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

Jim Kwik’s brain health challenges began at age five, after a childhood injury left him struggling to read, learn, and remember. Once labeled “the boy with the broken brain,” he spent years discovering how memory, focus, and learning can be trained. Now, AI, smartphones, and constant distraction are making these abilities easier to neglect, especially as entrepreneurs increasingly rely on technology to work faster and more efficiently. In this episode, Jim shares how to strengthen your memory, protect your attention, use AI more intentionally, and keep your mind sharp in an increasingly automated world. In this episode, Hala and Jim will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (00:00) Why Memory Matters for Entrepreneurs (09:37) How Remembering Names Builds Trust (13:45) Training Your Brain to Remember (18:11) The MOM Framework for Memory Recall (24:49) Jim’s Ten-Item Memory Test (38:51) Hacks to Strengthen Focus and Attention (48:35) Using AI Without Losing Human Intelligence (1:01:12) Why Women Should Embrace AI (1:08:11) Beating Brain Rot and Doomscrolling Jim Kwik is the world’s leading brain performance coach, a New York Times bestselling author, and the founder of Kwik Brain. For over 30 years, he has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, athletes, and world leaders in speed learning, memory improvement, and mental performance. As the host of the top-ranked Kwik Brain podcast, Jim focuses on brain health, cognitive wellness, and unlocking human potential in a rapidly changing world. Sponsored By: Indeed - Get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job's visibility at Indeed.com/profiting Shopify - Start your $1/month trial at Shopify.com/profiting. Northwest Registered Agent - Get a complete business identity with Northwest. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com/YAPFree and start using free resources to build something amazing. Mindstone - Master practical AI skills without the complexity with Mindstone’s AI Competency Programme. Head to experience.mindstone.com/yap and get 10% off. AT&T Business - Stay connected with reliable, secure internet built for entrepreneurs. Switch to AT&T Business at business.att.com. HoneyLove - Treat yourself to the most advanced bras and shapewear on the market. Save 20% off Honeylove by going to honeylove.com/PROFITING! #honeylovepod ElevenLabs - ElevenAgents by ElevenLabs helps businesses deliver better customer experiences. Start with a demo at ElevenLabs.io/profiting Quo - Bring your calls, texts, and contacts together in one place. Try Quo for free, plus get 20% off your first 6 months when you go to quo.com/profiting. Resources Mentioned: Jim's Website: jimkwik.com Jim's Book, Limitless: bit.ly/-Limitles Jim's Book, Limitless Daily: bit.ly/LimitlessDaily Jim's Podcast, Kwik Brain: bit.ly/KB-apple Jim’s Instagram: instagram.com/jimkwik Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap YouTube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting Newsletter - youngandprofiting.co/newsletter LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Podcast, Business, Business Podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal Development, Starting a Business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side Hustle, Startup, Mental Health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth Mindset, Biohacking, Motivation, Manifestation, Life Balance, Self-Healing, Positivity, Happiness, Sleep, Diet

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Today's episode is sponsored in part by Northwest Registered Agent, Whatnot, Mod, and AG1. Northwest Registered Agent gives you the tools and guidance to build a complete business identity. Start using free resources at northwestregisteredagent.com/ yapfree. Whatnot helps sellers grow through live shopping, community, and real-time connections with buyers. Search Whatnot, W-H-A-T-N-O-T, in the App Store, download, and you can start selling right away. Mod connects qualifying patients with licensed medical providers for modafinil to support sustained energy, focus, and alertness throughout the day. Visit mod.com for a free consultation and get 10% off your first order plus free shipping with promo code PROFITING.

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• 1:08Speaker 01

  Most people do first thing when they wake up, they grab their device.

• 1:12Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:12Speaker 01

  Right? You're wiring your brain for distraction, and then you wonder why you can't focus later that day. If you're spending eight hours doom scrolling and rotting your brain, and then have the audacity to complain, you can't be upset by the results you didn't get from the work you did do.

• 1:28Speaker 00

  Jim Quick is the world's number one brain coach, a bestselling author. Today, he's breaking down how to protect your focus, remember what matters, and why your human intelligence is the one thing AI can never replace.

• 1:40Speaker 01

  So the idea here is your brain's like a muscle. It's an organ that acts like a muscle, you use it or lose it. But if you put your arm in a cast for a year, it wouldn't grow stronger. It wouldn't even stay the same.

• 1:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:50Speaker 01

  It would weaken and atrophy. That's digital dimension, digital deduction.

• 1:54Speaker 00

  I'd love to hear your opinion on collaborating with AI and how to make sure we're not outsourcing too much with AI.

• 2:00Speaker 01

  In a world of artificial intelligence, you don't want human intelligence to become artificial and not valuable. AI is a tool that can magnify or multiply, but it only magnifies, multiplies, and amplifies what we.

• 2:12Speaker 00

  How can we retain our focus in this era of just so much distraction?

• 2:17Speaker 01

  I think where we can lean into a number of things.

• 2:22Speaker 00

  Jim, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.

• 2:24Speaker 01

  So good to be here.

• 2:25Speaker 00

  This is the third time that Jim has been on, and every conversation has been absolutely incredible. You are a brain expert, you are a memory expert, a learning expert, and I am just so excited to kind of dig into everything. And something that I'm not going to do today is be so worried about repeating any sort of information that we've covered in the past. Because I was realizing that half the things that we talked about, I didn't even retain. So how could I have expected my listeners to retain? So I want to start there. Why is it that we can hear things more than once and still not remember them or recall them?

• 3:02Speaker 01

  It's so important for entrepreneurs to have a good memory. I think two of the most costly words in business are I forgot. I mean, just think about the consequence of saying, I forgot to do it, I forgot to bring it, I forgot to go to that meeting, I forgot what I was going to say to this person. I forgot that conversation, what was said to me. You know, I forgot how to do something, I forgot that person's name, you know? And so on the other side, memory is a magnifier, it's a multiplier. It can make you money when you can easily remember client information, product information. You could do sales videos or pitches, remember sales scripts, give presentations without notes. You know, walk into a room of 20 strangers and leave saying goodbye to all 20 of them. You know, they're all going to remember you.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  So memory makes things a lot easier, and it'll make you money for sure. It was interesting, I was just in Miami speaking at an event, doing brain training. We train a lot of Fortune 500 companies, and that commercial real estate guy came to me and he, he's like, Jim, I wish I would have gone through this before. He said he, he lost a $50 million deal because he called the client the wrong name twice.

• 4:11Speaker 00

  Oh my gosh.

• 4:11Speaker 01

  Could you imagine?

• 4:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:12Speaker 01

  Because what, you know, what does that make, what's the message we send to somebody? You know, when we, when we have those memory lapses, so.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, the idea here is there's a forgetting curve. When people hear something once on a podcast, even previous episodes, within two days, when you're exposed to information once from a presentation, a conversation, you read it, you listen to it on a podcast, 80% of it, it's gone. Unless you are doing something with that information. And I think part of it is just, I would say, number one is, you know, part of it is just paying attention.

• 4:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  Sometimes when people are listening to something like this, they're multitasking, like they're, they're cleaning, or they're, they're working, or they're working out, or they're driving, and there's, you know, their focus is, comes and goes, and the focus is, I mean, the art of memory is the art of attention. You can easily remember a name or something that you just read, but it's if our mind is wandering, that's a challenge. Also, we're not taught how to remember things, like in school. You know, I know there are a lot of subjects for entrepreneurship that wasn't taught in school that would have been useful. You know, leadership, investing, negotiation skills, sales skills, you know, the legal parts to a business. The same thing with, school teaches you what to learn, what to remember, what to think,

• 5:27Speaker 01

  but there's zero classes on how to learn, how to remember, you know, how to think. And I think those are like the lead dominos right now. They're their highest lever point for, I think the faster you learn, an entrepreneur can learn, the faster they will earn. Knowledge, say, is not only power, it's, it's profit. And, you know, there's this divide, not those just to have and those who don't have. There's a divide between those who know some things and those who don't know. Even in an age of AI, you know, information is ubiquitous, we all have access to information, right? You know, I know, we could talk about AI a little bit later, but it's no longer a competitive advantage because everybody has it.

• 6:02Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 6:02Speaker 01

  It's what you bring to it, though, that makes the difference. But the reason why it's so important is you can only make, your life is the sum total of all the choices you made up at this point. Right? Who to spend time with, you know, what to focus on, what you're going to eat, how you're going to move, what city you're going to live in. And it's interesting, you can only make good choices based on the information you know. And when you know more, you can do more. When you know better, you could also do better also as well.

• 6:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:26Speaker 01

  You know, there's a reason why people have seen pictures of me with Elon or Oprah or these individuals. And people ask how we bonded, how we connected. We bonded over books, you know, because even Warren Buffett reads 50, you know, 500 pages a day. So he has more information, so he can make better decisions. And so I love it. But yeah, one of the reasons, the reasons not paying attention, the forgetting curve, not having a system to remember things, you know, also as well. And also just asking the question, like, how can I use this? You know, I feel like you learn something once.

• 6:58Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 6:59Speaker 01

  And then if you don't use it, whatever you don't use, you lose, right? It's use it or lose it. So what happens in the brain is you start pruning this information, so it's more efficient, right? And so you start pruning or deleting this information. And that's why I'm a big, you know, advocate for, you know, application. Like, why learn a new idea if you're not going to implement it?

• 7:20Speaker 00

  So if people are listening to this podcast, and let's say there's two different people. One person is multitasking.

• 7:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:26Speaker 00

  And the other person is actually like, I really want to take advantage of this, and I have like a pen and a paper.

• 7:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:31Speaker 00

  Or like, I've got a computer or whatever it is.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  Sure, sure, sure.

• 7:34Speaker 00

  How should they actually listen to this podcast episode to retain the most information?

