Habits and Hustle - Episode 585: Jim Kwik: Build These Brain Skills Before AI Makes Them Weaker

Episode Date: September 1, 2026

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

Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle. Crush it. Welcome to Habits and Hustle, where I sit down with the world's biggest thinkers, entrepreneurs, athletes, and experts to uncover the habits, strategies, and mindset that actually move the needle in your health, happiness, and success. And today I'm sitting down with Jim Quick, a brain performance expert, best-selling author, and leading voice on memory, focus, learning, and human intelligence. We talk about AI and whether or whether it's weakening or thinking, why human intelligence is becoming a key advantage, how your morning shapes your focus, and how to build confidence through action. We also cover dopamine,

multitasking, self-talk, memory, and how to train your brain instead of outsourcing it to technology. This conversation is packed with practical ways to stay mentally sharp, make better decisions, learn faster, and become more intentional about where you put your time and energy. Jim gives you simple strategies you can start using right away to perform better, adapt faster, and stay deeply human in a world that keeps getting more automated. So now let's dive in. All right, you guys, welcome to another episode of Habits and Hustle. And this one, I got a good one for you today.

This one you're going to really like because not only is this guest just, he has a plethora of information, but he gives you actionable things that you can apply to your life. That can help you optimize your human performance, your human intelligence, and all the things. So this is a treat. We have Jim Quick today on the podcast. So thank you, Jim for being here. Oh, this is good. I've been looking forward to this conversation.

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

Yes. Thank you. You're one of them. You're one of them. First of all, I was saying to you off before we even started to even basically roll. Like, what do you call yourself? Like, you're not, like, you're not, you're a brain coach, but you're also a human performance. Like, what is your title? Do you have one? Do you have one? No, I don't. That's a good question. People started calling me a brain coach or brain performance coach. But I guess, I don't know, I'm an entrepreneur and, you know. In the brain space?

a husband and father and all of that. But yeah, I mean, I write books and I help people with their brain. I think for an entrepreneur or any individual, your number one wealth building asset is your brain. And I like helping people to optimize that because everything comes from that. Your relationships, your business, your bank account, the impact that you have is all there. But, you know, none of people are talking about practically how to use it. Exactly. Then that's like the name of the game in my world, practical. Like how do we actually truly optimized. There's a lot of words out there. There's a lot of noise and things. But how do we actually get our brain to be better working for us? And how do we really optimize it? And that's what I

love about what you talk about. By the way, Jim has a new book out called Limitless Daily, 366 keys to train your brain, master your mind, and win every day. So just so you guys know, he wrote that book called Limitless that crushed. And so now, like, there's all these iterations that kind of keep on kind of with the times, which is why I really, what I really wanted to talk to you today about, and I'm sure this is on a lot of people's mind, is of course, AI and memory, right? I think this is a big one because I'm using myself even as an example. We all just turn to AI to do everything for us. It writes our emails or we're kind of like training our brain actually to be weak because we're not using it anymore, I feel. What do you say?

about all this stuff. Yeah, it's called cocked into offloading. I wrote about that and even limitless six years ago when it came out where technology is wonderful, but if we're dependent on it and relying on it, like one of the things we talk about the four horsemen or the mental apocalypse, the things that are making us not as intelligent and not as effective in our life is relying on technology and not doing some of the work ourselves, meaning like digital dementia, for example, is where we use technology to remember things for us. Like our phones, remember your to-dos and your schedules and fax and in your notes and

phone numbers, right? I mean, how many phone numbers do we know growing up? That's a perfect example, actually, because that was even before AI. Because now, even with just like your cell phone, you don't even remember, I don't remember anybody's number. Yeah, and then, but growing up you did. Of course. Yeah. You had to. Right. And so I don't want to memorize a thousand phone numbers. I don't think anyone wants to do that, but it should be very concerning. We've lost the ability to remember one phone number, or pin number or something we just read or something we just heard or somewhere we needed to go or someone's name, right? And so your brain is like a, it's an organ, obviously, but it acts like a muscle, but it's use it or lose it, right? And so if you put your arm in a cast for a year, it wouldn't grow stronger and wouldn't stay the same, it would atrophy. Right. That's the challenge is that the high dependence. And then I wrote about digital deduction, which is the high reliance, not just for memory, but to think for you, technology thinking. I mean, even think about GPS. Right. Before we had to remember looking at maps. You had to remember where and when to turn. People give you directions and you can't write you had to be able to store it, but now we don't.

And while it's easier, it's easier for certainly if technology is telling you where and when to turn, but then we don't have to develop our visual spatial intelligence, right? Absolutely. I mean, you know what it is? It's kind of like, you know, fitness and the beautiful gym here and everything. It's like if I had to go 10 blocks to go to the bank, if I'd get into an Uber, right, that's form of technology. very convenient, but then it can be crippling if I'm not getting into steps in. If someone's office or apartment was on the fifth floor, an elevator is a form of technology, simple form of technology, and it's convenient, but then you don't get the workout, right?

And so I feel that while AI is, just remember this, like, people think AI is no longer a competitive advantage, right? I know you have a lot of entrepreneurs aspiring or established entrepreneurs that are using it for leverage. It's no longer competitive advantage because we all have it, right? we all have access to it, just like we have access to all the information. So what gives us an advantage is what I talk about human intelligence. You know, and people know me for doing the memory, the focus, the speed reading, training, all the accelerated learning, the brain optimization. But that's all to build our human intelligence in an AI world, meaning that AI, let me think about

how you use AI. It could scale, it could amplify, but it only scales and amplifies what you bring to it, right? With prompts or whatever. All of that, but that's your thinking. Like somebody could use exactly an AI to create a social media post, right? But somebody can use it to build a billion dollar venture, right? And so it's the intelligence that they're bringing to that, that allows them to get that scale. It's like, I work with a lot of athletes, a lot of race car drivers. I mean, think about a F1 car, right? It's a multimillion dollar piece of technology like AI, but ultimately that trained intelligence, the driver is what's going to get the performance, as opposed to the average person that's not, does it have that same kind of intelligence. Right. So if we talk about

this whole idea of like you don't, you know, use it or lose it. But people are, it is doing a majority of like the basic work for us. Is it our job as a, as the human to learn then how to work in tandem with it properly? Like what is, what's the, what's the game here then? So my challenge, okay, so for me it's more augmented intelligence. It's there to augmenting you partner as a creative partner, right? It's there to be able to call you, ask you two questions, is it to reveal your blind spots or your cognitive biases.

You know, in Limitless, even years ago, I put a whole chapter on how to use AI to hand your H.I., your human intelligence, you know, because we take all the principles that I teach in Limitless or accelerated learning and feed it into AI and have it quiz you, have it test you, summarize things for you, mind map things for you, create memory palaces for you,

to teach you in your preferred learning, channel, you know, based on like how you prefer to take in information. So it's a wonderful way to use AI to enhance your H.I. What I would say, though, is just like with the physical stuff, with technology, like the car and the stairs and everything else that we were talking about earlier, is I just don't want to stop using our critical thinking. Like imagine like all the contents can be very derivative if it's just people aren't improving their own intelligence to keep pace of like what's going up with AI. So AI could process compute immensely, but ultimately humans have to use a human intelligence to what's important. What does this data mean? What are we going to do

with this data? Right. All of that is discernment. It's critical thinking. It's a level of judgment. But if we're not exercising that on a regular, then imagine a whole society in the country or even globally people who just don't think anymore. So you're right. So this is why people laugh at me all the time, because I refuse to use those apps, like, you know, like Uber Eats, Postmates, all those, I refuse to use any of those because I think it's just another way of becoming lazy, right? Like, go to the store, get your food. Like, it's technology is making people just overall more lazy and useless. And throughout human history, technologies changed the way we, our cognition,

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

Like, how do you remain deeply human in a world in an age of AI? Well, 100%. Do we even need a good memory anymore with AI? So if you don't exercise your memory, I'm all for using AI to automate things for lesser, let's say lesser important things like to do, because we've always used technology to do that, right? Yeah. But I would say with that extra bandwidth that you have are the energy of the flow. focus at the time that AI is allowing you to have, use that to reinvest in something that

AI maybe can't do as easily or well. So would you say then, as a professional and expert in this world, would you say, if you would have to give people advice, would you tell them to limit them themselves using AI to write them like an email or to ask a basic thing that they should be able to do on their own? So we don't get too lazy or like, so our brain doesn't get too atrophied, basically? And this is what's happening, right? Like everyone heard about that MIT study, you know, a few months back where they took three groups of students, A, B, and C, and they had to write essays. And group A used chat GPT to write the essay. Group B used Google search. And group C, no, no technology. And so they also scanned their brains through the process and they tested them afterwards. And group A who just didn't have to do a whole lot of effort to be able to create that, they had the least amount of recall for what was written, which makes sense. They were just given it because they didn't have to work for it. They didn't earn it, right? And also parts of their brain was the least engaged also through the process because they

didn't have to exert any kind of friction. So I just want to remind everybody that every cognitive advance that we've had is humanity, let's even date back 200,000 years with the human brain, came from friction. It came from struggle, right? We needed to develop memory for our survival. Like where's the enemy tribe? Where's clean water? Where's soil?

