine you can imagine it, right? Because your imagination, what is it? Einstein said imagination is more powerful than knowledge, right? Knowledge is what is, imagination is what could be, right? We're recruiting more of those visual feelings, everything.

• 42:54Speaker 01

  And then finally, on your fingers, imagine some turmeric. The curcumin is anti-inflammatory. Imagine like you can't get this gold powder off your, you know, your fingers. And then walnuts, we hear all the time, the vitamin E, almonds, imagine them coming out of your belly button. Very simple. And then imagine your bottom, everyone's favorite super brain food, dark chocolate, which people can use in their own imagination, whatever.

• 43:21Chris Williamson?

  You mentioned there, not just about nutrition, but the new version of the book has got some advice when it comes to nootropics.

• 43:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's going to be one of the, one of the 10 things is definitely supplementation. So that'll be coming up in a few. So just everybody imagine like your first place, imagine my home, right? You're at the microwave and you have all these brain foods there and you're taking it out and you're putting it on your body, right? And I bet you even an hour from now, one of the ways to encode is to do spaced repetition, right? And rehearse it, review it an hour later. And also the retrieval practice is so very important. So I mentioned it's encoding, making it emotional, making it visual, storing. We have a place to put it, the microwave, right? Or your nose. And then the retrieval, active retrieval helps tremendously improve your memory.

• 44:13Speaker 01

  Even something like asking yourself after you read something or listen to this podcast, quizzing yourself, right? It sounds so simple and common sense, but common sense is not always come in, come in practice.

• 44:24Chris Williamson?

  You know what my favorite strategy for doing that was? For a good while I was training on a morning time with a training partner. And I would tend to read, I usually read for about 15 minutes on a morning as part of my morning routine. And I would always try and just explain one thing that I'd read that morning. Dude, I got to tell you about, I learned this story about World War II, or I learned this story about what happened in the space landing or whatever, whatever. And that was like an absolute turbocharged hack because not only was I doing the retrieval thing, like memory is repeated retrieval, not repeated exposure. And it was also doing the teaching thing, right? So I had to simplify it and especially given what I do, it's all about. It's not just having an idea of the concept.

• 45:09Chris Williamson?

  It's also being able to display it right in a way that sounds cohesive and sort of slick. So, uh, yeah, yeah, that was, that was a good hack for me. Teach your training partner about what you've read this morning.

• 45:21Speaker 01

  Absolutely, and I feel like even, you know, parents could do that with their kids. Instead of saying, have a school and what are they gonna say? Good, right? But asking them specifically what they, what they learned and then going in micro. Again, giving them examples again, because it gets them to actively retrieve. So you have to light up that same cognitive web. And that's really what that memory is every single time it's reinforced and you, you actually recreate the memory. Right? And so by, by having that representation, describing it, it just makes it more sticky. Right? They say neurons that fire together, they wire together. We have what 86 billion neurons and each of them have potentially out of like synapse, like 10,000 different connections.

• 46:02Speaker 01

  So there are more connections in that your brain can make than there are stars in the known universe. Right? I mean, this is what, this is the power that we have access to. But I feel like we were only using a small potentiality of it. But starting with a good brain diet is, is a good place to start. And then imagine that the microwave, you put it on your body and then test yourself and teach it to somebody else. You walk over to the second place. If you're in my home, let's say we're gonna have like a dinner together. And, uh, we go over to the stove top and the, the second key that I was talking about, the 10 keys for limitless, uh, brain. Is I got this from Dr. Daniel Amen, the, the famous, uh, brain doctor, psychiatrist. He's written like 40 books on the brain, change your brain, change your life.

• 46:46Speaker 01

  He talks about killing ants is good for the brain and ants stands for automatic negative thoughts. That's exactly what we've been talking about, how your self-talk, you know, becomes your, your reality, that thoughts are things that all behavior is belief driven. If you think you can or think you can, either way, you're right, right? Henry Ford said it that all the, all the self-help kind of cliches, but there's like with every cliche, there's some form and, uh, nugget of truth there. So killing ants, automatic negative thoughts. And while I'm going through this, people could rate themselves zero to 10, like zero to 10, how good is my diet? Cause on the other side is the processed foods, the fried foods, high sugar foods, right? That's gonna spike your, your glucose and so on. But on a scale of zero to 10, kind of rate yourself, cause everyone wants to know like the, what's the one thing?

• 47:27Speaker 01

  You know, everyone wants to like the magic pill, but there's not. There's a process of these 10 things. So the second one's killing ants. So just imagine on the stove, we're roasting ants, we're killing ants, right?

• 47:38Speaker 01

  And so that's very simple. You can't forget it takes more time to internally describe it than it does to picture it. And a picture is worth a thousand words. So there's a lot of descriptors there. And then walk over to the third place, which is the, in my case, happens to be refrigerator. And this is exercise, right? We know that especially strength training, right? It's been saying strength training, right? It's, it's for so many, so many benefits, right? B D N F, which we talked about, brain derived neurotropic factors, which is like fertilizer for the brain, helps support neuroplasticity and neurogenesis. Neurotransmitters, you think about the dopamine, the serotonin, the endorphins that, that you get from, from working out, potentially systemic decrease in inflammation.

• 48:23Speaker 01

  It helps also with insulin resistance. I mean, so many benefits from, from physically working out. And I don't just mean that, but when you're rating yourself zero to 10 is moving throughout the day. You know, we're talking about, if we're talking about evolutionary science, the brain, the primary reason we have a brain is to control our movement. You know, and as your body moves, your brain grooves. So it's not just a mind body connection. There's certainly a body mind connection. And that's one of the, we have a 10 month old, right? And he's learning how to crawl. And they say crawling for children is so important because it stimulates different parts of their brain. Even the act of learning how to juggle, there's a study done at Oxford University that jugglers actually have bigger brains. By the act of learning how to juggle, you could actually create more white matter.

