Modern Wisdom - #710 - Jim Kwik - 10 Hacks To Improve Your Memory, Focus & Attention

Episode Date: November 23, 2023

Jim Kwik is a world renowned memory expert, a podcaster and an author. Mastering a new skill, language, or instrument can be an intimidating task. However, Jim has found hacks which can dramatically elevate your learning process. This has the potential to transform an arduous learning approach into a simple journey toward peak brain performance. Expect to learn if modern people's brains are actually broken, the biggest lies we are told about how to learn, how memory actually works, where people go wrong when trying to improve their recall, how you can increase your reading speed, ways you can get into a flow state more easily, the strategies you need to know to access a limitless brain and much more... Sponsors: Get 10% discount on all Gymshark’s products at https://bit.ly/sharkwisdom (use code: MW10) Get 20% discount on Nomatic’s amazing luggage at https://nomatic.com/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM) Get $150 discount on Plunge’s amazing sauna or cold plunge at https://plunge.com (use code MW150)  Extra Stuff: Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ Buy my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello everybody, welcome back to the show. My guest today is Jim Quick. He's a world-renowned memory expert, a podcaster, and an author. Mastering a new skill, language, or instrument can be an intimidating task. However, Jim has found hacks which can dramatically elevate your learning process. This has the potential to transform an arduous learning approach into a simple journey toward peak brain performance. Expect to learn if modern people's brains are actually broken. The biggest lies we are told about how to learn how memory actually works,

where people go wrong when trying to improve their recall, how you can increase your reading speed, ways you can get into a flow state more easily, the strategies you need to know to access a limitless brain, and much more. This Monday, another huge modern wisdom cinema episode, I flew all the way out to Arizona a couple of weeks ago to record with Dr. Jordan B. Peterson. His third time on the podcast and one of my favourite conversations, this was very, very special. A really awesome way to round out the year and nearly a two-year anniversary since the last time

that he was on, that goes live this Monday, so get ready for that one. Don't forget, you might be listening but not subscribed, and that means you will miss episode when they go up. The only way that you can ensure you will not miss them is by pressing the subscribe button on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you are listening. So go and do it and support the show if you would. Thank you. This episode is brought to you by Gymshark. The best gymwear on the planet is from Gymshark, so no matter what you are looking for, if you are spending more time in the gym, you will feel better if you've got cool new clothing. And Jim Shark make the best men's shorts on the planet. Their studio shorts in Dusty Maroon, Willow Green, Onyx Gray and Navy were what I wore throughout all of my trip to LA, which you may have seen

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Are modern people's brains broken in your opinion? Broken is a big word. And I definitely can identify with being broken with my traumatic brain injury when I was a child and my learning difficulties and people teasing me, calling me broken. I feel like our minds are under assault for sure. With technology, I don't think that's like technology is the reason, but certainly I feel like our minds are under assault for sure, with technology. I don't think that's like technology is the reason, but certainly technology can amplify the issues of distraction and forgetfulness

and this overload information anxiety. And it's an interesting world. The amount of information is doubling at dizzying speeds, but I feel like we're not really prepared. I don't know a lot of people who aren't struggling right now with forgetfulness or distraction, maintaining their concentration, feels like taking a sip of water out of a fire hose nowadays,

just to kind of catch up and keep up. Yeah, how are you doing with this data, day loose? It's interesting because obviously, I consume so much for the podcast, you know, prep for the guests and other reading and then my own reading. And then the useless consumption of everything from social media to YouTube,

when I'm watching, when I'm trying to eat my lunch and stuff, it's a mix bag because there are so many amazing insights that I really value and, coming along for the ride is this kind of ambient distraction, almost like this habituated ADHD thing that comes in, where I just find myself task switching, even though I don't need to. So, you know, from, you've spent forever studying the brain, both for yourself and from a professional perspective. you've spent forever studying the brain, both for yourself and from a professional perspective. How many of the problems that people are dealing with when it comes to focus and attention are an inbuilt, endemic part of being a human, and how many do you think our novel and

can be laid at the feet of the modern world? Well things are definitely simpler for our brains as hunter and gatherers. We want to be able to survive, and that's a big prerogative. We want to be able to reproduce. We want to be able to know where all the fresh water is and the enemy tribe and where the fertile soil is. Nowadays, though, every day, I feel like people are just really sprinting just to catch up, right? New technology, new people, new ideas, fast changes, endless updates, you know, it's happening

in our careers in school and business industry and literally every person's daily life. And so people feel a little overwhelmed by the growing, like the data clutter. You stress out by the knowledge that you must absorb and process and read and recall, the nature of my work is really how do you stay on top and deal with all that. Yeah, I've noticed executive function, so your ability to kind of project manage yourself and what's happening is increasingly like the vanguard of my life. Right? You know, it really is. It's like the absolute front lines of what's going on because there

is so much different inputs and so many different things to do. And oh, I could go down that rabbit hole and I could have this conversation with this person. And maybe I'll do this thing. And there was a point probably probably like June of 2011, where the amount of information that people wanted and the amount of information that was available around about balanced. And for almost all of human history, there was less. And then it got to, I don't know,

at some point in the last sort of 50 years, it hit equilibrium. And then very quickly, it just blasted straight through. So previously, the smart thinker was somebody who was able to scout for information and actually find information, whereas now, the most important tool, I think is someone who's able to discern appropriately,

and they're able to triage, and they're able to titrate whatever it is that's needed. You know what I mean? Yeah, it's definitely a filtering issue and a prioritizing issue also as well. We have unfethered access to the world's information. They say that with our phones, we have more access to information than President Clinton did

when he was in office, and we're just carrying it around with us. And I don't know if the human brain really evolved to deal with that onslaught with all the context switching and up social media with all the rings and pings and dings and ab notifications, all the social media alerts. It's it's it's it's it's it's a different animal now and nowadays. And I think more than ever we need to really invest in our brains to upgrade our brains. We we hear about upgrading our technology all the time. get the newest iPhone and upgrade your apps and your software, your television, whatever.

But not only to talk about upgrading the most important technology that has created all the technology, which is the brain. And so that's the nature. I feel like a lot of people also don't know a lot enough about their brain. It's not really taught in school. There's no owners manual. It's not really taught in school. There's no owners manual.

It's not really user friendly, but it controls everything. I think we're living the millennium of the mind. I don't think any of the listeners solely. It's not like it was hundreds of years ago where it was really our value in society was our brute strength. Today, it's our brain strength. It's not our muscle power as much as it is. Our mind power, our ability to learn, to unlearn,

to relearn also. Yeah, I was doing a program that I just did a Google Talks. And I remember my first two training at Google, helping with mental fitness, there was this quote from Eric Schmidt, who was then chairman and said the amount information on paraphrasing, the amount information that's been created through the dawn of humanity to the year 2003,

which was only what two decades ago. How long does it take to create that amount of information today? And the answer was like 48 hours. I mean, we're drowning in it. You think about all the podcasts, right? And the social media, YouTube, there's just so much information, but how we've learned it and read it, understand it, you know, that hasn't changed a whole lot, you know, we live in an age of

autonomous electric cars, spaceships that are going to Mars, bar vehicle choice, in comparison when it comes to our own personal learning is more like a horse and a horse and buggy. So I feel like we could really, you know, do well by upgrading some of these these mindset and these methods. What do you wish more people knew about how the brain works? Functionally, there's interesting stuff to do with the pituitary and the hypothalamus and blood. But when it comes to the nuts and bolts of how people use their brain and what they

want it to do, if you were to give a bunch of headlines, you had a bunch of billboards out there that you could maybe put some things under remind people. What would be the lessons that you wish people knew about the thermodynamics of their own mind? So stress response probably is up there. I don't know if it would be the top one, but it's invisible for a lot of people because we're so used to it. It's like a fish and water not recognizing the water because it's always present. We know that chronic stress could potentially shrink the human brain but to in fight or flight. You know, the cortisol, the adrenaline, and I feel like it keeps you in your survival brain

and maybe your held hostage from your executive functioning, from your ability to solve problems, from your own creativity. You know, chronic stress will shrink the brain. Chronic fear and we live in a society with marketing and media, where it's perpetual fear. And it bleeds, it leads, and it's very intelligent. It's working exactly how it's designed to work. But I think that there's also this analogy, there's this algorithm, just like there's an algorithm with social media, whatever you engage with, you see more of, right?

And you engage in all the entrepreneurs stuff or the cat videos you like and share and comment. You get more of it in your newsfeed. But I feel like if we're whatever we engage with or with our mind also, if we're looking at what's threatening and scary, what could harm us like in the news, then you know, whatever we engage with, we tend to see more of it all the time. And chronic fear will actually

suppress your immune system, which is as a big issue nowadays, because you can't turn on, you can't go on social media or the news without seeing something that's you know, life-threatening and it feels like it's happening local, even if it has any more global. All-area science called psychonuro immunology is where we're more susceptible to colds, the flu, the viruses. So I think even just coping mechanisms to deal with stress, some people do bodywork, some people get to do mindfulness training or meditation or

they use a float tank or they use biohacks. I feel like we're under a lot of undue stress and that locks up our nervous system. It's hard to learn. If you're wired for survival and that's your mindset, those're not in it. Those creative juices aren't hard flowing, right? And I feel like we're not using all that potentiality that our mind has. I've got an interesting story about this, so I'm currently doing my first live shows.

