A Bit of Optimism - Your Limits Are Learned (And They Can Be Unlearned) with Brain Coach Jim Kwik

Episode Date: September 1, 2026

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

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

and help you recognize that you indeed, you know, weren't broken. Yeah. But in fact, we're quite the opposite. You're limitless. Too many of us are still walking around with a self-belief that came from our child. When we were young, somebody may have told us that we were bad at math or that we were lazy. Whatever it was, we still say those things about ourselves today.

That label became part of our identity. Worse, those labels become our limits. That's why I wanted to talk to Jim Quick, because that's exactly what happened to him. When Jim was five years old, he suffered a brain injury, and it delayed his ability to read by three years. When he was nine years old, a well-meaning but probably short-sighted teacher called him the boy with the broken brain. The problem was that label stuck, and Jim believed it. That label became his identity, and it held him back in all kinds of places in his life, until he learned how to overcome the label. Today, Jim is a leading expert on memory and accelerated

learning. He's the best-selling author of Limitless, and his new book, Limitless Daily, offers daily upgrades to transform our lives. This is the great irony. The boy with the broken brain has spent over three decades teaching people to read faster, remember more, and think better. This episode covers a lot of ground, and we come to some amazing conclusions by the end. But at a high level, what it's about is that difficult times can define us, diminish, diminish, diminish us, distract us or develop us. We get to decide. If you like this episode, please remember to subscribe. This is a bit of optimism. This episode is proudly brought to you by SAP. The best companies all have something in common. They have figured out how to build a culture

in which their people feel cared for. They invest in relationships, in curiosity, and in helping their people grow. And the results speak for themselves. People want to work there for a long time, and the companies themselves become powerhouses. To learn more about SAP Grow, head to SAP.com slash grow. The one and only Jim quick. I can't believe it's been this long since we've done a podcast together. I did yours a million years ago. Yeah, we were one of the OG podcasters. We did a few episodes. You were doing it before there was a thing called podcasting. Now everybody's got a podcast. I saw on Facebook memories those nine years ago. Somebody's placed

you and I on stages and has 38 million views. I was talking about our devices and how just you need you talk about having the phone. You and I were talking about that a long time ago. This was, yeah, it's timely now especially. I know. It's true. We were making some serious predictions

back then. Yeah. And you have no gray hair. My hairline is definitely received. That was yeah. That was special time. Your career I mean, you're known for memory and learning, but I'm so curious how our career progresses, you know, when start with Y first came out. Yeah.

People called me the Y guy, right? The Y guy. Everybody knew me is the Y guy. I didn't come up with that. And I was so afraid of being stuck in one thing. What have you learned about learning over the course of how many years you've been doing this? I am turning 53, so it's 34 years. 34 years.

Yeah. Well, it's very meta question, you know, learning about how I learn. Yeah. I mean, can I give a little context for why I do this? Sure. Is that when I add events and I'm teaching learning, people assume that I was just kind of born with this knowledge or this ability or this talent for memory or something else. And that's definitely not the case. As you know, I had a traumatic brain injury when I was five. I was in kindergarten, took a really bad fall, rushed the emergency room, and where it showed up was in school where he spent most of your time. I had migraines every day, poor focus, poor memory. It took me three years longer

to learn how to read. You know, it's one thing to injure your brain. It's another to injure your heart and your mind, you know, because I felt like I was broken. Yeah, it kills your confidence. Yeah, my self-esteem, my self-confidence.

I just clearly wasn't like the other kids. When I was nine years old, I had a defining moment where I was being teased. My last name really is quick. I didn't, just my father's name. My grandfather's not like a stage name. But I was called Slow and a lot worse. One day I was being teased in class.

The teacher came to my defense. She said, leave that kid alone, that's the boy with the broken brain. So that label became my limit. Because adults have to be very careful of their external words because they often become a child's internal words. Yeah. I remember even thinking it all the time.

Like this was a revelation for me. I didn't know why I was broken. Every time I was in pick for sports, which is all the time, I would say, oh, I'm broken. I have broken brain. Or when I didn't do well in school, which was all the time. It was just like, I'm the broken kid. That was a challenge.

And it wasn't just short term. It was all through middle school, junior high, high school. And I was still motivated because my parents, they immigrated to United States. My dad lost both his parents when he was 13. So we put a high value on family because of, you know, what he instilled going through that loss. You know, we live in the back of a laundromat that my mom worked at. They all had many jobs. My grandmother was raising me. Was there a human being in your life that help you overcome those feelings of limitation? I mean, my parents certainly not the wealthiest or the most educated or the most

health conscious or in their head of green juice or done a yoga class. But they were just really good people. So I was very blessed. I felt like I won the lottery there. I feel like anything that I've done well in my life, I credit to them. And where I fell short, it's all definitely all on me. So you had love? I did.

Yes. Those internal stories that teenagers or kids tell themselves, those can last an entire life. And the way people hold themselves back because of an old story, an old narrative. there's adults still dealing with it in therapy now. I'm curious what it was that broke the narrative and help you recognize that you indeed, you know, weren't broken. Yeah.

