Episode 585: Jim Kwik: Build These Brain Skills Before AI Makes Them Weaker

Is technology making you smarter, or are you slowly training your brain to do less? We are living in a world where AI can write our emails, answer our questions, organize our thoughts, remember information, and make decisions faster than we ever could on our own. Our phones remember everything for us. GPS tells us where to go. Social media constantly competes for our attention. And the more convenient technology becomes, the easier it is to stop exercising the memory, focus, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills that make us human. This matters because your brain adapts to how you use it. You can deliberately train your focus, memory, confidence, adaptability, and ability to think for yourself. You can protect the first few minutes of your morning, stop giving away your attention, create friction before immediately turning to AI, and build mental strength the same way you build physical strength. The goal is to use technology as a tool while continuing to develop the human intelligence that allows you to make better decisions, solve harder problems, and adapt when the world changes. Jim Kwik is a brain performance expert, bestselling author, and leading voice on memory, focus, accelerated learning, and human intelligence. After experiencing a traumatic brain injury and learning challenges as a child, he dedicated his life to understanding how the brain learns and how people can improve their cognitive performance. His latest book, Limitless Daily, focuses on simple daily practices designed to strengthen your mind, improve performance, and help you make meaningful progress one day at a time. What's Discussed: (04:07) How relying on AI and technology to remember and think for us can weaken the cognitive skills we stop using. (06:42) Why AI is no longer the real competitive advantage and why human intelligence, judgment, creativity, and critical thinking matter more. (27:43) Why the first five minutes after waking can shape your focus, mood, and perspective for the rest of the day. (37:31) Why confidence comes after action and how doing difficult things creates evidence that you are capable. (41:47) How deliberately thinking before turning to AI can help strengthen cognitive flexibility and mental resilience. (55:44) How scrolling, bingeing, and getting rewarded before doing the work can reduce motivation and make follow-through harder. (59:28) How the questions you repeatedly ask yourself shape what your brain notices and reinforce the beliefs you already hold. (01:00:25) Why reading too slowly can make your mind wander and how increasing your pace can improve focus and comprehension. (01:13:43) How multitasking and constant task switching drain focus, increase mistakes, and waste mental energy. (01:19:29) Why remembering someone's name can strengthen relationships, improve likability, and even affect major business opportunities. Thank You to Our Sponsors! Magic Mind: Head over to magicmind.com/jen http://www.magicmind.com/jen and use code JEN at checkout. Momentous: Ready to try supplements that actually do what they claim? Head to livemomentous.com http://livemomentous.com and use code JEN for 35% off your first subscription. Therasage: Visit therasage.com http://therasage.com and use code JEN to get 15% off your order. Your skin Prolon: Prolon is offering listeners 30% off sitewide plus a $40 bonus gift when you subscribe to their 5-Day Program! Just visit prolonlife.com/JENNIFERCOHEN https://prolonlife.com/JENNIFERCOHEN and use code JENNIFERCOHEN to claim your discount and your bonus gift. Tru Niagen®: For supplements that are rigorously tested, third-party verified, and actually deliver what's on the label, head to truniagen.com http://truniagen.com Kion: Visit getkion.com/habits https://getkion.com/habits for 20% off Find more from Jen Cohen: Website: jennifercohen.com https://jennifercohen.com Instagram: @therealjencohen http://instagram.com/therealjencohen Books: jennifercohen.com/books https://jennifercohen.com/books Speaking: jennifercohen.com/speaking-engagements https://jennifercohen.com/speaking-engagements Find more from Jim Kwik: Website: limitlessdaily.com http://limitlessdaily.com Instagram: @jimkwik https://www.instagram.com/jimkwik/ Facebook: Jim Kwik https://www.facebook.com/jimkwikofficial/ YouTube: Jim Kwik https://www.youtube.com/c/JimKwik LinkedIn: Jim Kwik https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimkwik/ X: Jim Kwik https://x.com/JimKwik Book: Limitless Daily https://www.amazon.com/dp/1401978940?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle. Crush it.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Welcome to Habits and Hustle, where I sit down with the world's biggest thinkers, entrepreneurs, athletes, and experts to uncover the habits, strategies, and mindsets that actually move the needle in your health, happiness, and success. And today, I'm sitting down with Jim Quick, a brain performance expert, bestselling author, and leading voice on memory, focus, learning, and human intelligence. We talk about AI and whether it's weakening our thinking, why human intelligence is becoming a key advantage, how your morning shapes your focus, and how to build confidence through action. We also cover dopamine, multitasking, self-talk, memory, and how to train your brain instead of outsourcing it to technology. This conversation is packed

• 0:51Speaker 01

  with practical ways to stay mentally sharp, make better decisions, learn faster, and become more intentional about where you put your time and energy. Jim gives you simple strategies you can start using right away to perform better, adapt faster, and stay deeply human in a world that keeps getting more automated. So now, let's dive in.

• 1:19Speaker 01

  All right, you guys, welcome to another episode of Habits and Hustle. And this one, I got a good one for you today. This one, you're gonna really like because not only is this guest just, he has a plethora of information, but he gives you actionable things that you can apply to your life that can help you optimize your human performance, your human intelligence, and all the things. So this is, this is a treat. We have, we have Jim Quick today on the podcast. So thank you, Jim, for being here.

• 1:48Speaker 00

  This is good. I've been looking forward to this conversation.

• 1:50Speaker 01

  Oh, me too. Listen, Jim's, I have to say, Jim has been here before, and that episode that we did back a few years back did very well. People loved it. So like I said, this is like a big treat to have you back for round two. So

• 2:02Speaker 00

  Congratulations on the show.

• 2:04Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 2:04Speaker 00

  You had some amazing guests.

• 2:06Speaker 01

  Thank you. You're one of them. You're one of them. First of all, I was saying to you off before we even started to even basically roll, like, what do you call yourself? Like, you're not, like, you're not, you're a brain coach, but you're also a human performance, like, what is your title? Do you have one? Do you have one?

• 2:22Speaker 00

  No, I don't. That's a good question. People started calling me a brain coach or brain performance coach. But I guess, I don't know, I'm an entrepreneur and, you know,

• 2:34Speaker 01

  In the brain space?

• 2:36Speaker 00

  A husband and a father and all of that. But, um, but yeah, I mean, I write books and I help people with their brain. I think, I think for an entrepreneur or any individual, your number one wealth building asset is your brain. And, and I like helping people optimize that because everything comes from that. Your relationships, your business, your bank account, the impact that you have is all there. But, you know, I know people are talking about practically how to use it.

• 3:00Speaker 01

  Exactly. Then that's like the name of the game in my world, practical. Like, how do we actually truly optimize? There's a lot of words out there. There's a lot of noise and things. But how do we actually get our brain to be better, working for us? And how do we really optimize it? And that's what I love about what you talk about. By the way, Jim has a new book out called Limitless Daily: 366 Keys to Train Your Brain, Master Your Mind, and Win Every Day. So just so you guys know, he wrote that book called Limitless that crushed. And so now, like, there's all these iterations that kind of keep on, kind of with the times, which is why I really, what I really wanted to talk to you today

• 3:42Speaker 01

  about, and I'm sure this is on a lot of people's mind, is of course, AI and memory, right? I think this is a big one because I'm using myself even as an example. We all just turn to AI to do everything for us. It writes our emails, or we're kind of like training our brain actually to be weak because we're not using it anymore, I feel. What do you say about all this stuff?

• 4:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's called coptative offloading. I wrote about that in even Limitless six years ago when it came out, where technology is wonderful, but if we're dependent on it and relying on it, like, one of the things we talk about, the four horsemen of the mental apocalypse, the things that are making us not as intelligent and not as effective in our life is relying on technology and not doing some of the work ourselves. Meaning, like, digital dementia, for example, is where we use technology to remember things for us. Like, our phones remember your to-dos and your schedules and facts and then your notes and the phone numbers, right? I mean, how many phone numbers do we know growing up?

• 4:42Speaker 01

  That's a perfect example, actually, because that was even before AI. Because now, even with just like your cellphone, you don't even remember, I don't remember anybody's number.

• 4:50Speaker 00

  Yeah. And then, but, but growing up, you did.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  Of course. You had to.

• 4:54Speaker 00

  Right. And so I don't want to memorize 1,000 phone numbers. I don't think anyone wants to do that. But it should be very concerning. We've lost the ability to remember one phone number, or PIN number, or something we just read, or something we just heard, or somewhere we needed to go, or someone's name, right? And so your brain is like, it's, it's an organ, obviously, but it's, it acts like a muscle, but it's use it or lose it, right? And so if I, if you put your arm in a cast for a year, it wouldn't grow stronger, it wouldn't stay the same, it would, it would atrophy.

• 5:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 5:19Speaker 00

  That's the challenge is that the high dependence. And then I wrote about digital deduction, which is the high reliance, not just for memory, but to think for you, technology thinking. I mean, even think about GPS, right? Before, we had to remember, remember looking at maps, we had to remember where and when to turn. How people give you directions and you can't write, you had to, you had to be able to store it. But now we don't. And, and while it's easy, it's easier for certainly if technology is telling you where and when to turn. But then we don't have to develop our visual spatial intelligence, right?

• 5:48Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 5:49Speaker 00

  I mean, you know what it is? It's kind of like, you know, fitness and the beautiful gym here and everything. It's like, if, if I had to go 10 blocks to go to the bank, if I get into Uber, right? That's a form of technology, very convenient. But then it can be crippling if I'm not getting those steps in, right? If someone's office or apartment was on the fifth floor, an elevator is a form of technology, simple form of technology, but, and it's convenient, but, but then you don't get the workout, right? And so I feel that while AI is, just remember this, like, people think AI is no longer a competitive advantage, right? I know you have a lot of entrepreneurs, aspiring or established entrepreneurs that using it for leverage. It could, it's no longer competitive advantage because we all have it, right? We all have access to it, just like we have access to all the information.

• 6:33Speaker 00

  So what, what, what gives us an advantage is what I talk about, human intelligence, you know? And people know me for doing the memory, the focus, the speed reading training, all the accelerated learning, the brain optimization. But that's all to build our human intelligence in an AI world, meaning that AI, let me think about how you use AI. It could scale, it could amplify, but it only scales and amplifies what you bring to it, right?

• 6:54Speaker 01

  With prompts or whatever.

• 6:55Speaker 00

  All of that. But that's your thinking. Like, somebody could use exactly an AI to create a social media post, right? But somebody could use it to build a billion dollar venture, right? And so it's, it's the intelligence that they're bringing to that that allows them to get that, get that scale. It's like, I work with a lot of athletes, a lot of race car drivers. I mean, think about a F1 car, right? It's a multimillion dollar piece of technology like AI. But ultimately, that trained intelligence, the driver is what's going to get the performance, as opposed to the average person that's not, doesn't have that same kind of intelligence.