When stepping out on stage, it's 90 minutes of solo talking. All of the events were sold out in the 60 minutes to people across the UK and Ireland. in under 60 minutes, two people across the UK and Ireland, and then we're doing 1500 people in Dubai, and then I've got a US and Canada tour coming up with James Smith at the end of the year. Anyway, I know the stuff that I'm talking about, right? I know this stuff implicitly. I came up with the ideas. It's all bro signs, bro philosophies stuff that I've come up with, right? And it's stories from where I've been and who I've spoken to and all the rest of it. And the first time that I did the show, I was so nervous backstage that when I went out,

it was like somebody had just put blinkers on my mind. And I'm trying to access the stories that literally I created, right, I made these things myself. And somehow I can't access the things that I had. Now, thankfully I had a comfort monitor and it could, you know, keep on prompting me. But without that, if you just said, okay, and now talk to me about the Lonely Chapter and talk to me about the Tall Girl problem and talk to me about blah blah blah. I just didn't have access to it. And that is a very acute version of this, right? Everyone knows. Everyone knows you, the nerves kick in, something happens and you go, my performance isn't where it was supposed to be. Morgan Housel taught me about this guy, Archibald. Archibald, somebody, somebody, let me check my notes from yesterday. What was the fucking guy's name? This dude, this dude in the 1900s, early 1900s, Archibald Hill, he studied how quickly people could run,

and he was able to predict based on VO2 Max and Lacta Thresh, Alden and all this stuff. He could predict how quickly they would do a mile or whatever distance around a track, unbelievably accurately. But it had basically zero predictive power when it came to competition races. And this was highly criticized. It's like, hang in a second, I thought you've got this formula and it only works in one context. Well, yeah, because when you take them out of that context and into a competition, all

bets are off. All rules are out of the window. It's a different predisposition. There are adrenaline, the court is all the best. The amount of sleep that they had last night. You can talk me the story about the greatest downhill skier, a female downhill skier ever, this lady, and maybe she was Canadian, and she would throw up before every single race that she did. Wow. Wow. Elite athlete, right? And you've optimized your hydration and think about your

sleep. And just before you step out on stage, you throw up and you go, okay, all of that stuff was totally out there, but look at what she does in training. In training, she doesn't throw up. So I just think, yeah, the ability for fear, stress, overwhelm, especially acutely, to just completely wreck our performance is, it's wild.

And I've felt that firsthand and I'm now worked out for me a process that I can go through before the live show so that I don't feel like that. But without that tool, I was just at the mercy of the winds of my fear and stress. And I think a lot of listeners have their stages, right? You know, if you're on stage and you switch context, there's a phrase in that content is king,

or content is queen. But if content is king, then I think context is the kingdom. And all learning and performance is context dependent with that without a doubt. And it's also state dependent practicing in the environment that you need to be able to perform in those kind of conditions. And even if it's not the external environment, the internal environment is marrying, or you're using it the power of your imagination to be able to replicate that and rehearse on a regular. My biggest challenge besides learning growing up was public speaking by far.

I mean, this was really true. It shows the right career, didn't you? Yeah, I spent in learning who often does public speaking. This is this is this is my lot in life for sure. It's some but it's a testament that and I'm sure this resonates with a lot of listeners that that would challenge comes change, right? With our struggles, they can become strengths because I had my learning difficulties and I was labeled broken. I would be terrified of public speaking because I had my learning difficulties and I was labeled broken. I would be terrified of public speaking because I just never knew the answer. It took me three years longer to learn how to read. So it was very embarrassing. I think that's those circles where those reading circles, I think a lot of fear of public speaking came from that, where you'd

pass around the book and you had to read out loud a paragraph or a page. And that was the worst for me. I mean, even just thinking about it, my stomach, like I get nauseous. I mean, I can't tell you how many times and I can relate to these performers where they're just throwing up and vomiting. And so that was in the nurses office all the time. And it was all self-inflicted for sure.

I mean, part of it might have been strategic to get out of class. So I wanted to be called on and I wouldn't have to give that book report in from the class. But it was terrifying. I never knew the answer. My superpower back in school was being invisible. I mean, it was shrinking down.

I mean, even my physiology, I was always like, you know, collapsing. So I would take up less space in the world. So I wouldn't be noticed. And, you know, at that time, I didn't really want to be seen. I mean, probably I did. Right? I mean, everyone wants to be seen. They want to be understood. They want to be heard But you know my coping mechanism was just avoidance. It was just it was just hard and so yeah Your life has a sense of humor because those are my challenges now I do is public speak on this thing called learning

But you know, I think adversity can be an advantage. I don't know one strong person that had an easy life. And so I feel like certain things come into our lives, just like the hero's journey. I open limitless expanded with Joseph Campbell's like the stages of the hero's journey because I want people to feel like that. They are the hero.

They are the Dorothy or the loose Skywalker, if you're taking on the big bad witches or the dust star, those kind of things, finding a mentor and coming back and returning with some gems, some golds that they can share with the rest of the world. What do you think of the biggest lies of learning? Goodness. Yeah, a lie is for me. I use a lot of acronyms because they're shortcuts for these mnemonics we use back in school, like homes for the Great Lakes,

here on Ontario, Michigan, Erie Superior. They're like these mental shortcuts. So for lies, for me, is a limited idea entertained. I feel like it's, you know, a lot, that's what a lie is. You know, we talk about, you know, various things in the section on mindset that could hold us back because if you want to achieve something, a lot of people want to go right to the methods and I'm definitely going to do that. But I think so many people, including a lot of your listeners, they know what to do, but

they're not always doing what they know. And if they sabotage, it's usually a mindset issue because they're buying into these lies. Like one of them could be genius is born, right? And it's been my experience the past 30 years of just coaching is that genius, while there's certain traits, certainly, if you're born with a certain height

or a certain attribute, so you certainly have an advantage in today's marketplace and in the world in competitions. But also, I think genius gets certainly be built. I think when somebody exhibits something that looks like magic to the rest of the world, there's a method behind it. And I think part of genius is pattern recognition, seeing the invisible that makes this possible.

For me, it's always a combination of mindset, motivation, methods to create this momentum in your life by kind of unlimited these areas. One of them would be genius is born as opposed to being built. I talk about this story. I guess we learned through stories and you're an amazing storyteller. You know, always listen and watching your YouTube and just really observing how to metal level your style. But there was this one where there was this king and they had this performer and this performer was

doing, you know, it was basically, it had magic, right? And though the counselor was like, hey, and this is genius is born, it's not born, it's built. And the king was really upset by that because the king really wanted to buy in that, you know, people are born with genius, you know, with this amazing talent. And so to punish the counselor, he put them in the basement of the kingdom. And just to add salt to the wound, he gave them like two little piglets to live with, right?

Like to be with your own kind of thing. And while this counselor was there, he would take the piglets and hold them underneath his arms and then run up and down the stairs. You know, every single day, multiple times a day and one day the king, you know, weeks and weeks, weeks, maybe months later, thinks about the counselor and says, hey, bring the counselor, you know, back to my throne room.

I wanna say, you know, see how he's doing and he comes and he's, he's, he's jacked. I mean, because, and because these piglets eventually, you know, got bigger and he got stronger because of it. And then he, in front of the whole, the kingdom, he was like, look at this magnificent specimen, you know, gene, you know, it's this is, and, and of course, the vice-counsel said, the same thing he said before, that genius is not born, it is built, through dedication, through training, through deep work. And that story, that story must very much resonate with you. You know, somebody who, the setbacks with regards to learning and public speaking and so on and so forth,

to now being someone who specializes in precisely the thing that you were the most terrified about. And I was talking with Dan Bill's Aryan last night, and he... He didn't have that on your bingo card for me talking about. No, I did it. And he was saying how his story, his success, particularly with women, but also in other areas of life as well, that he wasn't particularly funny, he's 5'9", he's not particularly good looking, most of his faces hidden by a beard.

He wasn't particularly anything, really, he wasn't super smart in school, he kind of got through the tests that he needed to just about, etc, etc. In terms of raw materials, an like mostly average guy, pretty intelligent I guess, but mostly average guy with a very extraordinary outcome. And he was saying about how he feels like the story he has, at least from a female success perspective, should be something that other men find empowering or inspiring. because look, like I'm not fucking Brad Pitt. I'm not six foot five. I'm not like this, you know, super good looking dude.

I didn't have, I wasn't super funny. I wasn't a stand up comedian. I didn't have any of the things, you know, in terms of raw materials coming to this. And yeah, I think normal people doing extra ordinary things is spectacular, but for the most part, everybody was normal at some point. There are crazy outliers, right? And a lot of the things that make people outliers are the very,

very hidden things that predisposition for conscientiousness, their ability to deal with resilience and hard times, that, you know, those sorts of things, they're kind of more like soft hard skills, I guess. But yeah, man, I always think about the journey that people got to do something absolutely spectacular. And over the last few years, since spending time around, you know, outlier people in every different industry, they're so normal.