But in fact, we're quite the opposite. You're limitless. There were certainly people that helped me along the way. One of the pet peeves I have is like online, like when people say self-made this or that, I just doesn't exist. I've never seen the case of that. I remember when I was a freshman in high school and I was failing high school English. that was tough. They had to pull my parents out of work and had one of those awkward conversations

after school. The teacher said, your son's failing my class is not going to pass and might be held back. I was so embarrassed because I'm the oldest of three siblings and I want to be a good role model, you know, for my younger brother and sister. So I begged and plead. And he offered me extra credit. I had to do a book report on Albert Einstein. So I promised my parents, I promised the teacher. And she was caring. So she was there. I have such a respect for my mother became a special education teacher to help me with my challenges. She recently retired out of New York public school system. I promised I said, I'm going to really do this, I'm going to show people what I could do, make my parents proud because I never be able to do much.

Because I didn't lack the effort. Like I would work three times harder, but I just wouldn't be as smart. And there was only one other Asian in my school system. But he was a year older, and he was just class valedictorian, head of the debate team. head of the math team, scored at 1590 on its SATs, was so upset, had to take it again to get it perfect. You were failing all the stereotypes. Yeah.

He was keeping them alive. And he was like, I made that part of the Belkirk possible because I was on the other side, but I feel like maybe he said also a benchmark for people's cognitive bias in the school, but I felt a lot on due pressure, not that people really cared about me. So it's been every day in the library. This was before internet, just researching Albert Einstein. I found out he had some learning challenges, which was interesting. Yeah.

which is maybe why this teacher point me in that direction. But I remember weeks later, I'm so excited because I never worked so focused and so hard on something ever. The day it was due. My father surprised me and had it like professionally bound. This was like a symbol of like, I was so excited. I never got excited to go to school. But this day, I was just skipping on air and I couldn't wait to hand it in.

And in class, I can't wait. Like I'm just like really happy. And towards the end of the class, the teacher looks at me and says, Jim, we have a surprise for everybody class. Jim come to the front of the room and present your book report. And I just, oh my goodness, I didn't realize I had to talk about it. Right. Like my mouth is getting dry, just thinking about it. My challenge besides learning was public speaking. So I'm pointing out how bad it really was. Let me give you one more example and then I'll show you the intervention. I was so nervous that

I looked at the teacher. I said I didn't do it. I lied. And you can see the disappointment in her face because she really cared. And after the class let out and I'm the new one there, I remember going, standing up, going to the door to leave their classroom, reaching in my backpack, pulling out the book report. I threw in the trash. Whoa. Yeah. And I felt symbolically it was, but that's how bad it was, like, my fear of insecurity and self-esteem and not want to be seen. I couldn't read.

I taught myself how to read by reading comic books, something about the illustrations brought to life. But my superpower is being invisible, right? I didn't want to take up space because I don't want to be bullied. I don't want to be called in class. I would sit behind a tall kid. So I'd be an unseen. But the intervention was, I was fortunate enough to get into a local college. And I thought freshmen meant I could make a fresh start.

And I took all these classes. I'm like, I'm going to do it again. And I did worse. And I was ready to quit. And so the intervention came when I was ready because I didn't know how to tell my parents. So a friend said, hey, I'm going home to see my family for the weekend, why don't you come with and get some perspective. And I find Simon that when you change your place or your people around,

you get a different point of view. And family's pretty well off, beautiful home on the water, and father's walking me around before dinner saying just the property and says, innocent question, but the worst question you could ask me at the time, said, Jim, have school. And I just break, like, I'm pretty introverted and reserved. I just start bawling from this complete stranger because I had so much just pent up.

Tell my whole story about broken brain and I'm ready to quit school. And he's like, Jim, why am I in school? You know, what do you want to be or do or share? And I didn't have any answer. No one's ever asked me that question before. I just thought it's just, you know, what you do. And when I go to answer him, he takes like a notepad out of his back pocket and rips out a couple sheets, make me write it down.

And I honestly didn't, you know, it was hard exercise, but I really started dreaming about who I am and what I wanted to do, what motivated me. And when I'm done, I start folding in the sheets to put in my back of my pocket thinking the exercise is over. And he just reaches out and grabs it right out of my hand. And he starts reading it. And I'm freaking out, right? I'm an 18-year-old kid, and this guy's obviously pretty successful,

and he's looking at my dreams, things I haven't shared with anybody, or maybe even acknowledge myself. And he says, you're this close to everything on that list, and he spreads his index fingers about a foot apart, and I'm thinking, give me 10 lifetimes, I'm not going to crack that list. And then he takes his fingers on his truth, and he puts him to the side of my head, meaning inside in between, there's a key. And he takes me to a room of his home that I've never seen before.

It's wall-to-wall ceiling floor covered in books. And I've never read a book, so it's like being a room full of snakes. But what makes it worse is he starts grabbing snakes off the shelf and handing them to me. And I start looking at them. And there are these titles of some amazing men and women in history, like Napoleon Hill, Dale Carnegie, some of the icons. And he says, Jim, you know, I went to read one book a week. And it was like, there's no way. I'm fighting for my limitations.

At events all the time, people all come to me and say, I'm too old. I'm not smart of. And I always say, stop. If you fight for limitations, you know, you get to keep them. But I'm fighting for my limits. I'm like, can't do it. I say I have too much school work, and he whips out that Mark Twain quote, don't let school get in the way of your education.