• 7:29Speaker 01

  Right. So if we, if we talk about this whole idea of like, you don't, you know, use it or lose it, but people are, it is doing a majority of like the basic work for us. Is it our job as, as the human to learn then how to work in tandem with it properly? Like, what is, what's the, what's the game here then? What's the

• 7:51Speaker 00

  My challenge, okay, so for me, it's more augmented intelligence. It's there to augment and you partner as a creative partner, right? It's there to be able to call you, ask you questions, is to reveal your, your blind spots or your cognitive biases. You know, you, in Limitless, even years ago, I put a whole chapter on how to use AI to enhance your HI, your human intelligence, you know, because we could take all the principles that I teach in Limitless or accelerated learning and feed it into AI and have it quiz you, have it test you, summarize things for you, mind map things for you, create memory palaces for you, do teach you in your preferred learning channel, you know, based on like how you prefer to take in information. So it's a wonderful way to use AI to enhance

• 8:33Speaker 00

  your HI. What I would say, though, is just like with the physical stuff, with technology, like the car and the stairs and everything else that we're talking about earlier, is I just don't want it to stop using our critical thinking. Like, imagine like,

• 8:48Speaker 00

  All the contents can be very derivative if it's just people aren't improving their own intelligence to keep pace of like what's going on with AI. So AI could process and compute immensely, but ultimately, humans have to use a human intelligence to what's important. What does this data mean? What are we going to do with this data?

• 9:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:06Speaker 00

  Right? All of that is discernment, it's critical thinking, it's a level of judgment. But if we're not exercising that on a regular, then then imagine a whole society in the country or even globally, people who just don't think anymore.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  So you're right. So this is why for people laugh at me all the time because I refuse to use those app like, you know, like Uber Eats, Postmates, all those. I refuse to use any of those because I think it's just another way of becoming lazy, right? Like go to the store, get your food. Like it's technology is making people just overall more lazy and useless.

• 9:43Speaker 00

  And throughout human history, technology has changed the way we are cognition, meaning when the printing press was invented, it changed the way people remember things. When GPS was invented, it changes how people navigate the streets in the world, right? And, you know, when you think about the industrial age, right? Machines magnified muscle, right? All the machines in assembly lines, everything, the body. Now, you know, computers magnify, you know, information, you know? And so what I believe has to happen is while AI, and we'll get to tactical stuff, wow, because this is very important. I think I think we're leaning into the one of those important conversations like of our time. Like, how

• 10:26Speaker 00

  do you remain deeply human in a world in an age of AI?

• 10:29Speaker 01

  Well, 100%.

• 10:30Speaker 00

  Right?

• 10:31Speaker 01

  Do we do we even need a good memory anymore with AI?

• 10:34Speaker 00

  So if you don't exercise your memory, I'm all for using AI to automate things for lesser, less, I say lesser important things like to do, because that that we've always used technology to do that, right?

• 10:46Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 10:47Speaker 00

  But I would say with that extra bandwidth that you have or the energy, the focus of the time that AI is allowing you to have, use that to reinvest in in something that AI maybe can't do as easily or well.

• 11:00Speaker 01

  So would you say then, as a professional and expert in this world, would we, would you say limp, if you would have to give people advice, would you tell them to limit them themselves using AI to write like an email or to ask a basic thing that they should be able to do on their own? So we don't get too lazy or like our brain doesn't get too atrophied, basically?

• 11:21Speaker 00

  And this is what's happening, right? Like, everyone heard about that MIT study, you know, a few months back where they took three groups of students, A, B, and C, and they had to write essays. And group A used ChatGPT to write the essay. Group B used Google Search. And group C, no, no technology. And so they also scanned their brains through the process and they tested them afterwards. And group A, who just didn't have to do a whole lot of effort to be able to create that, they had the least amount of recall for what they what was written, which makes sense, right? They were just given it because they didn't have to work for it. They didn't, they didn't earn it, right? And also their parts of their brain was the least engaged also through the process because they didn't have to exert any kind of friction. So I just want to remind everybody that every cognitive

• 12:05Speaker 00

  advance that we've had is it's humanity. Let's even date back 200,000 years with the human brain, came from friction. It came from struggle, right? Memory, we needed to develop memory for our survival. Like, where's the enemy tribe? Where's clean water? Where's soil? We had to develop judgment because we had to solve problems of survival. We had to develop creativity because we had constraints of time or temperature or resources, right? So we had to be more creative. So all this. But what happens when AI removes all the friction? And you don't have to use any of that, right? And then it's just like putting your arm in a sling. And then we have, you know, these, you know, these futuristic movies where people are not moving and they're behind a screen and they're eating the junk food.

• 12:47Speaker 01

  Right. And they're obsolete. And like, the machine becomes the...

• 12:51Speaker 00

  Very much so. And I really feel that AI, I mean, this is like a manifesto. AI is whether it replaces people, I think it's a, they call it a barbell economy, where where it's really threatening people at least the stage when we're recording this is in the middle, those middle skill sets. It's getting so, so certain AI is is going, if it's going to replace or certainly affect certain professions more than others, right? And so in that middle skill set, who's it going to affect? Coders, copywriters, visual designers, right? Like, there's a whole set of people. And then, you know, this, this, you know, the barbell, if you're using that kind of metaphor, leadership, right, is that's why EQ, interpersonal skills, influence, you know, is very important on this side. And customer service might fall

• 13:36Speaker 00

  in the middle also as well with all these, you mean, these as advances it's getting with voice and chat.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  I haven't spoken to a human being in a year.

• 13:43Speaker 00

  And some people actually, where it is currently now, some people prefer it because it's because it's gotten so advanced. And imagine what it's going to be in the future. But on this side of the barbell are the ones that, you know, like HVAC and plum, there's certain things that are going to be easily replaced, you know, as as easy as what's in the middle. So my, my, my thing here is whether AI replaces you, it will certainly reveal you. Meaning if if an entrepreneur is chaotic and confused, AI is going to magnify that, like money does. Money just makes you more of who you are, right?

• 14:13Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 14:13Speaker 00

  And but if somebody is clear and they're concise and they're curious, it'll magnify that, right? And so my thing is, I'm very pro technology. It allows this to happen, right? It allows us to have our, you know, the work and the impact and scale. I like technology, but it's how it's being used. And my thing is just like with the car or the elevator or anything else that makes our life more convenient, that we still could do the work because we don't want to be weak, right? There's this whole idea of cognitive flexibility. This is what's in Limitless Daily. I'm building the skills to help people because, you know, even with businesses, I serve half the Fortune 500 companies doing mental training, mental fitness, like physical fitness, but mental training. Like, so it's Facebook, Nike, Google, SpaceX, the US Air Force. I mean, the highest performers, I

• 14:58Speaker 00

  realized that, and I was thinking about it the other day, it's not the constraint that I see as a pattern in terms of their business. It's not, it's not often technology or capital. The constraint or the bottleneck is usually the cognitive capacity of leadership. Because leaders have to decide, there's a lot of information. If anything, AI, there's too much information. Leadership or every, all of us, because we're all leaders and CEO of you, Inc., right? It has to decide out of this, all this information, what's, what's most important? What does this information even mean? What are you going to do with it? What are you going to focus on? So if you're, if your intelligence is compromised and your focus is compromised and you're suffering from decision fatigue and you can't hold the, you don't have mental models to be able to navigate it, then that person's

• 15:39Speaker 00

  going to be at a disadvantage, right? Even if they're using AI. And so I feel like AI will reveal people more because of, because it magnifies and makes everything more transparent. And I also think that what an opportunity there is, because I actually, my optimistic view, because everybody knows the dystopian, what Terminator, Matrix, what that looked like. And I'm not an expert on that. But what I am an expert on is the cognitive component, you know, and how our brain can change over time. Because again, when, when A, B, and C at MIT, C had the best, the one that used no technology, had the best recall of the, of what the work was done. They had the most engagement, just like, just like somebody would have more physical activity required. They get the work, they go through a struggle,

• 16:24Speaker 00

  they get, they get the strength, right? They went through the challenge, they get the change. And so I feel like, who am I to decide, you know, what's the balance, right? Ultimately, people have to decide, just like they do with their physical activity of what to do. Because again, I use technology, but the challenge is, is technology is a tool for us to use, but if the technology is using us, then then we become the tool, right?

• 16:45Speaker 01

  You have become the tool.

• 16:46Speaker 00

  And that's often the case. But I mean, from the cognitive capacity, like, you know, all the, the, the, the brain rot, the AI slop, you know, everything that we have to kind of go through. I think right now, those who lead the best are those who could adapt the fastest. They're going to learn, they're going to unlearn, they're going to relearn, and they're going to apply faster than other, other people. That's going to be the advantage. But that's all human intelligence, right? AI could do a lot of things, but what makes, what makes us human, the optimistic view that I, that I hope we're headed to is that AI is going to do all these different things, like, like, like Star Trek, right? Since for the geeks that watch Star Trek, you know, technology took care of everything. There's no scarcity. There's no disease. There's no, you know, people are living longer.

• 17:27Speaker 00

  So then they could pursue higher, deeper, more exploration, right? More connection because, because their basic needs on the, on the, on the pyramid have been satisfied. So they're not just trying to put shelter or food or, you know, those kinds of things. But I also believe that if AI is here, if we're going to just be able to survive and also thrive, then we're going to have to lean in to become more human. So my, my challenge is that is not that whether or not artificial intelligence, my challenge is that natural intelligence becomes artificial. You know what I mean? It's because we're so dependent on it that we're not even using any of this, you know, our natural gifts. And I'm where, and in order to be relevant today, we have to lean into our human intelligence. So what

• 18:09Speaker 00

  is that? What falls under human intelligence? I mean, this acronym on the way here actually called human. So, so the H just for you, sign those people are driving or working on, they're not writing it, but they can remember it with these little acronyms. H for me is like heart. Like, think about it. AI, this is emotional intelligence. Like, AI could give you a lot of data, but it has no bedside manner. It could fake empathy, like it cares about you, but it doesn't do that.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:31Speaker 00

  And depending on how you prompt it, it could be a sycophant just giving you what you want to hear, right? And that's the danger also as well with AI.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  That's a big thing that happens. You have to put like prompts in, you're like, truth mode, brutal truth.

• 18:42Speaker 00

  That takes, that, that takes reflection, that takes real thinking, that takes a certain level of discernment to even ask for that in the first place as opposed to being placated by something, you know, what you want to hear, right? But emotional intelligence is so very important because AI, it doesn't know what it feels like to break up, to get divorced, to help a grieving child, right? To go through loss, right?

• 19:03Speaker 01

  No.

• 19:04Speaker 00

  And I, and I feel like, and it could fame that stuff, but, but people could tell, right? And so I feel like what will make us more human and more effective as a leader also is, is, so I use the H as heart, emotional intelligence, empathy, all those things. The E, if we're going to, if we're talking about like, what, what is?

• 19:24Speaker 01

  Like, isn't human, if you're spelling human, isn't it, it's you?

