#1 Memory Expert: How to Think Clearly When You’re Put on the Spot

Have you ever known exactly what you wanted to say, only for your mind to go completely blank when the pressure is on? In this episode, I sit down with brain coach and memory expert Jim Kwik to talk about why that happens and how to train your brain to perform when you need it most. We get into practical ways to improve memory, focus, and thinking speed, how your inner dialogue affects the way you communicate, and why relying too heavily on AI could actually weaken some of the mental skills you need most. Jim also shares simple techniques for remembering names, thinking faster on your feet, and keeping your brain sharp for the long haul. Buy Jim’s new book, Limitless Daily: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/761666/limitless-daily-by-jim-kwik/ Join me on Supercast for ad-free episodes, bonus content, and AMAs: https://jefferson.supercast.com/ Leave me a voicemail to be featured on the show! https://www.jeffersonfisher.com/ask-jefferson Order The Next Conversation Workbook: https://www.jeffersonfisher.com/workbook Thank you to our sponsors: Our Place. Visit https://fromourplace.com/JEFFERSON and use code JEFFERSON for 10% off sitewide. David. Subscribe and save 10% on every order’ at https://davidprotein.com/jefferson Cozy Earth. Upgrade Your Every Day. Get 20% off at cozyearth.com/jefferson or use code JEFFERSON at check out. BetterHelp. Click https://betterhelp.com/jeffersonfisher for a discount on your first month of therapy. Order my book, The Next Conversation, or listen to the full audiobook today. Like what you hear? Don’t forget to subscribe and leave a 5-star review! Suggest a topic or ask a question for me to answer on the show! Want a FREE communication tip each week? Click here to join my newsletter. Join My School of Communication Watch my podcast on YouTube Follow me on Instagram Follow me on TikTok Follow me on LinkedIn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

• 0:01Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Good times mean competitions between you and your friends. Like seeing who can throw some pigskin the farthest or rush the field the fastest. Winner gets an ultra. Because it's not just a superior like beer. It's also giving fans superior access to their favorite sporting events. Superior is worth playing for. Visit michelobultra.com/superioraccess to enter. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026 Anheuser Busch InBev Michelob Ultra Beer, St. Louis, Missouri.

• 0:30Speaker 01

  I don't want humans to become more artificial because the danger is not cognitive offloading. It's the trend towards cognitive surrender. If it's thinking for us, then what happens to society that can't critically think?

• 0:41Speaker 02

  Is the reliance on AI making our brain weaker or stronger?

• 0:45Speaker 01

  Your brain grows through stressors, but what happens when AI ruins all the friction? There was a recent MIT study and the students had to write communication essays. Group A used chat GPT, group B used Google and group C neither. Which one had the most cognitive engagement? It was the one that did the work themselves. What's more interesting for me was-

• 1:04Speaker 02

  Is there a reason that our inner self-talk is usually harsher?

• 1:09Speaker 01

  I get emotional thinking about this. I had some severe learning challenges after my traumatic brain injury at five. I was called broken by a teacher in front of the whole class when I was nine. I was called the boy with a broken brain. That label became my limit. With the brain injury, it was one limitation. Far greater limitation was the conversation I was having inside my own head. Your brain is this incredible supercomputer and your self-talk is a program I will run. People come to me and say, I have a horrible memory. I'm just too old. And I would say the same thing. I would say stop. There's no such thing as a good or bad memory. There's a trained memory and untrained memory.

• 1:38Speaker 02

  How do we stop our minds from going blank? What causes our brain to underperform? What is the number one thing that somebody can do that's going to start improving their brain?

• 1:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. I've never talked about this, but this is what I do personally.

• 1:54Speaker 02

  How do we stop our brains from forgetting what we want to say in the moment?

• 1:59Speaker 01

  Well, I feel like sometimes we don't rise to a level of our aspirations or expectations. We fall to a level of our training, you know, and it's especially more difficult when you're under pressure.

• 2:09Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:09Speaker 01

  It's like if you have a fire extinguisher in your home and there's an emergency, you know, fire, it's one thing to know where it is. It's another in the moment to think about what to do.

• 2:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:20Speaker 01

  When you're under, literally, and it's some kind of a bad storm and there's family and everything's going on.

• 2:25Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:25Speaker 01

  And sometimes maybe people feel like that in the conversation. Maybe they, they've read your book or listened to podcasts and they know what to do, but they're able to kind of retrieve it when they need it the most. Or maybe it's on their, it's at the tip of their tongue.

• 2:40Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:40Speaker 01

  And they can't get it out.

• 2:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:42Speaker 01

  So I would say that a lot of it is this context learning where things get mapped over and it's, it's all practice, right? It's all rehearsal. So for example, um, let's say, uh, the power of the pause. We had you on our podcast. So we were talking about the power of a pause. So you're not reacting, um, you're, you're, you're thoughtfully responding to somebody, right? Let maybe that people know that because they read it and they heard it and they saw the video. But in the moment, when they're in a spirited debate, that doesn't even register, you know, in the moment. So I would say the practice is what, what happens because all athletes do mental rehearsal, right?

• 3:24Speaker 01

  They, pilots have a checklist that they go through, you know, musicians still, you know, practice their scales because they want it to come. So not because, I mean, they're successful, but they still practice that because they want it to come without thinking about it. So it's automatic, like it's almost an unconscious habit. So I would say, for example, with the power of the pause, I would practice pausing. Like, so it's all about triggers, right? You know, something reminds you of something else. So even something silly, a mental exercise, every time you reach for a door handle, just pause, right? Every single time your phone rings, train yourself to pause. So how you do that, when you do those things repeatedly, you get better at it. Just like with the meditation, I don't meditate to become enlightened.

• 4:08Speaker 01

  I meditate because when I'm quiet and my thoughts go somewhere else I don't want it to go, I could pull it back to a mantra. I could pull it back to my breath and I build a mechanism and I've trained myself. So when I'm stressed or somewhere else, my mind gets distracted when I'm on Zoom or I'm with my kids.

• 4:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:25Speaker 01

  I have a mechanism and then train, rehearse, you know, to be able to do that activity and get that result. So for example, you train it, that's one thing. Or even something silly, like when I train people, I'm one of those guys that get in front of an whole audience and memorize a hundred people's names and, and it wasn't always that way because I had a traumatic brain injury and I had very severe learning difficulties, very poor memory. But I would say that you could use your imagination. Like imagine you're with somebody that's starting to get heated up. This is kind of silly, but this will work, I promise you. When people are getting heated up and you want a reminder to pause, just imagine when that person's getting heated, that all of a sudden there's a big, that heat is turning all red and it's creating a red pause button on their forehead.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  And here's the thing, when you see that, it'll make you laugh, it'll break your state, right? Which is very useful between stimulus and, and response. There's that space, you know, as Viktor Frankl talks about. But I would say when that button appears, you can't respond until you hit that button mentally. And then you hit that button in your imagination and then it reminds you to take a pause and then you could, you could speak. So it's all about, and that's, that's important in neuroscience because it's how habits are formed. You know, there's always a trigger that creates some kind of behavior. It's nice when you could choose those triggers and whether it's a trigger of training, like touching the door to remind yourself to pause, the phone rings, pause, or visualizing a

• 5:51Speaker 01

  pause button on your person, on that person's forehead and to kind of interrupt the pattern, the state, but also to remind you, you can't speak until you hit the button and take your own pause.

• 6:02Speaker 02

  What I hear you saying is if you plan to only say it or do it for the conversation, most likely you're going to have a far less chance of actually remembering to do it unless you apply these skills outside of the conversation.

• 6:21Speaker 01

  I do believe it maps over. How you, how you do a lot of, how you do something is how you do a lot of things.

• 6:27Speaker 02

  Right.