• 7:38Speaker 01

  So the person who's multitasking, so they've done, when people, people ask me all the time, you know, as an author, like, what's the best, is it better to read something in a, in a book or to listen to it on audiobook, for example? And people will test better when they read it in terms of comprehension and retention. And part of it is because when, usually when we're listening to something, we are multitasking, right? So our focus is separate. So I would say the person who is trying to multitask, and we could talk about the science of multitasking, and how it's really task switching, and how it's not very effective. Focus on, if you're driving, focus on driving. Like, if you're operating a heavy machinery, focus on that, right? Those are priority there. And that person can listen and get a, kind of a, just a good review and bits of it, and then come back and really study it, you know, when they have a chance.

• 8:23Speaker 01

  I would highly recommend that. For the person who's taking notes, I don't know if they're watching it or listening it. Everybody has a preferred channel of learning, not, not so much a learning style, but a channel they prefer to receive information in.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  And I would say, taking notes, if you're going to take notes, you know, you could either do it handwriting notes or digital note taking. Handwriting will outperform digital note taking.

• 8:46Speaker 00

  In terms of retention.

• 8:47Speaker 01

  Absolutely, and understanding. Digital is great for storing information, it's great for sharing it with your team. But in terms of understanding and retaining the information, handwriting notes will outperform. You know, and everyone has a different process. Some people use it and they'll handwrite on, on one of their tablets, and then use AI to organize it or store it, or Notion, or summarize it.

• 9:11Speaker 00

  One of the really, like, hidden talents that you have is remembering a lot of names.

• 9:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:17Speaker 00

  And I have a story that, that I remembered when I was studying your stuff, and it's, one of my guy friends, we were trying to set him up with a, a girl that we know, and we brought him to like a party. And she's like a gorgeous girl, has lots of options, and he's, he's a great guy, but he couldn't remember her name. And they kept talking and, and she was like, what was your, I'll say her name is Anna. It's not Anna. And he'd be like, what's her name? We're like Anna. And then he would like, call her a different name and like, couldn't remember her name all night.

• 9:45Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 9:45Speaker 00

  And then she was like, I don't want to see this guy. Like, sorry. Like, I'm not going on a date with him. He couldn't even remember my name.

• 9:52Speaker 01

  Hmm. That's like a Seinfeld. There was a Seinfeld episode. This is, I'm dating myself. I'm, I'm gonna be 53. So, um, where Jerry Seinfeld, it was sitcom comedy where he was dating somebody and was intimate with her, but didn't know her name.

• 10:06Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  So every single time she went to the bathroom, he would try to go into her purse to get, you know, look at her driver's license. Every time George or Kramer would come by, he would introduce them, hoping that she would say their name. And the joke was, uh, it rhymed with a part of the female anatomy. Or something like that. But, um, Seinfeld talks about common things. You had an episode where they lost, like, where they parked the car. The whole episode was just trying to find the, the car.

• 10:30Speaker 00

  We've all been there.

• 10:31Speaker 01

  But, um, but yeah, I, I feel bad for your, for your, for your friend. That's embarrassing.

• 10:36Speaker 00

  It's embarrassing and it made her feel like she wasn't important, that he must be like talking to so many girls or that she wasn't a focus.

• 10:43Speaker 01

  Or he didn't care.

• 10:44Speaker 00

  Or he didn't care.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:46Speaker 00

  So I'd love to understand, when we remember things, whether it's people's names or their kids' names, or a story they told us in the past.

• 10:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:54Speaker 00

  How does that improve our networking and relationship?

• 10:57Speaker 01

  I think it's huge because it's, you know, they say success is what you know. So we teach people all how to, you know, know that faster, right? And read it faster, learn it faster. It's who you know. Um, so remembering them is very important. But it's also who knows you. And I feel like today, especially it's helped so many people with their confidence. Like, when you know you can walk into a room and retain a lot of the information from conversations and people's names, you walk in different because in psychology, they have a confidence, competence loop, that the more competent you get, the more confident you are. And I think being confident in your memory and your ability to recall information, especially in this expert economy, you know, where nobody listening to this as an entrepreneur, aspiring entrepreneur is paid, you know, for their brute strength, right? It's, it's your brain strength. It's

• 11:42Speaker 01

  not your muscle power, it's your mind power. It's not like we're working on fields and, you know, in the agricultural age or industrial age, moving things in factories. It's our ability to come up with new ideas. And, and a lot of creativity comes from memory also, from remembering things, you know, being a generalist, knowing, you know, a good amount about a lot of things, but then connecting those dots, you know, to innovate, you know, like, like a phone, like what, what Steve Jobs did, right? There's a camera and there's a calculator and there's a, there's a, their phone and all this other things, took, you know, different things, created something brand new. And entrepreneurs, that's what we're doing. We're innovating, you know, all the time. Um, but I would say that, uh, remembering names is very important because you need to be able to stand out. And when

• 12:24Speaker 01

  you have, you have what I call quick recall, and you're able to recall information well, people feel like that you were thinking about them, right? That you remember their conversations, that they, that you, that they were important. You know, there's a, what's, what's a quote? People don't care how much you know until they know much you care. Like, how are you gonna show somebody as an entrepreneur, you care for their health, their family, their finances, you know, whatever you have to offer them, if you don't care enough just to remember things about them?

• 12:51Speaker 00

  Totally.

• 12:51Speaker 01

  You know, so, you know, cause even if you don't remember, like, that kind of thing, nothing you know past that would count.

• 12:57Speaker 00

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

• 13:09Speaker 01

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

• 13:35Speaker 00

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• 15:44Speaker 00

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• 16:51Speaker 01

  For phone.

• 16:51Speaker 00

  Five, broken iPhone.

• 16:54Speaker 01

  Broken, I have a broken iPhone?

• 16:56Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  You came up with these randomly?

• 16:58Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 16:58Speaker 01

  Okay. I'm giving people a little bit of time to, to, to come up with theirs.

• 17:03Speaker 00

  Six, red high heel.

• 17:05Speaker 01

  Red high heel. Just one or two?

• 17:09Speaker 00

  Just one.

• 17:09Speaker 01

  Okay, red high heel.

• 17:11Speaker 00

  Seven, brain shaped balloon.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  Brain shaped balloon? So it's literally is random.

• 17:19Speaker 00

  Eight, $100 bill.

• 17:21Speaker 01

  $100 bill?

• 17:22Speaker 00

  A Benjamin, yes.

• 17:24Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 17:25Speaker 00

  Nine, mini treadmill.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  A mini treadmill?

• 17:28Speaker 00

  Yes, for a mouse.

• 17:30Speaker 01

  For a mouse? Okay.

• 17:32Speaker 00

  10, diamond notebook.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  10 is diamond notebook.

• 17:37Speaker 00

  How many do you think you could do?

• 17:39Speaker 01

  Well, I've taught people to how to memorize like pi to like thousands of digits, but it's, it's all, it's all, it's, it's, it's the same principle, but I just, but, um, yeah. So everybody who's listening, just do the best. And notice also, not only just, you know, um, how many you remember when we come back to the list, also think about how you remembered it. Like, what was your strategy, you know, for that?

• 18:03Speaker 00

  What is that process? Like, how are you remembering things?

• 18:05Speaker 01

  I mean, even in high school, we learned, like, memory is just three stages. You encode it, you store it, and then you retrieve it.

• 18:11Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 18:12Speaker 01

  You know, and if there's a break in any one of those, you're not going to get the remembrance that, you know, that you desire and that you really deserve. You know, I, I really, um, you know, for people that are connected to my work, they know that I had a brain injury when I was five years old. Because of it, I had learning disabilities. My mother became a special education teacher to help me with my, my, my challenges. I had migraines every day. I was, it took me three years longer to know how to read. And so, you know.

• 18:41Speaker 00

  They called you the boy with the broken brain? That was?

• 18:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was my, that was my, and that was all through school. Through, it was, it wasn't just like elementary school, it was middle school, um, junior high, high school. I just, I worked hard, you know, I came, you know, from immigrant parents, you know, we lived in back of a laundromat that my mom worked at. You know, we worked hard, but I just didn't get the grades. You know, it's just, it's a challenge. But I realized, you know, after this might, I've been doing this for 34 years, it's not how smart you are, it's how are you smart? It's not how smart you are, it's really how are you smart? And we all have different intel, and that intelligence, even in a world of AI, it's not fixed, you know, like your shoe size. It can be trained, but school again, teaches you what to learn and what to remember, what to think, but not how to. So, you know, I focused on this

• 19:26Speaker 01

  thing called meta learning, which is the science and art of learning how to learn, which I again, think it's the best thing that all entrepreneurs could focus on. Because once you can learn how to learn faster, you could read three times faster, understand more from it, you know, remember something in a fraction of time that normally takes people, you know, hours. Um, then what can you apply it to? You could apply it towards money, right? You could, you know, that subject or skill, Mandarin, martial arts, music, management, you know, marketing, everything gets so much easier once you can learn how to learn.

• 19:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  It's like the biggest advantage.

• 19:58Speaker 00

  So you've got this strategy, I think, related to memory specifically called MOM?

• 20:02Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 20:03Speaker 00

  Can you tell us about that?

• 20:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it's also interesting. I wrote Limitless, you know, in like, less than two months. Um, we donated proceeds to charity. We built schools in Ghana, Guatemala, Kenya for girls who don't have access, girls and boys, uh, who don't have access to education. And then we provided healthcare, cause a lot of people are sick, so they can go to school and clean water. Um, also, we donated to Alzheimer's research for women. Women are twice as likely to experience Alzheimer's than men.