• 49:07Speaker 01

  And this could be something simple, like where you're rolling up socks and just doing it over a table or a bed, making it very simple. Watching a YouTube video, starting with one, then moving, graduating to two and three. I'm not talking about like, you know, flaming swords or, or electric saws or anything like that. But you know, zero to 10, how much are we moving? So imagine you're open the refrigerator and you were doing your favorite exercise inside that your personal trainer is there. You're doing your whatever, your soul cycle, your, your burpees, your, your CrossFit, whatever, but it's in the refrigerator. All right. And that's to remind you of exercise. The fourth one is what you're alluding to. Let's go over to the fourth place, which for me again is the dishwasher.

• 49:50Speaker 01

  And those are your, your nutrients, your brain nutrients. I would always prefer people get it from. From their diet, that now that's my personal preference. And again, who am I to give, you know, like people, I think ultimately, we're talking about agency, that people should really, you know, test it themselves, right? You could trust, but then you validate and test with your own personal experience. I would always prefer people get it from food, but if they're not eating eggs, then maybe they could, they could supplement with choline, right? It's a nutrient found in foods like eggs and soybeans, and it plays a vital role in, in, in brain health, right? And acetylcholine, which is neurotransmitter, and you could harness

• 50:32Speaker 01

  that, that, that power, right? Some people want to supplement, they're not getting it from the, the fish. Maybe they want to supplement omega-3 fatty acids, particularly DHA, right? Which is crucial for, for brain health. It's, it's a primary, it's a, it's a structural component of the brain, and it plays a key role in memory, it plays a key role in, in brain function. I don't know, are you a very big supplement guy?

• 50:57Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I work with a company called Merrick Health, and they're, they're really great for blood work, and they've got me sort of vertically integrated into a whole bunch of stuff based on my system. Omega-3 esters, I've been taking, which are like pharma-grade omega-3s. We actually have this, this isn't out yet, but by the time that this episode happens, it will. So this is a drink that I've been working on with a friend for over 12 months now, and that is half a gram of Cognizin, which is a branded Cyticoline, it's a version of Alpha GPC, Rhodiola rosea, which is stress-induced fatigue reduction, Panax ginseng, natural caffeine, no sugar, L-theanine, B vitamins, all of that stuff. And I did four

• 51:42Chris Williamson?

  episodes in 27 hours in LA last weekend. Dude, the only way that I was able to get through that was adrenaline and the right amount of this. And I think that, I think there's definitely a place for acute performance enhancers for mental cognition, because how many, like, what am I going to do? Increase my egg consumption for two weeks in the buildup to that? So, oh yeah, my- Cytocoline response is really great because I've had thirty eggs a day for the last two weeks or something. And I'll get your address once I don't, I'll send you some cases of this. I hope you really enjoy it. And yeah, I'm a, I'm a big fan of it. I've been playing around with nootropics for a long time.

• 52:20Chris Williamson?

  I found some stuff, here's an anti nootropic. Actually, I got put on an anti cholinergic about two years ago, just like a normal, very boring thing from the doctor. But dude, it was like someone had just halved the RAM that I had in my brain. I couldn't remember the name of places. My thoughts felt sluggish and I'm very, very tuned into the texture of my mind. Right? Like the nimbleness, same with you, I'm sure. The nimbleness of my thoughts, my ability, especially for recall, and then not just recall, but all of the little nuances and I'm telling the story and I have to remember to pause here and so on and so forth. And dude, it was, it was just like walking through mud or something.

• 53:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. I can't, I can't see you in that state because you're so good at tracking. Even when some of the conversations you've had with mutual people that we know, like Alex, like, like maybe loses place and you pick it up exactly where, where they leave off.

• 53:15Chris Williamson?

  Dinner, I did it at dinner the other night. We were talking about something and someone left some loop open. And I was like, it was 10 minutes later and I really, it was some story about a cat. And I really wanted to know about this cat and I was like, dude, tell me about the cat. He was like, oh yeah, you're in podcast mode. And I was like, I just want to know about this fucking story about the cat. No, yeah, you're, you're right. It's, it's very scary to have, it was almost like having acute temporary dementia. And it was, dude, I absolutely do not wish that on anyone. So yes, make sure that you get your choline foods in. Make sure that you get your cholinergic system working nicely. You know, Alpha GPC is a fantastic solution. Cognizin, which is in this, in Neutonic is an activated version of that, which is great.

• 54:01Chris Williamson?

  Around about, around about half a gram a day seems to be the effective dose. That's been pretty well studied. So yeah, I think, yeah, with that is a good place to start.

• 54:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, the ones I was talking about were more brain supplements. I'd separate that from nootropics in the book, but the choline supplementation, the DHAs, your B vitamins, right? Especially vitamin B6, B9, folate, B12 is vital for brain health. Magnesium is vital for everything, right? Every physiological function, learning, especially for your brain, learning, memory, certainly for your mood. Some people supplement with that in different forms of it, like L3 and 8, you know, for various things, for rest.

• 54:44Chris Williamson?

  Glycinate, I've been playing around with, I can't remember, I can't remember the brand. It's this huge, big white tub that Marek sent. It's like fat thing. But yeah, my sleep, my sleep latency has improved an awful lot since taking that. So yeah, the simple stuff seems to be the ones that work.

• 55:05Speaker 01

  And that's what I look for. Like even right now, I'm drinking some green tea. So it has the, you know, L-theanine, which is an amino acid that's, that's found in green tea. It's, it's, you know, obviously very popular nootropic. It also promotes relaxation without the drowsiness and enhances brain function. You mentioned pakopa, you know, which is an herb in Ayurvedic medicine, which can improve cognition and, and memory. Rhodiola, you mentioned also, which is a Scandinavian herb, which has been shown to help reduce mental fatigue and improve.

• 55:38Chris Williamson?

  It's going extinct. You know that it's going extinct at the moment?

• 55:42Speaker 01

  I did not know.

• 55:42Chris Williamson?

  We're having a, we're having a nightmare. So the formulation for this, that we spent ages putting together to be evidence-backed, research-based, all the rest of it. And we decided to put something in which is protected. So the price of it's just gone through the roof, but it would be really cool. I would love to do like a regenerative thing with the drink where, you know, for every one plant that we use, we plant two more.

• 56:05Speaker 01

  Smart.

• 56:06Chris Williamson?