And I was like, wow, that's really brilliant and clever. But I still can't promise because my word, if my parents raised me, if I'm going to do it, no, I'm going to do it. And then he's very smart. He still has my dream list, my bucket list, and he takes it out, and he starts reading every single thing line by line out loud. And something about hearing your dreams or things that you want in another person's voice and can't it out in the universe,

it just mess with my mind, my spirit, something fierce. and honestly a lot of things I'm on the list for things I want to do for my folks things they can never afford to do even if they had the money they wouldn't do it for themselves and you know with that purpose I agree to read the books so fast forward the end of the story is like I'm back at school

I have to read for midterms pile of books I promised to read I already couldn't get through pile A so what do I don't have times I don't eat I don't sleep and I don't socialize I don't actually I don't do anything for weeks and then one night in the library I'm just living at the library I pass out two o'clock in the morning. I remember like yesterday. I fell down a flight of stairs.

I hit my head again. And I woke up in the hospital two days later. I woke up to all these IVs. I was the scariest moment in my life. I was down 117 pounds. I just thought that was not worth anything. It was the darkest time in my life. And then the nurse came in.

I said there has to be a better way. Then to put a bow on it, nurse came in with a mug of tea. I drank a lot of tea. And on it was a drawing of Albert Einstein, like a artistic piece. And had that quote, we've all heard something of like the same level thing as created a problem won't solve your problem

and made me ask a new question like what's my problem well i have a broken brain how do i fix it and you know i'm a slow learner how do i learn better i thought school and i asked the nurse for a course bulletin i looked all these classes and they're all classes on what to learn like math history science banish but they're never really classes on how to learn or how to think and how to do it so i mean i put that as my focus but you know, that was a mentor that just those little things made a big difference if you're going to map out like Joseph Campbell's hero's journey. Like that that person was like a Yoda to me. What I find so interesting about that is well-intended people tell you what you can do. And he didn't do that. You told you what you want to accomplish. And he simply said so, you know,

because he held this beautiful safe space for you where he didn't make you feel dumb or stupid or broken. He made you feel capable, possible, you know, all of these things. You wanted to do him right. You know, in part it was for you, but in part is because you wanted to do right by him. I find that motivates me a lot. You know, I feel even why I do what I do is just I feel moral impetus because I'm still that kind of a shy kid. I still feel that. Yeah. Even when you went on stages or in front of people or on media. I feel like shame on me if people are struggling the way I did. And, And I didn't do something to be supportive of that. You know, you and I are very similar in the sense that our work comes from the solutions we found to solve our own problems.

Yeah. And because it worked for us, we shared it with the people we loved. And it turns out it worked for them. And then obsession and passion follows shortly because you realize there's something magical here. And this is where I think the work is driven by service, you know. And both of our careers are accidents. neither of us imagined what we would be doing. Yeah, I never went to a career fair. No, no, no, no. Nothing I'm doing in my life now was on any bucket list, dream list.

Yeah. It wasn't on any plan. I love when people say, what's your plan for the next 10 years? I'm like, ha, I'm not going to start now. But to your point, you know, there are dreams of impact. They're not goals. Yeah. They're not like, I'm going to, you know, make a million dollars, you know, be my own boss. They're not goals. Yeah. They're like, I want to be a cog in a big machine, but I want my cog to matter. You know, and you've seen the power, you know, from your parents to the teacher who probably knew what she was doing when she assigned you Einstein to your friend's dad who didn't have to do any of that.

It's not a deep meaningful relationship. He wasn't your lifelong mentor. It was an intervention that he probably didn't even realize he was making, you know? And this is what I think is so profound about these relationships is. they're very often small. And I think, you know, if you look at this day and age, people are going through the world looking for the big thing to help them or looking for the levers, you know?

Because sometimes when something is so big, an abstract. Yeah, and big is impossible. Big is intimidating. I can't do big either. You know, I also, like, you show me something huge and like, where to begin. I don't know. But I can do small things.

And small things matter, right? Small things and small relationships and small impacts and small interventions. All these things are remarkable. Yeah. It's great to recognize that great things all had small beginnings. Like every professional was once an amateur, right? The groups of people I used to speak to were seven, eight, nine.

I remember those days. You know? Yeah. Those are the audiences I spoke to, you know, where I made no money. I just wanted to say yes and hone my craft. We'll be right back. But first, we want to share an ad with authenticity, brought to you by SAP.

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taking doesn't lead to the outcome we want, because it does lead to learning. And to celebrate the wins when they're new and different. Correct. We tend to overindex in criticizing the failure or showcasing what did not work, so we never make that mistake again, but we don't celebrate the successes. I remember learning the confidence as well. And I think learning the confidence. Learning the confidence. You know, like I remember I was posted an event and they invited me and it was in the early days. And so like I wanted to spread my message and they promised me an audience of a hundred people, I don't know, right? And I showed up and like 30 people were there. And other people would get angry that you promised me 100 people.