• 6:28Speaker 01

  You know, even, even the meditation example I use, it helps me to focus, but it maps over into other areas when I'm reading. I don't, you never read, read a page in a book and forgot what you just read because your focus is not there.

• 6:39Speaker 02

  Right.

• 6:40Speaker 01

  But I think focus is a muscle. You know, I also feel like memory is a muscle too. That there's no such thing as a good or bad memory. It's been my experience after 35 years that there's a trained memory and there's an untrained memory.

• 6:52Speaker 02

  A trained and an untrained memory.

• 6:54Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Because it's not taught in school, right? School teaches you what to learn, what to remember, what to think, but there are not a lot of classes on how to learn or how to remember. I didn't take that course or how to, or how to think.

• 7:06Speaker 02

  How to study.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  All right.

• 7:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. How to listen to the teacher.

• 7:09Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 7:09Speaker 02

  Yeah. How to actually do school.

• 7:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like going to a student or even, you know, an adult and saying focus or remember this is like going to someone saying play the didgeridoo or the, or the ukulele who's never taken any kind of class on how to do that. And, uh, you know, and that, that's the challenge is that is more of a, that 20th century education where it taught the what, math, history, science, Spanish, but not the how.

• 7:33Speaker 02

  Right.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  And I think it's a very important skill to have today because the world is, the what's always going to change. It's always going to be updated, you know, outdated also as well. So our ability to learn, to unlearn, to be able to relearn, I think is one of the most valuable skills today, especially in an age of AI.

• 7:49Speaker 02

  For the person listening and they say, okay, I resonate with Jim on, yeah, when I go into that conversation, I have everything prepared in my mind and then I'm in that moment and I know I read it in a book somewhere, I saw it on something and all of a sudden it's just gone. I first want to know, why does that happen?

• 8:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:09Speaker 02

  Why, why do we lose our train of thought?

• 8:11Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 8:12Speaker 02

  And is there a reason why some people lose their train of thought easier than others?

• 8:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. Well, the goal is to be more mentally fit, just like people are physically fit, they exercise and they eat right and they sleep, right? And they, they could get for better performance at work or at play. We don't exercise our, our minds the same way, or at least as, as structured, because we don't see it. Like in photos on social media, I always point it to my brain or I always, always have a brain on my shirt.

• 8:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  To remind people, uh, because what you see, you take care of. It's in your awareness. You see your clothes, your car, your hair. You tend to take better care of it, but we don't see the thing that takes care of us, right?

• 8:50Speaker 02

  Right.

• 8:51Speaker 01

  So I think say, number one, a good habit is to love your brain. Just fall in love with your brain, start loving your brain. But the other thing is I feel like it's lost because all learning and performance is state dependent, meaning that especially under stress, like one of the challenges, a lot of people come to us for, for coaching. I help a lot of TED speakers memorize their speech because a lot of it has to be verbatim. Actors memorize, you know, 30 pages of scripts on can set. A lot of people can remember things, but under, the challenges is how, why people forget. Part of the reason is, uh, is, is, is just, uh, I would say pressure, like it would be stress.

• 9:32Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 9:32Speaker 01

  Right? Because chronic stress will put you in that middle brain, like your amygdala is firing off. And if you're in fight or flight, you're not in flow, right? You're not accessing your executive functioning. Like when you're in fight or flight, it's like you're held hostage and you're just in survival mode and it holds, and it keeps you away and holds you hostage from executive functioning, good decision-making, good problem solving, uh, being present, be able to focus, be able to even be compassionate also as well.

• 10:00Speaker 02

  So it's the stress that's keeping-

• 10:02Speaker 01

  I would say that would be one thing, absolutely. I think another one could also be their beliefs around their memory. Like some people believe and they've rehearsed forgetting, like the, the fear of public speaking, which we know is one of the preeminent fears people have, right? Being seen in front of an audience. But I think underlining that is their- They wouldn't have that same intensity of fear if they were confident they would remember what they need to do and say. And I feel like a lot of people mentally rehearse failure unconsciously. So it's like they visualize it where they are failing and they are forgetting. And you know, it's interesting, you know, when the when the brain is mapped, you know, under scans that the mind doesn't know the difference between something that's vividly imagined, something that's real, right?

• 10:46Speaker 01

  People do, there's a study at University of Chicago where they took three groups of people, A, B, and C, and had them do free throws, basketball. And they, you know, they they measured how well they did. And then they said, okay, great. For 30 days, Group A, we want you to practice for an hour a day. Go out on the court, you know, shoot your shots. Group B, we want you to just practice mentally. So don't go out on the court, don't touch a ball, but just rehearse that you're successful for an hour a day making these shots. And then Group C, they took and they said, don't practice at all. Right? They followed up 30 days later. Group A improved 26%, right? Which is obvious, being a practice makes progress.

• 11:29Speaker 01

  Group C, who didn't practice, made no progress, same exact scores, right? Group B, who just practiced in their mind, never touched the ball physically, improved 24%.

• 11:38Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  Just a 2% difference. And and this has been repeated. And so the idea here is mental rehearsal plays a bigger role than most people think. Obviously, they use it in athletics, but sometimes we use it against us because sometimes we're rehearsing our fears of forgetting. And so I think, number one, people are forgetting when they need it because they're stressed. Number two, sometimes they've rehearsed failure unconsciously or consciously, like especially at things that have bigger stakes, like something at work, or some guy toast at a wedding, or whatever it happens to be. A third one is interference. Sometimes we're just distracted, you know, like even when people forget people's names, which I think is one of the most important business etiquette, you know, networking skills there is, right?

• 12:24Speaker 01

  How are you going to show someone you're going to care about their business, their future, their finances, what their family, if you don't care enough to just remember them? But a lot of times, they aren't even present to remember a name. What are they doing? They're thinking about how they're going to respond, or looking around the room, seeing who else is important, all that. And the art of memory is the art of attention. The art of memory is the art of attention. And a lot of people are just starting to observe. And so they're not even forgetting it. They're just never even hearing the thing.

• 12:50Speaker 02

  To begin with.

• 12:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:52Speaker 02

  So I'm what I'm distilling, and what we like to do a lot on this show, is to be able to kind of collaborate, collaborator, I need my brain.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 13:03Speaker 02

  Opened to collaborate.

• 13:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:06Speaker 02

  On how the advice we're going to give on, especially this big question I have is, how do we stop our brain from forgetting what we want to say in the moment? What I hear you saying is, one, it's a stress issue, the people feeling the stress, and the key being not to avoid the stress, because the stress is going to happen.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 13:28Speaker 02

  Because a lot of people say, well, how do I just not be stressed in the moment? And that's that's the wrong, that's the wrong question to ask.

• 13:34Speaker 01

  I think people could mitigate it to an extent, certainly.

• 13:38Speaker 02

  At least the pressure.

• 13:39Speaker 01

  But certainly, there are external things that we can't control.

• 13:42Speaker 02

  Exactly. The feeling of pressure, that feeling of, you know, all of a sudden, you get butterflies or that lump in your throat, like that's, that's going to happen because there's bad stress and good stress. And so what I hear you saying is to actually also practice, let's say, rehearse that stress in any way you can replicate it to where, like, I think of like Olympic skiers, you know, if you if you've seen them before they go down, they're like practicing.

• 14:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:13Speaker 02

  All their stuff because they have it already, they're already going down the slope.

• 14:17Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 14:18Speaker 02

  And so if we kind of do that in our mind before we're about to have a hard conversation, and not seeing it as we're failing in all the ways we're going to fail.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:30Speaker 02

  But keeping our mind on how we're going to get down the slope, no matter the the pressure, is that resonating?

• 14:37Speaker 01

  And I like it because like when I'm when I'm even setting my own goals or working with clients to achieve their goals, I'm spending less time visualizing like the goal itself, like, like, like the book written.

• 14:49Speaker 02

  Right.