  That would be cool, but I'm a huge fan of the rhodiola thing. This amazing study that was done on nurses. So they gave for 28 days, they gave efficacious dose of rhodiola rese, which is the same one we've got in there to nurses. Uh. Working in the National Health Service in the UK, they found that they made fewer commission errors under stress and it's what's technically referred to in the literature as a reduction in stress induced fatigue. And it just for me made a really big difference because your ability to stay on task and to stay focused is, we said it at the very beginning, like context

• 56:46Chris Williamson?

  often is a primer ahead of everything else. And if the context that you're in is, I am stressed, I can't deal with this, this is getting to me, et cetera, et cetera. No matter how much your prep's done, like you've just got this huge ceiling that comes down on top of it. Okay. So I think we're in your dishwasher at the moment.

• 57:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. So we're putting all these supplements there. You could put the, uh, probably one of my favorite ones is creatine.

• 57:07Chris Williamson?

  So good.

• 57:08Speaker 01

  Well, you know, and so, you know, obviously people, a lot of people associated it to, to, to working out. It's, it's found, you know, in higher levels in meat and, and fish, but it plays a huge role in energy metabolism, especially for improving cognitive function, you know, especially tasks that require a short-term memory. And so, uh, that's, and you know, and everything else that we talked about that were in the foods, like the turmeric, the curcumin, right? You could supplement with that. Uh, you know, some people make, uh, if I'm, if I make, if I don't do the tea, sometimes I'll have some kind of lion's mane mushroom. You know, which is potential neurotropic protective effects, uh, which is, uh, this maybe, it has been shown to be able to stimulate the synthesis of a nerve growth factor,

• 57:53Speaker 01

  which could enhance cognition and potentially even lower inflammation. Uh, caffeine, obviously a powerful one, especially if you add it with the L-theanine. So yeah, for me, it, I don't, I could get the energy without the, the jitters. I'm very, very sensitive. Some people like green Kinko also for, for blood flow. We actually put all this, uh, We're gonna actually take the what's in the book and people could go to a brainnutrition.com and see kind of the where what I get, you know, in the ones that are human studies, both from supplementation and also the nootropics. But that I would put all those bottles of supplements in the dishwasher. All right. And then that's number four. Number five is we're at the sink.

• 58:38Speaker 01

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

• 59:22Speaker 01

  or your neurological networks and more your social networks. If your friends smoke, that's definitely more of an influence to you than your biology. And then the T is our thoughts. We tend to have the same recurring thoughts as the people around us. C is character. We tend to maintain the same level of character, integrity, and you know, moral standards of the people around us. And then finally, the H in watch are habits, right? You've heard this phrase where first you create your habits, then your habits create you. And you know, we talk a lot about morning routines and evening routines. I've enjoyed a lot of the things that you've talked about about it also as well. So all the positive peer group is so important. We all need people to encourage us, to challenge us, to call us on our stuff, to cheerlead for us. And if you haven't found that person,

• 1:00:07Speaker 01

  Be that person, right?

• 1:00:08Chris Williamson?

  It's also an opportunity to have someone to teach to, right? Not everyone has a Substack or a podcast or a YouTube channel where they're teaching people on the internet, but you have the opportunity to be around people who are curious and who are going to teach you about new things. But dude, some of the conversations I've had in between sets in the gym have been some of the best things that I've ever done. And my housemate literally has a podcast called The Lift Companion, where he goes and trains in the gym and the podcast is about what happens in between the sets. And it's, it's, it's awesome. It's really, really fun. And you realize that, you know, you have this really lovely periodized, all right, we're going to talk for a moment, you know, 60 seconds, 90 seconds during the rest period,

• 1:00:53Chris Williamson?

  then someone's going to train, then the other person's going to train, and then we're going to come back to it and we're going to do another 90 seconds. And it's this really lovely rhythm, actually, to talking about something. I very much enjoy it. And any, any excuse to go into the gym more and excuse it as learning.

• 1:01:09Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And there are certain brain types that we talk about in the new book. These are cognitive types. It's an assessment that I put together. I've been using.

• 1:01:17Chris Williamson?

  I did the test.

• 1:01:18Speaker 01

  Oh, good, good, good. Yeah, we could, we could, we could talk about that a few minutes after these 10 things. But like elephants are highly empathetic and they love that, especially the, the community. They love collaboration. They, they're the ones that keep everyone together and they have high levels of empathy. So they would really, you know, those are wonderful people to have in your life also as well. Because sometimes learning is not solo, it's social for sure. You know, book clubs and having accountability partners or workout, you know, buddies. All of that's really important. But just imagine your positive peer group at the, the sink and we're all just like washing dishes or something like that. And that, that helps you to anchor it. So then when you're giving your TED Talk, you can go through and just walk to the microwave and you're like, oh, all the brain foods, right?

• 1:02:01Speaker 01

  And you can probably, some of the people listening, if they weren't multitasking when they're listening, they probably remember that there are avocados and blueberries and broccoli and olive oil and eggs and so on, all over their body. And then on the stove top, you're killing, roasting ants. And then you open up the refrigerator and people know that there's movement and exercise. As your body moves, your brain grows. You go to the dishwasher and you have all your nootropics there and then there at the sink and your positive peer group. And then you walk into the other room. We'll do the rest really fast, super fast, so that we get close this loop, you know. I know you talked about the Zygarnik effect and the psychologist whose last name happens to be Zygarnik and she's at a cafe, the story goes, where she sees everyone,

• 1:02:45Speaker 01

  all the waitstaff deliver the orders and take everyone's order and not write any of it down. And which is pretty magnificent, uh, cause

• 1:02:52Chris Williamson?

  I love it when someone does that. The waiter comes up and he's got his hands behind his back. It's almost a flex. They know what they're doing.

• 1:02:59Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And I'm still, as much as I know about memory, I'm just like, oh, please write this down.

• 1:03:06Speaker 01

  We'll mess this up and have to wait again. But the Zygarnik effect is basically they will retain that order until they are delivered because the brain doesn't like open loops, right? And, you know, Netflix and all these binge shows, they're really good at keeping open loops to keep people coming back, right? And, uh, but yeah, we want to close this loop for everybody. So they're not like raging on YouTube and stuff. Now, number six, so go into my second room and the first, the sixth place is going clockwise is the sliding glass door. And so I just want you to remember the sixth key is a clean environment, clean environment. We find that your external world is a reflection of your internal world and, you know, you clean your desk or make your bed, or maybe you're on your computer and everything's the right folder.