• 19:27Speaker 00

  I have another acronym called, called, called heart. The, the U is understanding. So going back to... Like like reasons, going back to meaning, right? Because again, it could go through and extrapolate all kinds of data and computations. But ultimately, we decide what things mean, right? We have questions. We want to have a greater levels of understanding for for things. And I feel like that, like like curiosity is is very important. Because I think it drives us to be able to wonder and have awe and ask new questions, which are prompts. Like, people should be prompt experts, because we've been doing it. We're always asking ourselves questions.

• 20:05Speaker 01

  Absolutely. But we're stopping to as well. Wait, let me just say this, because as we're talking about critical thinking, I'm thinking about kids. If you have kids, if you have someone who is raising kids, how do you apply? How do you teach your children to use AI without them losing their ability to critically think?

• 20:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, and this generation will be the generation that wouldn't know a world without AI.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 20:27Speaker 00

  Right, just like when you grow up there.

• 20:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, like they, everything is now, you know, automated and social media and AI. Like, are they?

• 20:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, when I was like, um, you know, I'm thinking about brain also. You know, I'm fifty three. We have, we have a, we have a toddler and infant. So I got very, you know, in terms of starting in the new, new journeys here. So I'm very thinking about not only an aging brain, because my brain injury as a child, my learning disabilities, losing my grandmother to Alzheimer's, all those things that put me on this path, right? But also now, you know, with children, I've always worked with children. They use our educate, our accelerated learning techniques in Finland and South Korea, some of the globally best education systems that are out there. And there are models out there where they're using AI for personalized learning, right? We do know that, I mean, this is, people know this, so it's no, it's no, not new information, but just the presence that

• 21:18Speaker 00

  that a lot of the tech, you know, billionaires are creating a lot of these platforms. They don't let their kids on devices, right?

• 21:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know.

• 21:24Speaker 00

  And because of, and the challenges, and if you've seen some of these videos, is it's rewiring their brains, especially at those early stages, when your brain is even more plastic.

• 21:34Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 21:35Speaker 00

  And and also, the human brain, I mean, think about all the sounds and all, and all those, those, those lights and everything else that is bringing you. And again, it, fire is a form of technology, right? Fire can can cook your food, or fire could burn down your home. It's just how it's used, right? So I would, I, it's having the intentionality with kids is very important. For young kids, limiting screen time, you know, delaying, you know, how long that, you know, when they get their phones and all that. I'm not saying any of this is easy, right? Crying, a crying kid at the, at a restaurant or, you know, in, on an airplane. And I totally, I could totally understand. So I'm not saying there's a perfect solution here, but everything, it's all, like, when, if you want to change your life, there's only four choices you can make, right?

• 22:18Speaker 00

  There's a quote in Limitless that says, "Life is the letter C between B and D, where B is birth and D is death, life C is choice." So if we're gonna get really tactical, if you want to change your life, there's only four choices you could do. You either stop something, you start something, you do less of something, or you do more of something. Now, that is so simple. I'm not saying it's easy to stop smoking, or to stop, you know, or to start, you know, exercising, or, or, or do less binge watching. But things will change for sure.

• 22:43Speaker 01

  That's great. I love that. That's a great thing. It's not, it's not easy, but it's simple. So stop overcomplicating it.

• 22:51Speaker 00

  So much, but it still requires work, right? So if you want it, if you feel limited, right? You feel stuck in your health, in, in your energy, in your reading speed, your memory, your, your finances, whatever you feel stuck, right? You feel limited, then I would say, the only four things you could do, you know, stop something. So you could stop smoking, that, that'd be a difference. You could start doing some kind of mindfulness practice, right? And that will help you with stress management, and all those other things that come with it. You do less binge watching or doom scrolling, right? That would be just a good thing. Or you could do more, more movement throughout the day, right? And it's simple things like that, because little by little, a little becomes a lot. So if you, if you come through it from, from here, like, what can you do to, with kids? Well, they could start something, you know, stop something, do more of something, or do less of something.

• 23:36Speaker 00

  And then it just makes it easy. And how do you do these? You do it small, because sometimes like, oh, I'm gonna start working out. For someone who doesn't have that habit, it's a big jump, right? At least to be consistent. Like, I think if you're persistent, all of us could achieve something, right? You can put it, make a certain amount of money, you could lose a certain amount of weight. But if you're consistent, you get to keep it, right? And so consistency compounds. And I wrote this book, it's interesting, because I haven't talked about this, but Limitless I wrote in less than two months. It was my first book, because I had thirty, this is my thirty-fourth year, right? I just, you know, I had all this content, it was very therapeutic to get out of my head and organize it.

• 24:11Speaker 01

  Wow, that's amazing.

• 24:12Speaker 00

  But, and we sold a couple million copies, and we don't, you know, we had all this money to build schools in Ghana, Guatemala, Kenya, brain research for Alzheimer's, for women who are, who are twice as likely to experience Alzheimer's than men. And then, but this, it took me a year. And well, this is kind of, I dedicate this book to, to my kids. They can, they're, they're not gonna be able to read the book, but when I was in the hospital with my daughters, about a year and a half, like, I, I, I journal every day. I don't know if you have a practice. I find I'm most creative, and I've been doing this for, for fifteen years, just I have to write and just get things out of my head, or maybe gratitude, or what I'm gonna do that day, or something I'm thinking about, that I want to solve.

• 24:52Speaker 00

  When I was in the hospital, when she was being, when she was born, I, I had my journal, but I started writing to her. And like, I had a couple of near-death experiences, and I just, like, if I wasn't here, what I wouldn't be able to share? And, and I was, and I wrote about things that I was facing, or clients, that was top of mind clients or students we were facing. Things like frustration, or lack of focus, or overload, or burnout, or imposter syndrome, or fear of failure, right? I mean, all of these. And I started writing about it, and I said, here's the idea, here's the science behind it, either psychology or neuroscience, and here's one thing you could do in less than two minutes to help you win your day, right? And I did that for all these different categories. And then a year passed, and there's the book, you know?

• 25:36Speaker 00

  And so for them to be able to read it, and then the biggest question we got with Limitless is like, wow, this is an owner's manual for your brain, which, which surprisingly, it doesn't come with. There'd be people like, where do I even start this? Five minutes a day, every single day, and we're gonna do a whole three hundred sixty-six challenge for free for everybody. He gets the book, and then every single day, we'll focus on one thing, to get rid of the friction in your life, so you could win that day.

• 26:00Speaker 01

  I love that. Okay, so if someone only has five minutes a day

• 26:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:04Speaker 01

  to train their brain, what would you suggest they do?

• 26:08Speaker 00

  Highest leverage? This, this is new. So I'd say is, when I was doing research for this book, it's not just what you read, it's when you read it, right? Or when you input anything. So people could find all, all of, all my stuff out there. Here's something new, that's high leverage, because that's what I want, is the, like, what's the least amount of things I could do to be able to get the most return and rewards? Here's one, and some people have seen some semblance of this, but I'm gonna show you the science that no, that I haven't heard talk about. When you wake up in the morning, there's something called sleep inertia. Sleep inertia is where you transition from sleep mode to, to waking mode, right? And what comes online? Your conscious awareness, your attention, your alertness, all of that's coming online. And especially, first thing in the morning, your working memory, very short-term memory is empty. That cup is empty.

• 26:53Speaker 00

  It's not full of all the, everything that you had to put, go through that day. So what happens during that window of sleep inertia, when you first wake up, is the mental inputs that you choose to let in has a disproportionate effect on the rest of your day. Now, that's leverage, meaning, I'll tell you how, what it affects. Depending on what you choose here, in that window, has a disproportionate effect on your feelings. Like, what do most people do that first window in the morning?

• 27:20Speaker 01

  Swirl their, scroll their phone.

• 27:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, and so, you know, so you get a bad, you get a voicemail message, or a text, or WhatsApp, or social media message, about something, whatever, and it puts you in a mood. And so it affects your feelings. The second thing it affects, your focus, like what you, they call it intentional priming. So intentional priming is what you're training your attention for. So what you see first thing in the morning, let's say it's a political thing, or it's this thing, or something that's going to be a new thing, that trending, whatever, you're gonna focus on that more that day. And that just makes sense, you're starting seeing it more that day. So it affects your focus, your feelings, and then third, which is a big one, no one thinks about, the framing of the day. Meaning, when things happen throughout the day, we will disproportionately, based on what we fed our mind first thing in the morning, frame situations differently, based on what happened.

• 28:07Speaker 00

  So if you see, if you, if you go on your phone, you see this thing about a reality show, whatever, and this, the kind of, you know, this relationship, whatever, we'll, we'll, we'll taint our relate, our interactions with humans later that day. You, whether you go through a challenge, depending on what you fed your brain, has a disproportionate effect, not a complete effect, but definitely a strong influence, on, is this a challenge, or is this a problem? Is this an opportunity? You know, do I feel like I can handle it? All the framing. So the message here, and that's why, first thing in the morning, that if you don't touch your phone, you do what other people, whatever the routine is, prayer, some people do gratitude. For me, like, one of the three hundred sixty-six things, I do, I do something called future episodic memory, where I, episodic memory is remembering the episodes of your life,

• 28:49Speaker 00

  the experiences of your life, as opposed to procedural memories, is remembering how to do something, like how to drive a car, how to type, whatever. And so, future episodic remembering is one of the days in this, and it's basically how to set a goal where it feels so real, it's as real as remembering what you had for breakfast that morning. And you could, and this whole process for that. So here, and when, one thing you could do is use that time, is when you wake up, even without the book, right? You could do gratitude, you could do journaling, you could set your goals, whatever, because you'll get more out of your day that way, intentional priming. What I do is I just stay in bed, and I keep my eyes closed, and I imagine myself coming back to bed. And we could all do that, right?

• 29:30Speaker 00

  Just imagine you're coming back to bed, and, and you get a message, or somebody asks you, like, how was your day? And I, so I imagine my wife asking, how was your day? And I, and I light up, and I'm like, today was incredible. Like, I totally crushed the day. And then I, I, I imagine asking myself, what had to happen in order for me to feel that way? Like, and I just think of, for me, I choose three things personally, and three things professionally. So those six things are my, what I'm focusing on that day.

• 29:56Speaker 01

  Give me an example.

• 29:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:57Speaker 01

  So let, so just, this is, this is really good. So, so you're saying if someone only has five minutes a day to work on their brain in all aspects, the most important five minutes actually is the five minutes you're waking up. Because it frames everything else that you're talking about and doing and how you feel, focus, et cetera. And then you're saying in that five minutes, you close your eyes and visualize you going back to bed and like your wife asking.

• 30:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, I would do one of the, well, there's three hundred sixty six different things you could do in the book, but this is one of them.

• 30:29Speaker 01

  And there's three questions you ask professionally, you talk.

• 30:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I ask myself, so again, like, what do I do is take advantage of that sleep inertia. When your brain is transitioning to attention, awareness, a level of alertness and that window. My, my, my mantra for the longest time has always been mind before media. I will not touch my media phone, because who would? We would never, first thing in the morning, invite two hundred strangers into our bedroom just to talk about whatever the heck they want to talk about. That would just be, that'd be insane. But that's kind of what we're doing when we open up our phone, right? So it wires, it uses that attentional priming to wire your brain for number one, distraction. Because none of that's important, right? And then it also wires your brain for reaction.