We had to develop judgment because we had to solve problems of survival. We had to develop creativity because we had constraints of time or temperature or resources, right? So we had to be more creative. So all of this. But what happens when AI removes all the friction? And you don't have to use any of that, right? And then it's just like putting your arm in a sling.

And then we have, you know, these futuristic movies where people are not moving and they're behind the screen and they're eating the junk food. Right. And they're obsolete. And like the machine becomes. the very much so and i really feel that i mean this is like a manifesto a i is um whether it replaces people i think it's a it's a they call it a barbell economy where where it's really threatening people at least the stage when we're recording this is in the middle those middle skill

sets that's going so so certain ai is going if it's going to replace or certainly affect certain professions more than others right and so in that middle skill set who's it going to affect coders copyrighters, visual designers, right? Like there's a whole set of people. And then, you know, this, you know, the barbell, if you're using that kind of metaphor, leadership, right, is, that's why EQ, interpersonal skills, influence, you know,

is very important. On this side, and customer service might fall in the middle also as well with all these, you know, as advanced as it's getting with voice. I haven't spoken to a human being in a year and year. And some people actually, where it is currently now, some people prefer it because it's,

because it's gotten so advanced. And imagine what it's going to be in the future. But on this side of the barbell are the ones that, you know, like HVAC and Plum, certain things that aren't going to be easily replaced, you know, as easy as what's in the middle. So my thing here is whether AI replaces you, it will certainly reveal you. Meaning if an entrepreneur is chaotic and confused, AI is going to magnify that. Like money does. Money just makes you more of who you are, right?

Exactly. But if somebody is clear and they're concise and they're curious, it'll magnify that, right? And so my thing is, I'm very pro-technology. It allows this to happen, right? It allows us to have the work and the impact and scale. I like technology, but it's how it's being used. And my thing is just like with the car or the elevator

or anything else that makes our life more convenient, that we still could do the work because we don't want to be weak, right? There's this whole idea of cognitive flexibility. This is what's in Limitless Daily. I'm building the skills to help people. because, you know, even with businesses, I serve half the Fortune 500 companies doing mental training, mental fitness,

like physical fitness, but mental fitness. So it's Facebook, Nike, Google, SpaceX, the U.S. Air Force. I mean, the highest performers, I realized that, and I was thinking about it the other day, it's not the constraint that I see the pattern in terms of their business. It's not often technology or capital. The constraint or the bottleneck is usually

the cognitive capacity of leadership. Because leaders have to decide, there's a lot of information. If anything, AI, there's too much information. leadership, or every, all of us, because we're all leaders and CEO of U.N.C., right, has to decide out of this, all this information, what's most important? What does this information even mean? What are you going to do with it? What are you going to focus on? So if your intelligence is compromised and your focus is compromised and you're suffering from decision fatigue and you can

all the, you know how mental models to be able to navigate it, then that person's going to be at a disadvantage, right, even if they're using AI. And so I feel like AI will reveal people more because of, because it magnifies and makes it more transparent. And I also think that what an opportunity there is, because I actually, my optimistic view, because everybody knows the dystopian, what, you know, Terminator matrix, what that look like. And I'm not an expert on that, but what I am expert on is the cognitive component, you know, and how our brain can change over time. Because, again, And when A, B, and C at MIT, C had the best, the one that used no technology,

had the best recall of what the work was done. They had the most engagement, just like somebody would have more physical activity required, they get the work, they go through a struggle, they get the strength, right? They went through the challenge, they get the change. And so I feel like, who am I to decide, you know, what's the balance, right?

Ultimately, people have to decide, just like they do with their physical activity of what to do. Because, again, I use technology, But the challenge is, technology is a tool for us to use, but if the technology is using us, then we become the tool, right? We have become a tool. And that's often the case. But I mean, from the cognitive capacity, like, you know, all the brain rot, the AI slop, you know,

everything that we have to kind of go through, I think right now those who lead the best are those who could adapt the fastest. They're going to learn. They're going to unlearn. They're going to relearn. They're going to apply faster than other people. That's going to be the advantage. but that's all human intelligence, right?

AI can do a lot of things, but what makes us human, the optimistic view that I hope we're headed to is that AI is gonna do all these different things, like Star Trek, right? Instead, for the geeks that watch Star Trek, you know, technology took care of everything. There's no scarcity, there's no disease,

there's no, you know, people are living longer. So then they could pursue higher, deeper, more exploration, right? More connection because, because their basic needs on the, on, the pyramid have been satisfied, so they're not just trying to put shelter or food or, you know, those kind of things. But I also believe that if AI is here, if we're going to just be able to survive and also thrive, then we're going to have to lean in to become more human. So my challenge is that is not that artificial intelligence, my challenge is that natural intelligence becomes

artificial. You know what I mean? It's because we're so dependent on it that we're not even using any of this, you know, our natural gifts. And in order to be relevant, today we have to lean into our human intelligence. So what falls under human intelligence? I mean, this acronym on the way here actually called human. So the H just for you, because I know some people are driving or working out and they're not writing it, but they can remember it with these little acronyms. H for me is like heart.

Like think about it. AI, this is emotional intelligence. Like AI could give you a lot of data, but it has no bedside manner. It could fake empathy like it cares about you, but it doesn't do that. And depending on how you prompted, it could be a sicko fan just giving you what you want to hear, right? And that's a danger also as well with AI. That's a big thing that happened.

You have to put like prompts in. They're like truth code, brutal truth. That takes, that takes reflection, that takes realical thinking, that takes a certain level of discernment. To even ask for that in the first place, as opposed to being placated by something, you know, what you want to hear, right? But emotional intelligence is so very important because AI, it doesn't know what it feels like to break up, to get divorced, to help a grieving child, right? To go through loss, right? No. And I feel like, and it could fame that stuff.

But people could tell, right? And so I feel like what will make us more human and more effective as a leader also is, so I use the H as heart, emotional intelligence, empathy, all those things. The E, if we're going to, when we're talking about, like, what is... But isn't human, if you're spelling human, isn't it, it's you? I have another acronym called, called Hart. The U is understanding.

So going back to, like, reasons, going back to meaning. Right? Because again, it could go through and extrapolate all kinds of data and computations, but ultimately, we decide what things mean, right? We have questions. We want to have a greater level of understanding for things. And I feel like that, like curiosity is very important because I think it drives us to be able to wonder and have awe and ask new questions, which are prompts. Like, people should be prompt experts because we've been doing it. We're always asking ourselves questions. Absolutely. But we're stopping to. Well, let me just say this, because as we're talking about critical thinking, I'm thinking about kids. If you have kids, if you have someone who is raising kids, how do you apply, like, how do you teach your children to use AI without them losing their ability to critically think? Yeah, and this generation will be the generation that wouldn't know a world without AI. Right. Right. Just like when we grew up there.

Yeah, like everything is now, you know, automated and social media and AI. Like, are they- I mean, when I was like, you know, I'm thinking about brain also. You know, I'm 53. We have a, we have a toddler or an infant. So I got very, you know, in terms of starting the new journeys here. So I'm very thinking about not only an aging brain because my brain injury as a child, my learning disabilities, losing my grandmother to Alzheimer's, all those things that put me on this path, right?

But also now, you know, with children, I've always worked with children. They use our, our accelerated learning techniques in Finland and South Korea. some of the globally best education systems that are out there. And they're models out there where they're using AI for personalized learning, right? But we do know that, I mean, this is, people know this. So it's no, not new information, but just to presence it that a lot of the tech, you know, billionaires are creating a lot of these platforms. They don't let their kids on devices, right?