They're only 30 people. You're wasting my time, you know? And he came up to me and he says, I'm really sorry. I hope for a bigger audience. And I sort of like made this little joke. I said, no, no, don't worry about it. I just feel sorry for the 70 people who didn't come, you know, because they're missed out. Were you always like that? No, I was making a joke. Okay. No, I was just being snarky. I was

really jacked up on caffeine and adrenaline, you know, but it sort of stuck with me that what mattered was my message, not the size of the audience. I had almost a 180 experience. Oh, when I first learned this, I felt like happy. My grades improved. My life started to improve in my confidence also. My identity that really started a shift. But I was really upset that there were simple things that I could have done to be better, right, that I suffered and struggled all this time. And I think adversity could be an advantage. Like with struggle comes strength, I don't know one strong person that had an easy life, right? Yeah. So with that challenge comes to a certain level of change. And yes, I did take my mess and turn to my message, but how it happened, I couldn't help it help other people because

I was upset, that I went through it. And there were little things I could have done to not have to struggle like I did. And so friends said, because I was tutoring them at school, said, well, hey, why don't you get some people to tutor and practice? And I'm like, okay, I didn't know. How do I get those people? And then when I had that thought, I was walking down the always I saw a classroom not being used. I said, okay, next week at this time in this room, and this day, I'm going to put like five or ten people in there for free and teach them for a couple hours, what's working, and then maybe one

or two wants to be tutored. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And accept my help. And I said, okay, so I go back to my dorm room and I take out, you know, eight by 11 with a Sharpie and I write free speed reading, memory, tips, get better grades, less time, Thursday, 7 p.m., that classroom, right? Right. The next morning, I make some photocopies on the way to class, put them on just some bulletin boards, not a lot. Fast forward to the next Thursday, I'm walking down the hallway, and I'm just thinking my mind, what am I doing?

I just hope five people believed in this that this was like a thing. I want to hear, like, what's working, and I turn the corner, and there's like a crowd of people outside the classroom. God honest truth, I said, I hope whatever was going on end soon so I could do my thing, right? And I can't even get in because there's this really tall guy in the doorway and I'm like, what's going on inside? And he looks down to me. He's like, there's a speed reading class. God honest truth, I was like, wow, what a coincidence.

Like, what are the chances? There's another speed reading class in the same room and the same night as mine. And I push my way in. And as you can imagine, there's a crowd of people, people standing in the back every seat is taken. And there's no one teaching. Right. It's hard to see what you don't believe, right? It takes my slow brain all this time to realize why they're there and who they're there for.

and I do a head count, and instead of five or ten people, there's 110 people. Now, remember, I'm an 18-year-old kid. I look like I'm 12, dressed in T-shirt shorts. There's a lot of upperclassmen teaching assistants. And the last time you had to do a public speech, you pretend that you didn't do the work. I literally have never spoken in public. Right. And so I'm freaking out.

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

and I take one step back to the classroom. And isn't that instructive, like one step in another direction, if you're going this way and you go this way, you end up in a completely different destination. Yeah, yeah. And I go in the classroom, and I don't even remember what I said other than apologizing, and I just talk for two hours.

I don't know, like, you've been in a place where it just kind of flows through you. At the end, I come out of this trance, and I don't even remember what I said. But I was like, hey, if you're interested, I just need about 10 hours to teach you what I'm doing, maybe a couple hours a week for the next five. weeks. I used to teach tennis back in school and I got $30 an hour at this, you know, that's this

record club. And I was like, you know, this is what I tutor and do this. I'll be in the students here tomorrow noon if you have any questions. I swear Simon, a hundred people just get up and all of them leave. Like nobody talks to me. And now I'm in that classroom by myself, the 10, 11 o'clock at night, quiet. And I feel like totally confused. And I'm completely exhausted because whenever you face like a big fear like mentally emotionally physically I I fall asleep right on the carpet and as the best sleep in my life I get woken up the next morning by the class coming at 8 o'clock in the morning and I'm down on the carpet drooling on myself I freak out I go back to my dorm room shower go to breakfast go to class 12 o'clock comes I was like oh I promised to be in there

I go there I hope one person just believes in me and that same crowd is waiting for me there and at the end of two hours, 71 of those 100 kids signed up for a course that didn't even exist. And now I'm not even 19 and I have $21,000 cash in my backpack. And I just think about my mentor because I didn't know what to do with it. And I was feeding my mind and not letting school get away in my education and supplementing my education. That's amazing. With what I do. And the caveat is one of those 71 kids.

She was a freshman. She read 30 books and 30 days. Wow. Now this changed my life because I thought there was a one-off. right she read 30 books and 30 days i want to find out not how but i want to know why yeah right now so i want to start with why i wanted to find out you know because a lot of people know what to do but they don't do it right yeah yeah and i find out her mother was diagnosed oh goodness i get took a terminal cancer yeah let's give in just two months to live by doctors

and the books she was reading or books that save her mom's life wow and that's what i said six months goes by i get a call from this young lady and on the phone she's crying profusely i don't know how much time goes by. When when she stops, I find out their tears of joy, then her mother not only survive, but it's really getting better. Doctors don't know how or why. They're called a miracle, but her mother attributed 100% to a great advice she got from her daughter who learned her from all these books. Wow. And in that moment, Simon, I realized, like, two things. I realized that if knowledge is power, then learning is our superpower. Because our lives are a reflection of, like, the decisions we make, right? Life is letter C between B and D, or B is birth and D is death. Life is

is choice. Yeah. You know, but basically I believe that these difficult times can define you. These difficult times can diminish you,

distract you, or develop you, right? We decide. And so that was a choice and she did it. And so I realized that, you know,

we have a choice each day. But the other thing I realized was that I found my Dharma, my mission. I learned this a hard way. That true purpose is not visions and dreams

and all of this stuff. But true purpose is the opportunity to serve those who serve others. I like that. The thing that feeds my soul more than anything else is not helping some company make money

that does nothing for me. When I talk to people who have devoted their lives to service, military arts, doctors, nurses, teachers, you know, when I get to help people like that, they're always the most joyful, most rewarding experiences I have. And you know this, you know, we live these weird lives now and where people will stop us on the street and say thank you because they were able to help somebody else.