• 14:49Speaker 01

  Right? What I'm visualizing are the habits and the activities that will make that book inevitable. So it's kind of like, a lot of people would say they have, they struggle with creativity, or they can't get themselves to just start something, right? Like for me, you could visualize if they wanted to be an author, for example, they can imagine themselves. And what I would rehearse, it was not just visualizing the bestselling book, I would be visualizing opening up my laptop at a certain time in the morning.

• 15:21Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 15:21Speaker 01

  You know, because what it does, most people have heard of neuroplasticity, right? Neuroplasticity is our brain's ability to make new connections through stimulus, through novelty and proper nutrition. It's just like a muscle. You give it novelty to grow it, and you give it exercise, and then you give it nutrition to be able to to nourish it. Same thing with your mental muscles, right? And so Hebb's law is basically neurons that fire together, are wired together. So imagine going through a forest and you and you and you kind of pave a trail after doing it repeatedly every single day, it becomes almost like a, like a highway, right?

• 15:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:58Speaker 01

  And it's kind of like how our brain works, right? Through through repetition.

• 16:01Speaker 02

  Creating a new neural path.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, which could be a new thought, a new belief, it can be a new identity, it can be a new habit or behavior.

• 16:08Speaker 02

  Like brushing your teeth with the other hand.

• 16:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love, I love that. Yeah, it's interesting. I started talking about this like over 30 years ago, as for, we do a speed reading program, but just to engage a different part of your brain. But I also do it because of, and these viral videos about eating with the opposite hand and stuff like that. But what it does is, you know what it does besides potentially stimulating a different part of your brain? It forces you to be present because you're probably not great at brushing your teeth with the opposite hand.

• 16:35Speaker 02

  Functionally present, too.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, as opposed to your mind wandering. And again, that's the other thing, like when you could train yourself to be focused when you need it most, you're going to retain more because you're going to be paying attention. As opposed to being driven to distraction.

• 16:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:49Speaker 01

  Like we wake up in the morning, and the first thing we do is flex our distraction muscles, right? We grab, we grab our device.

• 16:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:55Speaker 01

  We get that free dopamine that we didn't have to earn, which, you know, and then it just trains us to be more, more distracted. I really like, share, comment, cat video.

• 17:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:05Speaker 01

  Add notification, social media alert, all that. But I but I would say, I would say with this neuroplasticity that we could rewire our brains, and this is exciting, because a lot of this is changeable because we're adaptable, everything is figureoutable, because human being, our superpower is our ability to adapt. And and also, the other part of it is our identity. Because some people have this self-talk, like, let's say they want to be present, but they're saying to themselves, oh, I'm going to forget this, right? Or I'm, like at events, I speak at, people come to me always in the hallway and say, I'm so glad you're here, I have a horrible memory, I'm just too old, not that smart. And I always say the same thing, I always say, stop. If you fight for limitations, you have to keep them, right?

• 17:50Speaker 01

  They're yours. Your brain is this incredible supercomputer, and your self-talk is a program that will run. So if you tell yourself, I'm not good at remembering people's names, you won't remember the name of the next person you meet, because you program your computer not to, right?

• 18:03Speaker 02

  You ran, you run, you're running that program in your brain.

• 18:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think this is like the, one of the most important conversations you have is the conversation you have with yourself before, because before talking to your spouse or your kids or your coworkers or your clients, like we've been talking to ourselves all all day, you know, and the challenge is, it's hard to create a positive life with a, with a negative mind. You know, that Henry Ford quote, if you, if you believe you can or can't, either way, you're, you're right.

• 18:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:29Speaker 01

  I honestly believe if people truly understood how powerful their mind is, they wouldn't say something or think something they didn't want to be true. That's not to say like you have a negative thought ruins your life, any more than eating one donut will ruin your life. But we have to admit that if someone ate that donut 50 times a day, every single day, there would be a consequence. And I think sometimes these thoughts could be the same way.

• 18:52Speaker 02

  Is there a reason that our Inner self-talk is usually harsher than what we'd ever say to people that we actually love and care about.

• 19:04Speaker 01

  Your brain evolved not for our happiness, but for our survival, right? So it forced us to have a negative bias, because those things can be danger, right? So we're always hyper vigilant for the things that could cause us pain, you know? Because the brain was rewarded to be able to stay alive and stay safe. It needed to see what could go wrong, because a mistake could be very costly. So I think most people have a bias towards negativity, and especially when we say it to ourselves. And of course, we would never say those things to someone we love. So the filter that I would suggest, if you say to yourself, because I think part of self-care,

• 19:48Speaker 01

  Jefferson, is not just, I don't know, exercising or going to the spa. I think part of self-care is looking in the mirror and loving that reflection that's looking back, who's been through so much, but is still standing, right? There's a lot of research on, like, when we're hard on ourselves, here's a reason to do this less. When we're hard on ourselves, let's say, I'm such an idiot, I'm not worth anything. I said I would work out, but I didn't work out. But people think that by doing that, they would more likely follow through the next day, right? But studies done on self-compassion say, actually, when you're kind to yourself, you're more likely to give yourself some grace, you're more likely to follow through.

• 20:32Speaker 01

  And so the filter is like, when you say, oh, I'm too old, I'm an idiot, you know, just

• 20:38Speaker 01

  if you wouldn't say it to like, someone you love deeply, then I think that's the filter.

• 20:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, mine's like, if I wouldn't say it to my kids, why would I ever?

• 20:47Speaker 01

  And so what I would, my suggestion would be, you know, like, less critic, more coaching. So, you know, we could criticize ourselves all the time, right? But what I would say is, I would go into self-coaching mode, and self-coaching is honest, but there's a compassion and kindness to it. And there's something that's moving forward, you know, right? Like, if a good coach will be honest with you, they'll tell you what's wrong, but they'll say it in a way that they care, you know? And then this forward-moving, meaning there's some advancement, some progress there. And so I would use that, I would use those two filters. If you find yourself being negative to yourself, have the filter, just like you said, would you talk to your kids this way?

• 21:31Speaker 01

  And the second thing I would say is, less critic, more coaching. And a good coach would be honest, they'd be kind, they'd be compassionate, and forward-moving.

• 21:41Speaker 02

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• 22:25Speaker 02

  I use Our Place. Quality products, they don't have these forever chemicals, they're ceramic inside, they're awesome. So if you care, like me, about what you cook with, you need to go to ourplace.com/jefferson, and right now, you can get 10% off site-wide, which is great, from ourplace.com/jefferson. And with a 100-day risk-free trial, can't beat that. Now, let's keep going. Is the reliance on AI, like, when we go, when somebody says, okay, I'm going to talk to ChatGPT or Claude or whatever, and they find that that's what they're going towards every time, they have a random thought in their head, they're like, I want to see what AI has to say about that. Is it making our brain weaker or stronger?

• 23:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it's called cognitive offloading, and it's been throughout time, technology has changed the way our brain thinks and works. I mean, you think about, from, I don't know, 300,000 B.C. to 3,000 B.C., that there was no written word, so people would have to be able to, they would have to be able to communicate everything through stories and everything. I mean, even, even early times, like, before there was like, writing, they would pass, like, whether it's the Iliad or the Odyssey, we'd pass through, just through human memory, right? And then when writing came, it changed the way people think, right? They would be putting things out for other people to be able to see, kind of like a second brain.

• 23:52Speaker 01

  And then when the printing press came, and it could be actually shared more, it changed things also as well. And, but even, even to modern times, I mean, calculators, you know, remember that? Like, you get to use a calculator, you can't use the mental math. And I think there's a challenge, because I think math is important in that it builds a lot, you know, logic, and for people to have an understanding of it. You know, I was, this is sad, I was at a client thing, and the bill came, it was 10 of us, and I swear, when the bill came, four people, Jefferson, took out their phones to divide by, the bill by 10, you know? And so that's a challenge.