• 20:31Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  Twice as likely. I lost my, I lost my, I was going through my challenges when I was seven, uh, because my parents were always working, um, My grandmother raised me and she passed when I was seven, Alzheimer's. So in memory of her, but um, so I bring this up. I mean, everybody has their kind of their origin story, but my struggles became my strength. You know, that adversity can be an advantage. That would challenge comes change. Like, I don't know how one, one strong person that had an easy life.

• 21:00Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 21:01Speaker 01

  You know, and entrepreneurship is not necessarily an easy path. I think it's extremely worthwhile if you do it right. And I'm a big fan of, I've been an entrepreneur my whole life. I feel like, you know, be able to solve problems, be able to move the economy, be able to create jobs. And yeah, really, really, really, really good things. But when it comes to mom, I wrote it in Greece, most of it, that memory is the largest chapter in Limitless. Cause I found out there was a goddess of memory and she was the mom.

• 21:30Speaker 00

  A goddess of memory?

• 21:31Speaker 01

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

• 22:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:05Speaker 01

  You know, and so, yeah, mom is very, three principles to a quick recall, the M. Well, let's apply that towards names, right? In business, let's say someone listening or watching, they have trouble remembering names. But we had a, like a briefcase here or suitcase of a million dollars cash. And I know you have an international audience, whatever they put a lot of money, tax free. If you just remember the name of the next stranger you meet, who's going to remember that person's name for a million dollars?

• 22:33Speaker 00

  Everyone.

• 22:34Speaker 01

  Everyone.

• 22:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:34Speaker 01

  So as a memory coach, my job is to, to call people on their BS, their belief systems, right? It's not true, you can't remember a name. It's the first M stands for motivation. Like a lot of people aren't feeling or presencing like how important it is to remember someone's name. So a simple hack is just like, you know, before you meet somebody, you even open up your mouth. You know, you're going to talk to them soon. Just why do I want to remember this person's name?

• 23:03Speaker 00

  So it's like, why do I care?

• 23:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like, and then come up with a couple of answers. Like maybe it's to show the person respect. Maybe it's to make a sale, maybe it's to get a referral. At the very least, maybe it's things that, you know, to practice what they learned on this podcast. You know, without a reason, you won't remember because reasons reap results. And so I just feel like if you don't feel it, you're not going to remember it. Cause it's not relevant to you.

• 23:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:26Speaker 01

  So that alone, I think is very important. The O in mom is observation. A lot of people aren't forgetting the name. They're just not even listening. You know what I mean? Like at, at events that you go to sometimes you're with someone, but you know, they're looking over your shoulder. You know, your shoulders, see who else is in the room. Or maybe we're guilty of talking to somebody, they're talking, but we're thinking about what we're going to say.

• 23:50Speaker 00

  Or like for some reason self-conscious about like your outfit or something.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  Something like that.

• 23:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:54Speaker 01

  Exactly. And so like, and so we're not even present. And so the art of memory is the art of attention, you know? And so I remember years ago, I was, I was, I went to a charity event, it was like 2,000 people. And I get assigned to a table. So I go to my assigned table, I'm the first one there. And then, you know, a few minutes later, Forrest Whitaker, the Oscar winning actor sits next to me. And then Richard Branson sits down, then Ashton Kutcher and his twin brother, which I didn't realize he had a twin brother. And, and then President Clinton sits right next to me. And I had met him a few years earlier and we had this brief conversation, but he sits down and he remember my name.

• 24:35Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 24:35Speaker 01

  And, but then I was like, yeah, I said the same thing, wow. And then I was like, oh, of course he was told who's sitting, he was sitting with, right? So he picks up the conversation that we started three years earlier and nobody was privy to that conversation.

• 24:48Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 24:48Speaker 01

  And I was like, you know, I'm the memory, I, I need to know how you're doing this. And I think genius leaves clues when somebody does something magical, there's a method behind the magic. And, and he's telling me this story about, you know, his grandfather in Arkansas in the living room, telling stories to the kids. But after he would tell the stories, he would do something very specific and different. He would go to each child and quiz them to see if they were paying, paying attention. And, and it was more than that, but when he explained this to me, I felt this kind of ease and also unease where, have you ever been with somebody and they're like talking, you feel like you're the only person that exists?

• 25:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:27Speaker 01

  They're like, they're so present.

• 25:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:29Speaker 01

  And politics aside, you know, most people would say Clinton, you know, strong charisma, great communicator, you know, you know, a great, you know, and he's got an incredible memory. And I think this powerful presence that he has with people, his incredible memory, his powerful presence comes from being powerfully present. And it's not reserved, right? To just an elite few, anybody could train that, but we have to really just be with somebody, you know?

• 25:56Speaker 00

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

• 26:06Speaker 01

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

• 26:24Speaker 00

  Silent?

• 26:25Speaker 01

  And I think that's, that's the key, you know? The great, a great book, Dr. Stephen Covey, I mentioned a lot of books, Seven Habits Highly Effective People. You know, but one of them, one of the habits is seek first to understand, then to be understood. But in order to understand, we have to be really present, you know, with the person.

• 26:42Speaker 00

  I love that.

• 26:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:44Speaker 00

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

• 26:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, and people could also check themselves also.

• 26:55Speaker 01

  Was it a pink flamingo?

• 26:57Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  And then it was the Tesla key.

• 27:02Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 27:04Speaker 01

  Blueberry muffin. I call blueberries brain.

• 27:06Speaker 00

  This is insane.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  I call, I call them brain berries, you know, without a doubt. Golden microphone.

• 27:12Speaker 00

  Uh huh, that's correct.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  And then you have your broken iPhone and you have that big red.

• 27:18Speaker 01

  What do they call those, those women's shoe? The high heels?

• 27:23Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 27:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:24Speaker 00

  Well, it was one high heel.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, one, absolutely. There's one. And then there's a, there's a big brain balloon. Was, was that, was that a brain balloon?

• 27:35Speaker 00

  Brain shaped balloon, very close.

• 27:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, and the $100 bill.

• 27:40Speaker 00

  Correct.

• 27:41Speaker 01

  And then you have that really small little treadmill for the mouse.

• 27:45Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  And then you have your.

• 27:47Speaker 00

  Mini treadmill, yeah.

• 27:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then you have your diamond notebook.

• 27:50Speaker 00

  Wow. Wow.

• 27:53Speaker 01

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

• 28:14Speaker 00

  What are you doing? Are you visualizing it?

• 28:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then like, once you understand your memory works, you could, you know, you could even, if, if like, you know, we're here in Austin and I'm, I'm here pretty frequent, you know, if I, we see each other at a restaurant, 30 days from now, let's say, he could say Jim needs to remember that list and also remember most of that list without even rehearsing it once.

• 28:35Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 28:36Speaker 01

  You know, and then, or I could, or I'll do it backwards and go diamond notebook, mini, mini treadmill, you know, $100 bill, brain shaped balloon, and you know, the, the red high heel, that's really big in my, my mind. But once you understand your, your, how, how it works, then you can work. And this is the kind of stuff, don't you wish this had been so useful back in school?

• 28:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:57Speaker 01

  You know, if you learn in school, how easy it would remember the periodic table or whatever. We had to remember history or anything. And, you know, but, but imagine applying something that for something that's random and not really that interesting to something that you are interested in, that's very relevant to your life, you're going to remember it even easier because it, you know, has a point.

• 29:16Speaker 00

  I remember in fourth grade, a Spanish teacher told us the countries and capitals of Central America and South America. And till this day, I can still say like Caracas, Venezuela, Bogota, Colombia, Quito, Ecuador. And I could just list them all off, but I couldn't tell you the, the capitals and states of America.

• 29:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 29:35Speaker 00

  You know, because I didn't learn it in that way. So what are you exactly doing? Like, what are you doing to, to, to recall that?

• 29:42Speaker 01

  And, and I'm curious because I would love wherever you're consuming this, maybe you could post a comment or something to see how well people did.

• 29:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:50Speaker 01

  You know, like if people are willing to share, I could teach you 20 different ways to memorize that list.

• 29:55Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 29:56Speaker 01

  You know, and after a while, like I can, I remember names without trying because once you know how to type, you know how to type. Right? Once you know how to drive a car, you know, how to drive a car, you know, maybe it takes a few weeks or 30 days. Once you know how to tie your shoes, you know, tie your shoes, memory is a skill, you know? And so once you know how to do it, you know, you could, you start to, and your confidence goes up and you could just do it more and more and you challenge yourself. But you know, I could teach 20 different ways of remembering this list. One way that people wanted to is make a story out of it if they wanted to, right? Right? They could, they could start with the pink flamingo, right? And then all of a sudden, pink flamingo is going into a Tesla car.

• 30:38Speaker 00

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• 31:19Speaker 00

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• 31:37Speaker 00

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• 32:21Speaker 00

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• 32:37Speaker 00

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• 33:21Speaker 00

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• 33:33Speaker 01

  The red high heel, you could put that into the story also as well. And imagine that red high heel, you know, that's coming from the iPhone or whatever. Maybe imagine on the broken iPhone, there's an image on there of that red high heel, but the screen is broken, right? And then imagine it comes out of the phone tied to, you know, a brain-shaped balloon going up in the sky, and you bribe somebody $100 to get that balloon for you. And so you're attaching the $100 to it, and somebody wants to, is gonna go get that balloon, but there's, maybe it's like a little mouse going on a little mini treadmill going towards it. And if you think if it makes you laugh, it makes it memorable, right?

• 34:15Speaker 00

  Cause emotion helps, right?

• 34:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, emotion helps a lot. You know, and so that little mouse is on the treadmill now, obviously making a lot of traction. You know, and then, you know, from there, he's taking some notes in his, you know, his diamond notebook.

• 34:30Speaker 00

  Cute.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  And that's just one way, but there's certainly a lot of other ways. But, and as I go through it and I just talking about it, some people listen and not be able to do it because they just listen. But if they actually went through and imagined that little story and made up their own, which is even better if you make up your own, that would be something that's really simple to do. And then, by the way, those 10 things could have been cues or key words for a speech, you know, as an example.