• 1:03:51Speaker 01

  You tend to have clarity of thought. And when I say clean environment, also going back to like, you know, when you ingested that, uh, that toxin, that kind of threw you off. There are a lot of neurotoxins in our environment. It could be off gassing from furniture or from your carpet. And so, you know, having clean air is important, whether you have the windows open or you have an air purifier. I would include a clean environment, even the light sources, right? So many offices and schools, they use the like fluorescent lights and that's probably not, you know, your eyes are only part of your brain that that's outside of your skull, right? And when you have visual fatigue, it leads to mental fatigue and, uh,

• 1:04:34Speaker 01

  and they probably fill offices and schools with that because it's ultra cheap. Also, also, also as well, but clean environment, so from the lighting, from the water, from the air, and also just organize, you know, Marie Kondo your mind. So you get zero to 10, kind of rate yourself how clean your environment is. Now, some people say a messy environment is good for creatives, but that's probably is true because it stimulates.

• 1:04:54Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 1:04:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:55Chris Williamson?

  Well, think about, think about it this way, like walking into any artist's studio.

• 1:04:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:04:59Chris Williamson?

  What have you got? There's a torn up novel over the far side and cigarette ends and there's a magazine and that, you know, that's not the environment in which you want to do your tax return.

• 1:05:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:10Chris Williamson?

  Your tax return is in the office next door. It's nice and clean. It's clinical. It's sterile focused.

• 1:05:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:16Chris Williamson?

  You also don't want to try and do your next ideation in this room that's bereft of any inspiration for you.

• 1:05:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. So, and, and also like keeping track of where everything is could also be some undo, you know, memory or RAM that you're doing, just consciously keep track of everything, right? It's a lot easier to put your keys in the same spot every single time. So you don't have to kind of think about it going back to storage, right? Encoding storage and then you could achieve it because it's always in the same storage place. So you have a mental, a physical file folder, not an actual file holder, but a place that you store it in also, also as well. And you've, you've talked about this, like regulating certain activities for where you thrive. Like you're not going to work in your bed because you're going to get that angst in your executive functioning. And then when you're going, why later on you can't sleep there, right?

• 1:06:02Speaker 01

  Because of all, all that state is being, the emotional state is, and that activity is being anchored to the environment. Like we talked about, submerging underwater. It's not just the information, it's the feelings that are being anchored. And so like even something simple, like we use your iPad to, to watch Netflix and that's your entertainment system. Don't, don't do work on it, right? I mean, something, something simple like that.

• 1:06:24Chris Williamson?

  I really struggle to read on my phone for that reason. You know, there's a great tool called Send to Kindle for Google Chrome. And it's just a, just an extension. It's an Amazon like official application. And you press one button and the webpage becomes fully optimized for Kindle and delivers to your device. If you've got a Paperwhite or an Oasis or something, and it turns your Kindle into a read later app, but the alternative for me was to use, try and use Pocket or something which, or like, uh, uh, I can't remember that other one everyone uses. And, and like, I'm gonna read it on my phone. I'm like, no, I'm just, if I'm on my phone, I'm in task switching, messaging, executive function mode. If I'm on my Kindle,

• 1:07:06Chris Williamson?

  all I'm thinking about is, ah, like, if I bet if I tracked on my Whoop, I bet that as soon as I pick my Kindle up, I just get parasympathetic activation. Hundred percent that happens, that the device that's in my hands primes the way that I feel.

• 1:07:21Speaker 01

  With, without a doubt, you know, for, for me, I, I'd read most of mine on, you know, print. It's just my, I'm looking for any opportunity and then to not be on a screen, but without a doubt, our devices get anchored the same way as our, our environment. So yeah, I would say number six, the thing about the, the, the door is just clean environment. So just imagine we're just cleaning the glass and we're just cleaning the environment around the door, which happens to be the sixth place. The seventh place is the radiator. So I have a radiator there and I would just say the seventh key is sleep. So just imagine you're sleeping on the radiator and that, that would be very uncomfortable, right? You feel the heat and, um, but sleep obviously for your brain is so very important, probably the number one thing.

• 1:08:05Speaker 01

  It's something that I struggled with for a long time. I have, uh, I was, I had undiagnosed obstructive sleep apnea, severe where I stopped breathing 250 times a night. And I was only sleeping a couple of hours a night for five straight years and doctors didn't know how or why. And I had this kind of misdiagnosed for something else. And I eventually had this surgery at UCLA, where they took out my uvula, soft palate, tonsils. It was very painful. It degraded more airflow. My sleep jumped up to like four hours. But it'd be like 250 times a night is a lot because each time counts as 10 seconds. So that's what an episode was. So it's like, the doctor was saying, no wonder you're not sleeping. It's like somebody coming in and put a pillow over your face a couple of hundred times a night.

• 1:08:48Speaker 01

  And so I had a lot of, you know, anxiety around it. And I use CPAP and dental devices and all these things, but, you know, optimizing your sleep because specifically for your brain, because when you get a, you don't get a good night's sleep, how are you performing next day? How's your ability to solve problems? How's your focus? How's your mental endurance, right? How's your memory? You know, when you sleep, you consolidate short to long-term memories. If you have long-term memory issues, maybe do a sleep study yourself. You could get it easily done at home. You know, most doctors could prescribe that. It's also where you clean out, you know, the sewage system kicks on in your brain that could lead early, you know, because if it's not taken care of, it could lead to brain aging challenges. I lost my grandmother to Alzheimer's when I had my, two years after I had my brain injury when I was five. So that's why I'm just very passionate about, about brain health and, and my inspiration

• 1:09:33Speaker 01

  really is my desperation. But we've heard all the great brain hacks, there's a whole chapter in, in here on how to optimize your sleep. We've done many episodes on it. My favorite ones, and I know your audience knows this, but I just want to say, maybe say it in a different way, just to remind them, because are they doing it right? Because I know sleep is a big, sleep loss is a big challenge. Direct sunlight first thing in the morning, right? To reset your circadian rhythms. Caffeine, I can't do past two o'clock in the afternoon because at the half-life, I'm extremely sensitive to caffeine. So I just want to kind of, kind of pull that back a little bit. And then just realize that your brain loves a schedule. Everyone has an alarm to wake up. I really would have alarm to trigger you phasing to sleep.