Like they're so incredibly normal. And they're still riddled with the same, you know, self-doubt and uncertainty and lack of a steam and all the rest of it desire for validation, almost all of them are. And you think, oh, well, that's like an oddly normal thing for this very extraordinary person to have. And that's that's comforting, I think. Like to see that the to see that the gods are mortal is comforting.

Yeah, it certainly makes it relatable. We know without a doubt that these people are flawed. I talk a lot about superheroes because I mentioned I couldn't read. I taught myself how to read by reading comic books. And I don't know what it was. My uncle gave me a comic book. And when I was a child, I would just look at it. And I would read these comic books.

Even if the words didn't make sense, I'd be underneath the covers of my bed with a flashlight and something about the illustrations really brought the story to life and gave words the meaning. And when I started to understand the words, it was very comforting because I would escape. I mean, we had, my parents immigrated to the States and we didn't have a lot of resources where it's certainly the education money, you know, that kind of thing. But yeah, it would allow me to escape because I was, you know, being bullied in school and that that's not fun for anyone who's gone through that.

I had a lot of self-doubt, but I would use it as inspiration. And these superheroes offered hope. They offered like, wow, these people are helping other people. And they were flawed too. Like Spider-Man and, you know, Iron Man was an alcoholic and a lot of people had issues. A lot of them were orphans. Superman, Spider-Man, Batman. I mean, you just think about the beginnings of their superhero,

their origin stories. So they had a lot of a tragedy. And yeah, it's a matter of, there's a quote in Limitless from a French philosopher that says life is a letter C between B and D, right? B is birth, D is death, life, C choice. And we're constantly making these choices about who we're spending time with, what are we going to do, what are we going to eat, you know, what we're going to put our focus, but also choices on what things mean. Like, the meaning we're associating to what's going on, if this is here to, to, to hurt us, or this is here

to prepare us. And I think that meaning, as part of the mindset, what affects what you believe is possible, what you believe you're capable of, maybe even what you believe you deserve. And it becomes this internal thermostat where a lot of times we're acting like a thermometer, where we're just reacting to the environment, right? We react to politics, we react to global wars, we react to how people treat us, we react to the weather. But I feel like the people who have more agency and a level of sovereignty, they feel like, you know, they can be a thermostat, they can they don't not react, they can engage, they know

what the temperature is. But then they also said, they have a vision, they said it's kind of standard, they said a temperature, and then the environment reacts to it. And if I was to go back to that child, I would the two beliefs I would instill in my nine-year-old self would be like, you're 100% responsible for your life. You can make excuses, you can play, and probably some of it is true, but so what? What's the difference? It doesn't change the situation at all. It waste a lot of time, waste a lot of energy, and the truth

is we can't be upset, you know, by the result we didn't get from the work we didn't do. And there's just a truth to it. And sometimes we're, we're standing by. You said on a podcast I listened to recently, if you fight for your limitations, you'll keep them. If you argue for your limits, they're yours. Yeah. Given that there is one of the pandemics that didn't come from a virus, kind of like a pandemic of nihilism or apathy, or at least limiting belief beliefs or believing, what would you say? Somebody has kind of got themselves into a routine of despondency and externalizing of the locus of control and not believing that they may be make the

progress that they do. What do you say to them to try and drag them out of that? For each person, I mean, I would want more more context with that person and more connection. You're really go with social dynamics, which is really shows up in your conversations with people. I would say reminding people that they have agency is not, it's one thing to know it intellectually, it's another to embody it. That our world is a reflection of our choices.

And giving people examples, certainly potentially, could help getting them to, even with children, right? Like if somebody, if a child, let's say you're trying to, really, you're really strict with their diet and they go to a birthday party and they eat this food, you know, instead of like criticizing inform, just like having them self-aware, re-utilizing and just asking them how do you feel, right?

And what caused that? And just so they can see, like cause and effect. I feel like we all play a role in sometimes in our own misery. And the challenge is, you know, when this, this story I tell is when I got to spend some time with Stanley, right, the creator of so many co-creator of so many Marvel superheroes.

And we're going out to dinner and, you know, I just have this time with them solo. And I was just like, hey, I'm dying to know, like, who's your favorite superhero? Who, you know, all you've created everybody, right? The Avengers, the Fantastic Four, and so on. And he looks at me as like Iron Man. And he says, Jim, who's your favorite superhero? And I was like, it's got to be Spider-Man, because he had this big Spider-Man tie. And without a pause, he goes in his iconic voice with great power, comes great

responsibility and we all know that I guarantee you all your listeners know what word was coming and I switch words still to this day, maybe because I had a few head injuries, too many head injuries as a child. When I read sometimes I'll switch them, I'll hear it, and I was like, you know, you're right, with great power comes great responsibility. And the opposite is certainly also true. With great responsibility comes great power. When we take responsibility for something, we have great power to make things better, right, with these choices that we make every single day. And so, yeah, I think agency is very important that you are 100% responsible.

And I also have this belief that everything, reformio as this word, everything is figure outable, right? You have agency and you could figure it out with enough commitment and creativity. And I feel like we grossly underestimate our own capabilities. When I say people fight for the limitations, I get to keep them.

I hear it on a regular. I'll be on stage. And before I go on, people grab me invariably and say I'm so glad you're here. Can we do your talk? You're the memory expert and I'm telling you, I'm too old. And I'm just too stupid. I have a horrible memory.

And that's the context where I say, hey, stop. If you fight for limitations, you have to keep them. I tell them that your brain is this incredible supercomputer in your self-talk is a program that will run. If you tell yourself, I'm not good at remembering names. You won't remember the name of the next person you meet because you program your supercomputer not to. I believe that if people truly understood how powerful their mind is, they wouldn't say things or even feel something they didn't want to be true. And again, I'll stipulate that, yes, you have one negative thoughts not going to ruin your life, obviously.

But just like you need that one donut or muffin, it's not going to ruin your life. But if it does not end up that toned up, those donuts every day, every single day, it would definitely have some kind of effect. And so, I think we have to stand guard to the doors of our mind and realize again that we're, you know, that thoughts we don't have to believe everything that we think, and we can also adjust what we think. You know, people say, I'm not smart enough or I don't have a great memory just, you know, editing it, like, I don't have a great memory yet. It just feels different. It just lands different. And it gives you some kind of hope to be able to move forward.

How does memory actually work moving beyond the stories that we tell ourselves? What are the nuts and bolts of how memory works? There are three phases to memory. There's the encoding phase. There is the storage. And then there's the retrieval phase. And so if people, I believe there's no such thing as a good or bad memory, there's a

train memory, and there's an untrained memory. And unfortunately, it's not really taught in school. I mean, maybe they took some kind of class in high school or maybe college, but I don't know how practical it is. You know, one of the things I'm obsessed with, even when I'm listening to podcasts or reading books, it's like, how can I use this? When will I use this? Why must I use this? How does this relate to what I already know? I feel like so many people learn passively. The human brain, I don't think it learns best through consumption because we're consuming all the time and

So many people's lives, you know, you talk about mental masturbation So many people just get addicted to just you know novelty and they're just buying books and they sit on the shelf unread and become Shellfeld not so felt that that whole that whole dangerous spiral But you know the whole idea is you learn something so how you could apply it right. If somebody isn't consistently doing something and they're procrastinating and they're self sabotaging, it's usually a mindset or motivation issue. But going back to memory, I'm always thinking like, hey, I want to make this more sticky. So how can I encode it by not just hearing it. Maybe I could see it and use more of my nervous system. Maybe I could tap into some of those feelings, right?

You have that middle brain where you have like the seahorse looking part of your brain called hippocampus, which is primarily function is memory attached to it, is this little almond-shaped part of your brain called the amygdala, which is like a switching station for a motion. And it's interesting that, you know, the where memory is being processed, it's also connected with emotions. I think information today, it's everywhere, right?

So it's very forgettable. It's not, it's very ordinary. But information was tied with emotion and visualization becomes unforgettable. When you hear it, feel it, see it, then you're recruiting more of your nervous system and you're more likely to be able to retrieve it. The storage part is interesting because we teach people methods like a mentally filing system, something like memory palaces, back in the ancient Greeks.

So we write, limitless expanded, and I pull on and draw on neuro-nutrition, and neuroscience, and adult learning theory, also though ancient wisdom. I just feel like, what did people do before there were books? What did people do before they were like the internet? How do they remember things before there was a printing press? And how do they pass on history and information around campfires? And one of the techniques was a storage device. I mean, where you use locations that you're very familiar with, like maybe your home, your school, your office, the mall,

maybe parts of your body, your car. and just taking the information that you want to remember and placing it intelligently around those locations, because as hunter-gatherers, we didn't need to memorize lots of numbers or lots of words. What we need to remember where things are, right, where the clean water is, where as a fertile soil, where as the enemy tribe, all the survival, right? And so even when people forget someone's name, they tend to ask themselves questions like, where, where do I know this person from?