Yeah, I know. And because of, and the challenges, have you seen some of these videos, is it's rewiring their brains, especially at those early stages when your brain is even more plastic. Absolutely. And also the human brain, I mean, think about all the sounds and all and all those, those lights and everything else that's bringing you. And again, fire is a form of technology, right? Fire can cook your food or fire could burn down your home. It's just how it's used. Yeah. So I would, I, it's having the intentionality with kids is very important. For young kids, limiting screen time, you know, delaying, you know, how long that, you know, when they get their phones and

all that. I'm not saying any of this is easy, right? Crying kid at a restaurant or, you know, on an airplane. And I totally, I can totally understand. So I'm not saying there's a perfect solution here. But everything, it's all, like, if you want to change your life, there's only four choices you can make, right? There's a quote in a limit list that says life is the letter C between B and D, where B is birth and D is death, life C is choice. So we're going to get really tactical. If you want to change your life, there's only four choices you could do. You either stop something, you start something, you do less of something, or you do more of something. Now, that is so simple.

I'm not saying it's easy to stop smoking or to stop, you know, or to start, you know, exercising or do less binge watching, but things will change for sure. That's great. I love that. That's a great thing. It's not easy, but it's simple. So stop overcomplicating it. So much, but it still requires work, right?

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

what can you do with kids? Well, they could start something, stop something, more of something or do less of something. And then it just makes it easy. And how do you do these? You just do it small. Because sometimes, like, oh, I'm going to start working out for someone who doesn't have that habit.

It's a big jump, right? At least to be consistent. Like, I think if you're persistent, all of us could achieve something, right? You can make a certain amount of money. You can lose a certain amount of weight. But if you're consistent, you get to keep it. Right.

And so consistency compounds. And I wrote this book, It's interesting because I haven't talked about this, but limitless I wrote in less than two months. It was my first book because I had 30, this is my 34th year, right? I just, you know, I had all this content. It was very therapeutic to get out of my head and organize it. Wow, that's amazing. But, and we sold a couple million copies and we don't, you know, we need all this money to build schools in Ghana, Guatemala, Kenya, brain research for Alzheimer's, for women, or twice as likely experienced Alzheimer's than men.

And then, but this, it took me a year. And, well, this is kind of, I dedicate this book to my kids. They're not going to be able to read the book. But when I was in the hospital with my daughter's, about a year and a half, like I journal every day. I don't know if you have a practice. I find I'm most creative, and I've been doing this for 15 years. Just I have to write and just get things out of my head or maybe gratitude

or what I'm going to do that day or something I'm thinking about that I don't want to solve. When I was in the hospital, when she was born, I had my journal, but I started writing to her. And I had a couple of near-death experiences. And I just, like, if I wasn't here, what I wouldn't be able to share. And I wrote about things that I was facing or clients, that was top of mind clients or students were facing. Things like frustration or lack of focus or overload or burnout or imposter syndrome or fear failure, right? I mean, all of these.

And I started writing about it. And I said, here's the idea. Here's the science behind it, either psychology or not. neuroscience, and here's one thing you can do in less than two minutes to help you win your day, right? And I did that for all these different categories, and then a year passed, and there's the book, you know, and so for them to be able to read it, and then the biggest question we got with Limitless is like, wow, this is an owner's manual for your brain, which, which is surprising it doesn't come with. And there are people like, where do I even start this? Five minutes a day,

every single day, and we're going to do a whole 366 challenge for free for everybody that he gets the book and then every single day we'll focus on one thing to get rid of the friction in your life so you could win that day. I love that. Okay, so if someone only has five minutes a day to train their brain, what would you suggest they do? Highest leverage? This is new. So I would say is when I was doing research for this book, it's not just what you read it, it's when you read it, right? Or when you input anything. So people can find all of all my stuff out there. Here's something new that's high leverage because that's what I want is the like what's the least amount of things I can do to be able to get the most return and rewards. Here's one and some people have seen some semblance

of this but I'm going to show it to science that I haven't heard talk about. When you wake up in the morning, there's something called sleep inertia. Sleep inertia is where you transition from sleep mode to waking mode, right? And what comes online? Your conscious awareness, your attention, your alertness, all that's coming online. And especially first thing in the morning, your working memory, very short-term memory, is empty. That cup is empty. It's not full of all, everything that you had to go through the day. So what happens during that window of sleep inertia when you first wake up is the mental inputs that you choose to let in has a disproportionate effect on the rest of your day. Now, that's leverage, meaning I'll tell you what it affects.

Depending on what you choose here in that window has a disproportionate effect on your feelings. like what do most people do that first window in the morning? Swirl their phone. Right, they grab their phone. And so, you know, so you get a bad, you get a voicemail message or a text or WhatsApp or social media message about something, whatever, and put you in a mood. And so it affects your feelings. The second thing it affects your focus.

Like what you, they call it intentional priming. So attentional priming is what you're training your attention for. So what you see first thing in the morning, say it's a political thing or it's this thing or something that's going to be a new thing, that's trending, whatever, you're going to focus on that more of that day. That just makes that you're just seeing it more that day. So it affects your focus, your feelings, and then third, which is a big one, no one thinks about the framing of the day.

Meaning when things happen throughout the day, we will disproportionately based on what we fed our mind first thing in the morning, frame situations differently based on what happened. So if you go on your phone, you see this thing about a reality show, whatever, and this kind of, you know, this relationship balance, whatever, we'll taint our interactions with humans later that day. You go through a challenge, depending on what you fed your brain, has a disproportionate effect, not a complete effect, but definitely a strong influence on, is this a challenge or is this a problem?

Is this an opportunity? Do I feel like I can handle it? All the framing. So the message here, and that's why, first thing in the morning, if you don't touch your phone, you do whatever the routine is, prayer, some people do gratitude. For me, like one of the 366 things, I do something called Future Episodic Memory, where I, Episodic memory is remembering the episodes of your life, the experience of your life,

as opposed to procedural memory is remembering how to do something, like how to drive a car, how to type, whatever. And so future episodic remembering is one of the days in this, and it's basically how to set a goal where it feels so real, it's as real as remembering what you have for breakfast that morning. And you could end this whole process for that. So here, one thing you can do is use that time is when you wake up, even without the book,

right you can do gratitude you could do journaling you could set your goals whatever because you'll get more out of your day that way attentional priming what i do is i just stay in bed and i keep my eyes closed and i imagine myself coming back to bed and we could all do that right just imagine you coming back to and and uh you get a message or somebody asked you like how was your day and i so imagine my wife has how was your day and i was and i light up and i'm like today was incredible like i totally crushed it today and then i i imagine asking myself what had to happen in order for me to feel that way. Like I just think of, for me, I choose three things personally and three things professionally. So those six things are my, what I'm focusing on that day. Give me an example. Yeah. So just,

this is really good. So, so you're saying if someone only has five minutes a day to work on their brain in all aspects, the most important five minutes actually is the five minutes you're waking up because it frames everything else that you're talking about and doing and how you feel, focus, et cetera. And then you're saying in that five minutes you close your eyes and visualize, you're going back to bed and like your wife asking the question. Yeah, I would do one of the, well, there's 366 different things you could do in the book, but this is one of them. And there's three questions you ask professionally, you talk about. Yeah, so I ask myself. So again, like, what would I do is take advantage of that sleep inertia. When your brain is transitioning to

attention, awareness, a level of alertness, and that window, my mantra, my mantra, for the longest time has always been mine before media. I will not touch my media phone. Because we would never, first thing in the morning, invite 200 strangers into our bedroom just to talk about whatever the heck they want to talk about. That would just be insane. But that's kind of what we're doing

when we open up our phone, right? So it wires, it uses that attentional priming to wire your brain for number one distraction because none of that's important, right? And then it also wires your brain for reaction, meaning Brendan Bershard, who wrote Motivational Manifesto said, Motivation Manifesto said, your inbox is nothing but a convenient organizational system

for other people's agenda for your life. And isn't that true that you could get a voicemail or an email or something else and you're fighting fires? And you're starting your day on defense. Yeah. Right? And it's kind of like the way I visualize it, Jen, it's like when I wake up, we're all getting on a plane.

And we want to go to a destination, a city, right? That's the goal. We want to do something special that day and travel. And, you know, a lot of people go in there and there's turbulence. And that turbulence might be distraction, it might be energy vampires. It might be the crazy, all that stuff. Or somebody could be going and hijacking that plane and take you where you don't want to go. And that often happens for leaders, entrepreneurs, parents, because the world happens, right?