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

Thank you for sharing that story. That inspires me to keep going. I love that. And I think we live in a very selfish world. You know, our nation over-indexed on individualism. We came up in a generation that was about, you know, greed is good. Right. And what can you do and how much can you make

and that we're supposed to be competing against each other, which is nonsense. Very finite game. Very finite game. Yeah. And it might be fun at times, but it's not fulfilling. Right. It's not inspiring. you meet these people who've had

tremendous quote unquote success you know traditionally defined and yet they're bored they're not happy they're lost and if they stopped doing that thing that made them quote unquote successful

their identity was stripped away from them you know because they've defined themselves by their title or some award they won 20 years ago you know, CEO of Oscar nominated, Oscar winning. So your identity is defined by a position or a past achievement, which is now history. It's interesting to work with people that are transitioning from like, let's say, professional sports into their next game or military. Yep.

Right. So the work even with not only helping with TBIs and concussions, but also skill acquisition, and that even then identifying like the principles and the processes of the passion that made them extraordinary. the discipline, the growth learning, be able to apply that towards another game because they lose their identity. Yeah. Like, what do you do when you train your whole life 24-7 for this? Our favorite CEOs, and this is not an anti-business. This is a very pro-business message.

Jim Senegal, you know, who was the CEO of Costco. I mean, he was like dogged about serving his customer, you know? Or you have Jesse Cole, who's the founder and CEO of the Savannah bananas, dogged about giving back to his customers, his guests. Walt Disney dogged about creating experience for people to escape the stresses of their lives to come to this place where they can leave their stresses behind and come into this magical world. All of these people, they were driven by service and they operated in business. Right. But they were driven by service. The business was more of expression of that service. The business was the expression. It was the

manner, the thing that they found, but they were insanely service oriented. And when you're that service oriented, you also take care of your own people. Because if you have a service orientation, you can't not. Those guys, even though they did make tons of money, and they did have success by traditional terms, none of them define their own success by those things. My friend and mentor Bob Chapman, he said, you know, we define success by how we touch the lives of people, you know? Yeah. Like, don't ask me how my company's doing. Ask me how my people are, you know? And so service is one of these corny things. It's not something you volunteer on the weekend. Right. You know, I do that. I like that as well, but that is not the compensation or the balance for the life you live during the day,

which is a taking life. It's the same mentality as like, I'm going to get rich. And then once I have my millions, then I'm going to give to charity. You know, it's like, or. And it's so much more fulfilling to give time and energy to another human being than to simply giving money. That thousand percent. You learn to earn to return. The business could certainly be a force for good. A hundred percent business could be a force for good. Absolutely. So these people could do well by doing good. And you use the business as the tool to serve, to serve people, to serve customers, to serve employees, to serve communities. And that doesn't mean taking the profit and then giving it away. That means the physical structure of the business is built to serve. When people

are studying biomimicry and using certain principles for energy or something like that, the nature kind of figured out. And it seems like a lot of nature gives back to the ecosystem, serves the purpose. That's what makes an ecosystem and ecosystem. It doesn't overuse resources, you know, know also as well, but if it gives back or it becomes extinct, right? I feel like even in this, there's this self-improvement trap where people are always trying to like optimize for, for everything, but I also feel like there's a paradox there because if it's, you know, self-improvement potentially could be good to grow until it's not, right, where it's just self-rejection or people are motivated because they have to win in order to prove something to themselves or they are a certain

kind of people or to be happy. I feel like we grow to give. I have this tournament that, called grow givers. I feel like, because back in, it was like, go getting, right? Just getting, getting, getting, getting. But then you could turn it upside down. You could go and give and give and give, but then you're depleted because I get to work with a lot of caregivers. A grow giver is someone who grows, so they have more to give more to give. And I feel like it's more healthy harmony between, because it gives me a purpose. Then I could grow, the distinctions, grow, emotionally growing in a way, so I have more to be able to offer to people who could benefit. So I want to change subjects. and I want to ask you an entirely selfish question.

Yeah. I love the idea of reading. Okay. And I buy books like they're going out of fashion. Yeah. And I've started a lot of books. Yeah. And I can't finish them.