• 24:28Speaker 02

  I know there's some who get the calculator out, like, what's the tip and how we're going to split everything in? Yeah, but cognitive offloading.

• 24:34Speaker 01

  So cognitive offloading is basically, your brain grows through, through stressors, just like your muscles, you have to give it some kind of stimulus. But what happens when AI removes all the friction, right? And I talk about in Limitless, actually, in 2020, when the book came out, I talked about the four villains of the mental apocalypse, the horsemen. Number one, digital distraction, that's kind of obvious, that's why we train people how to focus. Digital deluge, which I termed, is the information overwhelm. There's actually a term, information fatigue syndrome, higher blood pressure, compression of leisure time, more sleeplessness, because we're drowning in information, that's why we teach, you know, the speed reading, the accelerated learning. Digital dementia is a term in healthcare where the high reliance on technology to remember

• 25:16Speaker 01

  things for us, to your to-dos, your grocery list, your schedule, your phone, how many phone numbers did you know growing up?

• 25:22Speaker 02

  Right, like, quite a bit.

• 25:24Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, like, most people, like, all of them. But how many phone numbers do you know currently?

• 25:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, four.

• 25:29Speaker 01

  Right, and so everyone could count on one hand. And so, not that I want to memorize 500 phone numbers, but it should be very concerning, we've lost a billion remember one phone number, our PIN number, our passcode, or what hotel room we're staying in.

• 25:42Speaker 02

  It's like brain atrophy.

• 25:44Speaker 01

  It is, that's digital dementia, it's the high reliance, and then you'll see this in tests, because it's like, if people ever read a page in a book, forgot what the, I think, I forgot her too, most costly words in life sometimes. I mean, think about the consequences. Yeah, there's two simple words, but when you say these words to yourself, or someone else, like, you lose, like, like-

• 26:05Speaker 02

  It's very defeating.

• 26:06Speaker 01

  Like, think about the consequence of saying, I forgot what I just read, I forgot what I was, I just heard, I forgot what I was going to say.

• 26:12Speaker 02

  Like, the sentence I just read, now I got to go back up to the page again.

• 26:14Speaker 01

  Right, or I forgot what I was going to do, I forgot to go to that meeting, I forgot that person's name, you know? Every time, on the other side, memory could, is an amplifier in business, certainly, it can make you money, when you can easily remember client information, have it at your mental fingertips, you know, what they're proud of, the important day, whatever happens to be, facts, figures, speeches, names and faces, life gets easier.

• 26:34Speaker 02

  What is the cost of relying too much on AI to communicate for you?

• 26:39Speaker 01

  So the last one, so besides digital deduction, digital distraction, digital dementia, is digital deduction. And I term that, I coined that phrase in Limitless, and that's, that's where technology is thinking for us. And it's also communicating a lot, right? Like, there, I know too many people who are just going to respond to their spouse even, right, for things. And here's a challenge. So we, our brain grows through effort, but if AI removes all the friction, now, it's interesting, because people feel like AI will replace, you know, humans. Whether that happens or not, and certainly will to a certain degree, especially right now, there's like a barbell economy, right?

• 27:21Speaker 01

  You have like, leadership, man, here, you have, like, people who have skill-based things like, that are very more physical, like, AI is probably like, if there's HVAC, or massage therapists, and plumbers and so on. In the middle, though, copywriters, like, you know, visual designers, coders, all that, that's going to be a challenge. But that's, that's why communication, I think, is one of the pillars for human intelligence, meaning I would lean into becoming a better communicator, just like I would learn, lean into the work we do in terms of be able to adapt faster, cognitive flexibility. So in communication, so basically, AI will scale and amplify, but what is it going to scale and amplify? Only what human beings bring to it.

• 28:07Speaker 01

  So if somebody is unclear in their communication, or confused, it's amplify that, or in their creation. If somebody is very clear and competent, right, then it can amplify that. And I don't see that someone as artificial intelligence, I think more practical, functional, empowering approach would be, like, it's augmented intelligence. It's like a partner for you, it could be a creative partner for you, to bounce ideas off, to see, you know, where the holes are, our blind spots, you know, risk factors, is to stress test ideas that we want to put out, you know, and communicate to the world. But it's like, I work with a lot of athletes, right?

• 28:43Speaker 01

  An F1 driver, they have this multimillion-dollar piece of technology, think about that, like, AI, that's race car, but it's the driver that determines that performance. And so, you know, I'm a big advocate for human intelligence, and I ask, I'm actually very hopeful, like, it's going to go one of two ways, and I'm hoping, instead of it just, the bad things that you see online and in movies, I feel like it could force us to become more human. Because I think one of the most important, talk about conversations, I think one of the most important conversations we had right now, is the story we're living in, the conversation we're leaning in, which is, how do you remain deeply human in an age of AI?

• 29:21Speaker 02

  I'm with you.

• 29:21Speaker 01

  Right, with AI doing these things, especially for our identity, where, like, if somebody was a coder, or a creative, whatever it is, and AI could do the job faster and better, then who are you, right?

• 29:33Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 29:34Speaker 01

  You know, in terms of-

• 29:35Speaker 02

  I want to make sure that I, that we provide some really concrete pieces for the listeners. If somebody listening finds themselves in the habit of every time they want to write an email, or send a text, they go to AI first, and say, how should I say, and what should I say?

• 29:54Speaker 02

  I want to make sure that, as long as they're doing it as a partnership, and not a full replacement, that's what sounds like the safest thing. Because I can say, personally, I'm a proponent of using AI absolutely as a collaborative partner. I have an AI, a lot of people have an AI, that says, hey, here's a lot of my advice, and here's how you can use this to help improve. But when you are- Replacing

• 30:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:18Speaker 02

  All of the, what you said, you're using that as cognitive offload.

• 30:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:23Speaker 02

  That's where it can go south. So we don't want to do that. The question I have is, what is the number one thing that somebody can do?

• 30:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:30Speaker 02

  Right now, that's going to start improving their brain. The most, you know, return that they can have.

• 30:38Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Yeah, I know exactly. I've never talked about this, but this is what I do personally. Before I go to AI for anything, uh, for any, like, maybe I would help with my communications or marketing, whatever happens to be five things. Because the danger is not of cognitive offloading, it's the trend towards cognitive surrender. Like, if we don't, if it's thinking for us, then what happens to a society that has, can critically think? Or can have strong judgment or anything else, that's a challenge. And we don't want those things to atrophy. Just like, we could take an elevator to the fifth floor for an office or an apartment, but then we don't take the stairs. The elevator is a form of technology, it makes our life convenient. But we don't want it to cripple us when we take an Uber to go eight blocks to the bank, when we could have got our steps in.

• 31:22Speaker 01

  So it's always a balance. So five things you could think about, and I'll use an acronym. And this is what I use personally, and we use it with our team and clients, but I've never talked about it on a podcast. I'm thinking, I'm interested in building, right? I want to, I want to build before I borrow from AI, right? I want to build my brain. And I don't want to go slack by not using those thinking muscles. So the B stands for brainstorm. So before I post a prompt about a communication set or something else, I'd want to do the little bit of work myself. I want to be able to brainstorm, uh, some, uh, some answers myself, right? I'm going to be able to engage my, uh, one of the eyes, the imagination. The U is I want to understand, because I often think, especially when we're dealing with problems or difficulty.

• 32:07Speaker 01

  What was the Einstein quote? Like, if I have an hour to solve a problem, I'll spend most of it focusing on defining the problem. And so, understanding really what the situation is, I think is very important before we go to AI to tell us something it thinks, right? The, the I is imagination, and this is very tactical. I would be thinking about if I'm solving a problem using AI, before I even talk to AI, I'm using my own imagination, thinking, asking questions like, what would, how would a five-year-old look at this problem? How would someone 10 times smarter than me look at this problem? Right? Or, or even the professional position of like, what would Leonardo da Vinci do in this situation, right? It gives me a different point of view.