Right, because again, the context gives you the content. They did, they did studies where they put, they'll submerge people with breathing apparatus underwater and give them things to remember, like maybe something simple like lists of words, and then they'll take them out of the pool and they'll test them. And see how many they recall, very simple. And then they'll sort of merge them back under the water and test them. And in which environment do you think had greater recall? Right, it was, it was, I was underwater. And we could probably

guess that. But the idea here is when you're studying something, the environment also is getting anchored to that information and helps you to greater retrieve it. So if you like, you know, when we were talking about before, if you are on stage and you got the opportunity to rehearse and practice and review your information and study on in that same context, you're more likely to be able to access more than information because unconsciously the light, the smells, everything gets anchored to the information. Now, that's not possible for a lot of people. Like maybe you could prepare in the board meeting there and then perform there also or

studying class and then performing class, but it's not usually the case. So even something simple is giving yourself a trigger. I know you've done episodes about habits and triggers, having a prompts for certain behaviors. You could bring the environment with you. You could take a certain, I mean, one of the most out of the five senses, smell is definitely the one most closely connected to human memory.

Maybe smell is the most closely associated sense to human memory. Right. I mean, I think there's all and maybe there's a reason for that, right? If you smell poison, it could be it could save your life or food is rotten, you know, it'd be able to recall that that's part of your survival. And we all have this, I'm sure there's fragrance or food is rotten, you know, you'll be able to recall that that's part of your survival. And we all have this, I'm sure there's a fragrance or food that could take you back to when you're a kid. We all have those things. And the idea here is so going back to how the environment gets anchored to your study and your recollection, you could actually bring it smell. Like I always say, you're preparing for your talk

and you want to remember all the different points when you're live on stage, while you're preparing, you could have a unique cologne or essential oil or two, they say chewing gum could potentially help with your memory, but a specific flavor. And then it's headed, but it has to be unique, so it's not diluted in terms of the learning.

And then when you want to be able to perform, use that same essential oil or, you know, scented lip balm, gum, whatever it is, and that will help trigger all the information and data that you were rehearsing. And so, but the storage part is interesting because using your body or using your microwave, like imagine you're in your kitchen and you go clockwise around your kitchen and say, okay, you know, if I'm going to, the first place is the microwave, the second place is the stove top, the third place is the refrigerator, four place going around. I'm doing my kitchen is dishwasher and then the fifth place is the sink.

And that would be a way of using your memory palace. And then you could go into a Jason room and do the bookshelf and the fireplace and the coffee table, whatever. And then the idea here is, let's say you need to give a TEDx talk, you could take the information and turn it into a picture, because we, most of us tend to think in pictures. If I ask you to tell me about your car, right? Well, I don't know, I'm going to do this.

So tell me, tell me about your car. It's a BMW 123D. It's like a coupé thing. It's blue. It's got mac gray alloys, cream seats. Amazing. So when you see BMW and blue and mac red, you don't see those words, right?

When you're saying it, you see an image of it. And our visual cortex takes up the most real estate in the inner brain, which is probably why people are better with faces than they are with names, right? You see the face, but you heard the name. You know, you go to someone and say, I remember your face, but I forgot your name. You never go to someone and say the opposite. You never go to someone and say, I remember your name, but I forgot your face. So it would make a lot of sense. There's a proverb, a Chinese proverb that says, what I hear, I forget, what I see, I remember,

what I do, I understand. I heard the name, I forgot the name, I heard it on the podcast, I forgot it. Right, I saw the face, you know, what you see, you remember, and what you do, going to the power of practice, right, and rehearsal and study and deep work, then you really truly understand it.

Because I feel like you don't understand unless you could do it. That's just a principle that I, and then behind every principle, there's some kind of promise and some kind of reward. And so, like let's say you wanted to give a talk, in the book I talk about, how one-third of your cognitive performance, brain health is predetermined by genetics and biology is pretty accepted in a neuroscience space. But that means two thirds is in your direct control. And I talk about the 10 levers that would move that, right?

And so if somebody wanted to know what those 10 things are and they had to give a TEDx talk next week about it, first of all, when I want to learn something faster, I learn it with the anticipation and the intention of teaching it. And so it doesn't matter what I'm learning, even if I'm not really going to teach it, I intend to teach it. And once I'm reading, I'm thinking, how does this relate to me? And when I'm listening, I'm taking better notes, right? If somebody had to teach it, they call it the explanation effect. When you learn with the intention of explaining to somebody else, you're going to learn it better because

you're focused, you're in focus better, you're going to ask more questions, you're probably take better notes. And when you teach it, you get to learn it twice, right? So like if people have that perspective as they are listening to this conversation, like, how would I teach this to somebody else? I'll, you know, talk about the 10 keys, maybe, that move the needle, science base, and think about it, not just like, oh, that's great information, but asking yourself, how can I use this? How can I apply it?

How can I teach it to somebody I care about? Right? Because the number one reason to learn something is how it would have benefit you, but the close second is how it could benefit somebody else. Right? You learn, so you can earn, get some kind of benefit to return, to be able to share it with somebody else. Also, when you share it, it benefits you, also, as well, because you get to be an expert at that subject matter more easily. You can go through some of these 10 keys.

Yeah, dude, I want to get high level. Let's go through all of them. I would not give them. 10 keys. Yeah, dude, I want to get high level. Let's go through all of them. I will give them. Okay, so the first in no particular order, let's say, let's start with a good brain diet. What do you eat matters, especially for your brain matter? There's area science, there's a whole chapter in the book on neuro-nutrition. Your brain is only 2% of your body mass, but it requires 20% of the nutrients, and it's an energy hog, right? It uses up a lot of energy. Chess play has burned some ungodly amount of calories, right? Like the most static sport in history. They extreme, extremely, right?

I know a number of them that are just always, you know, calorie deficient, but they're always eating with them without a doubt. I never see a fat chess player. No, this is true. And so another reason why you want to be mentally engaged, right, we hear a lot about physical fitness, which obviously relates also to your mental performance as well. And Obe get to talk about that because that's one of the 10 things.

But going back to neuro nutrition, certain foods, and I'll stipulate this with, I'm not a doctor, I'm not a nutritionist, but, you know, and go get a food sensitivity test, right? Do a nutrient profile, because not everything is for everybody. I really do believe everyone's bio-individual. Generally though, avocados, the monon citrate of fat, your brain is mostly fat, is fatty,

so you know, what you eat matters again, for your brain matter, blueberries. And, you know, I put this on my body, so I always remember when I'm at the store, I use this as a memory palace, my body, so I imagine the avocados using it as a scalp conditioner, like guacamole, or find blueberries, right? Or mulberries. A lot of the berries, they're brainberries. Full of antihocs, and it's very neuroprotective.

Blueberries coming out of your nose. And when you're doing it, you imagine that you're a child because children are such fast learners because they're playful and they use their imagination. That's something you remember people's names. I mean, I don't love people made fun of your name growing up. But certainly with last name, quick, I got a lot of the ones of a lot of jokes, but that's how kids remember, right? They say, you know, Tony, Tony, Boba, I mean, like they make the rhymes, they make it fun. Yeah, so imagine you're eight years old, and Blu-Rey's coming out of your nose.

Broccoli is a brain food, high in vitamin K. The sulphur vein in broccoli is very good for your brain, especially if you sprout them, that tends to be like even 10 times more so firfane, which potentially could help with BDNF, the brain derived from the retropic factors, but imagine broccoli stuck in your teeth. So something simple, like if you want to remember

olive oil, you know, right, you know about the Mediterranean diet, you're cleaning your ears with olive oil or wearing olive earrings, whatever. Eggs, probably one of my favorite foods, good protein. The yolk is high in and coline, which needs to acetyl coline, which is good for cognitive health and memory.

So eggs right in your throat, and you're choking on a hard boiled egg. So those are just like things that I would just think about and maybe people like kale and spinach, great, make them your shoulder pads. You hear about certain fish, and you have to be careful with fish, right, with the mercury and some of the toxins. If you get a clean source, sardines, imagine you're a collar, you have a necklace made out

of sushi, you know, salmon sushi or sardines. And use your senses. Again, imagine what that would smell like. And if you can't imagine it, imagine you can imagine it, right? Because you're your imagination. What is it? Dinesite said, imagination is more can imagine it, right? Because you're your imagination. What is it? Dinesite said, imagination is more powerful than knowledge. Knowledge is what is, imagination is what could be.

We're recruiting more of those visual feelings, everything. And then finally, on your fingers, imagine some turmeric. The curcumin is anti-inflammatory. Imagine you can't get this cold powder off your fingers. And then while nuts, we hear all the time, the vitamin E, almonds, imagine them coming out of your belly button. Very simple.

And then imagine your bottom. Well, everyone's favorite of us, super brain food, dark chocolate, which people can use in our own imagination, whatever they want. That's great. But you mentioned that, not just about nutrition, but the new version of the book has got some advice when it comes to new tropics. Yeah, that's going to be one of the 10 things, it's definitely supplementation, so that

will be coming up in a few. So everybody, imagine like your first place, imagine my home, you're at the microwave, and all you have all these brain foods foods there and you're taking it out and you're putting it on your body, right? And I bet you even an hour from now, one of the ways to encode is to do space repetition, right? And you know, rehearse it, review it in an hour later. And also the retrieval practice is so very important.