• 1:10:16Speaker 01

  Otherwise it becomes 11 o'clock, 12 o'clock at night and, you know, we're not prioritizing our sleep, but your brain loves a schedule even on the, on the weekends. And then as hunter gatherers, we would, going back to like, you know, why we are the way we are, we would know it'd be time to sleep because our environment would tell us there'd be a dip in two environmental factors, temperature and light, right? So the colder, now where it's so cold, you're, it's, it's distracting, keeping you up, you're shivering, but also, you know, darker. And sometimes we want to get off those devices also because they can mimic, I could fool your mind into thinking it's still daylight, right?

• 1:10:51Chris Williamson?

  I, I read this a couple of weeks ago, which is just a nice, again, mnemonics and memes and easy ways to remember stuff. The three, two, one rule of three hours before you go to bed, no, no more food, two hours before you go to bed, no more liquids, one hour before you go to bed, no more devices. The most difficult one, embarrassingly, is the one hour before bed, no more devices. So we're so like acculturated to using them that you think, well, what am I going to do for that hour before I go to bed if I'm not using my devices? And it's actually a pretty good question. But certainly for me, I find if I sleep, if I eat close to going to bed, my sleep is wildly disrupted. Whoop did, this is a really cool thing that they do. They aggregate anonymously

• 1:11:33Chris Williamson?

  all of the user data and they look at correlations in journal entries, but and they know, right? They know what people say that they did and they actually can read the data on the backend. And eating close to bedtime was one of the biggest alcohol and eating close to bedtime were two of the biggest disruptors.

• 1:11:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's been my personal experience. Also, if I if I eat, I'm not, I can't go to bed, you know? And so if I end up finishing a meal because I'm out with clients or something at nine o'clock, then I'm pretty much screwed because I'm not going to bed till at least midnight. Also, and alcohol certainly could could have that effect also as well, working out sometimes before you go to bed, you know, because you want to bring your heart rate down. But I but I will go into a sauna in the evening because or a hot bath, especially like an Epsom salt because the magnesium helps you to be able to relax because it, you know, absorbing it transderminally. Also, when you leave the sauna or you leave the hot bath, your core body temperature drops, right? Which is a signal to produce melatonin. Same thing with the lighting, you know, but now

• 1:12:33Speaker 01

  with modern conveniences, we don't have to have it drop in temperature or light, right? So we have to take agency again and make conscious decisions for for our sleep hygiene. So that that's and also dreaming also, I talk about how to remember your dreams and a lot of that, you know, like in the book and other things you could do because it's remarkable in that REM state where you do a lot of your brain doesn't shut off at night. I'll just offer this as inspiration. Then a lot of inventions, works of art, literature, music came from dream states. They say that Mary Shelley created Frankenstein in her dream. A chemist created the framework of a periodic table in his dream. Paul McCartney came of the song Yesterday in

• 1:13:15Speaker 01

  a Dream, right? And just lots and lots of stories. Elias Howe created the sewing machine in his dream, like these kind of things. But that presupposes you're getting good sleep, right? Because not just the quantity of sleep, it's the quality of your your slow brainwaves, like the deep sleep and the REM sleep. So yeah, that sleeping on the radiator. So just imagine that and everyone remembers that. Then you walk over. Next, we have a china cabinet. And there you want to be able to remember a brain protection, protect your brain. This is a simple one, right? Your brain is very resilient, but it's also very fragile. Having had, you know, three head injuries before age 12. And I had this, you know, I had my brain scanned and did all these hyperbaric chambers and, and just kind of getting blood flow in the areas that were damaged.

• 1:13:59Speaker 01

  Just imagine you're head butting the, the China cabinet with a helmet and the helmet reminds you to protect your brain. And then finally, um, we have a, like a, a couch kind of area here. And, uh, and on the couch, you can remember the next thing, which is new learnings. So just imagine you and I, I'm, I'm talking to the listeners here on that couch. And we had maybe have a whiteboard and we're just putting the words new learnings in your favorite color. Right? Because it's so important, just as you keep your, the way you build your body, right? Is through novelty and nutrition and then sleep, right? But same thing with your mental muscles, right? It requires novelty and nutrition and it can even potentially help you to age better.

• 1:14:41Speaker 01

  Meaning there is a study done with nuns and they wanted to find out there was a longevity study, living 80, 90, uh, and above. Then researchers wanted to find out what was the, you know, the contributing factors. Half of it had to do with their emotional faith and gratitude. I'm summarizing this. The other half, they were lifelong learners. They're always reading, having debates, conversations. And they're suggesting because of it, it adds years to their life and life to their years. They, they put this study on the cover of Time Magazine. It was called Aging with Grace, you know? But on a scale of zero to 10, and everyone who's listening has a 10, right? Out of 10, because they're always learning, um, that would be key because that, that's really where the novelty, the newness, right? You make new connections. It can be very supportive. And then, so imagine that on the couch, we're doing new learnings.

• 1:15:26Speaker 01

  And then finally, the, the dining table there. Let's say the last one is stress management. All right. We talked about stress and coping with stress. So whatever you do, we talked about how chronic stress, you know, it can have negative effects on the brain. Maybe it's body work on the dining table, you know, or you're meditating on the dining room table. And just take a moment and just picture that. So the idea here, using the storage, we started this with encoding, storing, retrieving, is we've encoded it using visualization and feelings and story. We've stored it in very specific places on our body or, you know, in my two rooms of, of my home. And then now can you retrieve it? So now you're on stage and you're going and you see the microwave and I'm talking to people really who are listening at home. What does

• 1:16:11Speaker 01

  that microwave remind you of, right? What's coming out of the microwave and what are you putting on your body? All these brain foods and you probably remember it from avocados all the way to the dark chocolate and backwards. Because when you understand how your memory works, you can work your memory. And you go over the stove top and you're killing ants, right? You open up the refrigerator and I'm just kind of making this interactive, the exercising. And then you have your, your, your dishwasher and it's filled with those brain nutrients, right? The nootropics. And then who's washing the dishes? All your positive friends. And then you go in the other room, the sliding glass door, you're cleaning it because you're cleaning your environment. And then the radiator, what are you doing on it? The behavior is you're sleeping, right? To remind you to sleep. And then you go over