What I want to do is on that plane, the same metaphor. Because if you're going this to this city and you take a 1%, because the first thing you do when you get on a plane, it's set to go to a destination. But if it's off even 1%, you could end up in a completely different city or country, right, over the length of that flight. In this case, the full and the hours in a day, right, depending on when you wake up. And so the metaphor for to build that out is I want to take people from being a passenger on that plane, put them into the cockpit, and they are the pilot of their mind. It's like for me, we use the word intelligence. We've talked about it a lot. Intelligence is not IQ, right?

I make a big argument in limitless saying your IQ is not fixed. Like you take a test when you're eight years old, that's your potential when you're 88. That's ludicrous, right? Plus the test doesn't even test for a lot of things that are important today, like just like the school system, not preparing them for the world. Yeah, I'm a big believer in this. And so for me, intelligence and, you know, I have different definitions over the years. Intelligence could be pattern recognition, right? Like somebody who's very intelligent could see patterns in the market or patterns in biology,

or patterns in lifestyle. For me, patterns of the brain and learning, right? It's to get, there's a method behind the magic. So you could do extraordinary things because you see things other people don't because they don't have distinctions as they see the themes and the patterns. Also, you know, intelligence for me is just the ability to change your opinion based on new data. Like what a concept, right? And so in this book, I have passages on cognitive flexibility.

Because think about what physical flexibility allows you to do. You don't get as injured, you know, as individuals because you're pliable, right? But we don't do this mental parkour, you know, where we could train flexibility mentally, meaning, I mean, think about the opposite in business because I'm either going to compare things when I'm talking about brain. I'm either going to compare it to body, the physical workout, or business where people who relate. Like, think about...

But that cognitive flexibility is so smart, right? And that's a form of human intelligence, right? That's something, because here's the opposite, cognitive rigidity. And what happens when people are cognitive. they're rigid, you get a blockbuster, right? Blockbuster video. Where are they? Right?

Because they didn't, they were not flexible. Yes, because they weren't able to be fluid with the times. And think about based on new information data, right? Because they're rigid, right, and their thinking and their execution. Think about, remember Kodak? Of course I remember Kodak. That's a great example. Kodak actually developed the main technology for digital photography.

They developed that. Polaroid. Right. But they developed a, but they developed. the digital photography and then where are they now? Nowhere. Because they were cognitively rigid. So cognitively flexible are people to be able to be.

And that's what human beings want to be. You want to be able to change things because you know what the big part of human intelligence is your ability to adapt, right? Like if I'm going to build out that human acronym, H is, H is heart, all the emotional intelligence, U is understanding because while AI can feign understanding, it really doesn't understand why. M in human is meaning. like purpose, right?

Like purpose is what, as human beings, we want to lean. And by the way, when we exercise these things, we become more human. And I think that could be the renaissance for humanity, where AI is saying, okay, I don't have to do this, this, and this because AI could do it. Let me not just sit back and just have a convenient life. Because life really is, I noticed you have a book here. I don't know if you had them on the show we did, Michael Easter, about comfort crisis. Yeah, I did have.

And having deliberate, because the other part to cognitive flexibility, that we talk about in Limitless Daily as entries in five minutes is building cognitive anti-fragility. Anti-Fragility, because we hear about being anti-fragile. For me, it's all about cognition. And so I'm thinking about how do you build cognitive anti-fragility so you have that mind where you could persevere, you could go through difficult things. How do you? This is a great point.

And you know, just same thing mentally is the same thing physically as you do difficult things, right? So for me, and I would love to have a conversation with you about courage and confidence and how you and where what comes first and also action and how that's not people feel stuck or stalled because they just they're not just they don't they're not stepping in and building that muscle of confidence or courage and that's the only way to really build confidence yeah and people think it has to come first no comes right exactly right exactly and so and by doing the action you start develop evidence because I feel like the action is the vote that you are this person that you are courageous or you are confident right and so going back to deliberate discomfort, what I would say is we've optimized for convenience, for comfort, right? And that's the challenge that I have with AI. It's making you even more comfortable because you don't have to put any effort to something. And we don't tend to grow or even appreciate things when I do a lot of stuff. I was having a conversation with a mutual friend about family office. You know, it's like first generation wealth. What happens second generation? What happens

the third generation, right? Because they never had to develop the muscles. No. Right? Or the distinctions or the knowledge or the wisdom that comes through friction and AI is removing that friction. And I'm fine with it making my life convenient. I like the fact that technology allows me to do lots of things. And I don't want to just let my brain just retire, right? Because that's usually the big decline in cognitive is when people either graduate school because they associate learning. Oh, my learning is done. Right. And then or when people retire. And when people retire, they often don't use their mind as much. and then their body is not far behind after that. But how do you build, like, let's look at nature, right? There's a whole area of science in nature called biomimicry.

And this is where we look at nature because it's been around longer than we have. And how to use that for energy systems? Like all these different things, because we can learn because they've refined and have wisdom. But it also look at nature about being anti-fragile, like a hermetic response, right? Or heat adaption. So for me, cognitive resistance. I'm going to make a distinction personally, because I make things very functional for me. Cognitive resilience is bouncing back to stress, right? You bounce back to a default baseline.

Cognitive anti-fragility is bouncing forward, so you're actually stronger because of it. So how do you become more cognitively? Yeah. Well, so so. So flexibility. Or flexible. So yeah, cognitive flexibility, we could talk about developing as suppose the rigidity of a blockbuster. How can you do that if you're very set in your ways? Right. And then incognitive anti-fugility is the endurance to be able to bounce to be stronger.

So working out is a way of becoming more anti-fragile because you're not even staying the same. You're growing stronger with the pressure, with the stress, right? And so nature imitates that even like, so whether it's a hormetic response, whether it's heat adoption, you're going to be more efficient and stronger because of it, or you're working out. Mentally, it's like reading and novelty so you can get stronger mentally. or like even look at kids, right? Like babies, they're exposed to more soil and more bacteria.

Their immune systems are stronger, right? So it's just married. They become more anti-fragile based on the stressor. And so what I'm saying here cognitively is to be able to push ourselves. But what kind of strength or anti-fragility cognitively do we have if AI is doing all the work? Right. And what do we do? What do we do?

What do we do to make it less, to become more flexible? Yeah. So what I would say is here, a simple example, and this is hard, but learning is supposed to be hard. Like, if you're working out and it's not hard, what are you really growing? Maybe you're maintaining some of your health. I was going to say also, I don't really believe in easy or hard. I just believe in doing it more, right? Because anything becomes easier if you just do something, right? So that hard thing becomes easy, and that easy thing becomes hard if you don't do it. So, like, the idea is just doing it. What does someone do, though, to be become more cognitively more flexible. Do they do fill in the blank? Yeah. So to get stronger, so to get stronger cognitively, right, like anti-fragile, you push yourself mentally. Like you do the difficult things and you don't avoid it.

So for AI, for example, before I prompt about like, oh, I had this episode about this and what it would be done. I actually spend five minutes thinking about what I would answer for this before I would just offload it and just get an easy answer, right? That would be one example. of just like, you know, if I'm going to go here to the area, yes, I can use the technology, but I'm also going to kind of walk the long way just to kind of push myself a little bit more, just like I would do physically. So it's a moment-to-moment choice that we're making intentionally

if we're going to do something more difficult at the time so we could build some kind of strength because we go through some kind of struggle that leads to some kind of, you know, change. And that's kind of like taking the stairs, not the elevator, even though you have that option. All the time. Like even, you know, thinking about if you're using AI to make social media, but be able to think about it. And you don't want to spend, I don't want people to waste time. Because I'm cognitively pretty, I wouldn't say lazy, but I think people who optimize for, they don't want to waste their time because they see the value of their focus. They see the value of what energy they have. They see the value of the minutes in their day. And so I would say

the answer is just like working out, you push yourself, why you do that, you do that, but we're not doing that mentally. So I would say be doing those mental pushups. And it could be different for each person. I personally like reading, just because, you know, like that's, that's, that's, that's, my jam, if people have seen pictures of me with the Oprahs and eons or whatever, you just bonded over books, right? And somebody has a book, like yourself, and you put it into a book, you put it into, you see, so it's knowledge decades, you put into a book and someone could read that book in a few days, you could download decades and days. That's a huge advantage. Plus, reading is great exercise for your mind, right, new ideas. And I'm not just saying nonfiction, in fiction reading is wonderful.