• 34:56Speaker 00

  Oh, that's really smart, like so that you can remember your talking points.

• 34:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, like imagine, like you chose that pink flamingo because it represented a key idea. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. In a talk, you're in a toast at a wedding or something like that.

• 35:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:10Speaker 01

  You know, or a certain feature. Then it gets, you know, or maybe you want to talk about, you know, something that embody around Tesla, around energy, you know, technology, innovation, whatever it happens to be, and use that as your second point for your speech.

• 35:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:26Speaker 01

  You know, and then maybe going there to, you know, a recipe or healthy eating or you want to remember blueberries as a good brain food.

• 35:34Speaker 00

  Are you visualizing it in your brain? Or are you like, are you visualizing the words themselves? Or like what the words represent?

• 35:41Speaker 01

  So people could do either one. Everybody's a little bit different. It's not how smart you are, it's how are you smart? Everyone learns a little bit different. Some people can visualize as well, or they don't think they can. And so those people could get more of a feeling for it and maybe hear the words, or maybe in different tones or tonalities or voices. Same thing with remember someone's name. You want to meet somebody named Matt, you can imagine them using their tie. Imagine you're at a networking event, or you're at a conference, you meet somebody, and it's really fast. Someone says, "Hi, my name is Matt", and you just imagine using their tie as like a doormat. And it's so silly, you would never do that.

• 36:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:19Speaker 01

  And, but what it does is it overcomes what I call the six-second syndrome. You know, somebody tells you their name, you have six seconds to do something with it. Otherwise, it's gone, right? The handshake breaks, name just falls right to the floor.

• 36:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:32Speaker 01

  This is giving you some mental glue to be able to store the information. And then, you know, later on, when you're saying goodbye, you see this person there, "Oh, I remember that tie. What was I doing? I was wiping my feet like a doormat. What's the person's name? Matt." And then, this is a way, remember I said you encode, you store, you retrieve? This is a way of encoding it in a way that's memorable, and it's stored right on the person, because the tie is the reminder, you know, as an example. And, but once you know the person's name is Matt, then the picture disappears. It was a means to an end.

• 37:02Speaker 00

  Just to remember his name.

• 37:04Speaker 01

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

• 37:22Speaker 00

  So are we just kind of creating a mini story around each word?

• 37:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, you think about how people remember things through history.

• 37:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:31Speaker 01

  Like, I mean, think about the parables from the Bible, like stories, and you think about why we use stories in business, right? Because they're vivid, and people could see themselves inside the story. And we're, so they did, they did a study called the Baker-Baker Paradox. You know, imagine we're in the studio and somebody walks in, they did this with the focus group. Somebody walks in and say, "Hi, my name is Mr. Baker", and then that, someone that would leave, somebody else would come in and say, "Hi, I am a baker", right? Somebody else come in saying, "Hi, I'm Miss Taylor", somebody else come, you know, leaves, somebody else comes in, "Hi, my name is Miss Taylor", right? And so, and so, and then they did that repeatedly, and then all of a sudden, they said, "Okay,

• 38:14Speaker 01

  which ones do you remember more of the names? And do you think they remember the name or the occupation?

• 38:22Speaker 00

  Probably the occupation.

• 38:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. And part of it is because when somebody says they're a baker...

• 38:27Speaker 00

  You imagine them like cooking and stuff.

• 38:29Speaker 01

  There's a story.

• 38:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:30Speaker 01

  Right? You probably know they wake up very early to be able to make, you know, make their bread. So there's a whole picture and image, and it makes it more memorable than a word that's abstract.

• 38:40Speaker 00

  Does it help, like, if you're meeting somebody at a networking event? Like, okay, that's Hala the podcaster? Or that's, and like, I'm just attaching something else to it?

• 38:49Speaker 01

  The more connections you make, like, some people will go, instead of seeing Matt, you know, so like Mark, I use a marker, put a check mark right on their forehead, and I'll just always remember that. And then it make me, if it makes me laugh or smile, then, you know, that's very, people could say that's very, you know, childlike, but, you know, who are the fastest learners? Like kids, they could learn musical instruments, languages, everything. And they make fun of names all the time. I mean, I know as a kid, my name was, you know, Quick is my real name. I didn't, it's not like a stage name. I didn't change it to my father's name, my grandfather's name. But people made, you know, Nestle Quick, or they call me Slow, but that's how kids learn naturally. So I'm not saying when I, for David, I use a slingshot for David and Goliath, right? To the nose. Now, I'm not sharing this with David, right? This is in the privacy of my own mind, right?

• 39:33Speaker 00

  That's just what you're doing.

• 39:33Speaker 01

  But some people could just, FDR would do this. He would walk around his office, President FDR, and his strategy was he went picture, turned the name into a picture, like Carol, singing Christmas Carol's are merry, getting married, or something like that. And some names, you come up with something that sounds like, like, have you ever forgot someone's name and you start going through the alphabet? Like, does it start with an A, a B?

• 39:57Speaker 00

  And then you get it eventually, usually.

• 39:59Speaker 01

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

• 40:41Speaker 01

  It just gives you more to remember than just, you know, a random word.

• 40:45Speaker 00

  Well, that was so impressive that you remembered that entire list. Like, I'm shocked. I wasn't sure if you were gonna be able to do it, but of course you are.

• 40:53Speaker 01

  But imagine being able to do that for what you read.

• 40:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:56Speaker 01

  You know, like, this is, again, random words that don't mean anything, you know, important to me. But imagine it's something you're studying that you want to learn, that you are interested in. You know, then it's even more exciting because you could use that information.

• 41:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, I totally agree.

• 41:10Speaker 01

  Or names or anything else.

• 41:12Speaker 00

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

• 41:22Speaker 01

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

• 41:45Speaker 00

  And you have a new book, Limitless Daily, that's gonna be out pretty soon.

• 41:48Speaker 01

  I'm so excited about this book.

• 41:49Speaker 00

  I don't even have a copy. We're only getting to talk about it at a high level, but...

• 41:53Speaker 01

  It is so amazing. I think here is like one of the most powerful, you know, brain hacks anybody could do. I love the science. So Limitless, I wrote in a couple of months, right? You know, it's my first book. I had 30 years of content, it was just really easy. Limitless took me a full year. And I started writing, as an entrepreneur, one of the things you need to do to be able to... Is to really manage your time, right? Manage your focus. And what uses up a lot of time and energy is switching from tasks like multitasking.

• 42:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:27Speaker 01

  Cause we're not actually multitasking, we're task switching. And every time you think you're on Slack and then do social media, you jump to this and that. We, we, number one, we lose time. Cause it could, it could take anywhere from five or 10 minutes to regain your focus. You know, on the new task. So we lose time. We're actually not gaining it. Second, we make more mistakes. I get to train some of the most amazing doctors worldwide. And do you know, like, like surgeons who try to multitask during operations will make more surgical errors. Right? I mean, think about texting and driving, right? There's gonna be more accidents. You can't do two cognitive activities well, you know, uh, because you're, you're switching tasks. And then finally you use a lot of energy, you know, when you're trying to multitask. You use a lot of blood glucose. Some people struggle with brain fog or mental fatigue in the afternoon.

• 43:13Speaker 01

  Check on that.

• 43:15Speaker 01

  But focus is your superpower. And the challenge is, is like, think about the words we use. Like there's, there's a financial part to focus. Like you pay attention.

• 43:26Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 43:26Speaker 01

  Right? Like what if tomorrow morning, all of you entrepreneurs, every single time you put your focus to something, you had to take out your credit card or debit card or Apple Pay and you had to, you know, put it into Facebook every single time or Instagram or how like you would treat your focus.

• 43:41Speaker 00

  Totally different.

• 43:42Speaker 01

  Right? And so, you know, instead of like wasting that currency, that money, you know, you would invest it. And then so how are you investing your focus? How are you saving and protecting your focus? You know, like you would do, like you would do money. And so that, that's one thing. But I think one of the biggest things people could do for an entrepreneur, it's not about time management. Cause that's the only thing that's equal. Not everybody here, everybody here watching, like we all have different incomes. We all have different networks and connections. We all have different levels of education, whatever. What's consistent, 24 hours in a day.

• 44:16Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 44:16Speaker 01

  It's not even about time management. It's about mind management. It's about priority management. So the most important thing is to keep the most important thing, the most important thing. Right? Everything I filter through, even in a world of AI, you know, as opportunities come or challenges or whatever. Like for me, it's, uh, this is my filter. If it's not a heck yes, like then it's heck no. Right? So I'm like, right now, there's nowhere else I'd rather be like, cause I'm right here. Because like it was a yes, right? And, and so I could appreciate that some fully present. I'm not like, or somewhere else.

• 44:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:49Speaker 01

  The other thing is I, I filter like, I think that if this isn't help me grow, glow or flow, I say no. Doesn't help me grow, like grow my brand, grow my business, grow my personal development. If it doesn't help me flow, like be more effective. And if it does help me glow, like maybe feel good, then, then I say no. And I'm, I know, like in the beginning, especially for entrepreneurs, right? You have to feed your business until it feeds you back.

• 45:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, you gotta take.

• 45:15Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 45:15Speaker 00

  You know?

• 45:16Speaker 01

  Right? And if you want, but I do really believe you want your business to grow or your bank to grow. Then we need to grow, especially, you know, our learnings.

• 45:23Speaker 00

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

• 45:48Speaker 01

  And because also we live in a world of distractions. So people's, people's focus, especially with short form content and everything. And I'm not even judging that because we use that, right? And technology allows this to happen, all of this, and be able to share our message and our impact at scale. So it's so very important. But what I'm saying is like, we could, we could train our focus. And you could train your focus like a muscle. Just like you could train your memory.