• 31:13Speaker 00

  Meaning Brendan Burchard, who wrote Motivational Manifesto, said, Motivation Manifesto, so said, "Your inbox is nothing but a convenient organizational system for other people's agenda for your life." And isn't that true that you could get a voicemail or an email or something else and you're fighting fires? And you're starting your day on defense.

• 31:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:31Speaker 00

  Right? And, and you, and it's kind of like, the way I visualize it, Jen, is like, when I wake up, we're all getting on a plane. And we want to go to a destination, a city, right? That, that's, that's the goal. We want to do something special that day and travel. And, you know, a lot of people go in there and there's turbulence. And that turbulence might be distraction, might be energy vampires, it might be the crazy, you know, all that stuff. Or somebody could be going in and hijacking that plane, take you where you don't want to go. And that often happens for leaders, entrepreneurs, parents, because the world happens, right? What I want to do is, is hit on that plane, the same metaphor, because if you're going this to this city and you take a one percent. Because the first thing you do when you get on a plane, it's, it's, it's set to go to a destination, right?

• 32:12Speaker 00

  But if it's off even one percent, you could end up in a completely different city or country, right? Over the length of that flight, in this case, the full, how many hours in a day, right? Depending on when you wake up. And so my, the metaphor for to build that out is I want to take people from being a passenger on that plane, put them into the cockpit, and they are the pilot of their mind. It's like, for me, we use the word intelligence, we've talked about it a lot. Intelligence is not IQ, right? I, I, I make a big argument in Limitless, saying your IQ is not fixed. Like, you take a test when you're eight years old, that's your potential when you're eighty eight. That's ludicrous, right? Plus, the test doesn't even test for a lot of things that are important today. Like, just like the school system not preparing them for the world, right?

• 32:52Speaker 01

  I'm a big believer in this.

• 32:53Speaker 00

  And so for me, intelligence and, you know, I have different definitions over the years. Intelligence could be pattern recognition, right? Like, somebody who's very intelligent could see patterns in the market, or patterns in biology, or patterns in lifestyle. For me, patterns of the brain and learning, right? It's to get, there's a method behind the magic, so you could do extraordinary things. Because you see things other people don't, because they don't have distinctions, as they see the themes and the patterns. Also, you know, intelligence for me is just the, the, the ability to, to change your opinion based on new data. Like, what a, what a concept, right? And so in this book, I, I have passages on cognitive flexibility. Because think about what physical flexibility allows you to do. You don't get as injured, you know, as, as individuals, because you're pliable, right?

• 33:37Speaker 00

  And, but we don't do this, these, this mental parkour, you know, where we could train flexibility mentally. Meaning, I mean, think about the opposite in business. Because I'm either going to compare things, when I'm talking about brain, I'm either going to compare it to body, the physical workout or, or business, where people relate. Like, think about, um.

• 33:55Speaker 01

  But that cognitive flexibility is so smart, right?

• 33:58Speaker 00

  That's a form of human intelligence, right? That, that's something, because here's the, what's the opposite, cognitive rigidity. And what happens when people are cognitively rigid? You get a blockbuster, right? Blockbuster video. Where are they? Right? Because they, they didn't, they were not flexible.

• 34:14Speaker 01

  Because they wouldn't, yes, they, they weren't, they weren't able to be fluid with the times. Yes.

• 34:18Speaker 00

  And think about, based on new information, data, right? Because they're rigid, right? And their thinking and their execution. Think, think about, remember Kodak?

• 34:25Speaker 01

  Of course I remember Kodak. That's a great, that's a great example.

• 34:28Speaker 00

  Kodak, Kodak actually developed the, the, the main technology for digital photography. They developed that.

• 34:34Speaker 01

  Polaroid.

• 34:35Speaker 00

  Right. Like, so, but they developed the digital photography, and then where are they now?

• 34:39Speaker 01

  Nowhere.

• 34:40Speaker 00

  Because they were cognitively rigid. So cognitively flexible are people to be able to, and that's what human beings want to be. You want to be able to change things, because you know what? Part, the big part of human intelligence is, is your ability to adapt, right? Like, if I'm going to build out that human acronym, H is, H is heart, all the emotional intelligence. U is understanding, because while AI can feign understanding, it really doesn't understand why. M in human is, is meaning, like, purpose, right? Like, purpose is, uh, what, as human beings, we want to lean, and, and by the way, when we exercise these things, we become more human. And I think that, that could be the Renaissance for humanity, where AI is saying, okay, I don't have to do this, this and this, because AI could do it. Let me not just sit back and just have a convenient life.

• 35:25Speaker 00

  Because life really is, I, I noticed you have a book here, I don't know if you had them on the show, we did, Michael Easter, about, about comfort crisis.

• 35:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did have them.

• 35:33Speaker 00

  And having deliberate, because the other part to cognitive flexibility that we talk about in Limitless Daily as entries in five minutes, is building cognitive antifragility. Antifragility from, because we hear about being antifragile. For me, it's all about cognition. And so I'm thinking about, how do you build cognitive antifragility? So you have that mind where you could persevere, you could go through difficult things.

• 35:54Speaker 01

  How do you? This is a great point.

• 35:55Speaker 00

  And, and, and, you know, just same thing mentally is the same thing physically, is you do difficult things, right? So for me, and I would love to have a conversation with you about courage and confidence and, and how, and where, what comes first? And also action and how that, because a lot of people feel stuck or stalled, because they just, they're, they're, they don't, they're not stepping in and building that muscle of confidence or courage.

• 36:16Speaker 01

  And that's the only way to really build confidence.

• 36:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, and people think it has to come first.

• 36:20Speaker 01

  No, it comes way after. Yes.

• 36:22Speaker 00

  Exactly. And so, and by doing the action, you start to develop evidence. Because I feel like the action is the vote that you are this person, that you are courageous, or you are confident, right? And so, going back to deliberate discomfort, what I would say is, we've optimized for convenience, for comfort, right? And that's the challenge that I have with AI. It's, it's making you even more comfortable, because you don't have to, to put any effort to something. And we don't tend to grow or even appreciate things when I do a lot of stuff. I was having a conversation with a mutual friend about family office. You know, it's like, first generation wealth, what happens second generation, what happens at third generation, right? Because they never had to develop the muscles, right?

• 37:04Speaker 00

  Or the distinctions, or the knowledge, or the wisdom that comes through friction, and AI is removing that friction. And I'm fine with it making my life convenient. I like the fact that technology allows me to do lots of things. And I don't want to just let my brain just retire, right? Because that's, that's usually the big decline in, in cognitive, is when people either graduate school, because they associate learning, oh, my learning is done.

• 37:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 37:27Speaker 00

  And then, or when people retire. And when people retire, they often don't use their mind as much. And then their body is not far behind after that. But how do you build, like, let's look at nature, right? There's a whole area of science in nature called biomimicry. And this is where we look at nature, because it's been around longer than we have. And how to use that for energy systems, like all these different things, because we can learn, because they've refined and have wisdom. But also look at nature about, about being antifragile, like a hormetic response, right? Or heat adaption. Like, so for me, cognitive resilience, I'm going to make a distinction personally. Like, I make things very functional for me. Cognitive resilience is bouncing back to stress, right?

• 38:12Speaker 00

  You bounce back to a default baseline. Cognitive antifragility is bouncing forward, so you're actually stronger because of it. So.

• 38:20Speaker 01

  How do you, how do you become more cognitively?

• 38:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:24Speaker 01

  Well, so. Agile.

• 38:26Speaker 00

  Yeah. Also, flexibility.

• 38:28Speaker 01

  Or, or flexible.

• 38:29Speaker 00

  So, yeah, cognitive flexibility, we could talk about developing, as opposed to rigidity of a blockbuster.

• 38:34Speaker 01

  If you're very set in your ways.

• 38:36Speaker 00

  Right. And then in cognitive antifragility is the endurance to be able to bounce back, to be stronger. So working out is a way of becoming more antifragile, because you're not even staying the same. You're growing stronger with the pressure, with the stress, right? And so nature imitates that, even, like, so whether it's the hormetic response, whether it's heat adaption, you're going to be more efficient and stronger because of it, or you're working out. Mentally, it's like reading and novelty, that, so you can get stronger mentally. Or, like, even look at, look at kids, right? Like, like babies, they're exposed to more soil and more bacteria, their immune system is stronger, right? So it's, it's just merit, that they become more antifragile based on the, the stressor. And so what I'm saying here cognitively is to be able to push ourselves.

• 39:21Speaker 00

  But what kind of strength or antifragility cognitively do we have if AI is doing all the work, right?

• 39:27Speaker 01

  And what do we do? What's the first step here? What do we do to make it less, to become more flexible?

• 39:32Speaker 00

  Yeah. So what I would, what I would say is here, a simple example, and this is hard, but learning is supposed to be hard. Like, working, if you're working out and it's not hard, what are you really growing? May, maybe you're maintaining some of your health.

• 39:44Speaker 01

  I was going to say also, I don't really believe in easy or hard, I just believe in doing it more, right? Because anything becomes easier if you just do something, right? So that hard thing becomes easy, and that easy thing becomes hard if you don't do it. So like, the idea is just doing it. What do, what does someone do, though, to become more cognitively flex, cognitively more flexible? Do they do, fill in the blank?

• 40:07Speaker 00

  Yeah. So to get stronger, so to get stronger cognitively, right? Um, like, antifragile, you push yourself mentally. Like, you do, you do the difficult things and you don't avoid it. So for AI, for example, before I prompt about like, oh, I had this episode about this and what, I actually spend five minutes thinking about what my, what I would answer for this. Before, I would just offload it and just get an easy answer, right? That would, that would be one example of just like, uh, you know, if I'm going to go here to there, yes, I could use the technology. But I'm also going to kind of walk the long way, just to kind of push myself a little bit more, just like I would do physically. So it's a moment to moment choice that we're making intentionally. If we're going to do something more difficult at the time, so we could build some kind of strength,

• 40:50Speaker 00

  because we go through some kind of struggle that leads to some kind of, you know.

• 40:53Speaker 01

  And that's kind of like taking the stairs, not the elevator, even though you have that option.

• 40:57Speaker 00

  All the time. Like, even, you know, thinking about, if you're using AI to make social media posts, be able to think about it. And you don't spend, I don't want people to waste time, because I'm cognitively pretty. I wouldn't say lazy, but I think people who optimize for they don't want to waste their time because they see the value of their focus. They see the value of what energy they have. They have, they see the value of the minutes in their day. And so I would say the answer is just like working out, you push yourself while you do that, you do that, but we're not doing that mentally. So I would say be doing those mental pushups and it could be different for each person. I personally like reading just because, you know, like that's, that's my jam. If people have seen pictures of me with the Oprahs and Elons or whatever, you just bonded over books, right? And somebody has a book, like you're, you put into a book, you put it,

• 41:40Speaker 00

  you see, so it's knowledge decades, you put into a book and someone could read that book in a few days, you could download decades and days. That's a huge advantage. Plus, reading is great exercise for your mind, right? New ideas. And I'm not just saying nonfiction. Fiction reading is wonderful. Like, like I do have a, I don't have my phone by my nightstand. The best way of changing your habits, as you know, like one of the best ways is remove the triggers and change your environment, right? So otherwise you're using willpower if that phone is there that be like, oh, I see you do it every single time. It's like, if you don't want to eat bread, like at a restaurant, then they bring bread. It's easy to say no and say it once as opposed to it being there and you're saying in your mind 50 times, no, no, no, no, right?