So I mentioned it's encoding, make it emotional, make it a visual storing. We have a place to put it, the microwave, right? Or your nose. And then the retrieval, active retrieval helps tremendously improve your memory. Even something like asking your, you have to read something or listen to this podcast quizzing yourself, right? It sounds so simple and common sense, but common sense is not always common, common practice. You know what my favorite strategy for doing that was? right? It sounds so simple and common sense, but common sense is not always common, common practice. You know what my favorite strategy for doing that was for a good while I was training on a

morning time with a training, training partner, and I would tend to read, I usually read for about 15 minutes on a morning as part of my morning routine, and I would always try and just explain one thing that I'd read that morning. Dude, I gotta tell you about, I learned this story about World War Two, I learned this story about what happened in the space landing or whatever, whatever. And that was like an absolute turbocharged hack because not only was I doing the retrieval thing,

like memory is repeated retrieval, not repeated exposure. And it was also doing the teaching thing, right? So I had to simplify it. and especially given what I do, it's all about, it's not just having an idea of the concept, it's also being able to display it, right, in a way that sounds cohesive and sort of slick. So yeah, yeah, that was, that was a good hack for me. Teachers having partner about what you've read this morning. Absolutely. And I feel like even, you know even parents could do that with their kids instead of saying, how does school and what are they going to say, good, but asking them specifically what they learned and

going in micro and giving them examples again because it gets them to actively retrieve. So you have to light up that same cognitive web and that's really what that memory is. Every single time it's reinforced and you actually recreate the memory. And so by having that representation and describing it, it just makes it more sticky. They say neurons that fire together, they wire together. We have what, 86 billion neurons, and each of them have potentially outy, like, set up like 10,000 different connections. So there are more connections in the brain can make

than there are stars in the known universe. I mean, this is the power that we have access to. But I feel like we're only using a small potentiality of it, but starting with a good brain diet is a good place to start. And then imagine that the microwave, you put it on your body, and then test yourself and teach it to somebody else. You walk over to the second place, if you're in my home, and we're going to have a dinner together.

And we go over the stovetop. And the second key that I was talking about, the 10 keys for a limitless brain, is I got this from Dr. Daniel Aiman, the famous brain doctor, psychiatrist. He's written 40 books on the brain, change your brain, change your life. He talks about killing ants is good for the brain. Enants, stands for automatic negative thoughts. And that's exactly what we've been talking about, how yourself talk, and it becomes your reality, thoughts or things, that all behaviors, believe driven. If you think you can or think you can, either way you're right, right? Henry Ford said

it, that all the self-help kind of cliches, but there's like with every cliché, there's some form and nugget of truth there. So killing ants, automatic negative thoughts, and while I'm going through this, people could rate themselves zero to 10. Like, zero to 10, how is my diet? Because on the other side is the processed foods, the fried foods, the high sugar foods, right? That's going to spike your carrot glucose and so on. But on scale of zero to ten, kind of rate yourself because everyone wants to know like what's a one thing, you know, everyone wants to like the magic pill, but there's not. There's a process of these ten things. So the second one's killing ants. So just imagine on the stove or roasting ants,

we're killing ants, right? And so that's very simple. You can't forget. It takes more time to turnly describe it than it does to picture it. And a picture is worth a thousand words. So there's a lot of descriptives there. And then walk over to the third place, which is the, in my case, happens to be a refrigerator. And this is exercise, right? We know that, especially strength training, right? It's been, it's been strength training, right?

It's for somebody, so many benefits, right? BD&F, which we talked about, brain derived, nootropic factors, which is like fertilizer for the brain, help support neuroplasticity and herogenesis, neurotransmitters, you think about the dopamine, the serotonin, the endorphins that you get from working out,

potentially systemic decrease in inflammation, it helps also with insulin resistance. I mean, somebody benefits from physically working out. I don't just mean that, but when you're rating yourselves the R10 is moving throughout the day. If we're talking about evolutionary science, the brain, the primary reason we have a brain is to control our movement. As your body moves, your brain grooves. So it's not just a mind-body connection. There's certainly a body, mind-connection. And that's one of the, we have a 10-month-old, right, and he's learning how to crawl.

And they say crawling for children is so important, because it stimulates different parts of their brain. Even the act of learning how to juggle. There's a study done at Oxford University that jugglers actually have bigger brains. By the act of learning how to juggle, you could actually create more white matter. And this could be something simple,

like where you're rolling up socks and just doing it over a table or a bed making very simple watching a YouTube video starting with one, then moving, graduating to two, and three, I'm gonna talk about like, flaming swords or electric saws or anything like that. But you know, zero to 10, how much are we moving? So imagine you're open to the refrigerator and you were doing your favorite exercise

inside that, your personal trainer is there and you're doing your, whatever, your soul cycle, your burpees, your crossfit, whatever, but it's in the refrigerator, all right. And that's the remind you of exercise. The fourth one is what you're alluding to. Let's go over to the fourth place, which for me, again, is the dishwasher. And those are your nutrients, your brain nutrients. I would always prefer people get it from their diet. Now that's my personal preference. And again, who am I to give, you know, like people, I, ultimately, we're talking about agency, that people should really, you know, test it themselves, right? You could trust, but then you validate and test with your own personal experience. I would always prefer people get it from food,

but if they're not eating eggs, then maybe they could supplement with co. It's a nutrient found in foods like eggs and soybeans, and it plays a vital role in brain health, right? And acetyl colon, which is neurotransmitter, and you could harness that power, right? Some people want to supplement. They're not getting it from the fish. Maybe they want to supplement omega-3 fatty acids, particularly DHA, which is crucial for brain health.

It's a structural component of the brain, and it plays a key role in memory, it plays a key role in brain function. I don't know, are you a very big supplement guy? Yeah, I work with a company called Marick Health, and they're really great for blood work, and they've got me sort of vertically integrated into a whole bunch of stuff based on my system. Omega-3S, I've been taking which are like, pharma grade, omega-3s.

We actually have this. This isn't out yet, but by the time that this episode happens, it will. So this is a drink that I've been working on with a friend for over 12 months now. And that is half a gram of cognizant, which is branded Cytocrolene. It's a version of alpha GPC Rodiola Raseya, which is stress-induced fatigue reduction, panax, gin-seng, natural caffeine, no sugar, altheneine, bivitamins, all of that stuff. And I did four episodes in 27 hours in LA last weekend.

Dude, the only way that I was able to get through that was adrenaline and the right amount of this. And I think that I think there's definitely a place for acute performance enhances for mental cognition. Because how many are like, what am I going to do? Increase my egg consumption for two weeks in the build up to that. So, oh, yeah, my site of calling response is really great because I'm like, 30 eggs a day for the last two weeks or something. And I'll get your address once we're done. I'll send you some cases of this.

I'll be really enjoy it. And yeah, I'm a big fan of it. I've been playing around with Neutropics for a long time. I found some stuff. Here's an anti-Neutropic, actually. I got put on an anti-colonurgic about two years ago, just like a normal, very boring thing from the doctor. But dude, it was like someone had just half the ram

that I had in my brain. I couldn't remember the name of places, my thoughts felt sluggish, and I'm very, very tuned into the texture of my mind, right? Like the nimbleness of the same with you, I'm sure. The nimbleness of my thoughts, my ability, especially for recall, and then not just recall, but all of the little nuances, and I'm telling the story, and I have to remember to pause here and so on and so forth. And dude, it was, it was just like walking through mud or some of those.

Yeah. I can't, I can't see you in that state because you're so good at tracking even when some of the conversations you've had with mutual people that we know like Alex, like you maybe lose his place and you pick it up exactly where they leave all of it. I did it at dinner the other nights. We were talking about something and someone left some loop open and I was like it was 10 minutes later and I read it was some story about a cat and I really wanted to know about this cat And I was like, it was 10 minutes later. And I read, it was some story about a cat. And I really wanted to know about this cat. And I was like, dude, tell me about the cat.

And he was like, oh yeah, you're in podcast mode. And I was like, I just want to know about this fucking story about the cat. But no, yeah, you're right. It's very scary to have, it was almost like having acute temporary dementia. And it was, I absolutely do not wish that on anyone. So yes, make sure that you get your colon foods in, make sure that you get your

colon urge system working nicely. You know, alpha GPC is a fantastic solution cognizant, which is in this in new tonic is an activated version of that, which is great. Roundabout, around about half a gram a day seems to be the effective dose. That's been pretty well studied. So yeah, I think it's a good place to stop. Yeah, the ones I was talking about were more brain supplements. I separate that from nitropics in the book,

but the Colleen supplementation, the DHAs, your B vitamins, right, especially vitamin B6, B9, folate, B12 is vital for brain health. Magnesium is vital for everything, right? Every physiological function, learning, especially for your brain, learning memory, certainly for your mood. Some people supplement with that in different forms of it, like L3 and A, you know, for various things for rag. Glyson A, I've been playing around with, I can't remember, I can't remember the brand.

It's this huge big white tub that Marik sent. It's like fat thing. Okay. But yeah, my sleep, my sleep latencies improved an awful lot since, since taking, since taking that. So yeah, well, the simple stuff seems to be the ones that work. And that's what I look for. Like even right now, I'm drinking some green tea.