And my ADHD, I get very distracted. Or I'm like, oh, I'll read, but then I don't. You know, and I have the books piled up next to my bed. Literally, a pile of books next to my bed that don't get read. Right? Yeah. And when I was a kid, they would do these reading comprehension things where I don't know if you remember, the little light that went across the sentence

are the words. Oh, you're lucky. Do you remember? Yeah, yeah. And they had to take the cellophane off the highest level because no one had ever done it before for me to do it. And so when I'm locked in and when I'm focused, and the ADHD is my best friend, I could read faster and retain what was going on literally better than the whole class. Yeah. Right? But that's not how one reads, which is with a little light going across the words to help me focus. And I'm terrible. Even when I'm really well-intended. I'll sit down and I'll read the first page and I'll be like, oh my God, this book is great. And I'll finish the first, you know, section. Not even a chat. I'm loving this book. The next thing I do is I count how many more pages until the end of the next

section. I'm like, oh, I can't do 30 pages. Now it feels like work. Yeah, I think a lot of people could relate to having books on their shelf. They haven't read yet and it becomes more shelf-help than not just self-help. Or the experience or they'll read a page in a book and forget what they just read, how embarrassing. And they go back and reread it. And when I read, I read incredibly slowly, even though I know I can read incredibly fast. So for somebody with my funny brain, the ADHD brain, can you give me some tips or tricks that not only help me read at the pace I know that I can, I like magazines and newspapers because they're very short. And so sometimes I have a Kindle that I'll make the type really huge. Those only three or four words. But again, I still don't do the reading.

So to make me feel like I'm making progress on enjoying myself, so then I'll go back. can do more of it. That's where I need your help. Let's unpack this. So we know the importance of reading, right? So that doesn't be, but for some people listening, maybe they're just not motivated because they don't say the relevance. I'm bought into the reading. Yeah. Somebody has decades experience like you do and you put it into your next book and somebody can read that book a few days. They can download decades of insight and experience in days. That's a huge advantage. Plus, reading is just great exercise for your mind. I would say visual pacer could help, certainly. This is trainable. I feel like a lot of people don't,

read as much because they're not getting the benefit either. They're distracted or they forget or they lose interest and they get bored. And partly is because they're reading too slow. So like John F. Kennedy, a lot of leaders are readers, right? He said to have read at something where like 800,000 words a minute, you know, where the average person reads about 200 words a minute. He said to have read six newspapers every morning with a cup of coffee. One of his speeches is about 280 words a minute. So he could talk at 280 words a minute, but process much higher than that. Right. And so he's not saying all the words. So part of it is reducing that sub vocalization, right? Sub vocalization, you ever notice when you're reading something, you hear that inner voice reading along with you? Yeah, yeah. Hopefully your own voice is known like somebody else's. Yeah, yeah. But if you're saying the words, it implies that you can only read as fast as you could speak,

not how fast you could think. That's why a lot of people could listen to podcasts or audiobooks at faster. And by the way, when I listen to podcasts, I listen to them at double speed, two-time speed. And so you can understand that speed. Sometimes the speed is too slow. Right, exactly. And that's a great testament to the reading,

because if you could understand it that fast, but you can't speak that fast. Right. You can't talk that fast. So sub vocalization can be reduced, but it's there because of training, right? Because we're taught to read out loud, can I think? Either we're reading out loud

because teachers needed to make sure you're pronouncing the words phonetically and correctly. And then later on, your teacher probably said, okay, read silently to yourself, requally to yourself. And that's where you associated that external voice when you made an internal, right? And so naturally gifted readers,

they don't sub-vocalize because do you need to say New York City in your head to understand when New York City is. No, they read more on site, like a stop sign. You don't say to yourself stop when you're driving. You understand 100% what it means, but you don't have to pronounce it, right? And 95% of words that we're reading on a daily basis are sight words, words that we've seen thousands of times that we don't have to pronounce to understand it. We see pictures and pictures of worth a thousand words. That's a lot of comprehension. So when we teach speed reading

online, we have students in every country, so we have a lot of feedback. If I ask people to read faster, most people would say their comprehension would go down. Because they're speaking faster in their head. Right. They would say they would say their comprehension. If I challenge people, everyone here to read a little bit faster, they would feel like their understanding would go down. Now, in actuality, what we've seen is actually the comprehension is up when you're reading faster because your brain is this incredible supercomputer. So the hack here is don't say the words. So there's two things. There's a mindset, belief system. Because I could teach somebody the behavior, but if their belief is, if I read faster, then I'm not going to understand it, they're not going to do the behavior, right? Because

all behavior is belief driven. So there's two hacks. built into this. Number one, the belief we have to unraveled is that if you read faster, you won't understand as much. That's absolutely not true because you can listen audio books twice as fast and understand it. Right. Right. Here's the reason why is because your brain's an incredible supercomputer when you're reading, you're feeding it one word at a time. We're both from New York. I can't even talk that slow. But if we were to talk that slow in this conversation, what would everyone who's joining us? It's boring. Yeah. They would, their mind would wander. They would think about other things. They would fall asleep. Aren't those similar symptoms of what people associate

to reading? Their mind wanders, their free-ups going on, they fall asleep. They feel as a sedative because it's going too slow. As opposed to, let's say you're driving a car going three miles an hour your neighborhood. You're not really focused on the act of driving. You should be, but you're not. You think about the dry cleaning, having a conversation, seeing the song, whatever. You'd be five different things because you're going slow. If you're racing cars, an F-1 driver, are you thinking about dry cleaning? Are you your mind wandering? You know, you try to do anything else? No, you're focused on the active driving, you're focusing on what's in front of you. So faster readers are like that race car driver because they're skill, they have strong human

intelligence, they're reading with that pace. If you don't give your brain the stimulus and needs, it'll seek entertainment elsewhere in the form of distraction. It'll wander. It'll think about other things. Play video game. Pick up my phone. Yeah, because you're going to go.