• 42:17Speaker 01

  A hundred percent.

• 42:18Speaker 00

  It's so much easier to control your environment. So you put your, your device, which we know is probably not the best thing in the morning or for late at night for sleep and everything else like that. Put it in the bathroom, replace it with a book, right? And I, that I read fiction. If I'm going to read like something usual outside of like a five minute like download from like Limitless Daily, because fiction reading has huge benefits.

• 42:40Speaker 01

  It does?

• 42:41Speaker 00

  Emotional, like emotional intelligence, empathy, imagination, be able to step into other people's shoes to be able to see that, like especially the way we train fiction reading. It's like, because nobody, like George Lucas, everyone, they can't do what you could do inside your own mind. Like when you're so enraptured into a fiction book, some people read Harry Potter, whatever they're reading, and they're just walking around with it. They don't even know what's like in the kitchen, everything else that just so it, because your imagination and, and it's a wonderful way of stimulating, you know, like your imagination, your creativity and empathy. And so it's been shown to help people and plus it's a great reducer of stress, reading. People will sleep better after they, they read a fiction book. And I think some people intuitively have experienced that. What I don't read is something super technical.

• 43:24Speaker 01

  I was going to ask you that. So you think before people go to bed, they should, they should read fiction, not nonfiction? They shouldn't read like some health, self-help book?

• 43:32Speaker 00

  No, because if I, if I read a business book or a neuroscience book, then I'll be in my executive brain and I'll get out of the parasympathetic. I'll be thinking about like, oh, what am I going to do with this? Focus everything else like that. But if I read something more entertaining, it's better than me feeling, and this is personal preference, watching a TV or iPad as screen because that blue light and that's how it affects our circadian rhythm and sleep. And this could be super stimulating, but a book is just very, yeah, that, that's for me. So I have.

• 43:56Speaker 01

  That's a great point because I've never actually heard anyone talk about that, that what the benefits are of reading a fiction book because people never think there's any benefit to it.

• 44:06Speaker 00

  Even when I was doing some of SpaceX and I first met Elon, I don't want to drop names, but like we bonded over sci-fi books, like our love for sci-fi books.

• 44:13Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 44:13Speaker 00

  Because like, think about like, and you could go to any, you could go online, people could search about whoever they admire, like the Steve Jobs or whatever, whoever, and all these fiction books come out because what does it do as an early age? It got you out of what, just like when I couldn't read, I was reading comic books.

• 44:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:28Speaker 00

  And that shaped my life because I, the, the pictures brought it to life and helped me understand the words and everything else. But then I unconsciously saw like the hero's journey, that people are here for purpose. They use their power for good. They think it overcomes struggle or.

• 44:41Speaker 01

  What's your favorite book?

• 44:42Speaker 00

  Fiction book?

• 44:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:44Speaker 00

  Oh goodness. So I, I like a lot of sci-fi. I like, obviously comic books I read every single day because, you know, people have seen pictures of me with the X-Men and the stuff that I've had to do with Marvel because they were childlike heroes. Like things like, I would love to buy the rights to like, well, before it was like Ender's Game, but then they made Harrison Ford and they made a movie out of it. I love everything. I'd rather read like a fiction book than watch the movie, but then, because the book is always better than a movie, right?

• 45:10Speaker 01

  Always, yeah.

• 45:11Speaker 00

  And movies are great. No, especially for stress management, everything else to, you know, it's just too much of anything. It's, that's why I say do more of or less of, or stop it or start it. It makes it really, really simple.

• 45:22Speaker 01

  I love that.

• 45:23Speaker 00

  But yeah, sci-fi books are just, you know, I, I read a lot of the fantasy books, The Lord of the Rings, all the classics. I have a very large fiction library, but I, I read, I have two books on my, on my nightstand instead of, instead of my phone because I don't want that urge. Even, you know, I had a, Simon Sinek and I have a video, I saw it on Facebook, so I'm nine years old, has 38 million views. Somebody spliced our two of our stages together, the two of us and this, and it's me talking about not touching your phone and all the reaction and distraction. And he, his was just saying, hey, just even having your phone at the meal table at a restaurant or at your dining table creates, even if it's face down, creates the, the, like the instinct or the impulse to grab it all through that. And just, just because.

• 46:06Speaker 01

  And so it's distracting you from, your attention is diverted.

• 46:10Speaker 00

  Or even if someone's holding it, how does it feel like if someone's here, not even looking at it and you're talking to somebody, right? And so moving it somewhere else. And what I have by nightstand is I have, I have a journal, I have fiction book for night and I have Limitless Daily in the morning. People can have their, whatever, you know, whatever they want to feed their mind first thing. And it's just, it works. And it doesn't have to be a lot of reading. Like if people say this, like, oh, I don't like reading. Well, first of all, we, most people don't like reading because they're not good at it, right? Just like if, if you don't, if you're not great at golf, you're probably, it's not going to be a fun activity, right?

• 46:41Speaker 01

  So true, yeah.

• 46:41Speaker 00

  So like, and we were taught how to read when we were last class, six years old. And so we haven't had any training past that. So people are really surprised when we could show people they get better comprehension, reading three times faster the way we teach it. And then, then it becomes fun. But I would also say, even if you didn't go through one of our, you know, we have students in every country, so we have a lot of feedback, tripling reading speed. Even if you didn't do that, my advice would be like, you know, read something you love until you love reading.

• 47:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 47:06Speaker 00

  Right? Like find things that you really love.

• 47:09Speaker 01

  See, you're so good with these, you know, phrases. That's a great thing to say.

• 47:14Speaker 00

  Yeah. Like what are your passions? Like even like I was, I was looking at.

• 47:16Speaker 01

  Such a good point.

• 47:18Speaker 00

  Like so many people are burnt out nowadays because of AI or because of their job or because of the economy or because of politics or because of information overload, whatever, right?

• 47:24Speaker 01

  A lot of information. I think people are burnt out from information overload.

• 47:27Speaker 00

  And AI. I mean, is that going to, is that going to, is that going to go down or is that going to?

• 47:30Speaker 01

  Well, it's giving people anxiety because you don't know how to use it and then you fall behind.

• 47:34Speaker 00

  And they call, they actually call it information anxiety. And how's it affect our health? Higher blood pressure, compression, leisure time. People aren't sleeping as well, right? Because of all this drowning. So we're drowning information, but I think we're starving for wisdom, right? The promise of Limitless Daily, and then it's purple, right? If you're watching this on video. I have 5,000 books in two, in two rooms and I have like no purple books. It's so wild. I don't know. Like I, there are a couple I could think of that are out there that are, that are well known. But purple, and I did the whole thing on color psychology and purple, the two, the two words that consistently came up sovereignty, which is your agency.

• 48:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:08Speaker 00

  And wisdom, right? And I feel like that was so, that was so fitting for the book because I want to remind people that they are a cause, that they have agency, they have sovereignty, they have responsibility. It lies on their shoulders and also wisdom giving them the insight to be able to get through, you know, something new in a day.

• 48:26Speaker 01

  That's why it's purple? What is certain colors? Like if someone were like, you say, can you talk about the color psychology? I think that's interesting.

• 48:33Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, I don't know all the science behind it, but you know, like there's a reason why in certain, in certain restaurants, that certain food, like in terms of design and the color design, the palette, there's a reason why red is more alerting, right? Whether they use a stop sign, there, there's a reason why police officers wear blue because it's trust, you know, and so all of that. But for purple though, it's interesting because it's a combination of red and blue. So people, it's, it's, and, and again, it's one of those things where I don't think the science is completely, is, is complete or definitive, right? But I like it from a memory standpoint, I like it because everyone would be talking about a purple book.

• 49:08Speaker 01

  I love that.

• 49:09Speaker 00

  But it's sovereignty and wisdom is just kind of the promise.

• 49:12Speaker 01

  Okay. But okay, get back to, you just kind of touched upon something that I think everyone would like to know more about is the focus and retention because of AI, because of where, where we are. I think our focus is, of course, we talked about completely depleted and also like retention, like you, you read, you can retain. A lot of times I read, I'm reading blah, blah, I've got to read the same sentence 20 times, right? Can you give us a really good actionable thing we can start doing today to really improve our focus? And then how do we help our retention?

• 49:46Speaker 00

  For reading?

• 49:47Speaker 01

  In general?

• 49:48Speaker 00

  Focus, yeah, absolutely.

• 49:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think in general.

• 49:51Speaker 00

  So I think just like confidence, confidence is something you have. So a lot of the nature of my work, the first principle is taking downs and turn them into verbs. Cause I think we trick ourselves or hypnotize ourselves with the words that we use, right? People at all the time see me memorize like a hundred people's names in audiences, wherever. And they come to me, it's like, Jim, I'm, I can't do that. You know, I'm, I'm not smart enough. I'm too old. I have a horrible memory. And I would say the same thing. Stop. If you fight for limitations, you get to keep them, right? They're yours. Cause your brain is this incredible supercomputer, it self-talks the program that will run. So if you tell yourself, I'm not good at focusing or remembering names, you won't remember the name of the next person you meet because you programmed yourself to not do, right? And so I would start first with the belief about focus and, and reading speed, right? Cause I always, I think all behavior is belief driven. Like we can't.

• 50:35Speaker 00

  It's been my experience, especially working with athletes or, you know, people who want to achieve big, big, big things. I don't feel like we rise to the level of our goals or our dreams. I think we fall to the level of our three, three things at least, our standards. We fall to our standards like we'll always like if our standard is we have to be able to pay the mortgage. We'll, we'll always hit that, right? We fall to love our standards. We fall to love our systems. You have systems for when things get, and especially when things is hard, right? Everyone could perform well when there's no pressure and everything's going really well. That, that's a given. People show up in even relationships when they're not stressed. That, that's easy, right? But it's always the stressors, right? Of the economy of how people treat you or whatever. So when things go wrong, we fall to the level of our, of our standards.