Like, like, I do have a, I don't have my phone by my nightstand. The best way of changing your habits, says, you know, like one of the best ways is remove the triggers and change your environment, right? So otherwise you're using willpower if that phone is there, that we're like, oh, I have to you to do it every single time. It's like if you don't want to eat bread like at a restaurant, then they bring bread. It's easier to say no and say it once as opposed to being there and you're saying in your mind 50 times, no, no, no, no, right? It's so much easier to control your environment. So you put your device, which we know is probably not the best thing in the morning or late at night for sleep and everything else like that, put in the bathroom, replace it with a book,

right and that i read fiction if i'm going to read like something usual outside of like a five minute like download from like like limitless daily because fiction reading has huge benefits uh it does emotional like emotional intelligence empathy imagination and be able to step into other people's shoes to be able to see that like especially the way we train fiction reading it's like because nobody like george lucas everyone they can't do what you could do inside your own mind like when you're so enraptured into a fiction book some people read harry pot or whatever they reading and just walking around with it. They don't even know what's going like in the kitchen and everything else. I just saw it because your imagination. And it's a wonderful way of stimulating,

you know, like your imagination, your creativity and empathy. And so it's been shown to help be able to. And plus, it's a great reducer of stress reading. People will sleep better after they read a fiction book. And I think some people intuitively have experienced that. What I don't read is something super technical. I was going to ask you that. So do you think before people go to bed, they should read fiction, not nonfiction. They shouldn't read like some health. No, because if I read a business book or a neuroscience book, then I'll be in my executive brain and I'll get out of that parasympathetic.

I'll be thinking about like, oh, what am I going to do with this, focus, everything else like that. But if I'm reading something more entertaining, and it's better than me feeling, and this is personal preference, watching a TV or iPad or a screen because that blue light and the alpha affects our circadian rhythm and sleep, and this could be super stimulating, but a book is just very, yeah, that's for me.

So I have, that's a great point because I've never actually heard anyone talk about that, that what the benefits are of reading a fiction book because people never think there's any benefit to it. Even when I was doing some of the SpaceX and I first met, you know, I don't drop names, but like we bonded over sci-fi books, like our love for sci-fi books. Wow. Because like think about like, and you could go to any, you could go online, people could search about whoever they admire, like the Steve Jobs or whoever and all these fiction books come out because what does it do as an early age? it got you out of what, just like when I couldn't read, I was reading comic books. And that shaped my life because I, the, the pictures brought it to life and help me understand the words and everything else. But then I, I unconsciously saw, like, the hero's journey that people hear for purpose. They use their power for good. They think it'll overcome struggle. What's your favorite book? My fiction book? Yeah. Oh, goodness.

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

Always, yeah. And movies are great. no discomfort, especially for stress management, everything else to, you know, it's just too much of anything. That's why I say do more of or less of, or stop it or start it. It makes it really, really simple. I love that. But yeah, sci-fi books are just, you know, I read a lot of the fantasy books, the Lord of the Rings, all the classics. I have a very large fiction library. But I, I have two books on my nightstand instead of my phone, because I don't want that urge. Even, you know, I had a, Simon Seneca and I have a video.

I saw it on Facebook. So I'm nine years old. It has 38 million views. Somebody spliced our two or our stages together to two of us. And it's me talking about not touching your phone and all the reaction and distraction. And his was just saying, hey, just even having your phone at the meal table, at a restaurant or at your dining table, even as it face down, creates the, like the instinct or the impulse to grab it all through that. And just just because it's distracting you from me.

your attention is diverted. Or even if someone's holding it, how does it feel like if someone's here, not even looking at it and you're talking to somebody? And so moving it somewhere else, and what I have my nightstand is I have a journal, have a fiction book for night, and I have a limitless daily in the morning,

people can have their whatever, you know, whatever they want to feed their mind first thing. And it's just, it works. And it doesn't have to be a lot of reading. Like if people say this, like, oh, I don't like reading. Well, first of all, most people don't like reading because they're not good at it, right? Just like if you don't, if you're not great at golf,

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

Right. Right. Like find things that you really love. See, you're so good with these, you know, phrases. That's a great thing to say. Yeah, like, what are your passions? Like, even, like, I was looking at, um... Such a good point. Like, so many people are burnt out nowadays because of AI or because of their job or because of the economy or because of politics or because information overload, whatever, right? A lot of information. I think people are burnt out from information overload. And AI. I mean, is that going to, is that going to go down or is that kind of... Well, it's giving people anxiety because you don't know how to use it and then you fall behind.

And they call, they actually call it information anxiety. And how does it affect our health? Higher blood pressure, compression, leisure time. People aren't sleeping as well, right? Because of all this drowning. So we're drowning information, but I think we're starving for wisdom, right?

The promise of limitless daily, and then it's purple, right? If you're watching this on video, I have 5,000 books in two rooms, and I have like no purple books. It's so wild. And I don't know. Like, there are a couple I could think of

that are out there that are well known. But purple, and I did the whole thing on color psychology, and purple, the two words that consistently came up, sovereignty, which is your agency, and wisdom, right? And I feel like that was so, that was so fitting for the book, because I want to remind people that they are at cause, that they have agency, they have sovereignty, they have responsibility, it lies on their shoulders and also wisdom giving them the insight, be able to get through, you know, something new in the day. That's why it's purple. What is certain colors, like, if someone wear, like, you say, can you talk about the color psychology?

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

I love that. But sovereignty and wisdom is kind of the promise. Okay, but okay, get back to, you just kind of touched upon something that I think everyone would like to know more about is the focus and retention. Because of AI, because of where we are. I think our focus is, of course, we talked about completely depleted. And also, like, retention. Like, you read, you can retain. A lot of times I read, I'm reading, blah, blah, blah.

I've got to read the same sentence 20 times, right? Can you give us a really good, actionable thing we can start doing today to really improve our focus? And then how do we help our retention? For reading? In general. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think in general. So I think just like confidence, confidence in something you have.

So a lot of nature of my work, the first principle is taking nouns and turn them into verbs. Because I think we trick ourselves or hypnotize ourselves with the words that we use. Right. People at all the time see me memorize 100 people's names, an audience, wherever. And they come to me and say, Jim, I can't do that. You know, I'm not smart enough. I'm too old.

I have a horrible memory. And I always say the same thing. Stop. If you fight for limitations, you get to keep them, right? They're yours. Because your brain is this incredible supercomputer. Your self talks to the program that will run. So if you tell yourself, I'm not good at focusing or remembering names,

you won't remember the name in the next person to me because you program, you're going to be really not to, right? And so I would start first with the belief about focus and reading speed, right? because I think all behavior is belief-driven. Like, we can't, it's been my experience in, especially working with athletes or, you know, people who want to achieve big, big, big things. I don't feel like we rise to the level of our goals or our dreams. I think we fall to the level of our three things, at least, our standards.

We fall to the level of our standards. Like, we'll always, like, if our standard is, we have to be able to pay the mortgage and we'll always hit that, right? We fall to love our standards. We fall to love our systems. You have systems for when things get high. And especially when things is hard, right? Everyone could perform well when there's no pressure and everything's going really well.

That's a given. People show up in even relationships when they're not stressed. That's easy, right? But it's always the stressors, right? Of the economy of how people treat you or whatever. So when things go wrong, we fall to the level of our standards. We follow the level of our systems. And I feel also the third thing is we fall to level our self-image.

You can't outperform who you think you are. It is really hard, at least not sustainably and consistently, right? So people could go through and do this thing for a relationship, but their self-image is, I'm not worthy of this love, or making that kind of money or whatever it is, or whatever that self-image is, we're gonna fall to that level. So limitless is not about being perfect.

Limitless is about redrawing the borders and boundaries of what's possible, because you could optimize, you could optimize your systems for greater results. You could raise your standards, right? You could transform your self-image. I'm not saying, again, easy is different than simple, but it's absolutely possible because how else do other people do it?

right in terms of and they go through a process and so limitless is about helping people with that their standards or self-image they're limiting beliefs like if somebody can learn a great method for entrepreneurs to make money but if their mindset is it's scarce it doesn't grow in trees I have to hurt people to make money right you know it's then then money's the root of all evil whatever it happens to be you're never going to be able to do that thing so people start stop you know or fear fear whatever it happens to be of them not looking good or they procrastinate Like, I would do the inner work, right? It's just like if somebody's watched,

there's another one in Limitless Daily, one entry talk about, is it mental exercise. It's like, you ever watch a movie or television show, and you're like, you know what the main character is suffering. There's the struggle. They're going to the child. And you know exactly what they need to do, exactly what they need to do.

And I think everyone listening or watching knows the same. 100% of the people know this, right? So just like one exercise in here is the thought experiment. It's like, imagine there's video cameras on you right now, It's been following you around for years. What's the audience screaming at you to do? Right? So it gets you out of yourself.