• 32:47Speaker 02

  Of the problem.

• 32:48Speaker 01

  Of, of, of the problem and potential solution sets, if I didn't ask that question. Like, you know, like, asking a new question, like, like in zero to one, how do I hit my 10-year goal, but do it in six months? Right? It forces me to not just work hard, but think about it differently. So I is imagine. Then the L in build is leverage AI. Then you could go to AI, but I would use AI to actually ask you more questions personally. You know, and because AI, and this is the other thing about artificial intelligence is, is whether or not it's becoming more human, I don't want humans to become more artificial, right? I think, I don't want our natural intelligence to become artificial by relying on it too much. Because AI could feign empathy, but it doesn't know how to communicate with a grieving child.

• 33:33Speaker 01

  It doesn't know a breakup, it does not forgive somebody and all the other things. But then I would leverage AI, and how I'd use it is to stress test my ideas that I just imagined or brainstormed, or my understanding of it, to see if it's clear. You know, I'd ask it to, to be able to, you know, ask me questions that would challenge my current assumptions or attitudes about something. If I'm using it to learn something, great, I could ask it to summarize something, certainly, or, or pose certain questions that I can improve on also as well. And then, um, then I would say the D in build is then you decide. Because while AI could process and compute faster than any human, ultimately, human beings, our skill set is determining what all that information, uh, what, what it means.

• 34:19Speaker 01

  What's important, right? Because AI is going to tell you that. And also make your, decide what to do with that information.

• 34:27Speaker 02

  Before we keep going, I want to take a moment to tell you about David. When it comes to fitness goals, convenience only works if it's actually going to help you reach your goal. That's especially true for protein bars. That's why I like David. Most of protein bars that are out there, right, are, let's say, 20 grams of protein, they're 350 calories, and also three, like, 200 grams of sugar. It tastes great, that's why it tastes probably like candy, but it's not helping you reach your goal. David is 28 grams of protein, 350 calories, and zero sugar. Little bitty thing that makes a very big difference. David is easy to put in my pocket, put in a backpack, and eat it on the go. They taste good. And I know that what I'm eating, what I'm putting in my body, is good quality stuff.

• 35:10Speaker 02

  I think they're the gold standard when it comes to protein bars. Right now, head on over to davidprotein.com/jefferson. When you buy four cartons, you will get your fifth free. And also, you can go online to davidprotein.com and find a store that sells them near you. That's pretty awesome. Now, let's keep going. I want to drill down on this cognitive offload, you know, how much are we relying on other things to be thinking, communicating for us and the cost of that? You were telling me earlier, before we started, about this, an MIT study.

• 35:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, there was a recent MIT study, and they had their right, the students had to write communication essays, right? And it's the first group A, B, C. Group A used ChatGPT to do it. Group B used Google, and Group C, neither, right? They had to use their own technology that they were born with, you know, between their ears. And they scanned the brains, and they tested, you know, afterwards. And out of Group A, B, and C, which one had the, the most cognitive engagement? It was the one that, that did the work themselves, not relying on technology, on the brain scans. What's, what's more interesting for me was when they were tested on their recall of what was created in terms of the final product, right?

• 36:21Speaker 01

  These essays, out of, out of Group A, B, and C, which one, which one recalled by far the least? Was the one that used ChatGPT, because it did the work for them. Being, because they didn't do the effort, they didn't get the reward, right? It's, it's the equivalent of like, going to the gym and asking a friend of yours at the gym to lift the weights for you.

• 36:41Speaker 02

  Right.

• 36:41Speaker 01

  Right? You're not going to get any of the benefit because you have to earn it. And that's, that's a thing with, with our brains. You know, doing a little bit more, you know, because I'm hoping that AI could help automate things, make our life easier for lower mental tasks. But it frees up the bandwidth to, to create. I mean, I, I think communication, I think communication is one of the pillars. I call them human, that if, if everyone, you know, in, in the age of AI, it's going to force us, because we're not going to out-process or compute, you know, computer. But it'll force us to be valuable in the workforce. H is heart, which is, for me, the symbol of emotion. That's emotional. I'd be leaning into right now, if someone's listening, anything for your EQ, empathy, compassion.

• 37:24Speaker 01

  Because AI is not going to be able to duplicate that. The, the U is understanding. And I think it's important to be able to be curious today, more than ever. You know, I think what's one of the through lines with high performers is they're insanely curious, and that's why they progress. They, you know, that your mind only, it's like a parachute only works when it's opened. So to understand deeply. The M in human stands for meaning. I think we're purpose-driven creatures. And I think it's going to force people to, to go deeper into what lights them up and lights other people up.

• 37:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:54Speaker 01

  Meaning, passion and purpose are often interchanged as words. For me, they're very, very specific. Passion, for me, is defined by anything that lights, lights you up. And you can have lots of passions, right? It could be pickleball, it could be nature, it could be.

• 38:06Speaker 02

  All the hobbies.

• 38:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. So things that light you up. Purpose, for me, is how you use the passions to light somebody else up. Like, I had these learning disabilities, and I couldn't learn really well. And, but learning eventually became my passion. And so passion, my passion of learning lights me up. Teaching people how to learn lights them up, and that's my purpose. So passion lights me up. How I use my passion to light someone else up is my purpose.

• 38:35Speaker 02

  And that's what makes us human.

• 38:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I feel like that's important. So that's meaning. And then finally, the A and the N, the A, I would lean into is adaptation. I think our ability to adapt, uh, quickly in today's age of AI is so very important, because the change is the one thing that will be constant. And so our ability to learn, to unlearn, to be able to relearn, I think is, is paramount. And then the N in human stands for nexus. And I would, I would put nexus as, I'm using that word as communication. Meaning, um, it's not just your neurological networks, it's your social networks. You know, our ability to, to communicate. Because I feel like even, you know, people are still coming to us, even they could go into an AI and say, how would Jim quick speed read this? Or remember this language, or whatever it is.

• 39:22Speaker 01

  But also, you know, the community that we've built, you know, and the trust that we've built. And, you know, because I still think people are going to want life experience from, from a real human that could really empathize in a real way. That's not synthetic or artificial. But nexus is maintaining, it's your communication skills, your ability to, is leadership. I would put everything, everything there. But I feel like, um, and then if people, imagine people putting their energy and their effort, their resources, their time and attention towards those five things. I feel like, you know, in an AI revolution, I feel like there could be a human evolution or a renaissance in, in, in new times, where AI could actually, you know, drive more creativity and more, more purpose.

• 40:01Speaker 02

  I want to do a lightning round with you.

• 40:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:04Speaker 02

  Cool. So I have about five or six questions that we're going to. Let's try and get them in like 30 second.

• 40:12Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 40:12Speaker 02

  Blige, you cool?

• 40:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, quick.

• 40:14Speaker 02

  It's gonna be.

• 40:14Speaker 01

  We'll keep it quick.

• 40:15Speaker 02

  It's gonna be easy.

• 40:16Speaker 01

  My last name.

• 40:16Speaker 02

  This is gonna be easy. How do we remember somebody's name rather than forgetting it the moment that we met them?

• 40:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I use suave. S is you say the name, you repeat it right away. Grant, nice to meet you.

• 40:28Speaker 02

  Use it a lot, use their name.

• 40:29Speaker 01

  I would say say it first to make sure you heard it correctly. You don't want to have a 20 minute conversation with Ted and say goodbye, Ed.

• 40:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:35Speaker 01

  So I immediately when they introduce themselves, I'll say it back. Grant, nice to meet you.

• 40:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, repeat it.

• 40:39Speaker 01

  U is use the name, but I would only use it three or four times in a conversation. Don't abuse it, right?

• 40:45Speaker 02

  Overuser.