• 51:19Speaker 00

  We fall to the level of our systems. And I feel also the third thing is we fall to the level of our self-image. You can't outperform who you think you are. It is really hard, at least not sustainably and consistently, right? So people could go through and do this thing for a relationship. But there's self-image is I'm not worthy of this love or making that kind of money or whatever it is or I'm poor. Whatever that self-image is, we're going to fall to that level. So limitless is not about being perfect. Limitless is about redrawing the borders and boundaries of what's possible. Cause you could optimize, you could optimize your systems for greater results. You could raise your standards, right? You could transform your self-image. I'm not saying, again, easy is different than simple, but it's absolutely possible because how else do other people do it? Right? In terms of

• 52:03Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 52:03Speaker 00

  And they go through a process and so limitless is about helping people with that. Their standards, their self-image, their limiting beliefs. Like if somebody can learn a great method for entrepreneurs to make money. But if their mindset is it's scarce, it doesn't grow on trees. I have to hurt people to make money, right? You know, it's, it's then, then money's a root of all evil, whatever it happens to be. You're never going to be able to do that thing. So people start, stop, you know, or fear, fear, whatever it happens to be of them not looking good or they procrastinate. Like I would do the inner work, right? It's just like if somebody's watching, there's another one in limitless daily, one entry talk about is that mental exercise. It's like, you ever, we ever watch a movie or television show and you're like, you know what the main, main character is suffering.

• 52:47Speaker 00

  There's the struggle, they're going to shot and you know exactly what they need to do, exactly what they need to do. And, and I think everyone listening or watching knows the same, a hundred percent of people know this, right? So just like one exercise in here is the thought experiment. It's just like, imagine there's video cameras on you right now. It's been following you around for years. What's the audience screaming at you to do, right? So it gets you out of yourself. There's this cognitive distancing from it, right? And gives you, you know, and I think ultimately all the great coaching is like self

• 53:14Speaker 01

  I've heard that before, actually, like if someone, if you were, if someone was watching a movie that you were the, you know, the main character in, what would they be screaming at you to do that you just don't see, right?

• 53:28Speaker 00

  Yeah. And so in here, so I break it down and I, I give them one idea. I talk about the science of what's being activated, either brain anatomy part of this, ecology part of it. And then, and then give them one little thing. It's always a quick start because my last name really is quick. It's not like a stage name or anything.

• 53:43Speaker 01

  That's amazing. That's a real name.

• 53:44Speaker 00

  Because also that small, simple step, what does it do? It gives them effort, cognitive effort that gives you dopamine that you earn.

• 53:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 53:52Speaker 00

  Right? The hope, one of the biggest challenging challenges nowadays is that dopamine, which is the molecule of motivation and, you know, and joy. Like most people aren't earning it, right? Like scrolling is no effort and you get all this dopamine. And then the baseline changes, right? And you're all spent. You wonder why you're not motivated to write that book, do that sales call, workout, whatever. Cause it's, it's just like binge watching something, no effort at all, or going to a website. No effort at all, junk food, right? So we get that hit. It's just like when people, they post on Facebook, someone does this, I saw this today. They put on Facebook, I'm going to write a book. And I literally messaged the person after because they got like a hundred comments saying, oh, congratulations. Amazing, dopamine, dopamine, dopamine, dopamine.

• 54:36Speaker 00

  And then I guarantee you that person's less motivated to finish that book because they got, they got their hit.

• 54:42Speaker 01

  A hundred percent.

• 54:43Speaker 00

  For, for nothing, for doing nothing.

• 54:45Speaker 01

  There's research on that though. There's a lot of research on that, that if people say that what they're going to do, and then they, they kind of get that dopamine enough where they don't even end up doing it because they got that release, so to speak, right?

• 54:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, especially with, or, or do it with somebody that's going to hold you accountable, like do it privately where someone's going to hold you accountable. Like in there or mentor or somebody you care about. If you don't follow through, like that's different.

• 55:08Speaker 01

  Are you on social, I mean, like, do you scroll? Are you on social media?

• 55:12Speaker 00

  I am, I'm less than less only, and not because I'm so enlightened, but I also, it's, it's the same reason I, I, I just, I don't drink. You know, like I, I have socially and stuff like that, especially with clients that have some little like bio dynamic, red wine, whatever it happens to be. But I don't, for the longest time I haven't drank. But it's just, it's easier for me just not to, so do I go on social? Yes, because part of my business relies on, I want to see what, you know, like peers are doing and staying close to a friend. That's useful, but I, I don't, I, I am even myself knowing every, all the cognitive consequences of doom scrolling and brain rot and all the things that the youth are going through. I'm more and more rigorous about having borders and boundaries around the things.

• 55:55Speaker 00

  Because here's the thing, here's, here's another exercise in limitless daily. It's, um, imagine, think about the words we use about, we live in the age of attention, right? That, that's everything and we can't do anything without focus. And our focus and attention is being sold to advertisers and everything else. We know this, so we pay attention, right? There's a currency there, like think about the words that we use. Like here's another experiment. What if tomorrow you're starting your day, whatever, and you had to whip out your credit card every single time you poured your attention to something? You go on the Facebook, you go on Instagram, you had to pour, you had, manually put in your credit card. And every single minute that goes by, you're being charged for whatever. We would treat it differently, right?

• 56:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 56:33Speaker 00

  Like we would think about how would we protect, you know, our currency? How would we invest our currency into something that would be lasting? And, you know, I feel like this, these are choices that we make. And so, um, yeah, I'm human and I, you know, I use technology, just like I use AI and everything else. But I use it sparingly because I also know that there's a consequence, you know,

• 56:54Speaker 01

  To do, to, to doing it.

• 56:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:56Speaker 01

  Okay. So for focus then.

• 56:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:58Speaker 01

  You're, I'm just going to make sure I'm clear. What, what is the first thing, what is a good thing we can do? Like in one sentence?

• 57:06Speaker 00

  Yeah. So that first five minutes already is protect your focus, right? So that, that, that gives you know, start your day and being distracted and flexing your distractions. The second thing of your focus is your brain primarily deletes stuff. It does focus on certain things based on your, your reticular activating system and what the questions you're asking. So here's the focusing tool are the questions. See the prompts that you're giving to AI, I'd be even more concerned about the prompts you're giving to yourself. Like, you know, I talk about in the book about a dominant question that you have 60,000 thoughts a day. And there's one, and a lot of those thoughts are questions you're asking yourself and answering for yourself, right? But there's questions that you ask more than any other question. Figure out what those questions are like, and there's some conscious, it's usually imprinted. Like when I was labeled the boy with the broken brain, my question was like, why am I broken?

• 57:51Speaker 00

  Like what's wrong with me? And I started getting my RAS, but I started focusing on all the things that was wrong with me, right? Because that's the prompt that you're putting into whether it's artificial intelligence or your natural intelligence. You're going to get answers based on the quality of that question. And then later on, I started changing that question is, it was like, well, how do I fix my brokenness? And I started getting answers too, that I didn't see before. So even when you read, has anyone who's watching or listening read a page in a book, got to him and just forgot what they just read? How embarrassing, right? And they reread it and they still know what they just read. I guarantee you, first of all, I think they're reading too slow. Cause when you're reading slow, like think, watch this, because we haven't taken a class, unless you've gone through a program, like probably since you're six years old as a reading class.

• 58:31Speaker 00

  If, when you have this incredible supercomputer or brain, most magnificent, there's 86 billion brain cells and trillion synaptic connections, four stars that are in the known universe. It can remember what you read or it can remember a name. But when you're reading, you feed it one word at, I can't even, I'm from New York. I can't even talk that slow. But, but, but, but imagine if we were to extrapolate that, if I was, if you and I were to have the conversation talking that slow, what would everybody, what would their minds all naturally do if we talk this slow?

• 59:02Speaker 01

  They would get bored and not pay attention.

• 59:04Speaker 00

  Not pay attention?

• 59:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:05Speaker 00

  But isn't that interesting? That's what, that's the experience people have when they read.

• 59:09Speaker 01

  That's so true.

• 59:10Speaker 00

  And they're reading too slow.

• 59:11Speaker 01

  So you gotta read faster.

• 59:12Speaker 00

  So here's the thing, because if they're reading too slow, feeding their word, you know, one word at a time, what happens? Just like when I was talking slow, you get distracted, you lose your focus, you, you fall asleep. Some people do that to fall asleep. They use reading as a sedative. And what I'm saying is when you actually, it's like driving a car in this, in this beautiful neighborhood. If they're going 20, 30 miles, they're not focused on driving.

• 59:32Speaker 01

  No.

• 59:33Speaker 00

  Like have you arrived at your location, you didn't even remember like the drive there? You're not consciously aware because you're going slow, right? You could, some people be, I saw somebody here like, like putting on their makeup when they're driving, like whatever. Or, you know, texting, which you absolutely shouldn't do because you can't multitask two things at once. That's why there's more accidents. We're singing a song, drinking their coffee, thinking about the dry cleaning, talking to somebody else in the car. You can do five things when you're going slow. But if you're racing a car and you're going, you go 200 miles an hour, taking hairpin turns. Are you thinking about dry cleaning? Are you trying to text? Are you thinking, are you drinking? No, you're focused on the act of driving and what's in front of you. Faster readers will have better comprehension because they have better focus. They're focused on the book and the act of reading.

• 1:00:16Speaker 00

  Because if you don't give your brain the stimulus it needs, it'll seek entertainment elsewhere in the form of distractions. Your mind wanders, starts thinking about client stuff or we're going with something in the future because you are boring your brain because you're going too slow. And so, one of the ways of improving, to answer your question for reading, read faster. You can use a visual pacer to help you focus, your pen, highlighter, mouse, or whatever, because your eyes are tracked in motion, that'll help you visually focus. And also, it'll help you go faster because you could control this pace and you won't backskip and reread words by accident. And by going faster, it'll improve your focus. And ask more questions, because let's say, like, I guarantee you, if somebody reads a page, even if they're going slow and they're not remembering anything, they're not asking any questions about that.

• 1:00:57Speaker 00

  Like, even, we have a whole, very successful student program to help students get better grades in less time, teaching them to focus, memory, speed reading. What an advantage that is, right? And part of it is, like, even if you look at standardized tests, you remember, like, in standardized tests, you do all this reading comprehension and then here are the questions? Like, would it make sense to read those 10 questions first? And then read the passages and be like, oh, there's the answer, there's the answer, there's there? And that's why even in Limitless, like, every chapter started with three questions. Because I wanted to intentionally prime people's minds, activate their reticular activating system. And then when they're reading, oh, there's the answer, there's the answer, and that helps them to focus.

• 1:01:33Speaker 01

  So, do you believe in ADHD then, or no?

• 1:01:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, we've had Dr. Amen and all the big ADD, ADHD doctors there. That's not my expertise, so definitely talk to your health practitioner, diagnose.

• 1:01:45Speaker 01

  But can you train your brain to be more focused?

• 1:01:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, I've taken a very, I'm very well read in the subject. Obviously, we have millions in our community, so it could just come up, just through numbers. I take an extremely strength-based approach to ADD, ADHD, dyslexia. I mean, I can give you countless examples of people throughout history and current people who have these traits, and they're exceptional. Because it forced them to think differently than other people.