There's this cognitive distancing from it, right? And I think ultimately all the great coaching is like self-coaching. I've heard that before, actually. Like if someone, if you were, if someone was watching a movie that you were the, you know, the main character in, what would they be screaming at you to do that you just don't see? Right. And it, yeah. And so in here, so I break it down and I give them one idea.

I talk about the science of what's being activated, either brain anatomy part or the psychology part of it, and then give them one little thing. It's always a quick start because my last name really is quick. It's not like a stage name or anything. That's amazing. That's the real name. Because also that small, simple step, what does it do?

It gives them effort, cognitive effort, that gives you dopamine that you earn. Right. Right. One of the biggest challenging challenges nowadays is that dopamine, which is the molecule and motivation and enjoy, like most people aren't earning it, right? Like scrolling is no effort, and you get all his dopamine, and then the baseline changes, right?

And you're all spent. You wonder why you're not motivated to write that book, do that sales call, work out, whatever, because it's just like binge watching something, no effort at all, or going to a website. No effort at all. Or junk food, right? So we get that hit.

It's just like when people, they post on Facebook, I just saw this today, they put on Facebook, I'm going to write a book. And I literally messaged a person after because they got like 100 comments saying, oh, congratulations, amazing, dopamine, dopamine, dopamine, dopamine. And I guarantee you that person is less motivated to finish that book because they got their hit. 100%. For nothing, for doing nothing. There's research on that, though. There's a lot of research on that. That if people say that what they're going to do and then they kind of get that dopamine enough where they don't even end up doing it because they got that release, so to speak, right? Yeah, especially with public or or do it with somebody that's going to hold you account. Like, do it probably where someone's going to hold you accountable, like in their mentor or somebody you care about if you don't follow through. Like, that's different.

Are you on social? I mean, like, do you scroll? Are you on social media? I am, I'm less and less only and not because I'm so enlightened, but I also, it's the same reason I just, I don't drink, you know, like I have socially and stuff like that, especially with clients that have some little, like, like. like biodynamic, red wine, whatever it happens to be. But I don't, for the longest time I have been drinking, but it's just easier for me just not to. So do I go on those?

Yes, because part of my business relies on it. I want to see what, you know, like peers are doing and staying close to friend, that's useful. But I don't, I am, even myself knowing everything, all the cognitive consequences of doom scrolling and brain rot and all the things that the youth are going through, I'm more and more rigorous about having borders and boundaries around the things.

Because here's the thing. Here's another exercise in Limitless Daily. It's imagine, the thing about the words we use about, so we live in the age of attention, right? That's everything. And we can't do anything without focus. And our focus and attention is being sold to advertisers and everything else.

We know this. So we pay attention, right? There's a currency there. Like, think about the words that we use. Like, here's another experiment. What if tomorrow, you're starting your day, whatever, and you had to whip out your credit card every single time you forward your attention to something.

You go on the Facebook, if you want on Instagram, be at the port, you manage you put in your credit card, and every single minute that goes by, you're being charged for whatever, we would treat it differently, right? Right. Like, we would think about how would we protect, you know,

our currency, how would we invest our currency into something that would be lasting? And, you know, I feel like these are choices that we make. And so, yeah, I'm human, and I, you know, I use technology, just like I use AI and everything else, but I use it sparingly because I also know

that there's a consequence, you know, to doing it. Yeah. Okay, so for focus then, I'm just going to make sure I'm clear. What is the first thing, what is the good thing we can do? Like in one sentence. So that first five minutes already is protect your focus, right? So that, that gives you know, start your day and being distracted and flexing your

distracts muscle. The second thing of your focus is your brain primarily delete stuff. It does focus on certain things based on your reticular activating system and what the questions you're asking. So here's the focusing tool. are the questions. See, the prompts that you're giving to AI, I'd be even more concerned about the prompts you're giving to yourself. Like, you know, I talk about in the book about a dominant question that you have 60,000 thoughts a day, and there's one, and a lot of those thoughts are

questions you're asking yourself and answering for yourself, right? But there's questions that you ask more than any other question. Figure out what those questions are. Like, and it's unconscious. It's usually imprinted. Like, when I was labeled the boy with the broken brain, my question was like, why am I broken? Like, what's wrong with me? And I started getting my RIS, but I started focusing on all the things I was wrong. with me, right? Because that's the prompt that you're putting into, whether it's artificial intelligence or your natural intelligence, you're going to get answers based on the quality of that question. And then later on, I started changing that question because it was like, well, how do I fix

my brokenness? And I started getting answers, too, that I didn't see before. So even when you read a, as anyone who's watching or listening, read a page in a book, Katana just forgot what they just read. How embarrassing, right? And they reread it and they still know what they just read. I guarantee, first of all, I think they're reading too slow, because when you're reading slow, like, Watch this because we haven't taken a class, unless you've gone through our program, like probably as you're six years old as a reading class. If when you have this incredible supercomputer or brain,

most magnificent, that's 86 billion brain cells and trillion synaptic can actually more stars than are in the known universe, you can remember what you read or I can remember a name. But when you're reading, you feed it one word at, I can't even, I'm from New York, I can't even talk that slow. But imagine if we were extrapolate that,

If you and I were to have the conversation talking that slow, what would everybody, what would their minds all naturally do if we talk this slow? They would get bored and not pay attention. But isn't that interesting? That's what, that's the experience people have when they read. That's so true. And they're reading too slow. So you got to be faster.

So here's the thing, because if they're reading too slow, if they're word, you know, one word at a time, what happens? Just like when I was talking slow, you get distracted, you lose your focus, you fall asleep. Some people who do that to fall asleep, they use reading as a sedative. And what I'm saying is when you actually, it's like driving a car in this beautiful neighborhood. If they're going 20, 30 miles down, they're not focused on driving. Like, have you arrived at your location? You even remember the drive there? You're not consciously aware because you're going slow, right?

Some people would be, I saw somebody here like not putting on their makeup when they're driving, like whatever. Or, you know, texting, which you absolutely shouldn't do because you can't multitask, two things in once, as far as more accidents. We're singing a song, drinking their coffee, thinking about the dry cleaning. talking to somebody else in the car. You can do five things when you're going slow. But if you're racing a car and you're going to hairpin, you're going 200 miles an hour, taking hairpin turns,

are you thinking about dry cleaning? Are you trying to text? Are you thinking of drinks? No, you're focused on the act of driving and what's in front of you. Faster readers will have better comprehension because they have better focus. They're focused on the book and the act of reading.

Because if you don't give your brain the stimulus it needs, it'll seek entertainment elsewhere in the form of distractions. Your mind wanders. Starts thinking about client stuff or something in the future because you are boring your brain because you're going too slow. And so one of the ways to improve, to answer your question for reading, read faster. You can use a visual pacer to help you focus, your pen, highlighter, mouse, or whatever, because your eyes are retracted in motion that'll help you visually focus. And also, it'll help you go faster because you could control this pace and you won't back skip and reread words by accident. And by going faster, it'll improve your focus and ask more questions.

Because let's say, like I guarantee if somebody reads a page, even if they're going slow and they're not remembering anything, they're not asking any questions about that. Like even we have a whole very successful student program to help students get better grades and less time, teaching them the focus, memory, speed reading. What an advantage that is, right? And part of it is like even if you look at standardized tests, you remember like in standardist test you do all this reading comprehension and then hear the questions? Like, would it make sense to read those 10 questions first and then read the passages and be like, oh, there's an answer, there's an answer. And that's why even in limit lists, like every chapter started with three questions because I wanted to intentionally prime people's minds, activate their reticulactivating system. And then when they're reading, oh, there's the answer, there's the answer. And that helps them to focus. So do you believe in ADHD then or no?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, we've had Dr. Raymond and all big ADD, ADHD doctors there. That's not my expertise. So definitely talk to your health practitioner, diagnosed, and you're going to say everything. But I would say, but I would say, but I would say, absolutely. Yeah, I've taken a very. I'm very well read in the subject. Obviously, we have millions in our community, so it could just come up just through numbers. I take an extremely strength-based approach to ADD, ADHD, dyslexia. I mean, I can give you countless examples of people throughout history and current people

who have these traits and they're exceptional because it forced them to think differently than other people. Just like with my learning disabilities and, you know, my brain traumatic brain injury and all the things that came with it, it forced me to be able to look at things in a different way to come up with different answers. That's what cognitive flexibility could be, right? Like, Steve Jobs is very flexible. Like, thinking about a phone.