• 1:16:54Speaker 01

  the china cabinet, putting on a helmet to remind you of brain protection. And then you look at the couch. What are we doing? We're learning, always be learning. And then finally, the dining table, getting massage, you're meditating, managing your stress. So it's just kind of a fun and takes way longer to describe it. But I would challenge people to do their own home. And then they can put, you're having a conversation with someone, you're doing an interview with somebody, maybe you're not taking notes, but you're taking mental notes and you're putting some of the key points that you want to remember in places, either on your body or off. And it's really infinite. It is limitless, the amount of places. If you see card counters do that, or people like if you see me memorize 100 words or one number, like these are, this is a solid strategy to remember facts, figures, presentations, and so much more.

• 1:17:39Chris Williamson?

  I had a card counter, actually Stephen Bridges, British guy, who has a huge YouTube channel that people should go and check out. It's really cool. And he goes and takes on casinos on tours, like literally like that movie 21. And there's a big player and there's the counters and there's the spotter and all this stuff. Wild. And yeah, he, he was just like, I'm just a normal guy. I was into maths and magic and then realized that with a bit of training and a bit of work on my memory that I could keep a hold of the count. And I can make, I can take casinos for, you know, 150 or 250 grand over the space A weekend, which is not

• 1:18:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:15Chris Williamson?

  Not not a bad owner.

• 1:18:17Speaker 01

  Traditional card counting is like math, right? So they have a plus one, if you went through it on your pocket, right? Plus one, minus one, zero. Each card has amounts so that you kind of know the probability of a of a ten coming up. And you can make your bets accordingly. But how they communicated in twenty one with their with their their partners that were undercover at the table is they would use signals and they would use an alphanumeric code where every number has a sound. And this is like a code where like there are ten digits and there are also ten consonant sounds in the English language. And each one is is has something. So if they happen to be, you know, up fifteen, for example, or in this case, they they use something different. They use basic association.

• 1:19:02Speaker 01

  So they said like, hey, if it happens to be like, like it happens to be a six up. And that was about the card counting. Six can be represented by like a gun, like a six shooter, right? They would use that in the conversation. And then people would know like the the exact number.

• 1:19:18Chris Williamson?

  They were doing, um, they have nonverbal signals as well.

• 1:19:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:22Chris Williamson?

  Because they didn't want to keep on saying the same thing in case mics. Mike's now using AI pick up on the things that they're saying and they can flag that in the back end. So, yeah, it's a a permanent war of evolution between the card counters and the casinos.

• 1:19:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. And this could be a disclaimer also. This is for recreational purposes only for the listeners.

• 1:19:40Chris Williamson?

  It's not legal. It's not card counting is not legal according to Stephen in the United States, in certain places in the United States. One of the things that I think might be useful, I I'm thinking about the use case of what we've gone through so far.

• 1:19:55Chris Williamson?

  Great in terms of optimizing our minds. You know, we mentioned at the beginning that people have got an awful lot of information that they're either indexing, consuming in one form or another. One of the things that I wish someone had taught me before I started to show was about that discerning skill that we mentioned previously. And I one of the ones that I've used, which I think is really great and almost alleviates pretty much all of the stress. There are certainly things that you have to learn, right? If you're going to go and be a a doctor, you need to learn all of the things in this and you're going to be tested on all of the things. And if you're going to learn to drive a forklift truck or whatever it is, right? Like there are certain things where you have to learn the entire body of work. But for recreational learning or for stuff that you're going to use to improve your life, Tim Ferriss has an idea called the good shit sticks.

• 1:20:41Chris Williamson?

  And what he means by that is We often castigate ourselves for not remembering things that we weren't interested in remembering, simply because we have this sort of arbitrary sense that I should remember all of the stuff that I listen to, or I should remember most of the stuff that I listen to. But really, your job as you listen to podcasts like this, or read books, or Substack articles, or whatever it might be, your job is to discern what are the elements of this that are specifically applicable to me. And even that, as a decision tree, it's like, is, you know, we can get all up in our head about, should I be using that? Am I ever going to want to try and learn to

• 1:21:21Chris Williamson?

  juggle? Maybe I should buy more socks so that I can do this. It's like, ultimately, the thing that you listen to on a podcast episode, or read in a book, or whatever, that you can't not take a photo or a screen recording of, you can't not, you can't stop thinking about it, that's the good shit, right? And with that, okay, let's go narrow and deep on that, on that one particular thing. And we can use all of the tools that we've spoken about today to try and help really embed that. But when it comes to the discerning side of stuff, massive overload of information, how is it that I'm going to choose what's useful to me? For me, it's like, it's the most embodied and natural way of doing it. There's no decision

• 1:22:02Chris Williamson?

  tree, there's no nothing. I'll just be listening to some, Morgan Housel told me this story yesterday about the guy that was choosing the, working out how fast people could run. I was like, I can't not remember that, right? Like, I'm pretty sure, I'm pretty sure I tried to explain it last night and failed after I'd spoken to him. So, all right, that's the thing. I don't know why that's the thing, but that's super important to me. So I'm just going to use that. So yeah, from a discerning perspective, I think the good shit sticks. Yeah, really lovely, simple rule.

• 1:22:32Speaker 01

  I like it. Primarily, our brain is more of a deletion device nowadays. We're trying to keep information out. Because if we let, I mean, what, there's probably a billion stimuli that in our environment, or things that we could be thinking, that we could focus on. And so for me, it's a reductive process. It's eliminating because You know, keeping the most important thing is to keep the most important thing the most important thing, right? And so I think questions are the answer in a lot of these cases. You have a part of your brain called the reticular activating system, RAS, which determines what we're going to shine a spotlight on, you know? So you could use that analogy. If you're reading a page in a book, getting to the end and forgetting what you just read, I guarantee you, you don't have adequate questions that you're obsessed about because

• 1:23:16Speaker 01

  then if you did, you'd be shining a spotlight, say, there's an answer, there's an answer, there's an answer, right? And, uh, and we have about 60,000 thoughts a day and a lot of those thoughts come in the form of questions and then, and questions some people suggest is, is part of the act of, of thinking. You're asking and answering questions of yourself, you know, like questions like, what's the best use of this, of this moment? Or, you know, you're mentioning, you know, with, with Tim, it's like, how do I, how do we make this easy, right? Or how do we make this more, more enjoyable? Or what's the lead domino, right? These questions, or how do I reach my 10-year goal in six months, right? Where you can't just force it and just work harder. You have to, you know, think, think differently. And so, you know, I think three questions, again, that I, I obsess about when I'm listening to a podcast or reading something is things like, uh, how can I use this?