• 46:12Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 46:12Speaker 01

  You know, to be present. And that shows up in as an entrepreneur, because the, the enemy there is distraction. Right? There's so many things, shiny objects for an entrepreneur. You know, entrepreneur, ADD, you know, it's, it's, it's a challenge. But here, but here's, here's the hack. If you want to win the day, you have to win the first few minutes of the day. And what do I mean by that? And when we train your focus, when, when you wake up, there's a process that you go through called sleep inertia. Sleep inertia is the transition between the, the sleeping state to the awake, waking state. And there's certain things that come online. Your alertness comes online, your, your conscious awareness, your attention comes online. And your working memory, which is like your short-term memory is not even full yet. Because you haven't inputted anything in yet.

• 46:56Speaker 01

  That time is, that short window for when you wake up, here's what happens. The mental input that you bring in at that time has a disproportionate effect on the rest of the day. So what I mean by that is that first few handful of minutes, first thing in the morning, has a disproportionate effect on things like your mood for the day.

• 47:19Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 47:20Speaker 01

  What you're gonna focus on the day. So the things that you look at first is gonna determine like, like a large disproportionate influence on like, what you're gonna see and focus on. Also how you frame situations. So we go through situations throughout the day, difficulties, demands, whatever. And whether or not we're having more of an empowering framing on it, like this is a good thing or bad thing or useful thing, or look for an opportunity, is a lot of it is preset first thing that morning. Now, what do most people do first thing when they wake up? They, they grab their device.

• 47:52Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 47:53Speaker 01

  Right?

• 47:53Speaker 00

  They're looking at their phone.

• 47:53Speaker 01

  And I just saw this Facebook reminder from over eight years ago. Simon Sinek and I have a video has 37 million views on, on Facebook. And it was just talking about the, the effect of our devices, especially first thing in the morning. If we're that impressionable. Because what happens is you pick that, you pick up your phone and that window, which has a disproportionate effect on the rest of the day. What are you wiring your brain for? Distraction, number one. Every like, share, comment, cat video, ring ping ding, app notification, whatever it is.

• 48:23Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 48:23Speaker 01

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

• 48:52Speaker 00

  Totally, or it hijacks the hour.

• 48:54Speaker 01

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

• 49:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:35Speaker 01

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

• 50:20Speaker 01

  you have a disproportionate advantage throughout the day.

• 50:23Speaker 00

  That's so good.

• 50:23Speaker 01

  And I, what I did was I was, I would wake up and write. I would think about what am I facing today? And any of the themes that everyone could relate to procrastination, maybe a lack of focus today, imposter syndrome, frustration, overload, too much opportunity, whatever it happens to be. And I read on that and I researched the science behind it. I give them one tactic they could do. So in five minutes, first thing in the morning, it sets you up to win and be more limitless that day. So it's a limitlessdaily.com is where people find out more information.

• 50:54Speaker 00

  So cool. I can't wait for that book.

• 50:56Speaker 01

  Oh, I can't, this is like my best work.

• 50:57Speaker 00

  That's gonna be so good. Attention is really the new IQ. Attention is really what's gonna differentiate people with all this technology and all this AI. It's really about focus and, and honing your focus. I was reflecting about that, even with like, let's just take the example of me studying for a podcast and how that's evolved over the years, right? When I first started my podcast, I had more time. I didn't have two companies. And I would study 20 hours per guest. I would listen to all their books. I would listen to all their interviews. I would take a whole week and study them. There was no video, so it was audio only. So I could have like lots of notes and like I'd prepare like crazy. Then like as I had a company like that had to change.

• 51:41Speaker 00

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

• 52:24Speaker 00

  of the interview for like while I'm getting ready and stuff, I'm just listening to everything to actually absorb what I did.

• 52:30Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 52:31Speaker 00

  You know, so that sort of helps, but I still feel like how do I like? I'd love to hear your opinion on collaborating with AI and how to make sure we're not outsourcing too much with AI.

• 52:43Speaker 01

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

• 53:24Speaker 01

  Right? As opposed to entrepreneurs bringing clarity and discernment, it'll give them, it'll scale that also. Like AI is no longer a competitive advantage because everybody has access to it. We all have access to it, right? Somebody could use AI to write a great social media post, wonderful. Somebody else could use AI to build the next billion dollar venture. You know, and so it's it's the human intelligence that you're bringing to it that determines the performance and the ultimate result. It's like I get to work with a lot of athletes, the the NFL, the NHL, the MLB, F1 drivers, right? With reaction time, thinking speed. Like, let's think about it like a a race car, a multi-million dollar piece of technology. It's a performance tool. That's AI.

• 54:07Speaker 01

  But it's the driver that determines its performance, right? Because everybody could have access, you know, all of them have great cars. But it's the driver, it's there. So I feel like my work is whether I teach focus, memory, flow, habit, brain optimization, sleep, whatever, accelerated learning, speed reading, memory, all the stuff that we have on our online academy. It's meant to enhance human intelligence. I I really do believe human intelligence is more important than artificial intelligence. Because again, it's AI could do amazing computation, pattern recognition, right? But ultimately, human beings, they decide what things mean out of the data. They they decide what to focus on on the data. They decide what what to do with that data in terms of next steps.

• 54:52Speaker 01

  So it's the humans that are gonna like, it's like Iron Man suit. It's it's like AI. But Tony Stark is just bringing a lot to it that he'll get a bigger result. And so my focus, I feel like in a world of, you know, rapid change, accelerated technology and AI, I I just don't want the dependence, right? Everyone's heard about the MIT study where students who are writing essays at college, they, you know, they broke them down to ABC groups, A, ChatGPT, they used. B was Google, they use Google, and C, no technology. And when they tested them and I'm summarizing this, you know, group A didn't remember anything. Just similar to the experience with podcasts, they didn't remember anything because they didn't have to work for it.

• 55:38Speaker 01

  Right? And also, when they scanned brains, like the ones that actually did the work, they remembered. And also, not only that, but but more of their cognitive networks were just activated, right? And so I wrote about this in 2020, when the book came out, Limitless, I called it digital deduction. So digital dementia is a high reliance in technology to remember things. Your to do's, your calendar, your phone numbers, like, nobody wants to remember 500 phone numbers. But it should be very concerning that we've lost a billion remember one phone number or a PIN number or a passcode or something. Have you ever read a page in a book at the end and just forgot what you just read? Right? That that's that's the kind of things you want entrepreneurs to be better at. But digital deduction is the high reliance technology to think for us. I mean, even think about GPS.

• 56:23Speaker 01

  Like, there was a time when we need to use our visual spatial intelligence instead of using a piece of technology to tell us where and when to turn.

• 56:29Speaker 00

  Now we can't go anywhere without it. Yeah.

• 56:31Speaker 01

  And so that's the dependence on it. So this is the thing, your brain, like even my shirt says, use it, right? Use it or lose it. So the idea here is your brain is like a muscle. It's an organ that acts like a muscle. You use it or lose it. But if you put your arm in a cast for a a year, it wouldn't grow stronger. It wouldn't even stay the same.

• 56:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:47Speaker 01

  It would weaken and atrophy.

• 56:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:49Speaker 01

  That's digital dimension, digital deduction. So the idea here is I'm all for using technology, you know, but if it's doing all the thinking, so, you know, let it think, but let you, but we should think too.

• 57:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:01Speaker 01

  Right? Let it help you to remember something, but you should still remember things also, you know, and so you know, the problem is when we grab technology out of habit and and without intention or without very like, we give our our minds prompts all the time. Like, I'm I'm very efficient with AI because I've I've been giving my HI a lot of prompts, like, you know, with the training, you know, the questions that we ask. You know, like questions like, you know, I use this all the time in AI is like, you know, explain this to me like I'm I'm 10 years old. Right? That'll be a way of summarizing difficult conversations with a podcast guest or summarize this book certainly, right? Or also, you know, propose questions like, you know, give me five questions that this person's never been asked for public, you know, about publicly

• 57:43Speaker 01

  that my specific audience that we've trained, you know, would would would really resonate with.

• 57:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:48Speaker 01

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

• 58:06Speaker 00

  So using AI to actually make sure that you know the material too. I do that too.

• 58:10Speaker 01

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

• 58:52Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 58:52Speaker 01

  And they mention AI and then like there's all

• 58:54Speaker 00

  People are really upset at like

• 58:56Speaker 01

  And they're booing and they're like all of that.

• 58:57Speaker 00

  Really big movement out there where people are really anti AI.

• 59:01Speaker 01

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

• 59:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's gonna happen.

• 59:23Speaker 01

  And so I I feel like AI is is a tool that can magnify and multiply. But it only magnifies, multiplies and amplifies what we bring to it.

• 59:31Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 59:32Speaker 01

  And so I feel like even more than ever is it important to to work on our own intelligence and see what we bring to it.

• 59:38Speaker 00

  I totally agree. I mean, like, I feel like we've all been kind of like like AI has just been sort of thrown at us and we we've all had to experiment with it. I think it's good to kind of fail on your own with it like I did because you just like learn the hard way. And then you're able to kind of guide also like your employees of how to use it better, something that I'm kind of going through right now. I've I've implemented AI. I have 60 people on my team. And so we did this whole AI training and everybody has this program that basically uses Claude and ingests their email and their Slack and everyone's like using AI really well. But at the same time, now everything I'm getting feels so AI generated. And I'm like, you guys need to still use your brains. Like, you know, this is not going to cut it like my my

• 1:00:22Speaker 00

  so many of my teams sent me a sales deck that I completely had to redo this weekend because it just was so obvious. And like, she's so smart. And I'm like, this is not the advice that you would be giving. And like, this is way too AI. And she's like, well, it really wasn't. And I was like, it was like, because I can tell, right? So what kind of human intelligence, like what are the characteristics that we should really focus on? And we talked about attention and memory, which I think just being charismatic is going to help people in the future. What else in terms of human intelligence HI should we be concentrating on?