• 40:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, like Jefferson is great to you. You're great with Jefferson. Yeah. Right, that would be an abuse, but use it three or four times. The A is ask. When you meet somebody and their, their name is a little unusual, name you haven't heard before, then everyone's favorite subject is themselves. Ask, what can you ask? Oh, who were you named after? You know, how do you spell it? You know, what does it mean? You know, where's it from? You know, and people, I feel like it's the sweetest sound to person's ears. And then the V is visualize. You meet somebody and if you can be playful as a kid, because kids learn pretty fast and have great memories, take their name and turn it into something that like Jeff or chef and put a chef's hat on the person, right?

• 41:21Speaker 02

  Make a career.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  As someone's name is Grant, you imagine them, you know, hitting on granite, right?

• 41:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, something like that.

• 41:27Speaker 01

  Mary carrying two lambs, or Mary, David, slingshot like David and Goliath, you know, and a Jim or someone living in Barbell. It's something silly, but it's something to get over what I call the six second rule. Somebody tells you their name, you have six seconds to do something with it. Otherwise, it's just, it's just gone to the ether. And it's, it's a means to an end. Once you know the person's name, then the picture just disappears. But it's create some mental glue.

• 41:48Speaker 02

  Right.

• 41:48Speaker 01

  And then finally, the E is end. And use end saying goodbye, using their name. Because if you could go into a room of 10 strangers and leave saying goodbye to every single one by name.

• 41:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:57Speaker 01

  Who are they all gonna remember?

• 41:58Speaker 02

  Right.

• 41:59Speaker 01

  Right, they're all gonna remember you. So suave.

• 42:01Speaker 02

  For me, I like it suave. I like it. And that's, that's aptly named. For me, it's if I go in with the intention of actually wanting to remember their name.

• 42:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:08Speaker 02

  If you just, you know, cursory, I not to meet you, I'm not gonna do it. But if I go in with the intention of I want to remember this person's name, that increases that likelihood. And then also, I will say, I've just had it to where I go, hey, I want to make sure I don't forget your name. Can you tell it to me again? And they, they're like, oh, yeah, it's because you told me you want to remember my name.

• 42:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:27Speaker 02

  And being that open with them can do it.

• 42:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:30Speaker 02

  I like the.

• 42:31Speaker 01

  I always tell people, remember mom, M O M. The M is motivation, going back to wanting. It's have to go from your head to your heart to your hands, right? Even when you visualize your goals in your head, you're not acting with your hands. You have to check in with the second age, which is your heart. But emotion and, and memory go hand in hand without a doubt. I mean, everyone knows there's a fragrance that could take you back to when you're a teenager or a food or a song.

• 42:53Speaker 02

  Like I can smell my mom's perfume.

• 42:54Speaker 01

  Right, just like that. And so that emotion brings back the memory. Your amygdala is connected to your hippocampus and it's emotion and memory. So mom stands for motivation. Like, just like you said, like I'll go in front of an audience of 2,000 people. I just did this two days ago and I said, okay, who's bad at remembering names? Everyone raised their hand. Okay, so let's say the host has a suitcase here, a million dollars cash you could take home with you, tax free, give it to your favorite charity or whatever. If you just remember the name of the next person you meet in the room, who's gonna remember the name? Same hands go up. And then I said, okay, as a memory coach, I have to call you on your BS, your belief systems.

• 43:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:27Speaker 01

  Like, how, it has nothing to do with whether you could remember a name and it has everything to if you wanted to. So, so even ask yourself, why do I want to remember the person's name? Like you did. Maybe it's to show the person respect. Maybe it's to practice these things on, on this podcast, right? Reasons reap results. And the O is observation. A lot of people, they're not forgetting the name, they're just not even hearing the name to begin with. And the last M in mom are, are the methods and one of them is the suave.

• 43:53Speaker 02

  Sure, you're an acronym guy.

• 43:54Speaker 01

  I, I like it because a lot of people, because my name's quick and our podcast's only 20 minutes long, but I have to keep it short and memorable if someone's working out or they're driving and they can't write it down.

• 44:05Speaker 02

  It's acronyms.

• 44:05Speaker 01

  You remember, you remember like, you know, things back in high school.

• 44:08Speaker 02

  I love it.

• 44:09Speaker 01

  Before we keep going, I want to take a moment to tell you about Cozy Earth. I have been proud to have Cozy Earth as a sponsor for so long. Why? Because everything they do is top notch. The other weekend, my family and I, we were in the airport, sat down, you know, while you're waiting there for your flight. And I got up and somebody approached me, it was a pilot. And he said, hey, are you Jefferson Fisher? I said, yes. He said, oh, very cool. I listen to your podcast, the same podcast you're listening to right now. And then he asked me the question. He said, is that Cozy Earth? What I was wearing? Because I was wearing a very comfortable Cozy Earth sweater. And I got to say, why, yes, it is. So it's not just something that I talk about here. It's something I actually like to wear. In fact, everybody I give them to goes nuts about them. They're like, what brand is this? It's Cozy Earth. Everything they make is soft, comfortable, cozy.

• 44:54Speaker 01

  So if you like just chilling, if you like going places to the store in between, in transition, and you want to feel comfortable, look no further than Cozy Earth. Right now, you can go to cozyearth.com/jefferson, use the code Jefferson for 20% off. cozyearth.com/jefferson for 20% off. Now, let's keep going. What causes our brain to underperform? So it's hardware and software. Sometimes the software we're using to remember things that focus is hasn't been updated. Like repetition to remember something is so antiquated. Like you have to study something and repeat it 50 times in your head. Or people are reading slow and they haven't taken it in another class since they were six years old. So their reading ability is just that of a six year old. So part of it is the software programming, but the other part is the hardware. You know, I always tell people, you want another acronym?

• 45:39Speaker 01

  Meds. Take your meds. You want a good brain? M is meditate. You have to disconnect to reconnect. I also think there is power in a pause also, meaning that sometimes when you pause a camera or you pause your computer or your TV, it stops working. I feel like sometimes when we pause ourself, we start working, we start recalibrating, we start recovering, we start rethinking, right? So I would say the M is meditation, the E in meds is exercise. And I don't just mean going to the gym, although when you exercise, you create B D N F, which is brain derived neurotropic factors, which is like fertilizer for neuroplasticity, very essential. You also create natural dopamine, serotonin, endorphins, which is good. But I mean, moving throughout the day. They say sitting is, is the next, you know, is the new smoking and everything, moving throughout the day, taking a brain break. The D is diet.

• 46:22Speaker 01

  I just want to remind everybody, sometimes our brain underperforms because of the food we eat. You're, you're in a food coma. High inflammation, processed food, high sugar, glucose spikes could affect your, your cognitive ability and overall cognitive health. And I always talk about some of my favorites. It's a whole area of science I write about called neuro nutrition, that your brain, that what you eat matters, especially for your brain matter. Some of my favorite foods are like avocados, blueberries, I call them brain berries, walnuts, very neuroprotective, eggs, the choline in eggs, choline, olive oil, dark chocolate. And then the S in meds is sleep. Some people, the, the, sometimes people's brain and memory is not where it needs to be because of poor sleep hygiene. Yeah, so I would say software, yes, you find it. We have it, all this stuff out there, but I would say the hardware, you have to take

• 47:05Speaker 01

  care of the, the brain, their three pound matter between yours too.

• 47:08Speaker 02

  How do you train yourself to think faster on your feet?

• 47:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, reaction time, thinking speed.

• 47:14Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 47:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just had a neuroscientist nutritious on our podcast and, and Dr. Lisa Moscone. She was saying that just staying hydrated, your brain is mostly water, just staying hydrated could boost your reaction time, your thinking speed upwards of 30%. So I just want to remind people to drink your water and especially when you wake up because we could lose up to a pound of water when we sleep through, through urination, through perspiration, through respiration. And, you know, everything is, our body is and brain, which is.