• 1:24:01Speaker 01

  Right? And then I'll, and I'll actually extrapolate and say like, okay, this could be useful. And then that's my filtering system because if I was like, oh, I can't really use this and I'll just kind of set it aside. This is not important for me. You know, I don't even note take that way, you know? I'll put a line down the page on the left side, I'll take notes, is how you read faster, learn languages, whatever. I remember people's names, the kind of stuff that, that we teach in, in the book. But then if my mind wanders, that, that right brain imagination wanders, it wanders on the right side of the page and I'm capturing like, how does this relate to what I already know? Right? What questions do I have about this? How am I going to use it? Why must I use it?

• 1:24:36Chris Williamson?

  I'll tell you what's a, a real cool feature for the Kindle obsesses amongst us. If you use highlights, um, there's actually a bit where you can highlight and then add a note and you just use the, uh, the little crappy keypad on the screen. Um, but just a tiny little bit of context is great. Do you use Readwise? Do you know what that is?

• 1:24:57Speaker 01

  No, I don't. I know what it is. Yes.

• 1:24:58Chris Williamson?

  Okay. Yeah. Well, just when it resurfaces the highlights from Kindle, it also adds the notes in.

• 1:25:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:04Chris Williamson?

  So you're not just resurfacing that one particular highlight. It also reminds you of the link of the thing that you made. So it's like networks of information are being sent back towards you. I think that's, that's, uh, that's cool. I like it.

• 1:25:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I love digital because it's, I mean, when people are handwriting notes, it's been shown to help comprehension and retention. But certainly digital note taking is a wonderful way to store information, share information and integrate it in other things also as well.

• 1:25:33Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:34Chris Williamson?

  One of the things that's still outstanding, I think, from the tool set that we've spoken about so far is concentration and focus. I think a lot of people have a very negative relationship with their ability to stay focused on task. So what do you usually look to first? What are the big movers, the 80s, 20s of focus and attention?

• 1:26:01Speaker 01

  It depends the context and the behavior of where, like when people come to me and say they want a better memory. I hear like somebody coming to a coach and saying, I want to be better at sports. I'm like, well, what sport specifically? Cause there's different methodologies and strategies and tools depending on, on their goals. Same thing with focus. If people are losing focus when they read, there could be a number of contributing factors. One of them is what we mentioned, they don't have enough questions, so they're not getting those answers. But another, it could be if they're reading and they're losing focus, their mind wanders, they get easily distracted. It could be they're reading too slow, right? You have this incredible brain and your feet, this supercomputer brain when you're reading one word at a time. Metaphorically, we're like starving our mind.

• 1:26:44Speaker 01

  And if you don't give your brain the stimulus and craves and needs, it'll seek entertainment elsewhere in the form of distraction. So sometimes it's you actually don't have the focus because you're reading too slow because it's like driving slow. If you're going really slow in your neighborhood, you're not really focused on the act of driving, right? You're you're thinking about something that you have to do that day. You're drinking your coffee, you might be texting, whatever. You can be five different things when you're going slow. But if you're racing cars and taking hairpin turns as fast as you could go, you're not thinking about the dry cleaning, you're not trying to text. You're completely focused on two things, what's in front of you and the actual act of driving, right? And that's the equivalent of I found with reading. We have

• 1:27:26Speaker 01

  an online academy. It's the largest online accelerated learning academy in the world. We have students in every country. So we have a lot of data, right? And we find actually that in general, the faster readers actually have better comprehension because they have better focus. And so, uh, speed equals focus, focus equals comprehension and comprehension gives you the retention. So I would challenge people that they're learning maybe processing too slow. And if you sped it up a little bit, you won't have time to distract yourself and focus on other things and you'd be monotasking as opposed to trying to trying to multitask. And the other part of focus would be on your brain type. And I know you took the quiz. This is something I've been using with with coaching clients for for years. And I realize

• 1:28:09Speaker 01

  just how the like there's personalized medicine based on like your genetics or personalized nutrition based on maybe your microbiome. There's also, we created a personalized learning based on your brain type. And I realized and I I created this model, and it's a model, a framework, right? Uh, to be useful and and and explain our way, our behavior and our and the results we're getting and also the behaviors and results of people around us. So just the quick of it is I I I pulled inspiration from like personality types like Myers-Briggs, introvert, extrovert, uh, multiple intelligence theory, uh, learning styles, verbal, uh, audio, uh, kinesthetic, uh, lateral dominance, like left brain, right brain. Anyway,

• 1:28:53Speaker 01

  so it's code, C O D E. And these are, I use animals because everyone wants to take like a quiz and what what Game of Thrones character am I or what? I don't know, Harry Potter or school, that kind of thing. So it's kind of fun. I don't know, it's maybe take four minutes, like something like that.

• 1:29:07Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I did it on my phone.

• 1:29:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's free, there's nothing to buy. And so we're offering this out to the world because it's not how smart you are, it's how are you smart, right? And this determines, this gives you shines a light on how you are smart. So code is an acronym, of course, for the animals. The cheetah are your fast actors, right? They implement really, really fast. They're, they have strong intuition. They, they love to adapt, right? The owls are your, they love logic. They're very analytical, methodical. They thrive when given a space to dissect, to ponder, to analyze things. These are individuals who benefit from deep work sessions, right? Away from distractions.