So it has the, you know, althianine, which is an amino acid that's found in green tea. It's, you know, obviously very popular and atropic. It also promotes relaxation without the drowsiness and enhances brain function. You mentioned bacopa, which is an herb in arovetic medicine, which can improve cognition and memory. Rodeola, you mentioned also, which is a Scandinavian herb, which has been shown to help reduce mental fatigue and improve. Going extinct, you know that it's going extinct

at the moment? I did not. Well, we're having a nightmare. So the formulation for this that we spent ages putting together to be evidence-backed, research based all the rest of it. And we decided to put something in, which is, I get protected. Oh my goodness.

So the price of it's just gone through the roof, but it would be really cool. I would love to do like a regenerative thing with the drink, where you know, for every one plant that we use, we plant two more type of. That would be cool. But I'm a huge fan.

The rodeo thing, this amazing study that was done on nurses, so they gave, for 28 days, they gave efficacious dose of rodeo lorissae, which is the same one we've got in there, to nurses working in the national health service in the UK, and they found that they made fewer commission errors under stress. And it's what's technically referred to in the literature as a reduction in stress-induced fatigue.

It just, for me, made a really big difference because your ability to stay on task and to stay focused is, we said it at the very beginning, like context often is a primer ahead of everything else. And if the context that you're in is I am stressed, I can't deal with this, this is getting to me, et cetera, et cetera. No matter how much you're prepped, and I keep just got this huge ceiling that comes down on top, okay, so I think we're in your dishwasher at the moment? Yeah, so we're putting all these supplements there. You could put the, what probably one of my favorite ones is creatine.

How awesome it is. So good, you know. So good. You know, obviously people, a lot of people associated it to working out. It's just found, you know, in higher levels than meat and fish, but it plays a huge role in energy metabolism,

especially for improving cognitive function, especially tasks that require short-term memory. And everything else that we talked about that we're in the foods, like the turmeric, the curcumin, you can supplement with that. Some people make, if I make, if I don't do the tea, sometimes I'll have some kind of lines main mushroom, you know, which is potential nerve, neurotropic protective effects, which is this maybe, I mean, it has been shown to be able to stimulate the synthesis of nerve growth factor, which could enhance cognition and potentially even lower inflammation, caffeine, obviously a powerful one, especially if you added with the L-thienine. So for me, I could get the energy without the jitters. I'm very, very sensitive. Some people like Grinkko also for blood flow. We actually put all this,

we're going to actually take what's in the book and people could go to brainnutrition.com and see the where, what I get, you know, in the ones that are human studies, both for supplementation and also the nitropics. But that output all those bottles of supplements in the dishwasher. All right. And then that's number four. Number five is we're at the sink. And what I believe is very important that we've talked a lot about on our podcast is the social networks having a positive peer group has been shown to be good for your brain because you we've heard this a million times right who you spend time with is who you become or the average of five people we spend most time with if you're on nine broke people be careful because you're in

probably be number 10 we have these things called marinarons where we're just we're always imitating people around us unconsciously usually. I always tell people to watch. The things we're mirroring and imitating are usually the W and watcher. We tend to say the same language, pattern, same slang as the people that we spend time with, the A and watch, are the actions and the behaviors. If you smoke, it has less to do with your biological networks or your neurological networks and more your social networks.

If your friend's smoke, that's definitely more of an influence to your biology. And then the T is our thoughts. We tend to have the same recurring thoughts as the people around us. The C is character. We tend to maintain the same level of character, integrity, and, you know, moral standards as the people around us. And then finally, the H and, you know, memorials, standards as the people around us. And then finally, the H and watch are habits, right? You've heard this phrase where first you create your habits, then your habits create you.

And you know, we talk a lot about morning routines and evening routines. I've enjoyed a lot of the things that you've talked about about it also as well. So all positive peer group is so important. We only people encourage us to challenge us, to call us on our stuff, to cheerlead for us. And if you haven't found that person, be that person. Right. It's also an opportunity to have someone to teach to, right? Not everyone has a

sub-stack or a podcast or a YouTube channel where they're teaching people on the internet, but you have the opportunity to be around people who are curious and who are going to take you about new things. Dude, some of the conversations I've had in between sets in the gym have been some of the best things that I've ever done. My house may clearly has a podcast called The Lift Companion where he goes and trains in the gym and the podcast is about what happens in between the sets. And it's awesome, it's really, really fun. And you realize that you have this really lovely periodized, or we're gonna talk for a moment, you know, 60 seconds, 90 seconds during the rest period, then someone's gonna train,

then the other person's gonna train, and then we're gonna come back to it. We're gonna do another 90 seconds. And it's this really lovely rhythm, actually, to talking about something, I very much enjoy it on any excuse to go into the gym more and excuse it as learning. Absolutely. And there are certain brain types that we talk about in the new book. These are cognitive types. It's an assessment that I put together. I've been using it with my test. I did the test. Oh, good, good. Yeah, we could talk about that a few minutes after that these 10 things, but like elephants

are highly empathetic and they love that, especially the community. They love collaboration. They're the ones that keep everyone together and they have high levels of empathy. So they would really, you know, those are wonderful people to have in your life also as well. Because sometimes learning is not so low. It's social, for sure. You know, book clubs and having accountability partners that work out, buddies, all that's really important.

But just imagine your positive peer group at the sink and we're all just like washing dishes or something like that. And that helps you to anchor it. So then when you're giving your TED talk, you can go through and just walk to the microwave and you're like, oh, all the brain foods, right? And you can probably have some of the people listening, if they weren't multitasking when they're listening, they

probably remember that their avocados and blueberries and broccoli and olive oil and eggs and so on, all over their body. And then on the stovetop, you're killing roasting ants and then you open up the refrigerator and people know that there's movement and exercise, your body moves, your brain grooves, you go to the dishwasher and you have all your nitropics there and then there at the sink and your positive peer group. Then you walk into the other room and we'll do the rest really fast, super fast so that we get close to slupe. I know you do talk about the zygarnaq effect in the psych psychologist whose last name

happens to be zygarnaq and she's at a cafe, the story goes, where she sees everyone, all the wait staff, deliver the orders and take everyone's order and not write any of it down, and which is pretty magnificent, because- I love it when someone does the wait to come up and he's got his hands behind his back.

It's almost a flex. They know what they're doing. Oh yeah, oh yeah. And I'm still, as much as I know about memory, I'm just like, oh, please write this down, because we'll mess this up and have to wait again. But the psychotic effect is basically, they were retained that order until they are delivered because the brain doesn't open loops, right? And Netflix and all these binge shows, they're really good at keeping open loops to keep

people coming back, right? And we want to close this loop for everybody so they're not like raging on YouTube and stuff. Now number six, so go into my second room and the first, the six places going clockwise is the sliding glass door. And so I just want you to remember the six key is a clean environment, clean environment. We find that your external world is a reflection of, clean environment. We find that your external world is a reflection of your internal world.

And you know, you clean your desk or make your bed or maybe you're on your computer and everything's the right folder, you tend to have clarity of thought. And when I say clean environment also, going back to like, you know, when you ingested that toxin, that kind of threw you off, there are a lot of neurotoxins in our environment.

It could be off-gassing from furniture or from your carpet. And so having clean air is important, whether you have the windows open or you have an air purifier, I would include a clean environment, even the light sources, right? So many offices and schools, they use the fluorescent lights, and that's probably not, you know, your eyes are only part of your brain that's outside of your skull, right? And when you

have visual fatigue, it leads to mental fatigue. And they probably fill offices in schools with that because it's ultra cheap, also as well, but clean environment. So from the lighting, from the water, from the air, and also just organize, you know, recondo your mind. So you get zero to 10, kind of rate yourself how clean your environment is. Now some people say a messy environment is good for creators, but that's probably is true, because it stimulates.

Yeah, but also think about it this way, like walking into any artist's studio, what have you got that is a torn up novel over the far side and cigarette ends and there's a magazine and there, you know, that's not the environment in which you want to do your tax return. Your tax return is in the office next door. It's nice and clean, it's clinical, it's sterile, focused. But you also don't want to try and do your next ideation in this room that's bereft of any inspiration for you. Yeah, absolutely.

And also, keeping track of where everything is, could also be some undue memory or ram that you're doing just consciously keep track of everything. It's a lot easier to put your keys in the same spot every single time, so you don't have to think about it going back to storage, right? Encoding, storing, and then you could achieve it because it's always in the same storage place. So you have a mental, a physical file folder, not an actual file folder, but a place that you store it and also as well.

And you've, you've talked about this, like regulating certain activities for where you thrive, like you're not gonna work in your bed because you're gonna get at that angst and you're executive functioning, and then you wonder why later on, you can't sleep there, right? Because of all that state is being the emotional state and that activity is being anchored

to the environment like we talked about, submerging underwater. It's not just the information, it's the feelings that are being anchored. And so like even something simple like we use your iPad to watch Netflix and that your entertainment system, don't do work on it, right? I mean something simple like that. I really struggle to read on my phone for that reason. You know, there's a great tool called Send to Kindle for Google Chrome. And it's just an extension.