• 1:00:58Speaker 01

  So what makes us human in a world of AI? I think this is the conversation. I think we're living in the conversation of our time right now is how do we become how do we come deeply human in a world of in an age of AI, right? Where everything feels artificial or there's that AI slop that you're referencing, like this feels like AI and people could detect it, right?

• 1:01:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01:20Speaker 01

  I think where we can lean into a number of things, curiosity. Right? Curiosity sparks wonder. It asks better questions, not only of AI, but of ourselves also as well. I would say leadership is huge, you know, our ability to influence and impact people around us to inspire them. I think that's critical. That's a human quality. I would say, let's say, emotional intelligence. So very important because I think EQ is so important for interpersonal, like EQ. Leadership is maybe external, emotional intelligence, self-reflection, right?

• 1:02:00Speaker 01

  Be able to look within, to be able to reflect instead of react and to have some kind of emotional regulation. You know, to be able to to have, you know, that with others. Adaptability, very, it's I I think it's human beings, that's our superpower, ability to adapt. I think in a rapidly changing world, our ability to learn, unlearn, relearn, to be able to adapt, learn new skills, that everything is figureoutable is so very important. You know, also, also as well, these are things that are that I would love for people to to lean into into into more.

• 1:02:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:33Speaker 01

  You know, it's not always taught, you know, I mean, you could think about, you know, you can make even make an acronym. You make a word like human, you know, H is heart for the emotional intelligence, you know, part. And you could kind of make like a whole thing, but it's whether you use acronyms and mnemonics or like these stories. There are things that I feel that, again, that what's what we bring to the AI that would make it just like it's a technology, it's always been like that with technology.

• 1:02:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:59Speaker 01

  Right? But my my thing is not to be dependent on it, meaning that an elevator is a form of technology. If you if your office is on the fourth floor, your apartment's on the fourth floor, yeah, an elevator is very convenient. But then you don't get your steps in.

• 1:03:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:03:13Speaker 01

  You know, if you take a a lift to go to the bank eight blocks away, very convenient, it's a form of technology, but then we don't get our steps in, right? And so I feel like every day we can make it, every moment we we have a chance because we can make a new choice. And so I like the balance of using it, but don't let it use you and not. Let our own gifts kind of atrophy.

• 1:03:35Speaker 00

  I want to bring it back to something that you just mentioned where you saw these commencement speeches. And when people bring up AI, they start to boo. I was actually pretty shocked because for the last like two years, I've been talking about AI on the podcast. And I'm kind of in this like entrepreneurship bubble where we embrace AI. We're excited about AI. We see the opportunity. And of course, there's some bad things with the environment for sure that they need to figure out. But I saw so much social content where people were just like bad mouthing Mel Robbins, who I love, and Reese Witherspoon and all these folks for telling women to start using AI and kind of making people know that women are less likely to use AI and why women really need to lean into it so we don't get left behind.

• 1:04:20Speaker 00

  And there was so much pushback from women who don't want to use AI and refuse to use it. And it just made me feel really sad because I just feel like all these people are going to be left behind because they think they're doing the righteous thing by not using AI. When in reality, I think that's going to really hurt them in the future. I personally feel that way. How do you feel about that?

• 1:04:43Speaker 01

  The environmental concerns are, you know, that is, I mean, that could be the whole podcast on itself. So, you know, if we, to have the conversation, if we separated that, you know, or talk about it. Technology has always been a tool like the internet, right? Like a smartphone. We can't put it back into the box, right? That genie is out of the bottle. So it's going to be here. It's, it's a challenge, just like with anything that we use.

• 1:05:10Speaker 01

  You know, obviously it'd be better if it was, you know, net, you know, net zero, you know, in terms of the impact that the imprint it has on the environment. So that, that, that aside, you know, I feel like, yeah, some people are. I mean, think about the unknown, right? The unknown in the mind, the nervous system wants to protect itself, right? And doesn't want to waste a lot of energy. Anything that's new, like starting a business or talking to that person, you know, that fear that we have, that amygdala kind of fight or flight response is to kind of protect us, right? It's to kind of keep things efficient, stable. Because change, what people don't talk about in the entrepreneur neural space is that change is scary. Right?

• 1:05:54Speaker 01

  And it could be AI, right? It could be the environment. It could be politics, political change, it could be market change, in demand, supply, all these different things. You know, threats, competitive threats or whatever. Change can be scary. Growth can be hard. It's hard to build two businesses to do what you've done, you know, with the podcast for the last eight years. People don't see what goes on behind the scenes. But nothing is as scary and hard as being stuck somewhere you don't, you don't belong. And so I don't know who needs to hear this, but I think life is hard for one of two reasons. Either where we, we leave our comfort zone. You know, we take our business next level. We ask for the investment, whatever it happens to be, right? Or life's difficult because we stay in our comfort zone, then life gets very, very difficult. You know, and AI is very disruptive, you know?

• 1:06:39Speaker 01

  It, you know, it changes people's, it's not even just a different of workflow. It's also challenging and threatening people's identity.

• 1:06:48Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:06:49Speaker 01

  Like who they are, right? Like if somebody, as a random example, like if somebody's a, an artist, right? And AI is doing all this stuff, or someone's an attorney and you can have access to all the legal advice you need, or a therapist, or you name it. Like it can be very threatening when we spent our whole life preparing for, you know, to be this person. This is who we are. And if a machine could do that, you know, what does that make me? You know, much less our self-confidence and self-esteem or self-worth in a world of being relevant. So that, that, that could be a friction for people adopting this. You know, also I also feel like, you know, I'm leaning into human intelligence, you know, regardless of what.

• 1:07:29Speaker 01

  I've always done that regardless of the technology, whether it's AI or something else, you know, as it evolves, just because it's, it's our agency, you know? Like I really do believe, even in the book, when people see it, it's purple. And by the way, I have 5,000 books and like I, there's no purple books. So from my standpoint, like, you know, I want it to stand on shelves, but also when people, it would stand on people's minds. Also, purple psychology, the words that always came up in color psychology, sovereignty, agency, like an entrepreneur.

• 1:08:02Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:08:03Speaker 01

  You're taking responsibility for their, you know, the direction of their life and their, and wisdom. So I think part of it is the unknown that people are threatened to. I think also not just unknown of what's happening outside, but, you know, their identity and self-perception is also threatening. And certainly there are other concerns, like, you know, I go back to the environment for sure. So I, I think it's great that people could voice their concerns and we have dialogue about this, right? Discourse about it. This is what, and, and it's the challenging, like, like I also was surprised when I, when people started sending me those commencement speeches. Because the other thing is with this algorithm, I rarely see people that I follow on social media. I'm not on social media a whole lot.

• 1:08:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:08:44Speaker 01

  But I rarely see the people I follow. I just see whatever I engage with. So we all are training that algorithm.

• 1:08:50Speaker 00

  To show us what we want, yeah.

• 1:08:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, so there, there is an echo chamber there. So like in entrepreneurship, everyone's a pro AIs, everyone's an AI expert and so on. And then, but you know, a lot of people, that's not where most people are living, you know, certainly. And, but I'm sure people felt the same way about cars.

• 1:09:08Speaker 00

  They did.

• 1:09:09Speaker 01

  You know, and assembly lines, you know, and, and they will about, you know, self-driving cars and everything else.

• 1:09:16Speaker 00

  And we just got to adapt.

• 1:09:17Speaker 01

  And that's the key.

• 1:09:18Speaker 00

  We just have to adapt.

• 1:09:19Speaker 01

  And that's what human beings, when they lean into it, that, that's why I think all learning is all adaption. Your ability to adapt, you know, in new environments, to be able to learn, unlearn, relearn new skills, new ideas, new systems is, is, makes us valuable, you know, today. And not everyone will do it, but that's the opportunity for people that, that do. So, you know, I look at AI like a lot of tools, you know, it's using it. I see it in some more than artificial intelligence, augmented intelligence. It's a partner for us to use. And you can use it in, I mean, there are limitless ways to be able to use it, you know, for, as. And, and level, it also levels the playing field, you know? I mean, I wish when I got started three or four years ago, there wasn't even the internet, you know?

• 1:10:03Speaker 00

  It's easy to be an entrepreneur right now.

• 1:10:05Speaker 01

  My goodness.

• 1:10:06Speaker 00

  Build your whole team with Claude.

• 1:10:08Speaker 01

  I remember building our first course program in 2006, 2007. Like, it was like, you know, much camera equipment, everything else I had to do.

• 1:10:15Speaker 00

  Developers and all these things.

• 1:10:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, was tens of thousands of dollars back then, you know? And so, yeah, it's, it's exciting time. So I'm, I'm, I'm more of an optimist, you know, for, for things, but I'm also a realist, you know? So we do the best we can with all we have, you know? And hopefully, you know, leave the, the world a better, brighter place.

• 1:10:35Speaker 00

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

• 1:11:20Speaker 00

  I find myself even like using two computers and like running an AI prompt and then doing something else, checking my AI prompt. And, and then I realized like this is probably not effective, right? So just help us understand as we close out this interview, how can we retain our focus in this era of just so much distraction?

• 1:11:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. What I'm going to say is going to be really simple and I'm not even suggesting it's easy. But, and take this with a grain of salt to whoever's listening to this, like, an entrepreneur or any individual, you can't be upset by the results you didn't get from the work you didn't do. And if you're spending eight hours doom scrolling and rotting your brain and then have the audacity to complain that I went through this course or I listened to this, I have this mentor and a coach and you're not doing it, like, I think people need to work and to the results speak for themselves. And I'm, I've gone through this path. We, we have a number of businesses, you know, and I advise some of the biggest ones. And I'm, and I'm just saying, every day we have a chance because we have a choice.