• 47:43Speaker 02

  The body is hydrated.

• 47:44Speaker 01

  I would say the one thing you could do for faster thinking speed, reaction time. But reaction time and thinking speed can be up, like we teach people to read three times faster on average in 21 days. Reaction time and thinking speed, that means they're thinking three times faster also, right? If they're taking in. And I imagine a lot of people are training themselves even with like audible and podcasts, listening at one and a half speed or two times speed. You can understand it that fast. You can't speak that fast. So there are all kinds of mechanisms to be able to improve your, and I think honestly, reading is one of the best exercises to keep your, your thinking sharp. The challenge is only 16%, of people, this was, it just came out in the Atlantic, 16%

• 48:24Speaker 01

  of people read daily, like a book or magazine, something other than like social media or something like that. 51% of the populace across gender, ethnicity and an age, 51% don't, won't read one book a year. Not even one, not even one book.

• 48:41Speaker 02

  That's wild.

• 48:42Speaker 01

  Not even one book, you know? And so reading is to your mind what actually, people ask all the time, what's the best exercise for the brain? They're physical exercises. Racket sports has been shown to increase your lifespan upwards of nine years.

• 48:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:54Speaker 01

  You know, more than jogging or, or swimming also as well. Dancing, incredible for the brain also because you're putting your mind in your muscle. But I would say in terms of cognitive activities, app, people ask for apps and everything else, reading, reading. And think about it also, someone has decades of experience like you do, you put into a book and then somebody can sit down and read that book in a few days? And they could download decades of wisdom and experience and research in a few days? I mean, there's no greater advantage than that.

• 49:20Speaker 02

  It's making me think that my grandfather, who I don't think has ever missed a day of doing the daily crossword.

• 49:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:25Speaker 02

  For the New York Times. I think he's got it figured out because his brain is super sharp.

• 49:30Speaker 01

  There's a study on these nuns. I call them super nuns. It was the cover of Time Magazine. Some people might have seen it, but they were living 80, 90 and above and they want to figure out what was their key to their long life and also just their sharpness. Cause they had life in their ears also. And they said half of it was their faith and the level of gratitude, emotions. The other half though, they were lifelong learners. They would, they would have spirited debate, discourse, uh, reading, you know, these common kind of conversations and writing. And because add years of life and life through years, the, the study is called Aging with Grace. So I, I would rather go a day without eating, honestly, than a day without reading. Like I could, cause I would skip a meal before I would skip like reading something and maybe that's my preference, but I feel that it's weird.

• 50:12Speaker 01

  Cause you know, cause you and I go to these author events that people could go like, no one would go a few days and be like, oh, I forgot to eat the past few days. Cause they would have a natural hunger.

• 50:21Speaker 02

  Right.

• 50:21Speaker 01

  I would just feel like that, you know, books are like the best and not just nonfiction books. Obviously I love nonfiction books, but at nighttime I read fiction. I won't read a nonfiction book. Cause I don't want to get my, I don't want to read a book on science or business or psychology. Cause that would give me my executive brain when I want to sleep, but fiction reading has been shown just, just like 20 minutes of fiction reading has been shown to reduce stress. Like 40 something percent.

• 50:45Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 50:45Speaker 01

  And it helped you sleep better also at night and fiction reading also will improve the, uh, the H and the human acronym, which is, uh, your emotional, the heart, which is emotional quotient. Empathy, storytelling, right? Seeing things from other people's point of view. I love, I'm a big advocate for, for fiction reading.

• 51:02Speaker 02

  This, I want to, um, this next question, I want to pull in some of your, your tips and training on how to improve memory.

• 51:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:08Speaker 02

  Okay. So how, how can we improve our memory to remember what we want to say in a conversation while we're actually in the conversation?

• 51:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I would say number one, mental rehearsal.

• 51:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:21Speaker 01

  Which is what you practice, right? In private, you're rewarded for in public. So I feel like you get those reps in. So mental rehearsal where you could see it and you're, you're, you're actually, even if you can't imagine it, you can imagine that you're imagining it.

• 51:33Speaker 02

  Like visualizing it.

• 51:34Speaker 01

  Visualizing it. Like I've given 2,200 keynotes at companies, corporation and conferences, but I probably rehearsed like tens of thousands of them. Justin, in my mind, right? And I'll even rehearse failure points, like what if this happens or what if this tech breaks or what if this like the fire? I was speaking for 10,000 kids and the fire alarm went off in this armory and I had no, cause I didn't prepare for it. But when you do the preparation, I think that's, that's important. So mental rehearsal, I would say number one, there are memory techniques, right? So in limitless and our, and our courses, we, we talk about them, like simple things like a memory palace. Like what did, um, what did the ancient Greeks do before there were printing presses and teleprompters and everything else?

• 52:15Speaker 01

  And they would use, uh, areas that they were very familiar with, like the, the, the story goes Simonides is a poet and orator. And he, 2,500 years ago in Greece, he was giving a reading and then when he left the building collapsed and killed everybody. He was the only lone survivor. And because he was a lone survivor, he had to help family members identify their loved ones. And he was able to do it because he remember where they were all sitting. Because we as hunter gatherers, we needed to remember where things were. Where's the clean water? Where's the fertile soil? Where's the, where's the food, everything? So we store information in location. And so, um, a technique you could use is take a place you're familiar with.

• 52:54Speaker 01

  Let's say you need to have talking points in a conversation or on a, on stage or something like that, or on camera. You take your living room or like, let's say you take your kitchen or your body or briefcase. And you can put like even this whole sales tips, like about product or service on one on the lock, one on this glass, one on the rear of the pocket, everything. So let's say, let's say for example, you go in your kitchen, the first place is your microwave, the second place is your stove top. Your third is your refrigerator, fourth is dishwasher, fifth is a sink. And you had five talking points. Let's say it happens to be, um, what are like five things you could do for a better brain? And you say, okay, the first one that you need to do is have a good brain diet. So imagine the microwave full with all those brain foods, right?

• 53:38Speaker 01

  Cooking though, which you would never do. The two is your stove top and it's killing ants, automatic negative thoughts from Dr. Daniel Amen. So imagine you're killing ants on the, on your stove top. And the third thing is the refrigerator and the third thing you need to remember is your exercise. So you open up and they're doing yoga inside your refrigerator. And if it makes you laugh, that emotion is very important to memory. And then let's say the fourth thing is, uh, you know, brain nutrients. And then so you go into the, the dishwasher and all these ginkgo biloba and omega three and everything else like that. Yeah. So, so there's another thing. So besides mental rehearsal, you could also be practicing using some kind of mnemonic device. That has been tried and true, um, that people have been using to be able to do everything from speeches to poetry.

• 54:23Speaker 01

  And also the other thing is, I'll give you one final one that I use with actors I don't talk about is if it's something you have to remember verbatim. You could change the, there's first of all, if it was like a script that you wanted to be just like, this is something you say on a regular basis. You could listen to certain music, um, not heavy metal or rap, but, um, certain, certain classical music will help you remember things faster and encode it better. Especially from the Baroque era, Vivaldi Bach, because it's like 60 beats per minute, which harmonizes with that resting heart rate. And then you could also be having, really like reading it or writing it to help you while the music is on there. Some people rehearse things in different voices, like Mickey Mouse voice or something else in their head. Because it'll give them more stimulus and more novelty, uh, to recall it later.

• 55:08Speaker 02

  It's working with the material in different ways.

• 55:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. Actors will do that a lot, you know, especially because they'll step into it. Because it gives them more novelty and more sticking points to make it stand out from, from other things. And other people, I'll give you one tip. This is, I don't talk about this, but I study skills when I do it at Ivy League schools. Like the most powerful sense you have for memory is your sense, is your olfactory, your sense of smell, right? And so there's certain smells that have been shown to help you focus your memory, rosemary and so on, citrus. But if you take a smell that, uh, that you put on like a lip balm or cologne or essential oil. While you're studying that thing you need to communicate and then you wear that same scent. When you need to be able to perform it, it'll come back faster.