• 1:02:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:02:11Speaker 00

  Just like with my learning disabilities and, you know, my brain, traumatic brain injury and all the things that came with it, it forced me to be able to look at things in a different way, to come up with different answers. That's what cognitive flexibility could be, right? Like, Steve Jobs is very flexible, like, think about a phone. It is the intersection of like, a computer, a camera, a calculator, like, all these different things, right? But anybody could have done that. There's a book called The Structure of Scientific Revolution that says that all innovation, the majority of all innovation in fashion, technology, automotive, it usually comes from somebody outside the industry. That came in an executive or founder that looks at the industry saying, why aren't we doing it this way? Because if you're in the industry, you also have the same education, the same learned helplessness, what's possible, that's reinforced in that environment.

• 1:02:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:02:57Speaker 00

  So, like, it's like Elon looking at the automotive industry, saying like, ask a new question, a new prompt, like, what you would do in ChatGPT, you know, or something else. You would ask yourself, saying like, hey, if I was to create a car today with today's technology, what would that look like?

• 1:03:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:12Speaker 00

  And you ask a new question or prompt, you get a new answer. And that's why I lean into human intelligence, because the last of it, because you're going to get these people posted on social media. The rest of the acronym, just to close this out, H is hard, which is emotional intelligence. The U is the understanding and the comprehension, because only humans could decide that. The M is the meaning and purpose behind what we do. Like, I think passion as well lights you up, and purpose is how you use that passion to light somebody else up. That's functionally, works serves me very well, meaning, you can have lots of passions. Like, I love martial arts, I love anime, I love arena, like, I like learning. Learning lights me up, then in all ways, because I struggled with this for so long, that lights me up. But teaching people how to learn, lights them up, that's my purpose, right?

• 1:03:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:52Speaker 00

  And so, that's purpose, and that's a big conversation, like, why we do what we do, who we do it for. And then, the A is adaptability. Our ability to adapt when the world changes, when technology changes. Are you going to adapt or are you going to fall behind? You know, or adaptability is on learning bad things that just don't work anymore. And then, finally, the N in human, besides adaptability, the N is nexus. And I use nexus as an easy way to remember connections. Because it's not just your neurological networks, it's your social networks. And to become a nexus of, because even on our podcast, we had the director of the longest, the longest study at Harvard, 80, over 80 years on longevity and happiness. And he said, yeah, it's for brain.

• 1:04:35Speaker 01

  Who was that?

• 1:04:36Speaker 00

  So, it changed, but like, I'll send, and we'll post a link. But I would say that it wasn't diet that was the biggest thing, or exercise, it was your connections. Not just romantic, it was the depth of your connections. Because as a reminder, it's not just your neurological networks, it's your social networks, which added years to people's life. And, you know, and so, by bringing this up, is, but that's a human quality, right? Adaptability, you know, understanding, you know, meaning, empathy, hard emotional intelligence. And I feel like, in the world of AI, where it's accelerating, the only people are going to survive, so we're going to be able to keep up with computation and processing, right? Everybody has that. It's the, it's, we're going to have to lean in and get really deep into what makes us

• 1:05:21Speaker 00

  more human. The curiosity, the empathy, the leadership, you know, the adaptability. And we do, in the book, we happen to touch on every single one of those things and more.

• 1:05:32Speaker 01

  I can't wait to read that book. Okay, I've got more questions to go. What's one belief you had 10 years ago that you've completely changed your mind on?

• 1:05:40Speaker 00

  What is one belief that I had years ago that I changed my mind on? Wow. Okay, so, 10 years ago, it'd be different. I'm trying to think back in terms of where I was 10 years ago, but even in the past, in general?

• 1:05:55Speaker 01

  Just in general, yeah.

• 1:05:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, before, I thought things were fixed. And this is a common belief that people have, that either genius is born, you're born with that ability, right? And my new belief is genius is built, you know? Or another way of saying it is that intelligence or memory is fixed like your shoe size. And it's absolutely not. It could grow through proper training, discipline, habits, mentorship. That's, and then, what does that mean, based on neuroplasticity? Is you could have new thoughts, you could have new feelings, you could have new habits, new behaviors.

• 1:06:24Speaker 01

  I want to talk to you about exercise, because I'm a big believer in that, and how it really helps with my brain and focus. Like, to me, that's like the best thing you can do for focus. And cognitive. But, do you know of any data or stats of what exercise does to the brain in terms of making it more efficient and more optimal?

• 1:06:41Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, for me, it is part of my morning routine, I have to, I just have to move. And I also remind people, it's just not just your exercise routine is moving throughout the day. And so, I think that's very important. So, exercise, so many benefits for the brain, right? We know about brain-derived neurotropic factors, BDNF. What is that? It's like fertilizer for that neuroplasticity. So, that's critical. When you exercise, you get dopamine, serotonin, you get endorphins that are earned, which is so very important. So, that's a physiological, neurological benefits. Also, exercise is hard, like, I know in terms of, until it becomes easy. But I like pushing ourselves and doing difficult things, because I feel like if people are

• 1:07:23Speaker 00

  struggling with brain fog, or they're stressed, it's a wonderful stress reliever. Have you ever had a workout and just, like, regretted you did it?

• 1:07:30Speaker 01

  Never.

• 1:07:31Speaker 00

  Literally.

• 1:07:31Speaker 01

  I want to know if there's any, like, do you have any, like, stats, like, it makes your brain 97% more functional?

• 1:07:37Speaker 00

  No, that one.

• 1:07:38Speaker 01

  You don't have that?

• 1:07:39Speaker 00

  I wouldn't have that.

• 1:07:40Speaker 01

  I want you to walk me through, fast, your daily habits, like, from what, the second you wake up and the second you go to bed. I want to know what you do every day, because that's really important, because we want to do what you're doing.

• 1:07:51Speaker 00

  No, well, okay.

• 1:07:54Speaker 01

  What time do you wake up in the morning?

• 1:07:55Speaker 00

  I'll share with you, I'm very transparent about it, because all I do is document. I can roll out of bed 2:00 in the morning, I'll have this conversation with you, because I practice what I post, and I think that's very important, right? Otherwise, I won't be able to do what I need to do, and then...

• 1:08:07Speaker 01

  2:00 in the morning, you say?

• 1:08:08Speaker 00

  No, no, no, no, no. But I'm saying, even if I tell you the hour I wake up, I'm not saying that's ideal for everybody, because I do believe people are bio-individual. What I would rather, what I would want people to do is not just know the process of what I'm doing, but more important, the principle, so they could customize it for themselves. I don't think necessarily there's a through line between people making their bed and, you know, not making their bed, or waking up at a certain time and not. But the principle behind that is, I think, is important. I don't require a whole lot of sleep, maybe I've trained myself that way, because I pulled all-nighters through school, trying to keep up and not doing well. I also have a kind of career where I could be on three continents in a week.

• 1:08:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:43Speaker 00

  So, I have to do the things, you know, you and I find ourselves at biohacking conferences, longevity, performance, wellness events, together, and, you know, I practice these things. And so, I, sleep is incredibly important, all right? So, for your brain, cleans out beta-amyloid plaque, it can lead to brain aging challenges, consolidate short-term memory, and there's so many benefits of sleep, right? That's a given. But I would say that prioritize sleep, probably the one of the most important things people could do for their brain. For me, you know, I'm definitely out of bed at 5:00 AM, but it's just me, like, I'm just a morning person. More important than that, and I'll go micro, so, one of the challenges people have with the cognitive dips throughout the day, or the mental fatigue, part of motivation is not just having purpose and small things they could do to break things down, to get

• 1:09:26Speaker 00

  some momentum and some dopamine, is having the energy, the wherewithal to do that, right? If you don't, if you have a newborn child and you haven't slept in three nights, you're not going to, you're not being motivated to work out, right? And even if you do, it's hard to get a lot of benefit when you can't exert a lot of effort into it. For me, part of the expenditure is the task switching, the multitasking. Meaning, you're on Slack, and then you go to this, and you go to email, and then you consume, like, you know, things you need to do, and you could do a conference call. You're task switching, and what it does is, this is big for focus. When you task switch, first of all, you waste time. People think that they're multitasking, gaining time. It could take five to 15 minutes to regain your focus, right? Number two, you're actually losing time. Number two, you make more mistakes. I get to work with some of the most amazing doctors, surgeons.

• 1:10:09Speaker 00

  Surgeons who do more multitasking will make more surgical errors during operations. They'll make more, it's like texting and driving, you can't do two cognitive activities well over time, right? You're going to make more mistakes. So, you're making more mistakes in your life, in your business, whatever. But the third expenditure that people don't think about is energy. Like, if I'm working on a specific task, and I switch to something else, this cognitive web is lit up, and now I have to kind of close this down, turn this on. It uses a lot of glucose, right? And so, if you get dips, maybe you have too many tabs open. So, what's the cure to that, or not the cure, but the treatment, is you batch certain things that are cognitively similar together, right? And so, this is how I do it, and it's not duplicatable, but I'm saying that's the principle, how it expresses itself in my life.

• 1:10:54Speaker 00

  In the morning, I create, in the afternoon, I consume, in the evening, I clear. Very, very simple. And I don't get this perfect, because I have speaking, and I have to do this conference call, but to the degree in the morning, I'm most creative in the morning. So, what do I do? I'm writing, I like, I'm sketching out interviews, I'm being creative, I'm thinking about my journal, I'm doing my thing, creative. In the afternoon, I love to consume, that's where I do my research, I read the books, I do, I watch videos of future podcasts, whatever it happens to be, I consume. And then, the evening, where create is pulling out, consume, consume movement is pulling in. Clearing is just putting it in the trash. And so how do you clear?

• 1:11:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:34Speaker 00

  So I'm gonna get that parasympathetic at night. So I can sleep very well. My nervous system can regulate. I talked, I could talk to my wife and just tell, and talk about the day. Right? I'm just clearing. Some people use yoga, yoga nidra. Some people journal. Some people will take what they want to do tomorrow and write it down to get out of their head. Right? So there's all these different ways you could do clear. And so that, that's the overall concept of my 24 hours. Now, like in terms of morning routines, for example, my morning routine used to be like, like just over two hours. And I just cannot do that, especially with the one year old and the three year old and all the other things.

• 1:12:07Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:12:07Speaker 00

  Right? And in the thing, so what I do 12 minutes. And outside of my limitless daily, which I just, I read, you know, going through every single year now, cause I'm going through it. I, I wrote limitless. And actually this, this one also part of it in, in Greece. Cause there's a, there's a goddess of memory and her children of the nine muses of science, literature and art. And there's this whole thing. And there's this 2,500 year old memory technique that orators used before there was printing present. I was, I was very inspired, but um, but while, while I was there, it's interesting, like ancient Babylonian times and Greek times, they, they used to believe everything was made of four elements, fire, water, earth and, and air. Right? And so I was like, wow, this, this matches a lot of my biohacking and everything else. So what I want to do is first thing in the morning after I do my, my, you know, uh, attentional

• 1:12:52Speaker 00

  priming with the book is I go outside barefoot, earth, right? The exchange of electrons and all the stresses that come with that and the healing. And then I get some direct sunlight. Cause your eyes are only part of your brain that's outside, outside of your skull. Helps to reset your circadian rhythm, right? To sleep better at night. So that's fire, sun is fire for me. And then I'll hydrate with some lemon or some electrolytes or whatever it'd be. And that's my water. Cause when you sleep, you can lose up to a pound of water, uh, just through respiration, perspiration. And we know that if you're dehydrated, it's gonna, it's gonna significantly affect your cognitive health and performance. If you're, if you're just, if you just stay hydrated, it could boost your reaction time thinking speed upwards of 30%. I mean, that's, I mean, your brain's mostly water.