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

So visual pacer could work, all right? But you have to pull yourself through the information because your eyes are attracted to motion, right? If someone ran across, if you're watching this on video, no one pay attention to either of us. Your eyes through as a hunter-gatherers, if the bush next to you moves, you have to look, is that your survival. Because number one, that could be lunch. Or number two, you could be lunch, right?

Either way. So your eyes are attracted to motion. So when you're using a visual pacer, a highlighter, a mouse on a computer, you know, a pen, your finger, whatever it is, your eyes are being pulled through the information as opposed to your attention be pulled apart. And also it's how your senses work. Like, have you ever tasted a great peach? See, you're not actually tasting the peach. Your tongue's not capable of tasting what a peach tastes like. It's smelling the peach. But your sense of smell and taste are so closely linked, your mind can't tell the difference, unless you're sick. If you're congested, food doesn't taste

the same, right? Just as your sense of smell and taste are closely linked, so is your sense of sight and touch. That literally when people use their finger, they feel more in touch with their reading. And so what I would say is using your finger will help you improve your speed because you're eyes aren't going to, the opposite is a regression. Yeah. Regression is back skipping, rereading words. Some people read whole lines by accident. And as you're wasting all the time, you're not going to back skip it when you're pulling your finger across the page or using a highlighter, a pen or whatever, using a screen, does not touching a screen. There's friction, so I go right above the page. I burn a lot of books up that way.

But I would say that your eyes are being pulled through it. Do you recommend I use a pen? I use a pen because I do and drag the pen as fast as I can. Not touching the page, but right above it, right, to help you focus. Right. The other thing that could help you get more out of it is asking, like, just how we prompt AI, we're not prompting our mind with useful questions. Like, if you're reading something and asking yourself questions, like, how can I use this? How does this relate to what I know? When will I use this? It keeps you engaged because then you're pulling. It's, your brain primarily is a deletion device, right? If we let everything in, we go mad, right? We'd be overloaded. We go insane. So primarily, we're trying to filter information out. out. Right. The things that we let in, there's like a little gatekeeper called your reticular activating system, which everyone from a lot of people have heard about, RAS. It's engaged by what's important to you. And usually what directs that, that spotlight are the questions you're asking. Right. So like years ago, my younger sister would send me postcards and emails a very specific

breeded dog, like a pug dog, right? My question was like, why she keeps sending me these things? And I realized her birthday was coming up and it was like, she was a good marketer. But the funny thing happened when I started asking the question about this, I would go to the supermarket and I'd be checking out, and the person in front of me is holding a pug dog. I'd be jogging in my neighborhood and somebody's walking six pug dogs. Now my question for everyone listening, and this is kind of obvious, did those pug dogs just teleport into my... No, of course. It's because... But I was blocking it. Right, yeah. It's in your mind and now you see them everywhere. Exactly. Because I was deleting them before because it was important when I started asking the question about pugs, then I started seeing them

everywhere. Like you buy a car because you think I'm the only person that has this car, then all of a suddenly you buy it and everybody has that car. And that's why that attentional priming is so very valuable questions because there's a dominant question I feel like we ask all the time. So if we have 60,000 thoughts a day, a lot of those thoughts come in form of questions. That's how we think we ask and answer questions. There is a certain one or two questions that we ask more than any other and it's individual per person. And those questions are determined our focus all the time, right? I walk my friend through this process. We found out her dominant questions. He asked hundreds of times a day, consciously, probably much more unconsciously, how do I get people to like me?

But you don't know anything about this woman, her career, which she looks like her, and nothing, but you probably know a lot about her personality. If someone is obsessed trying to answer, shine a spotlight on how do I get this person to like me, how would you describe their life or their personality? I mean, they're probably going to show up a bit much. They're a sycophant trying to be a people-pleaser or their personality changes, depending on who they're spending time with. She's a martyr because people are taking advantage of her all the time.

She's always people-pleasing, and she's not. nice, not kind. And so you know all this about her, and you only know one question she asked herself. And so it's interesting, as people are listening, like, what do you think your dominant question is? Because that's determined what pug dogs you're looking at, right? That spotlight. I would be asking more deliberate questions to express your interest, activate your RAS. So, like, if I finish the first section, then ask a question that I'm hoping to get answered in the second section? Yeah, even when I wrote limitless, I opened with the questions first. Like, so many people, it's backwards. Back in school, it was like,

like reading comprehension, read these passages. And at the end, the question. Absolutely read the questions first, because then when you're reading. And you're looking for the answers. Yeah, there's an answer, there's an answer, there's an answer. Right, right, right. It's called intentional priming. So attentional priming is where you're seeding the information that you want,

and you're pulling the information in and supposed to try to push it in because the brain doesn't learn best through consumption. It learns best through creation and co-creation, right? Right. Your creativity asking. And I think that curiosity is so very important to lean into, especially in an age of AI, right? There's certain things that are very human, right?