• 55:52Speaker 02

  How cool.

• 55:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, it is wild. Like I, I have a swimming pool and I used to train, remember like you were saying, like, cause you want to train under also ideal conditions, but also harsh conditions. So I would train like memorizing numbers and words and cards submerged using like, like, and then it's funny, like I would test myself back. Like after I studied it underwater, right? Um, I would, I would test myself coming out of the water and I'd go back underwater. And then I'd see which, how much I remember and in which situation or environment would I remember more? Where I learned it.

• 56:25Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 56:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. That's why students that study in the classroom or, you know, people preparing their, their performance on stage, on the stage will have more natural recall. Cause the environment will trigger a lot of the memories often like we do, even without knowing.

• 56:40Speaker 02

  Well, I can tell you, when your book came out in 2020, Limitless, uh, it blew me away because it really goes into just how much more. I find that my brain can do. I have just sometimes thinking small on the capacity of what is capable of our brains. And I know you have limitless daily.

• 56:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:01Speaker 02

  And that new book, I want you to tell us my listeners real quick, how was limitless daily different from limitless? And, um, how, how it's, how it's going to help our brains?

• 57:10Speaker 01

  I feel the same way about your book, the same exact way. I was like, why wasn't this taught back in school? This is like an owner's manual for communication. And I want to do the owner's manual for learning in the brain. A limitless daily came because a lot of people were asking, this is so much information on speed reading and memory enhancement and, and how to have your best brain of your life. But where do I start daily? Because I noticed that the big things don't come from the big things. They come from the small things that we do consistently. Cause consistency compounds, you know, and this limitless. I hadn't talked about this, but I wrote it less than two months when it came out, um, because I had 30 years, it was my first book and I had 30 years of curriculum and content to put in there.

• 57:51Speaker 01

  So I just like, I was a maniac. Limitless daily took over a year and that's a long time for me and at this pace I'm at. And it happened because it wasn't going to be a book. I started, uh, I get emotional thinking about this. Um, I have a three and a half and a one year old, a one and a half year old. And, uh, it's been the biggest learning experience of my life. I was, uh, in the hospital and I saw my wife holding her and her at the time, you know, like a little bit older brother. And, uh, you know, I'm 53 and so, uh, I had some severe learning challenges after my traumatic brain injury. I had five. You know, I was called broken by a teacher and then for the whole class when I was nine, I was, I was called the boy with a broken brain.

• 58:34Speaker 01

  And even though it took only five seconds for her to say, that conversation that followed.

• 58:39Speaker 02

  Stayed forever.

• 58:40Speaker 01

  For a decade, for a decade I had after that, that label became my limit. So the story I was telling myself was the brain injury was one limitation, was far greater limitation was the conversation I was having inside my own head about that injury. Every time I did badly in sports or wasn't picked for sports or did badly in school, I would say I was the boy with the broken brain. You know, so that I'm on a mission. And at the same time, around seven, I lost my grandmother to Alzheimer's. And she was my hero. Uh, and so, so we donated proceeds from limitless for, uh, built schools in Ghana, Guatemala, Kenya. Healthcare, clean water for all the kids in villages that don't have access to any of that. And Alzheimer's research for women, because women are twice as likely to experience Alzheimer's than men. In memory of my grandmother.

• 59:22Speaker 01

  So I'm very purpose driven. When I was writing limitless though, I mean, limitless daily, I didn't know I was writing it. Cause being 53 and starting my family when I was 50, that was a different phase of life. Like my father was, you know, and he was my age. I was like, Thirty.

• 59:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 59:38Speaker 01

  So it's different. So I started feeling my mortality, you know, in a way. So I started, I write every morning for as long as I can remember gratitude or what my goals are that day. But I started writing a letter to my kids that, God forbid, you know, when they're adults 20 years from now, like, if I wasn't there.

• 59:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:56Speaker 01

  What would I say to them on a hard day?

• 59:58Speaker 02

  Right.

• 59:58Speaker 01

  You know, if they didn't want to get out of bed, or if there's something that they're challenged with. And I started writing to them. And I kept that ritual every single morning for 366 days.

• 1:00:10Speaker 02

  That's cool.

• 1:00:10Speaker 01

  And that's how long it took me to write the book. And instead, though, I put the science in there for each entry. So I give them new idea to overcome distraction, or overload, or imposter syndrome, or burnout, or fear of failure, or negative thinking, all the things I talk about these in their conversations with the mind. And it's basically a one, every single page is dated. You read that date, first thing in the morning during a time called sleep inertia. And this might be the biggest tip people could get, whether they buy the book or not. Jefferson, when you wake up, there's something called sleep inertia. You transition from a sleep state to a waking state, and certain cognitive things come online, your attention, your awareness, your alertness, and your working

• 1:00:53Speaker 01

  memory is empty. Right? That window, whatever you mentally input, has a disproportionate effect on the rest of your day. So I'm all about leverage, right? Because time is the only thing that everybody has constants, you want to maximize that. Specifically, what you put, what you feed your minds, called attentional priming, will influence disproportionately three things. What you focus on later that day, throughout the day, what you feel that throughout the day, and how you frame the day, even conversations. And what do most people input that precious window with? Their phone.

• 1:01:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:26Speaker 01

  So comparison.

• 1:01:28Speaker 02

  News.

• 1:01:29Speaker 01

  War.

• 1:01:29Speaker 02

  Social media.

• 1:01:31Speaker 01

  The conflict, whatever it is. And that will disproportionately affect what they focus on. They'll see that more, you know, throughout the day. They'll frame situations and even conversations later that day. And it'll affect their mood and their feelings. You know, like, you put, you get, you pick up your phone, and you get a message on social media, or a comment, or a voicemail message, or an email.

• 1:01:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:52Speaker 01

  And it affects your mood for hours. Right? And so I always tell people, media, you know, like, media is one thing, right? But mind before media. No one would wake up first thing in the morning, invite 200 strangers into their bedroom, and to talk about whatever they want to talk about. That would be ludicrous, right? But that's kind of like what we're doing. Trust, plus, we're training our brain to be reactive. Because then we're fighting fires, dealing with other people's problems, and, you know.

• 1:02:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:15Speaker 01

  And so what I would say is, the goal here is, that's why prayer works really well in the window, gratitude works really well in the window, send your goals for saying, you know, or reading something like Limitless Daily. I always say, mind before media, right? Intention before interruption, direction before distraction. And so, Limitless Daily is my way of simplifying the tools in Limitless, in something that's digestible. Plus, it gets more people reading every single day, first thing in the morning, before the world tells you who you are. You get to have a conversation. It's like me coaching them for five minutes first thing. And everything has an identity statement, and has an implementation that you can do in two minutes. So it's like, you want to win the day, you have to win

• 1:02:56Speaker 01

  that first window, that first part of that morning. And that's what the book is designed to do.

• 1:03:01Speaker 02

  And who doesn't want to be limitless every day?

• 1:03:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it's at limitlessdaily.com.

• 1:03:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then we have some bonuses for people. And it's just, it's, I think you change your brain, you change your life. You change your brain, you could change the world.

• 1:03:16Speaker 02

  Absolutely. And if anybody is interested in increasing their capacity for their mind, me being somebody, I'm telling you, all I'm thinking about now is, I need to go buy a crossword. My grandfather would, every time he'd, even when he'd come out of town, he'd go in the morning, go get some donuts, come back with a Coke, and it's crossword. And every morning, he does a crossword. And now I'm just going, man, I need to, I need to increase my crossword intake. Jim, thank you so much for coming on. Awesome stuff, man.

• 1:03:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I really appreciate it. Thanks, everyone, for joining us.

• 1:03:49Speaker 03

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