It's an Amazon official application. And you press one button and the web page becomes fully optimized for Kindle and delivers to your device if you've got a a tape or white or an oasis or something. And it turns your Kindle into a read later app. But the alternative for me was to use, try and use pocket or something which it'll all like, I can't remember that other one everyone uses. And like, I'm going to read it on my phone. I'm like, no, I'm just, if I'm on my phone, I'm in task switching, messaging, executive

function mode. If I'm on my Kindle, all I'm thinking about is, ah, like, if I bet, if I try to on my whoop, I bet that as soon as I pick my Kindle up, I just get parasympathetic activation, 100% that happens, the device that's in my hands primes the way that I feel. With without a doubt, you know, for me, I'd read most of my non-print. It's just my, I'm looking for any opportunity and to not be on a screen. But without a doubt, our devices get anchored

the same way as our environment. So yeah, I would say number six, and think about the door, just clean environments. So just imagine we're just cleaning the glass and we're just cleaning the environment around the door, which happens to be the sixth place. The seventh place is the radiator. So I have a radiator there and I would just say the seventh key is sleep. So just imagine you're sleeping on the radiator and that would be very uncomfortable right. You feel the heat and sleep., for your brain is so very important.

Probably the number one thing. It's something that I struggle with for a long time. I had undiagnosed obstructive sleep apnea, severe, where I stopped breathing 250 times a night. And I was only sleeping a couple hours a night for five straight years. And doctors didn't know how or why. And this has misdiagnosed for something else. And I didn't know how or why. And this because of misdiagnosis

for something else. And I eventually had a surgery at UCLA where they took out my uvula, soft palate, tonsils. I was very painful. I took my hair more airflow. My sleep jumped up to like four hours. But it'd be like 250 times a night is a lot because each time counts as 10 seconds. So that's what an episode was. So it's like, the doctor was saying, no one you're not sleeping. It's like somebody coming in and putting a pillow over your face a couple hundred times a night. And so I had a lot of anxiety around it. And I used CPAP and dental devices and all these things. But optimizing your sleep because specifically for your brain, because when you get a good night's sleep, how are you performing next

day? How's your ability to solve problems? How's your focus? How's your mental endurance? How's your memory? When you sleep, you can solid a short to How's your ability to solve problems? How's your focus? How's your mental endurance? How's your memory? When you sleep, you can solidate short to long-term memory. If you have long-term memory issues, maybe do a sleep study yourself, you could get it easily done at home. Most doctors could prescribe that. It's also where you clean out the sewage system kicks on in your brain that can lead really,

because if it's not taking care of, it can lead to brain aging challenges. I lost my grandmother to Alzheimer's when I had my two years after I had my brain injury when I was five. So that's why I'm just very passionate about brain health and my inspiration was my desperation. But we've heard all the great brain hacks as well as chapter in here on how to optimize your sleep. We've done many episodes on it. My favorite ones, and I know your audience knows this, but I just want to say maybe say it in a different way just to remind them

because are they doing it? Because I know sleep is a big, sleep loss is a big challenge. Direct sunlight for a thing in the morning, the reset your circadian rhythms. Caffeine, I can't do past two o'clock in the afternoon because at the half-life, I'm extremely sensitive to caffeine So I just want to kind of pull that back a little bit And then just realize that your brain loves the schedule everyone has an alarm to wake up I really would have a alarm to trigger you facing to sleep Otherwise, it becomes 11 o'clock 12 o'clock at night, and you know

We're not prioritizing our sleep, but your brain loves the schedule even on the weekends. And then as hunter-gatherers, we would go back to like, you know, why we are the way we are, we would know it would be time to sleep, because our environment would tell us there would be a dip into environmental factors, temperature and light, right? So the colder, now we're so cold, you're free, it's distracting, keeping you up and you're shivering, but also darker. And sometimes we want to get off those devices also because they can mimic, I get full your mind and the thing is still daylight, right? I read this a couple of weeks ago, which is just a nice, again, mnemonics and memes and

easy ways to remember stuff, the 321 rule of three hours before you go to bed, no more food, two hours before you go to bed, no more liquids one hour before you go to bed, no more food, two hours before you go to bed, no more liquids one hour before you go to bed, no more devices. The most difficult one, embarrassingly, is the one hour before bed, no more devices. So, it was so, like, acculturated to using them that you think, what am I gonna do for that hour

before I go to bed if I'm not using my devices? And it's actually a pretty good question. But certainly for me, I find if I sleep find if I eat close to going to bed, my sleep is wildly disrupted. Woop did, this is a really cool thing that they do. They aggregate anonymously all of the user data and they look at correlations in journal entries. And they know, right?

They know what people say that they did and they actually can read the data on the back end. And eating close to bedtime was one of the biggest alcohol and eating close to bedtime were two of the biggest disruptors. What I mean, obviously. That's been my personal experience also. If I eat, I can't go to bed.

And so if I end up finishing a meal because I'm out with clients or something at nine o'clock, then I'm pretty much screwed because I'm out with clients or somebody at nine o'clock, then I'm pretty much screwed because I'm not going to bed till at least midnight. Also, and now call certainly could have that effect also as well, working out sometimes before you go to bed because you want to bring your heart rate down. But I will go into a sauna in the evening

because or a hot bath, especially like an epsom salt because the magnesium helps you to be able to relax because it absorb and it trans-derminately. Also, when you leave the sauna, you leave the hot bath, your core body temperature drops, which is a signal to produce melatonin, same thing with the lighting. But now with modern conveniences, we don't have to have it drop in temperature or light. So we have to take the agency again and make conscious decisions So we have to take the agency again and make conscious decisions for our sleep hygiene. So that's also dreaming also. I talk about how to remember your dreams and a lot of that, you know, like in the book and other things you can do because it's remarkable in that

REM state where you do a lot of your brain doesn't shut off at night. I'll just offer this as inspiration. And then a lot of inventions, works of art, literature, music came from dream states. They say that Mary Shelley created Frank and sign in her dream, a chemist create the framework of a periodic, a periodic table in his dream. Paul McCartney came up this song yesterday in a dream, right?

And just lots, lots of stories. He allies how create the sewing machine in his dream, like these kind of things. But that pre-supposed is you're getting good sleep, right? Because not just the quantity of sleep, it's the quality of your slow brain waves, like the deep sleep and the REM sleep. So yeah, that sleeping on the radiator.

So just imagine that everyone remembers that. And then you walk over next, we have a China cabinet, and there you wanna be able to remember a brain protection protector brain. This is a simple want to be able to remember a brain protection, protect your brain. This is a simple one, right? Your brain is very resilient, but it's also very fragile.

Having had three head injuries before age 12, and I had this, you know, I had my brain scanned and did all these hyperbaric chambers and just kind of getting blood flow in the areas that were damaged. Just imagine you're headburning the China cabinet with a helmet, and the helmet reminds you to protect your brain. And then finally, we have a couch kind of area here, and on the couch,

you can remember the next thing, which is new learnings. So just imagine you and I, I'm talking to the listeners here on that couch, and we have maybe have a white board and we're just putting the words new learnings in your favorite color, right? Because it's so important just as you keep your way you build your body, right, is through novelty and nutrition and then sleep, right? But same thing with your mental muscles, right? It requires novelty and nutrition. And it can even potentially help you to age better. Meaning there was a study done with nuns

and they wanted to find out there was a longevity study, the living 80, 90, and above, then researchers wanted to find out what was the contributing factors. Half of it had the emotional faith and gratitude on summarizing this. The other half were lifelong learners. They're always reading, having debates, conversations,

and they're suggesting because we had to add years to our life and life to their years. They put this study on the cover of Time Magazine. It was called Aging with Grace, you know, but on scale is zero ten and everyone who's listening has a ten, right, out of ten because they're always learning. That would be key because that's really where the novelty, the newness, right, you make new connections. It could be very supportive. And then, so imagine that on the couch, we? You make new connections. It can be very supportive. And then, so imagine that

on the couch, we're doing new learnings. And then finally, the dining table there, let's say the last one is stress management. All right, we talked about stress and coping with stress. So whatever you do, we talked about how chronic stress, you know, can have negative effects on the brain. Maybe it's body work on the dining table, or you're meditating on the dining room table, and just take a moment and just picture that. So the idea here using the storage, we started this with encoding, storing, retrieving,

is we've encoded it using visualization and feelings and story, we've stored it in very specific places on our body or in my two rooms of my home. And then now can you retrieve it? So now you're on stage and you're going and you see the microwave and I'm talking to people really who are listening at home, what is that microwave remind you of? What's coming out of the microwave?