It is the intersection of like a computer, a camera, a calculator, like all these different things, right? But anybody could have done that. There's a book called The Structure of Scientific Revolution that says that all innovation, the majority of all innovation in fashion, technology, automotive, it usually comes from somebody outside the industry that came in an executive or is our founder

that looks at the industry saying, why aren't we doing it this way? because if you're in the industry, you also have the same education, the same learned helplessness, what's possible, that's reinforced that environment. So it's like Elon looking at the automotive industry saying, like, ask a new question, a new prompt, like what you would do in chatGBT or something else. You would ask yourself saying like, hey, if I was to create a card today with today's technology, what would that look like?

And you ask a new question or prompt you get a new answer. And that's why I lean into human intelligence, because the last of it, because you're going to get these people post on social media. The rest of the acronym, just to close this out, H is hard, which is emotional intelligence. The U is the understanding and the comprehension, because only humans could decide that. The M is the meaning and purpose behind what we do.

Like I think passion is what lights you up, and purpose is how you use that passion to light somebody else up. That's functionally work serves me very well, meaning, you can have lots of passions. Like I love martial arts, I have anime, a arena, like learning. Learning lights me up.

Then in all ways, because I struggle with this for so long, That lights me up, but teaching people out to learn, lights them up. That's my purpose, right? And so that's purpose, and that's a big conversation, like why we do what we do, who we do it for. And then the A is adaptability, our ability to adapt when the world changes, when technology changes. Are you going to adapt or you're going to fall behind?

You know, or adaptability is on learning bad things that just don't work anymore. And then finally, the N in human, besides adaptability, the N is Nexus. And I use Nexus as an easy way to remember, connections because it's not just your neurological networks is your social networks and to become a nexus of because even on our podcast we had the director of the the longest the oldest study at harbored 80 over 80 years on longevity and happiness he said yeah for for brain who was that so it changed but like i'll send and we'll post a link but i would say that it was it wasn't diet that was the biggest thing or exercise it was your connections not just it wasn't just romantic it was the depth

of your connections. Yeah. Because as a reminder, it's not just your neurological networks, it's your social networks, which added years to people's life. And, you know, and so I bring this up is, but that's a human quality, right? Adaptability, you know, understanding, you know, meaning, empathy, hard, emotional intelligence. And I feel like in the world of AI where it's accelerating, the only people are going to survive.

So we're going to be able to keep up with computation and processing, right? Everybody has that. it's the it's we're going to have to lean in and get really deep into what makes us more human the curiosity the empathy the leadership you know the adaptability and and we do in the book we happen to touch on every single one of those things and more i can't read that book okay i've got more questions yeah yeah what's one belief you had 10 years ago that you've completely changed your mind on what is one belief that i had years ago that i changed my mind on Wow. Okay, so 10 years ago, it would be different. I'm trying to think back in terms of where I was 10 years ago, but even in the past in general. Just in general, yeah. I mean, before I thought things were fixed, and this is a common belief that people have, either genius is born. You're born with that ability, right? And my new belief is genius is built. You know, or another way of saying it is that intelligence or memory is fixed like your shoe size. It's absolutely not. It could grow up through proper training, discipline, habits, mentorship. And what does that mean based on neuroplasticity?

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

Yeah. So for me, it is part of my morning routine. I just have to move. And I also remind people, it's just not just your exercise routine is moving throughout the day. And so I think that's very important. So exercise, so many benefits for the brain, right?

We know about brain-derived neurotropic factors, BDNF. What is that? It's like fertilizer for that neuroplasticity. So that's critical. When you exercise, you get dopamine, serotonin, you get endorphins that are earned, which is so very important. So that's the physiological neurological benefits.

Also, exercise is hard. Like I know in the terms of until it becomes easy, but I like pushing ourselves and doing difficult things because I feel like if people are struggling with brain fog or they're stressed, it's a wonderful stress reliever. Have you ever had a workout and just like regretted you? Never. Literally. I want to know if there's any like, do you have any like stats? Like it makes your brain 97% more functional. No, that one.

You don't have that? Okay. I want you to walk me through fast your daily habits. Like from the second you wake up and the second you go to bed, I want to what you do every day because that's really important because we want to do what you're doing. No, well, okay. What time do you wake up in the morning?

I'll share with you. I'm very transparent about, you know, because all I do is document. I can roll out of bed at 2 o'clock at the morning on the conversation with you because I practice what I post. I think that's very important, right? Otherwise, I won't be able to do what I need to do. Two o'clock in the morning, you say?

No, no, no, no, no, no. But I'm saying even if I tell you the hour I wake up, I'm not saying that's ideal for everybody. because I do believe people are a bio-individual. What I would want people to do is not just, no, the process of what I'm doing, but more important to principle so they could customize it for themselves. I don't think necessarily there's a through line between people making their bed and not making their bed or waking up a certain time and not.

But the principle behind that is, I think, is important. I don't require a whole lot of sleep. Maybe I've trained myself that way because I pulled all-nighters through school trying to keep up and not doing well. I also have a kind of career where I could be in three continents in a week. Yeah. So I have to do the things, you know, you and I find ourselves at biohacking conferences, a longevity, performance, wellness events together.

And, you know, I practice these things. And so I sleep is incredibly important. All right. So for your brain cleans out beta amoe plaques, it can lead to brain aging challenges, consolidation shorts a long-dramory. And there's so many benefits sleep, right? That's a given. But I would say that prioritize sleep, probably the one of the most important things people

could do for their brain. For me, you know, I'm definitely out of bed at 5 a.m., but it's just me. like I'm just a morning person. More important than that, and I'll go, I'll go micro. So one of the challenges people have with the cognitive dips throughout the day or the mental fatigue, part of motivation is not just having purpose and small things they could do to break things down to get some momentum and some dopamine is having the energy, the wherewithal to do that, right?

If you don't, you have a newborn child and you haven't slept in three nights, you're not going to, you're not being motivated to work out, right? And if you do, it's hard to get a lot of benefit when you can exert a lot of effort into it. For me, part of the expenditure is the task switching, the multitasking, meaning you're on Slack and then you go to this and you go to email and then you consume like, you know, things you need do and you can do a conference call. You're task switching. And what it does is this is big for focus.

When you task switch, first of all, you waste, you waste time. People think that they're multitasking and gaining time. It could take five to 15 minutes to regain your focus, right? So you're actually losing time. Number two, you make more mistakes. I get to work with some of the most amazing doctors, surgeons. surgeons who do more multitasking will make more surgical errors during operations. They'll make more. It's like texting and driving. You can't do two cognitive activities well

over time, right? You're going to make more mistakes. So you're making more mistakes in your life and your business, whatever. But the third expenditure that people don't think about is energy. Like if I'm working on a specific task and I switch with something else, this, this cognitive web is lit up. And now I have to kind of close this down, turn this on. He uses a lot of glucose, right? And so if you get dips, maybe you have too many tabs open. And so what's the cure to that or not the cure, but the treatment is you batch certain things that are cognitively similar together, right? And so this is how I do it, and it's not duplicatable, but I'm saying that's the principle, how it expresses itself in my life, in the morning I create, in the afternoon I consume,

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

can regulate. I could talk to my wife and just talk about the day, right? I'm just clearing. Some people use yoga nidra. Some people journal. Some people will take what they want to do tomorrow and write it down to get out of their head, right? So there's all these different ways you can do clear. And so that's the overall concept of my 24 hours. Now, like in terms of morning routines, for example, my morning routine used to be like just over two hours. And I just cannot do that, especially with the one-year-old and a three-year-old and all the other things, right? And in the things, so what I do, 12 minutes. And outside of my Limitless Daily, which I read, you know,

going through every single year now because I'm going through it, I wrote Limitless, and actually this one also part of it in Greece, because there's a goddess of memory and her children of nine muses of science, literature, and art, and it was this whole thing. And there's this 2,500-year-old memory technique that orders used before there was printing present. I was very inspired. But while, while, while it was there, it's interesting, like ancient Babylonian times and Greek times,

they used to believe everything was made of four elements, fire, water, earth, and air, right? And so I was like, wow, this matches a lot of my biohacking and everything else. So what I want to do is, first thing in the morning after I do my, you know, attentional priming with the book is I go outside, barefoot, earth, right? The exchange of electrons and all the stress that come with that and the healing. And then I get some direct sunlight because your eyes are only part of your brain that's outside of your skull. It helps to reset your circadian rhythm, right? To sleep better at night. So that's fire. The sun is fire for me. And then I'll hydrate with some lemon or some electrolytes

or whatever it would be, and that's my water. Because when you sleep, you can lose up to a pound of water just through respiration, and we know that if you're dehydrated, it's going to significantly affect your cognitive healthy performance. If you're, if you're just, if you just stay hydrated, it can boost your reaction time thinking speed upwards of 30%. I mean, that's, I mean, your brain's mostly water. Right. So if you're dehydrated, your brain will work 30% less efficiently. Hydration. If you're dehydrated, it'll be 20%, which is wild. Yeah, that was Dr. Lisa Mascone. I was talking about that research on the podcast. She's a, she's a, the neuroscientist, and nutritionist, which is a really interesting combination. So then, so then I have the fire of the sun.