• 1:29:53Speaker 01

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

• 1:30:38Speaker 01

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

• 1:31:18Speaker 01

  M, who runs MI6 would be the owl, very, very, very logical and methodical. Money Penny, her right hand, you know, would be more the the elephant. Q, who makes all the inventions, would be the creative, you know, visionary. So you could go through and you could do Harry Potter, you could do any of this, but also it informs the careers. Like I had our team, which we have a few dozen people around the world. It's remarkable, 100% of our customer service team were elephants. Because they found they found their elements, right? They're there to be loyal and supportive and empathetic and have your backs, right? Because their success, you know, is your success and your success is their success. You know, our financial person, our CFO is is an owl, right? Our CEO, she's a she's a creative visionary.

• 1:32:02Speaker 01

  She has this, you know, positively impact 1 billion brains, right? And he has very imaginative things of using that. So it's interesting when you understand your brain type because it also can inform your your learning. And so when people take the quiz, it's we created, I think you we sent you a mybrainanimal.com. Right? Mybrainanimal. And it takes four minutes and you can send it to your spouse and it'll explain their behavior. And so you don't have to get like judgmental and everything because that's just how they think. And this is how they learn. And this is also correlated to how they, you know, even communicate with people. And so it's it's a kind of a fun way to kind of get to know each other and and stuff. Because the cheetah tends to be more direct, right?

• 1:32:44Speaker 01

  Straight to the point and speech is very concise and I know and now you could. You could overlap other communication and influence models over this, right? To give it make it even more rich and you know, because you I'm sure you have distinctions that that I don't have on this. But um, you know, cheetah is very concise, focused on action, all the very action oriented words. They're very instinctive, they trust their gut, they have strong intuition. They speak in a way that's very independent. Owls are analytical and methodical. And think about it, an owl would invest different than a cheetah. They would buy different than a cheetah. They would be influenced. They would date, you know, different. They would communicate, right? Owls would be a little bit more patient. They're like, like yourself, like you're, you're like you, you do so much research, right?

• 1:33:27Speaker 01

  You are willing to listen. You pause, you reflect before speaking, right? These are owl traits. I don't, you know, I'm not sure what.

• 1:33:34Chris Williamson?

  I read the PDF. The PDF was cool because it was talking about, um, you know, it's nice to be told what you are or a description that makes you feel seen or makes your whatever disposition feel like less of a just weird personal curse. But it's also interesting because it says things like, here are some of the areas that you might want to look out for. Here are some of your potential weaknesses. This is the way that you can communicate better with the elephants in the room and the cheetahs in the room and so on and so forth. And, uh, yeah, it's called it. I think the, the, the quiz was great. The PDF that you guys give afterward also, uh, really cool. So people should go and check that out. And you've got new book will be out now when this episode drops as well. Newly revised

• 1:34:18Chris Williamson?

  version. There it is. I didn't get it. What's happening? I didn't get that. I, I got a digital version. Send me that version.

• 1:34:24Speaker 01

  We're gonna, we're gonna send this to you along with, along with the T-shirt. We got your back.

• 1:34:27Chris Williamson?

  I'm fully quick pilled once, once I get that.

• 1:34:30Speaker 01

  Yes. I can't, I can't wait. The expanded edition was updated with all new case studies from previous readers and also is all about momentum. So we added chapters in there, you know, once you unlimit your mindset, your motivation and the methods of speed reading, memory, you know, all this stuff, focus, getting in flow habits, all the stuff we could, you know, discuss offline. We talk about momentum, how to create greater momentum in your life. And we do it through understanding your brain type, right? So I put all the research and examples in there. The quiz is also in the book, uh, because that knowing yourself will help you to, you know, have less friction in your life and relate with others and influence others better. We also have the entropic section in there, uh, which people could enjoy because that could actually have more momentum. Talk about learning agility, like in a post pandemic world.

• 1:35:12Speaker 01

  From, you know, whether you're working hybrid or remote or an in person, there's a whole large chapter on AI too. How to use AI to enhance your HI. And for me, HI is your human intelligence, right? And it's not artificial intelligence. For me, it's really about augmenting your intelligence and different ways you could use it to accelerate your own learning and earning in life. But yeah, limitlessbook.com. Thank, thank you so much. I've been looking forward to this and I want to thank you for the work that you do. Can I ask which animal you tested? Owl, okay. That's what I was saying, because even with the questioning, you ask probing questions, get clarity and often, you know, you could play devil's advocate and you could test an idea's validity. Like I just, it's, and you're very structured, you know, the way,

• 1:35:57Speaker 01

  the way you speak. And I try, I try to follow you when I'm listening, when I'm working out and everything. And I kind of like, I love the pace and cadence and the way you, you, you make ideas, you know, very sticky and relevant in people. But yeah, it's been a, it's been a wonderful pleasure. We have to have you on our podcast too.

• 1:36:15Chris Williamson?

  I'm down. Get me on when you need, Jim. And I really appreciate the kind words. I've been a massive fan of your work for a long time. Everyone should go and check out your book. They can go and do the brain quiz. And yeah, dude, I'm excited to see what you do next. It seems like there's always, always more desire for people to improve their brain function. I don't think it could come at a better time than right now. So keep doing what you're doing.

• 1:36:35Speaker 01

  Thank you. Can I challenge everyone to do one quick thing?

• 1:36:37Chris Williamson?

  Absolutely.

• 1:36:39Speaker 01

  Take a screenshot of this. Remember I said that, you know, knowledge is not only is potential power, power, we use when we take a small, simple step and something that everyone can do right now. Yes, you could obviously go to do the brain quiz and stuff like that, but take a screenshot wherever you're consuming this, listening to it or watching it and tag Chris, tag myself, we get to see it. And just share either your brain animal or one thing you're going to do for a better brain. We went through at least 10 different science-based things that you could focus on. Maybe it's reading a little bit more, adding these brain foods, these nootropics that Chris has or something, you know, prioritizing your sleep. Add that in the post and that way and tag us so we get to see it. And I'll actually repost some of my favorites and gift a few copies out to the community just as a thank you and reinforcing that knowledge times action is

• 1:37:23Speaker 01

  power. You know, I truly believe that there's a version of yourself that's patiently waiting and the goal is we show up every single day until we're introduced. So it's an honor to be on this journey with all of you.

• 1:37:33Chris Williamson?

  Hell yeah. Jim, quick, ladies and gentlemen. Jim, I really appreciate you. Thank you.