• 1:12:22Speaker 01

  It is still a choice, but if, but if we repeatedly doom scroll and we know we're doing it, then it is a choice. Right? And so I'm not saying, we've all watched Social Dilemma and all, we know that there are billions of dollars being put into these platforms with the top neuroscientists, behavioral, behavioral scientists that make this addictive.

• 1:12:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:12:42Speaker 01

  Right? And we all have heard stories about the, a lot of these founders that they won't let their kids on these platforms. You know, and we know that if there's not a product there, then we are the product that they're selling to advertisers. We all know this and I, we advertise, so I probably stalk a lot of you with our content and our, and our, our courses. So it's a tool that could be used for, in our opinion, to be able to, to impact. So brain rot's a real deal, right? If you're feeding, we just talked about your brain and how it's being wired by our devices. And you could scroll to infinity. And that's fine. Who am I to judge if somebody wants to do that and do that, that's your prerogative. But if there's a gap between where you are and where you want to be, you know, in your business or your bank account, or the impact, or income, or influence,

• 1:13:24Speaker 01

  and we're spending a third of our day like on, on those devices without any kind of results, then I would question how much you really want this. And I feel, I still go back to agency and responsibility. You know, years ago, I got to introduce two of my superheroes together. It was Richard Branson and Stan Lee, Stan Lee, like the late Stan Lee who created all the Marvel characters. And they wanted, they both mentioned each other, they want to meet each other. So we, you know, we go to dinner and I, I'm in the car. And I asked Stan, I was like, you created all these epic heroes. Who's your favorite? And he says, Jim, Iron Man. And, and then he said, Jim, who's your favorite? And he had, I posted this on social media, in the backseat, he had a Spider-Man tie. So he's a Spider-Man.

• 1:14:05Speaker 01

  And within his iconic voice with a pause, he goes, with great power comes great responsibility, right? And maybe because I hit my head too much, I tend to sometimes reverse what I read or see or hear. And I, I said, you're right, with great power comes great responsibility, Stan. And the opposite is also true. With great responsibility comes great power. When we take responsibility for something, we have great power. So I don't think we have to be super hard on ourselves. I think when we're compassionate, studies done in self compassion say, when you don't beat yourself up, when you're kind to yourself, you're more likely to make a positive change and follow through. So it's like you missed your workout, you don't beat yourself up, you say, hey, I'm human. I had a lot of kind of really hard day and you're more likely to follow through as opposed to like, you know, be a critic for yourself.

• 1:14:48Speaker 01

  Same thing with doom scrolling, you know? And I would say like, the first place to change is, it has to start with awareness. You know, you look, you look at your screen time on certain devices and you can't deny that. You know, and then you say, is this getting me the results that I want?

• 1:15:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:15:04Speaker 01

  And if it's not, then you make a choice and it's your, it's their choice, their responsibility. They could either continue doing that and that's fine, that's their choice. But if they're looking to create something that requires time, energy, talent, you know, I would think like, oh, how do I repurpose this into getting what I want? And it's hard. I'm not saying it's change is easy, but if it was easy, like everyone would just have like these great businesses and everything.

• 1:15:29Speaker 00

  And part of it is changing your identity around it, correct? Because you are responsible to kind of.

• 1:15:34Speaker 01

  It is.

• 1:15:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:15:35Speaker 01

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

• 1:16:19Speaker 01

  Charles Duhigg, all the best on our podcast. You know, like it's, it's environmental design, you can control your environment. Like, and I'm not saying this is easy, but like, don't have your phone by your nightstand, put it in your, in your bathroom. The first principle of environmental design is you want to make what's good for you easier and you want to make things that are not good for you harder. Like you're not gonna snack, if you don't have the junk food in your home, you're not gonna, you're changing your environment. It's not gonna make it easy, right? If you take the app and you had to log in every single time into your, into yours apps or reinstall it, it's not gonna be easy, it's not gonna be worth it. And that's how you change that. And then your identity changes once your behavior changes. Because you create evidence that you are the person that you say you are.

• 1:17:02Speaker 01

  And I, I think that's so very important, you know, that you are, you don't see yourself as this, a procrastinator or whatever it is, you see yourself as somebody who gets things done. And you create evidence, like real world evidence that, you know, validates that. But I would say we make a choice, like there are only four choices you can make, right? Again, life is a letter C between B and D. B is birth, D is death, life, C, choice. We always have that choice, that's the sum total of everything. And you're only four choices you can make to make, make your business better, your brain better, your body better, your life better. Stop something, start something, do less of something, do more of something. That's it. Cause the fifth thing is do nothing, that's insane and expecting different results. So you stop, stop checking your phone first thing in the morning.

• 1:17:44Speaker 01

  Start a meditative process which trains your focus. So you're not gonna be as addicted and you know, you can pull your focus back when you need to. Do less of something, do less binge watching stuff or doom scrolling and do more movement, right? Like it's just, it's so simple, I'm not saying easy.

• 1:18:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:18:03Speaker 01

  But it is so simple, like we know what to do, we're not doing what we know. And like common sense is not common practice. That's why these conversations are so important, because who's, who's talking about these kind of things, right? That gives people like some insight and some inspiration to say like, I'm gonna make a new choice today. And just, if you're going this way, you take, like every morning, for example, when, the reason why this book is so important, I think, and that special time was disproportionate time.

• 1:18:26Speaker 00

  That was one of my favorite things that we learned today.

• 1:18:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, cause when you wake up, you're getting into an airplane metaphorically and you're, you're going through the day to a destination. Now, like the first thing, like when you get in a plane, they set the course to go to the city. If you're off course just 1%, over time, over the length of that flight or that 24 hours in that day, you could end up in a different city or country, just a 1% shift. And sometimes when you get in that plane, you maybe you're the passenger and there's turbulence. What's the turbulence? It's distraction, it's your phone, it's energy vampires, it's other people's expectations, right? Shakes it up. Or some people are allowing the plane to be hijacked and they're just taking that person who's lean, is just directing your course to wherever they want it to go.

• 1:19:12Speaker 01

  You know, my work with this book is like, hey, let's walk to the cockpit together. You're sitting down, you are the pilot of your mind today and we're gonna set the course of where we're gonna go. Like, like, for example, like that, that window again, that you get disproportionate amount of like results for the rest of the day, but the mental input, same thing with physical input. If, if you woke up and the first thing you did was eat a bunch of junk food and donuts or anything else, first thing you do.

• 1:19:36Speaker 00

  Glucose roller coaster.

• 1:19:37Speaker 01

  And then that would have disproportionately affect the rest of your day. Your focus, your mood, how you feel about situations, because you're in that crummy mood. I mean, think about like the mental diet that you have first thing in the morning.

• 1:19:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:19:49Speaker 01

  You know, people wouldn't doubt it. So like, like, why would you start your day with confusion and doom scrolling and violence and leads and leads and like everything, comparison and all the other stuff.

• 1:20:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:20:02Speaker 01

  Right? And, but we choose to do that because we're letting the technology use us and then we become the tool. And I don't, I don't know, maybe I'm a little bit, you know, passionate about this because I, I see the effects on mental health, you know, especially for younger generations. You know, they're scoring less in aptitude tests academically also, but mental health, you know, is surpassed like, can't offer the biggest challenge that people are facing.

• 1:20:28Speaker 00

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

• 1:20:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. And again, I'm not who, you know, I'm not any more important to people to say that this is important or not. So people can decide what's important, you know? Like for, for me, I think it's, all that could be important and, and it is. But there's gotta be some kind of stopgap in terms of where you can't possibly.

• 1:21:07Speaker 00

  Cause they only have so much mental bandwidth, right?

• 1:21:09Speaker 01

  And then the result, the result is this burnout, you know, this digital depression, this, like all the, the brain rot, everything else like that. So it's interesting, there's this dichotomy, polarity where, you know, sometimes you put limits to become more limit less. Just like as an entrepreneur, like, or even writing this book, I had a deadline that I had to hit. So when there's a constraint of time or money or whatever, then you, what does it do? It forces human intelligence, it forces curiosity, it forces concentration, it forces commitment to be able to do that. So a limit makes you more limit less, go beyond what you normally do. Cause it's just gonna fill the space. If I had two years to do it, that would take two years, right? But I would say putting borders and boundaries around your mental health, your time, the things that you value,

• 1:21:51Speaker 01

  I think is, is, that would be my focus, because I can't affect, if people choose to put their, their attention to things, I would just say as long as you're doing something about it, because otherwise, what are we doing? Then we're indulging and getting in the storyline, but if we're not doing something about it, then the net effect is nothing, just, because we could spend an inordinate amount of time spiraling, you know, in our own mental health and challenges. I'm not saying turn a blind eye, but if you're gonna do that, then you might as well get, do something with that energy and that knowledge, you know? And it's, it's challenging for entrepreneurs, other people who take approach like, I can't change the personal economy, I can focus on my personal economy. I'm not gonna change the healthcare system, I can focus on my family's health, you know, and wellness also. And some people will take that approach.

• 1:22:36Speaker 01

  But I think we make the choices and that's the, you know, it is a system of control, because this technology could, it will eventually, you know, whether it controls us, but putting borders and boundaries and stopgaps, I think is important, especially around the things you value, your time, your energy, your emotions. You know, maybe there's some people in our lives that might not be nurturing to, you know, us and who we are at this point in time. But um, yeah, I think there's a lot of important things that are going on. I'm not saying don't focus on them, I'm just saying for what result, you know? But if you're gonna do something with it, yeah, please. We need more people are gonna do great things, you know, and, and help us in the situations that we're in, you know? And, but, but I know my energy, my time, for example, is fine, so I'm gonna focus on what I could control

• 1:23:19Speaker 01

  and where I can impact the most, you know, for things. But it doesn't mean, you know, I like to pay attention, I like to know what's going on. But also there's come a point where I can't pay attention to everything.