There's the heart, the emotional intelligence, there's the understanding, there's meaning, there's adaptation, there's the nexus of human connection. And so, you know, I feel like in an age of AI, because that's also training people to have more overload, more distraction, more misinformation, right? Because AI, as an example, I know there's another question, but that's a lot of what people are reading right now. It's exponential and it scales, but only scales, you know, makes something like magnifies what you bring to it. Right. If you bring chaos to it, it magnifies that. If you bring clarity, it's going to magnify that. But it magnifies your own human intelligence. My concern, though, is if it's so dependent on AI, then I don't want human intelligence to be artificial, right? So questions would be, whether it's fiction or nonfiction, I mean, when you're reading and you want to get through it more

is the fact that you love it, you express interest, you have a natural curiosity. You want to know what's going to happen and how the author's putting their time in it. But it's because I know the thing is slow that I don't pick it up. And I get distracted by, I'm like, oh, I'll just look at Instagram. Well, I mean, part of it also, let's be honest, like, you know, this year test scores came back in the U.S. and there were lower this year, both reading and math, right? And part of it is, you know, potentially suggested that because of how fast the medium is with social media, right, in terms of attention span.

So I believe focus is a muscle, right, and you exercise it. And what I would say is like control your focus, flex your focus muscle and muscle in the age of attention, where everyone's trying to vie for your attention, right? But you could practice your focus muscle. This goes back. We have to remember who built AI, engineers. Okay? Engineers built AI. Engineers are numbers people, data people.

They're good with it. God bless them. But they're not people people people. And very often, they always leave the people component out. So if I hear another person telling me that AI can do the work of the doctor, bed. and replace your radiologist and all of this stuff. And some of that may be true. Like there's machines that, you know, where it'll scan your whole body,

it'll calculate the number of moles you have on your entire body, including their size. And then when you go back next year, it'll know if it's got a new mole or if one grew slightly bigger. Your dermatologist cannot do that, right? So it's quite possible that the technology and the AI will absolutely replace the dermatologist. It's quite possible, at least for some of the stuff that they're going to do. But what everybody forgets is bedside manner.

Like, none of us like doctors that have no bedside manner. We're a human being, and if we're being diagnosed with a horrible illness, you don't want a computer to just simply spit out the answer of what it accurately diagnosed you with and good luck with the treatment that, you know, you want a doctor to hold your hand and say, I've got some really hard news. And this idea of bedside manner, a human being caring for a human being, aided by the computer, no problem with that. But this idea that AI will replace the people is nonsense because people want people. I want a doctor delivering bad news to me, not a machine. AI is not, whether it replaces or not is a different conversation. I would say that a calculator computes better than human brain can. AI could process information infinitely faster than human brain can,

but that those two devices aren't going to sit in the mud with you when you're going through those challenges. is not going to help a grieving child. It has no experience of falling in love or breakups or any of those things. And so, yeah, I lean heavy into the human intelligence and wisdom over artificial intelligence. And AI is technology. Technology is supposed to just amplify our expression of our other self. My thing with technology is for that we don't want to be overly dependent on it. That's the reliance.

I thought, you know, digital dementia where technology is remembering everything for you, your to do is your phone numbers. Not that I want to memorize 5,000 phone numbers. Don't you remember the Iliad? The Iliad was passed down through story over generations. It'd be like, son, it's time for me to tell you the Iliad, you know? And it was passed down because we could remember it. Before printing presses and everything, any kind of technology.

And the printing press, then our brains just stopped. And not that you want to memorize a thousand phone numbers, but it should be concerning we've lost a ability to remember one or a PIN number or the hotel room. But it is amazing that because the technology existed, my brain decided to go on strike. And that's digital dementia. The high reliance and technology you remember, so you don't have to use it. And I'm for convenience, but you don't want to be crippling. So I talk about digital deduction.

And just think about GPS, right? If you're using a third-party piece of technology to tell you when and where to turn, you never develop your visual spatial intelligence or your orientation in space or anything else. Right. And so you don't have to develop it. And it's convenient. What my concern is if your apartment or office is on the fifth floor and you take the technology you just called an elevator, convenient.

Very convenient. But then you don't get the work out of the stairs, right? If you have to go to the bank eight blocks away, you take an Uber or a lift, convenient, but then we don't get our steps in, right? So I'm all for using any form of technology. It's not good or bad. Fire is an early form of technology.

Cook your food or could burn down your home, how it's applied. I think the intentionality is very important that we bring to something that's going to scale. But also AI doesn't know, it could feign artificial empathy, but it doesn't understand. heartbreak or care. Right. It's not the teacher who when you were a kid gave you Einstein. It's

not your friend's dad. The AI might say all those things and it wouldn't have changed who you are. The AI may have given you all the same advice. You should do it to book report on Einstein. The AI said. The AI says, hey, write down all your dreams. It's all possible between these two fingers. All of that could have been true and it wouldn't have changed your life at all because it wasn't the information they were giving you that mattered. It was that you felt a human being cared about you and saw you and supported you. I just got goosebumps. I call them truth bumps. And that's how you became Jim quick. It was human beings who loved you and cared about you and not the answers or the information they gave you. Took it full circle. That was beautiful. It's such a treat to sit down and talk to you. Yeah.

It's been a long time. Yeah, I've been flown out here just to hang out. And I'm glad we could have this conversation. As always, thanks for listening. And if you liked this episode, please do remember to subscribe to A Bit of Optimism wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts. And remember, new episodes drop every Tuesday. A Bit of Optimism is a production of the Optimism Company, lovingly produced by our team, Lindsay Garbenius, Phoebe Bradford, and Devin Johnson. And if you want more cool stuff or just to find out what I'm up to, visit simonic.com. Until next time,

Take care of yourself. Take care of each other.