• 1:13:32Speaker 01

  Right. So if you're dehydrated, your brain will work 30% less efficiently.

• 1:13:38Speaker 00

  Hydration.

• 1:13:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:39Speaker 00

  We had a doctor.

• 1:13:40Speaker 01

  Those things, if you're dehydrated, it'll be 20, 30%.

• 1:13:42Speaker 00

  Which is wild. Yeah. That was, uh, Dr. Lisa Moscone, uh, was talking about that research on, on the podcast. She's a, she's a neuroscientist and a nutritionist, which is a really interesting combination. So then, so then I have the fire of this, of the sun. I have the grounding of the earth. Right? I have the water. And then the final one is, is air, which is some, some breathing. And I could do this with my, with my three year old and, you know, and my son. And we're just doing this breathing exercise. It could be Wim Hof, alpha breathing, fire breathing, box breathing, longer exhales, whatever happens to be. But it kind of, and then I'm just set in 12 minutes. It's free, very, not very time consuming. You do it with loved ones. You can do it anywhere.

• 1:14:17Speaker 01

  And it's easy.

• 1:14:17Speaker 00

  You know, I can't always travel with a, you can read with everything that I want to be able to do with a red bed and a hyperbaric chamber. But yeah, so that, that's the morning. Cause if you want to win the day, you have to win that first hour of the day. You know? And then I have it down, down, where I kind of touched on my, my clearing and going to bed and, you know, in terms of reading some fiction and journaling and just clearing my day. And then in between is, is the interesting part. But then I create, I consume and I, you know, and then I clear.

• 1:14:44Speaker 01

  Kind of one other question, and then you can go home or do whatever you need to do. Why can I, why can people or me, speaking for, I can never remember a name, but I can remember the smallest, stupidest insignificant thing that's happened in someone else's life, but I can't remember someone's name for the life of me.

• 1:14:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:15:00Speaker 01

  I could be introduced to them three times. I could see their face. Like I don't recall as well as I used to. When I was a kid, I was able to do it all the time. Not even a kid, like.

• 1:15:08Speaker 00

  So I would say there, there are a number of things, right? We teach it over a dozen different ways of remembering names. First of all, just recognizing the importance of it. You know how important it is.

• 1:15:15Speaker 01

  Yes, of course.

• 1:15:16Speaker 00

  Just even a few months ago, I was in Miami, uh, speaking at that event on memory specifically for salespeople to remember client information. Yeah. Client information, product information, just give salespeople without a, and one person pulled me outside and he was, he was, he was disheveled. I mean, he was really, he was like, I, I really wish I saw your work, you know, uh, weeks, weeks ago. He's in commercial real estate. He told me this whole story and I'll abbreviate it for you. He lost a $50 million deal because he called the client the wrong name twice. Hey, that's how personal people feel. Cause what's the message we send to somebody? When we forget their name?

• 1:15:51Speaker 01

  Horrible.

• 1:15:52Speaker 00

  Or we call them everything that they're not important. So I would presence the importance of it. And I would give you a couple of ideas on just how to remember names. First of all, the belief behind it is that, um, there's no such thing as a good or bad memory. It's that you train memory or it's an untrained memory. You could train remembering names, right? Um, a few ideas for it. You know, I always tell people to, uh, is to presence the motivation behind it. Right? Like being intentional about it. Like a lot of times even talking about this, you're gonna, you remember, like for me, I like, it's just natural. Like I was like, oh, I know it's good to see you. Ed, you do that because you could say the name, suave, S U A V. Say the name. You meet somebody, you get their name, you say it and you get to hear it twice. You use it three or four times in the conversation.

• 1:16:34Speaker 00

  Because then that repetition does help engrain a memory to encode it and store it. The A is great when you meet somebody and their name is different. So you can, um, maybe you haven't heard it before. You ask about it, right? Who are you named after? Oh, that, that's a beautiful name. Where's it from? How do you spell it? What does it mean? Right? And people, I've never, I think people are flattered when you take an interest in that cause most people don't. The V is visualize where you can just take someone's name and come up with like, uh, something that sounds like it or reminds you or a celebrity, whatever it is, and attach that to somebody. Um, and that's pretty selfish. Like I meet someone named David and I'll just do like a slingshot in my mind to their nose and David and Goliath. It just reminds me and it's kind of, it makes you smile. And it's only to overcome, like meeting Noah and it's Noah's ark or Ed is like a horse or whatever happens to be, this little picture.

• 1:17:19Speaker 00

  And then once you understand the person's name, it's in your long-term memory, then the pictures disappear. It's to overcome what I call the six second syndrome. You meet somebody, you have six seconds to do something with the name. Otherwise it's, it's gone.

• 1:17:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:30Speaker 00

  You handshake, done, it's gone. Uh, but it helps make it sticky. Right? Um, and then finally the E and suave is you end. It's nice to walk into a room of 10 strangers and leave saying goodbye to every single one by name. Because it's not just what you know and who you know, it's who knows you and who remembers you. And they're all going to remember you because unfortunately that's a standout skill. Right? And, and, and I think it's so important nowadays in a world where there's so much information. I think people are starving for wisdom and warmth. And you know, that's really what, you know, this, this work is, is really all about.

• 1:18:01Speaker 01

  I love that. Because I always, but the stupidest thing I remember all the time.

• 1:18:05Speaker 00

  Yeah. And then that's good. I mean, your memory works, right? It's just applying what made that memorable to the things that aren't as memorable.

• 1:18:12Speaker 01

  I love that. Okay, Jim, I know that I took you for, I, I, I know you're gonna run out of here, but okay, the book is called Limitless Daily. Uh, this is another, another iteration of an amazing book called Limitless. And I'm sure everyone's gonna want to pick it up.

• 1:18:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, this is not, uh, just like, uh, you know, eat blueberries in a day or just how to ref, this is actually.

• 1:18:34Speaker 01

  It's true.

• 1:18:35Speaker 00

  It's, it's how to win the day by leveraging that first five minutes. So if everybody, it's quick, right? Everyone has five minutes. They can read one passage and they will be transformed. Because here's the thing, little by little, little becomes a lot. You do this over 365 days, you become unrecognizable.

• 1:18:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:50Speaker 00

  And I really, and so people get a limitless daily. When they do, as a, as a thank you, they could join, we're gonna do a 366 day challenge. I don't think anyone's would have done like all year, but we, I'm gonna send you a prompt, a question for every single, cause it's by date. So everyone in the world's going through the same date and the same content. So we'll be doing these lives. I'll be, you know, sending out a prompt that for people to think about for your own mind, not AI. And, uh, and it'll be a fun process. I, I truly believe, and I really appreciate this, Jen. I love your energy. Cause you get me thinking of every way. And it's like, and that's why your community is so engaged. Cause you're so devoted for them and you're very protective and you're really serving. And I, and I think there's a version of ourself, you know, whether it's through hustle or habits

• 1:19:33Speaker 00

  or anything, that there's a version of ourself that's patiently waiting, like a limitless version. I think the goal is we show up every single day until, until we're introduced.

• 1:19:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:42Speaker 00

  To that person.

• 1:19:43Speaker 01

  Well, you're such a great guest. I love that you are here. Thank you, Jim.

• 1:19:46Speaker 00

  Thank you for having me.

• 1:19:46Speaker 01

  This is amazing. This is such a great conversation. Guys, pick up his book, follow him, join his community, join one of his, get one of his courses. You have a million of them, right? Like not a million, but a lot of them. And, uh, it is one of them, I, I think one of the more useful courses out there. I, I always say that most of these courses are not so useful, but this one is.

• 1:20:07Speaker 00

  Memory, we want to improve your memory in 30 days, 15 minutes a day. We do everything, languages, client information, product information. For those of you who have fear of public speaking, I think that a lot of it's dissipated when you remember you're confident in your competence to remember what you need to talk about and speed reading, triple reading speed, better comprehension. It's, it's all, these are the kind of things I wish we would learn back in school. Like, like fitness, like entrepreneurship, like on, like, uh, state regulation, like social intelligence, all that good stuff.

• 1:20:34Speaker 01

  It's all this, that, all those things that are, is actually, those are the devil in the details. Those things are actually what makes people, people.

• 1:20:41Speaker 00

  And I focus on the lea domino of learning how to learn, which is what this book's about. Cause it's all about adaptation. Cause if you learn how to learn and adapt and focus and read, then everything, you apply it towards money, muscles, marketing, management, martial arts, music, everything gets easier. When you could focus and read and understand and apply.

• 1:20:57Speaker 01

  100%.

• 1:20:58Speaker 00

  So it's, it's the biggest levers for, you know, for educators, for entrepreneurs, for seniors, for students, for anyone with a mind. So intelligence for me, I'll finish with this. The, the definition is I didn't get to, like I talked about pattern recognition and changing your opinion based on new data and being cognitively flexible is intelligence. When I talk about human intelligence, it's about how do we, and this is a question I'm obsessed with. How do we use our brain and direct our mind to create the life we want? Because honestly, someone can be very book smart, but if they are struggling in all these areas and they don't have the results, how smart, how intelligent am I really? Right?

• 1:21:32Speaker 01

  I totally agree. I just did a whole thing on this. Is, is a person that just because, what's intelligence, right? If you're not living the life you want, then you're not really that smart. Right? Because you're only smart if you're actually able to live the life you want. Right?

• 1:21:45Speaker 00

  Yeah. And I would challenge everybody so that, that only precedes that, like some kind of action is taken. So knowledge by itself is not power. It only comes power when we apply. We all know that. And since this is an application you do every single day with limitless daily, but here's the next thing. Wherever you're consuming this right now, take a screenshot, tag Jen, tag myself, tag their podcast. So we see it, right? I'll repost a few, we'll gift out a bunch of books, uh, just as thank you for having me and share, here's your action step. Because there's something called, um, the protege effect. They also call the explanation effect. When you share something and you teach it to somebody else, you get to learn it better. Right? And so I would think about this episode or maybe even listen and re-watch it and just share on your post, if it's an Insta story or whatever, like two or three things that

• 1:22:28Speaker 00

  you learned so that your fans, your followers, your family, your friends get the benefit or at least get, see something there. And then, uh, because you tag us, I'll, I'll share some, you know, repost some of those and gift out a couple of.

• 1:22:40Speaker 01

  I love that.

• 1:22:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:22:41Speaker 01

  That's amazing. Thank you so, thank you so much, Jim. Sorry, I hope you can hear me. Okay, I'll let you out of here. I'm sorry that you, we, we took up so much of your time, but, um, you know, that's what happens around here sometimes.

• 1:22:52Speaker 00

  I love it, Jen.

• 1:22:52Speaker 01

  Thank you. Bye.