• 1:23:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, you don't need to pay attention for five hours a day.

• 1:23:33Speaker 01

  Right? Yeah, I could, I feel you.

• 1:23:36Speaker 00

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

• 1:24:01Speaker 01

  Okay, so let's go back to that. Even if you don't read limitless daily in that window, first thing in the morning, which would be, which would be great, a gratitude practice will put you in that state, right? People could list three things that they're most grateful for, come from that place, because that'll set the tone for the rest of the day. They'll, they'll tend to see things that they're more gratitude, you know, more grateful for, right? And which leads to more opportunities. I think if anyone wants to feel wealthy, just count all the things you have in your life that, that money can't buy, right? There's so many like things, like we wouldn't trade, you know, maybe some of your senses or some of your, whatever, for amount of money and that's, that's a good place to come from, that we were, we are already blessed. If you're listening to this, able to watch this, you're probably more abundant than 99% of the population. The other thing you could do is like, I do this thought experiment where I'll sit in bed

• 1:24:46Speaker 01

  and I'll imagine in those first few minutes, fast forward, I'll do this mental experiment where I'll travel through time and I'll imagine myself getting into bed that night. And maybe somebody asks me, or my wife asks me like, how was your day? And I was like, today was amazing. Oh my God, like da, da, da. And I asked myself, what had to happen in order for me to feel that way? And I think of three things personally, three things professionally, and it doesn't have to be huge things. Three things personally, three things professionally, and those six things become my focus for the day. That becomes this, like, I'm getting on the plane, these are the things I want to be able to hit, because I'm not gonna get through that 200 to do list, right? And none of them are relevant. So I think about things that, that, uh, that are lead dominos, that if I did that, it makes everything else.

• 1:25:32Speaker 01

  Easier. You know, I think a lot of the treasure entrepreneurs seek is hidden in the work that they're avoiding. I don't know who needs to hear this, but that conversation you need to have, or that step that you need to take, that commitment. But I would, I would plan with the end in mind. So, you know, instead of being reactive and then touching your phone, do something with that for a few minutes. And as I mentioned in the book, but you do a gratitude process, or think about your three most important things to achieve that day. And I wouldn't just be thinking about the end result. I'd be thinking about, like, I don't even, when I do goal setting, I do something called future episodic remembering, where my goal is so vivid, it's as if I'm remembering it happened, right? Like, I could, I could, I could imagine it as real as what I had for breakfast this

• 1:26:15Speaker 01

  morning, right? So there's, and that's one of the entries in the book, right? And so there's 366 of those in five minutes to just five extra day. But I would also, when you're thinking about that thing, like, when you're thinking about goal setting, I would think about not so much, I think people make the mistake of just obsessing about that goal and visualizing that goal, that and getting that award, or having to see that money in their bank account, whatever it is. I'd be obsessing, rehearsing what it took to get you there. What are the habits where it's naturally gonna happen?

• 1:26:41Speaker 00

  It's the daily, it's the daily differences that you make, not just the one thing.

• 1:26:45Speaker 01

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

• 1:27:26Speaker 01

  friction for me to do it, because I've just done it 100 times in my head, right? Like, I don't, like, I go on stages, I've been on 2,200 stages, quarter million people every single year as an introvert, you know, but I practice in my mind, like, 200,000 times, right? And so you, I think we want to get really, the other technique, the thing I would mention for people watching, besides using that high leverage time window, first thing in the morning, to do something, then touching your phone or whatever, I would be doing mental rehearsal around the habits that will get you where it's gonna happen naturally and effortlessly. It's like undeniable that this will happen. If you did this, I'd be rehearsing that.

• 1:28:08Speaker 00

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

• 1:28:18Speaker 01

  When we talk about the treasures of our life, that some of them can be financial, you know, certainly. Not everyone measures it based on, on things, and people sometimes get in depression of comparison online. And, you know, I just want to remind people, the grass is greener where you water it. And online, there's a lot of, there's a lot of artificial turf. You know, there's a lot of filters being used, so it's not always what we see, that we're comparing our lives, you know, to something, or somebody else. In terms of profiting, in terms of my professional life, it's all about this book. You know, this book has the potential to reach a lot of people, even millions more. This book,

• 1:29:02Speaker 01

  everyone was asking after Limitless, which is like dense, like, how to learn, it's an owner's manual for your brain, all the things that you'll learn how to remember things, that names and everything else like that, speed read everything in that book. But people are like, how do you break this down into something that's really simple? So that's why this Limitless Daily, right? I think books changed my life. When I, when I was growing up, I couldn't read, I never finished a book cover to cover. My teachers would have been surprised if I read a book, much less wrote books. But it's just a reminder that I don't know one strong person that had an easy life. That adversity can be an advantage for anyone struggling right now with business or something else. I would say that what lights me up, I could think of a lot of other ways of making money. I

• 1:29:44Speaker 01

  know enough people, but, you know, I choose this path because how I measure profit, this whole idea is like, a millionaire is someone who's helped a million people, you know, or billionaires, someone who's helped be able to support a billion people, you know, and my goal for decades has been one billion brains, you know, no brain left behind. And I'm hoping this book is a big leverage point for us to be able to, to come on, you know, quality media like this and share it with more people who are struggling right now. You know, whether it's in AI, or their identity, or imposter syndrome, I literally took the biggest issues that people face, and we polled our community also, which is sizable, and did an entry on each of these things, frustration, overload, procrastination, you know, why,

• 1:30:28Speaker 01

  why can't I get myself to do what I need to do? Focus overload everything, just did an entry. And it's fun. I think it's a wild ride.

• 1:30:37Speaker 00

  Well, this was such a great way to end the interview, and I'm so excited for Limitless Daily. Like, I'm gonna do it every day, once I get a copy.

• 1:30:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're gonna do a whole, we're gonna do a whole 366 challenge. So it's great, because everyone has a date, and it has all this, so everyone's gonna be on the same page. So we'll do lives around it.

• 1:30:53Speaker 00

  When does it come out?

• 1:30:54Speaker 01

  And it's coming out in September.

• 1:30:56Speaker 00

  Amazing.

• 1:30:57Speaker 01

  So we're, we're so, we're so pumped. So I appreciate the conversation. This was fun.

• 1:31:01Speaker 00

  It was.

• 1:31:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:02Speaker 00

  Thanks for coming on.

• 1:31:03Speaker 01

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

• 1:31:34Speaker 00

  Thank you, Jim. Thank you for joining us on the Young and Profiting Podcast. Yap, fam, I just loved having Jim Quick back on the show. And getting to sit down with him in person was truly the cherry on top. Jim has this rare ability to make you feel like your brain is capable of so much more than you've been asking of it. And after this conversation, I genuinely believe that. What hit me the hardest today was something Jim said that I keep turning over in my mind. AI scales and amplifies, but only scales and amplifies what you bring to it. Think about that for a second. Every entrepreneur is racing to adapt AI, myself included. But what if we're bringing to it scattered thinking, poor focus, and a memory we've never trained? Then AI is just going to scale all of that

• 1:32:18Speaker 00

  chaos right back at us. The investment that actually matters the most is the one that you make in your own mind first. And speaking of memory, Jim completely reframed how I think about it. Remembering somebody's name, recalling a detail from a past conversation, staying present when someone is speaking to you, these are not soft skills. These are trust-building tools. Jim told us about a commercial real estate deal worth $50 million that fell apart because somebody called a client by the wrong name twice. Twice! That's the cost an untrained memory does in business. When you remember people, you make them feel valued. And people do business with those who make them feel that way. Finally, I loved Jim's point about the morning. That small window right after you wake up, before

• 1:33:03Speaker 00

  you check your phone, is when your brain is most open and impressionable. Jim calls it attentional priming. What you feed your mind in those first few minutes sets the tone for your mood, your focus, and even how you handle challenges for the rest of the day. Most of us hand that window straight to our notifications, straight to the algorithm, without thinking twice. Reclaiming that time might be the simplest performance upgrade available to any entrepreneur right now. So what are you gonna do in those first 15 minutes that you wake up? Your brain is not broken. It's just waiting for you to train it. Now, Jim has a new book coming out called Limitless Daily. It comes out in September. You can preorder it right now. It is built for exactly that morning window that we talked about. The one powerful idea per day to train your focus, sharpen your memory, and set

• 1:33:48Speaker 00

  yourself up to win. Go preorder it right now and start treating your mind like the asset it actually is. If you're watching on YouTube, we are pushing hard towards 100K subscribers. So please go subscribe to our YouTube channel right now. It's called Young and Profiting. Go to this video, drop a comment, tell us one thing you're gonna do differently for your brain, starting tomorrow. And if you want to take it to the next level, if you really love me and you support the show, you're gonna go to that YouTube channel, take a screenshot of one part in this video that you love, tell us what you learned, share it in your story, share it on Instagram, LinkedIn, wherever you want to post. And we will repost it, we'll share, we'll comment. And I'd love to hear from you. We're also on Spotify Video, so check us out there if you like watching your podcasts. And you

• 1:34:32Speaker 00

  can find us on all the major podcast platforms, of course. As always, huge thank you to all of our listeners that tune in each and every week, the ones that drop those five-star reviews on Apple Podcasts and ratings on Spotify. You can also find me on Instagram at YapWithHala, on LinkedIn, search for my name, it's Hala Taha. This is your host, Hala Taha, AKA The Podcast Princess, signing off.