I have the grounding of the earth, right? I have the water. And then the final one is air, which is some breathing. And I can do this in my, with my three-year-old and my son and we're just doing this breathing exercise can be wimhoff alpha breathing fire breathing box breathing longer exhales and whatever happens to be but it kind of and then i'm just set in 12 minutes it's free very not very time-consuming you do it with loved ones you can do it anywhere you know i can't always travel with uh you can read with everything that i want to be able to do with a red bed and a hyperbarry chamber but yeah so that that's the morning because if you want to win the day you have to win that first hour of the day you know and then i have it down down when i kind of

touched on my clearing and going to bed and, you know, in terms of reading some fiction and journaling and just clearing my day. And then in between is the interesting part. But then I create and I consume and I, you know, and then I clear. Kind of one other question and then you can go home or do whatever you need to do. Why can I, why can people or me, speaking for, I can never remember a name, but I can remember the smallest, stupidest, insignificant thing that's happened in someone else's life, but I can't remember someone's name for the life of me. Yeah. I can be introduced to them. three times. I could see their face.

Like, I don't recall as well as I used to. When I was a kid, I was able to do it all the time, not even a kid. So I would say there are a number of things, right? We'd use it over a dozen different ways of remembering names. First of all, just recognizing the importance of it. You know how important is. Yes, of course. Just even a few months ago, I was in Miami speaking at an event on memory, specifically for

salespeople to remember client information. Yeah, client information, product information, just give salespeople without a... And one person pulled me outside, and he was, he was, he was, he was, he was, He was really, he was like, yeah, I really wish I saw your work, you know, weeks, weeks ago. He's in commercial real estate. He told me this whole story, and I'll abbreviate it for you. He lost a $50 million deal because he called the client the wrong name twice. And that's how personal people feel, because what's the message we send to somebody when we forget their name?

Or we call them everything that they're not important. So I would presence the importance of it. And I would give you a couple ideas on just how to remember names. First of all, the belief behind it is that there's no such thing as a good or bad memory. It's that you train memory or it's an untrained memory. You could train remembering names, right? A few ideas for it. You know, I always tell people to presence the motivation behind it, right?

Like being intentional about it, like a lot of times even talking about this, you're going to, you remember, like for me, like it's just natural. Like I was like, oh, I know it's good to see you. You do that because you could say the, suave, S-U-A-V, say that. Say the name. You meet somebody, you get their name, you say it, and you get to hear it twice. You use it three or four times in the conversation because then that repetition does help ingrain in memory

to encode it and store it. The A is great when you meet somebody and their name is different. So you can, maybe you haven't heard it before. You ask about it, right? Who are you named after? That's a beautiful name. Where is it from?

How do you spell it? What does it mean, right? And people, I've never, I think people are flattered when you take an interest in that because most people don't. The V is visualized where you can just take someone's name and come up with like something that sounds like it or reminds you or a celebrity, whatever it is, and attach that to somebody.

And that's pretty self-it. Like, I meet someone named David, and I'll just do like a slingshot in my mind to their nose and David and Goliath. It just reminds me. And it's kind of, it makes you smile. And it's only to overcome, like, meet Noah and it's Noah's Ark or Ed is like a horse or whatever it happens to be. This little picture.

And then once you understand the person's name that's in your long-term memory, then the pictures disappear. It's to overcome what I call the six-second syndrome. You meet somebody, you have six-second syndrome. to do something with the name. Otherwise, it's gone. You can't shake, done, it's gone. But it helps make it sticky, right? And then finally, the E and swab is you end. It's nice to walk into a room of 10 strangers and leave saying goodbye to every single one by name. Because it's not just what you know and who you know, it's who knows you and who remembers you. And they're all going to remember

you because unfortunately that's a standout skill, right? And I think it's so important nowadays in a world where there's so much information. I think people are starving for wisdom and warmth. And, you know, that's really what, you know, this work is really all about. I love that. But the stupidest thing I'll remember all the time. Yeah. And then that's good. I mean, your memory works, right? It's just applying what made that memorable to the things that aren't as memorable. I love that. Okay, Jim, I know that I took you for, I know you're going to run out of here. But, okay, the book is called Limitless Daily. This is another iteration of an amazing book called Limitless. and I'm sure everyone's going to want to pick it up.

Yeah, this is not just like, you know, eat blueberries in a day or just how to refa. This is actually, it's true. It's not. It's how to win the day by elaborating that first five minutes. So if everybody, it's quick, right? Everyone has five minutes. They can read one passage and they will be transformed because here's the thing. Little by little, little becomes a lot.

You do this over 365 days. You become unrecognizable. And I really, and so people get a limitless daily. When they do, as a thank you, they, they, and join. We're going to do a 366-day challenge. I don't think anyone's been done like a whole year. But we, I'm going to send you a prompt, a question for every single, because it's by date. So everyone in the world's going through the same date and the same content. So we'll be doing these lives. I'll be, you know, sending out a prompt that for people to think about, for your own mind,

not AI. And it'll be a fun process. I truly believe, and I really appreciate this, Jen. I love your energy. Because you get me thinking of their way. And it's like, and that's why your community is so engaged because you're so devoted for them and you're very protective and you're really serving. And I think there's a version of ourself, you know, whether it's through hustle or habits or anything, that there's a version of ourself that's patiently waiting, like a limitless version. I think the goal is we show up every single day until we're introduced in that person. Well, you're such a great guest. I love that you were here.

Thank you, Jim. Yeah. Thank you for having me. This is such a great conversation. Guys, pick up his book, follow him, join his community, join one of his. I get one of his courses. You have a million of them, right? Like, not a million, but a lot of them. And it is one of them, I think one of the more useful courses out there. I always say that most of these courses are not so useful. But this one is memory, we want to improve your memory in 30 days,

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

Those are actually what makes people. And I focus on the lead domino of learning how to learn, which is what this book's about, because it's all about adaptation. Because if you learn how to learn and adapt and focus and read, then everything, you apply it towards money, muscles, marketing, management, martial arts, music, everything gets easier when you could focus and read and understand and apply. 100%. So it's the biggest levers for educators, for entrepreneurs, seniors, for students, for anyone

with the mind. So intelligence for me, I'll finish with this. The definition is I didn't get to, like I talked about pattern recognition and change your opinion based on new data and being cognitively flexible is intelligence. When I talk about human intelligence, it's about how do we, and this is a question I'm obsessed with. How do we use our brain and direct our mind to create the life we want? Because honestly, someone can be very book smart, but if they are struggling in all these areas and then all the results, how smart, how intelligent are I really, right? I totally agree. I just did

the whole thing on this. Is a person that just because what's intelligence, right? If you're not living the life you want, then you're not really that smart, right? Because you're only smart if you're actually able to live the life you want, right? Yeah. And I would challenge everybody, So that only precedes that some kind of action is taken. So knowledge by itself is not power. It only comes power when we apply. We all know that. And so this is an application you do every single day with Limitless Daily.

But here's the next thing. Wherever you're consuming this right now, take a screenshot, tag Jen, tag myself, tag their podcast. So we see it, right? I'll repost a few. We'll gift out a bunch of books just as thank you for having me. And share, here's your action step. Because there's something called the protege effect.

They also call the explanation effect. When you share something and you teach it to somebody else, you get to learn it better, right? And so I would think about this episode or maybe even listen and rewatch it and just share on your post, if it's an Insta story or whatever, like two or three things that you learned so that your fans, your followers, your family, your friends get the benefit or at least see something there.

And then because you tag us, I'll share some, you know, repost some of those and give out a couple of fun stuff. Yeah. That's amazing. Thank you so. Thank you so much, Jim. Sorry, I hope you can hear me. Okay, I'll let you out.

out of here. I'm sorry that we took up so much of your time, but, you know, that's what happens around here sometimes. I love it, Shun. Thank you. Bye.