And what are you putting on your body? All these brain foods. And you probably remember it from avocados, all the way to the dark chocolate and backwards. Because when you understand how your memory works, you can work your memory. And you go over the stovetop and you're killing ants, right? You open up the refrigerator and I'm just kind of making this interactive, the exercising. And then you have your dishwasher and it's filled with those brain nutrients,

right? The tropics. And then who's washing the dishes? all your positive friends. And then you go in the other room, the sliding glass door, you're cleaning it because you're cleaning your environment. And then the radiator, what are you doing on it? The behavior is you're sleeping, right, to remind you of sleep. And then you go over the china cabin, putting on helmet, to remind you brain protection, and then you look at the couch, what are we doing? We're learning, always be learning. And then finally the dining table, getting massage, you're meditating, managing be learning. And then finally, the dining table, getting massage, you're meditating,

managing your stress. So it's just kind of a fun and takes way longer to describe it. But I know I would challenge people to do their own home. And then they can put, when you're having a conversation with someone, you're doing an interview with somebody, maybe you're not taking notes, but you're taking mental notes. And you're putting some of the key points that you want to remember in places,

either on your body or op inion, and it's really infinite. It is a limitless amount of places. If you see card counters do that, or people, like if you see me memorize 100 words or wouldn't remember, these are, this is a solid strategy to remember facts, figures, presentations and so much more. I had a card counter actually, Stephen Bridges, British guy who has a huge YouTube channel that people should go and check out. It's really cool.

And he goes and takes on casinos on tours, like literally like that movie, 21. And there's a big player and there's the counters and there's the spotter and all this stuff. Wild. And yeah, he was just like, I'm just a normal guy. I was into maths and magic and then realized that with a bit of training and a bit of work on my memory that I could keep a hold of the count.

And I can take casinos for 150 or 250 grand over the space of a weekend, which is not a bad owner. Well, one of the intraditional car counting is like math, right? So they have a plus, if you went through it on your pocket, right, plus one minus one zero, each card has a mount so that he kind of know the probability of a 10 coming up and you can make your bets accordingly

but how they communicated it in 21 with their partners that were undercover at the table is they would use signals and they would use an Alphanumeric code where every number has a sound and this is like a code where like there are 10 digits and there are also 10 consonant sounds in the English language and each one is has something so if they happen to be, you know, up 15, for example, or in this case they they'd be used something different. They used basic association. So they said, hey, if it happens to be like, like, like, it happens to be a six up, and that was about the card counting, six can be represented by like a gun, like a six shooter.

Right. Exactly. And then people would know like the exact number. They have nonverbal signals as well. Yeah. Because they didn't want to keep on saying the same thing in case Mike's now using AI pick up on the things that they're saying and they can flag that in the back end. So yeah, it's a permanent war of evolution between the card counters and the casinos.

Yeah. And we're just going to be a disclaimer also. This is a recreational purpose is only for listening. It's not illegal. It's not, card counting is not illegal, according to Stephen in the United States, in certain places in the United States. One of the things that I think might be useful,

I'm thinking about the use case of what we've gone through so far. Great in terms of optimizing our minds, we mentioned at the beginning that people have gotten awful lot of information that they're either indexing, consuming in one form or another. One of the things that I wish someone had taught me before I started the show was about that discerning skill that we mentioned previously. And one of the ones that I've used, which I think is really great and almost alleviates pretty much all of the stress.

There are certainly things that you have to learn, right? If you're going to go and be a doctor, you need to learn all of the things in this and you're going to be testing on all of the things. And if you're going to learn to drive a forklift truck or whatever it is, there are certain things where you have to learn the entire body of work. But for recreational learning or for stuff that you're going to use to improve your life, Tim Ferris has an idea called the Good Shit Sticks. And what he means by that is we often castigate ourselves for not remembering things that we weren't interested in remembering, simply because we have

this sort of arbitrary sense that I should remember all of the stuff that I listened to, or I should remember most of the stuff that I listened to. But really, your job, as you listen to, but really your job as you listen to podcasts like this or read books or sub-stack articles or whatever it might be, your job is to discern what are the elements of this that are specifically applicable to me. And even that as a decision-treat, like, is, you know, we can get all up in our head about, should I be using that? Am I ever going to want to try and learn to juggle? Maybe I should buy more socks so that I can do the thing. It's like ultimately the thing that you listen to on a podcast episode or read in a book or whatever,

that you can't not take a photo or a screen recording of, you can't not, you can't stop thinking about it. That's the good shit, right? And with that, okay, let's go narrow and deep on that one particular thing. And we can use all of the tools that we've spoken about today to try and help really embed that. But when it comes to the discerning side of stuff, massive overload of information, how is it that I'm going to choose what's useful to me?

For me, it's like a, it's the most embodied and natural way of doing it. There's no decision tree. There's no nothing I'll just be listening to some Morgan House will told me this story yesterday about the guy that was choosing the Working out how fast people could run and I was like I can't not remember that right like I'm pretty sure I'm pretty sure I tried to explain it last night and failed After I'd spoken to him so all right. That's the thing. I don't know why that's the thing But that's super important to me. So, I'm just gonna use that.

So, yeah, from a discerning perspective, I think the good shit sticks. Yeah. Really lovely, simple rule. I like it. Primarily, our brain is more of a deletion device nowadays. We're trying to keep information out because if we let, I mean,

what, there's probably a billion stimuli that in our environment are things that we could be thinking that we could focus on. And so for me, it's a reductive process. It's eliminating because, you know, keeping the most important things, keep the most important thing, the most important thing, right? And so I think questions are the answer in a lot of these cases. You have a part of your brain called the Riticular Activating System, RAS,

which determines what we're going to shine us as spotlight on. So you could use that analogy. If you're reading a page in a book, getting to the end of forgetting what you just read, I guarantee you, you don't have adequate questions that you're obsessed about. Because then if you did, you'd be shining as spotlight

and say, there's an answer, there's an answer, there's an answer, right? And we have about 60,000 thoughts a day, and a lot of those thoughts come in the form of questions. And then, in questions, some people suggest is part of the act of thinking. You're asking and answering questions of yourself. You know, questions like, what's the best use

of this moment? Or, you know, you're mentioning, you know, with Tim, is like, how do I, how do we make this easy? Right, or how do we make this more, more enjoyable? Or what's the lead domino, right? These questions, or how do I reach how do we make this easy? Or how do we make this more enjoyable? Or what's the lead domino? These questions, or how do I reach my 10 year goal in six months, where you can't just force it and just work harder, you have to think differently.

And so, I think three questions, again, that I've obsessed about when I'm listening to a podcast or reading something is things like, how can I use this? And I'll actually extrapolate and say, okay, this could be useful. And then that's my filtering system because I was like, I can't really use this, and I'll just kind of set aside this

and not important for me. I don't even note take that way. I'll put a line down the page and on the left side, I'll take notes, desire read faster, learn languages, whatever, remember people's names, the kind of stuff that we teach in the book. But then if my mind wanders, that right brain imagination wanders, it wanders on the right

side of the page. And I'm capturing like, does this really what I really know? Well, questions do I have about this? How am I going to use it? Why must I use it? Right. A real cool feature for the Kindle Obsesses amongst us. If you use highlights, there's actually a bit where

you can highlight and then add a note. And you just use the little crappy keypad on the screen. But just a tiny little bit of context is great. Do you use read-wise? Do you know what that is? I don't. I know what it is, yes. Okay. Yeah, well, just when it resurfaces the highlights from Kindle, it also adds the notes in. So you're not just resurfacing that one particular highlight. It also reminds you of the link of the thing that you made. So it's like networks of information are being sent back towards you. I think that's that's that's cool. I like it. Yeah. I mean, I love digital because it's I mean, when people hand writing notes, it's been shown to help comprehension

and retention, but certainly digital note takings a wonderful way to store information, share information, and integrated and other things also as well. Yeah. One of the things that's still outstanding, I think, from the tool set that we've spoken about so far is concentration and focus. I think a lot of people have a very negative relationship with their ability to stay focused on task. So what do you usually look to first? What are the big move as the 80-20s of focus and attention? It depends on context and the behavior of where, like when people come to me and say they want a better memory,

I hear like somebody coming to a coach and say, I want to be better at sports. And like, well, what sport specifically? Because there's different methodologies and strategies and tools, depending on their goals. Same thing with focus. The people are in focus when they read,

there could be a number of contributing factors. One of them is what we mentioned. They don't have enough questions, so they're not getting those answers. But another, if they're reading and they're losing focus, they're mind wanders, they get to easily distracted. It could be they're reading too slow, right? Do you have this incredible brain and your feet, the supercomputer brain, when you're reading one word at a time, metaphorically, we're like starving our mind. And if you don't give your brain

the stimulus and craves and needs, it'll seek entertainment elsewhere in the form of distraction. So sometimes it's you actually don't have the focus because you're reading too slow because it's like driving slow. If you're going really slow in your neighborhood, you're not really focused on the act of driving, right? You're thinking about something, you have to do that day, you're drinking your coffee, you might be texting, whatever. You can be five different things when you're going slow. But if you're racing cars and taking hairpin turns as fast as you could go, you're not thinking about the dry cleaning, you're not trying to text. You're completely focused on two things. What's in front of you and the actual act of driving, right? And that's the equivalent of I found with reading. We have an online academy data. And we find actually that in general, the faster readers actually have better comprehension,

because they have better focus. And so speed equals focus, focus equals comprehension, and comprehension gives you the retention. So I would challenge people that they're learning maybe processing too slow. And if you've sped it up a little bit, you won't have time to distract yourself and focus on other things. And you'd be monotasking as opposed to trying to multitask. And the other part of focus would be on your brain type.

And I know you took the quiz. This is something I've been using with coaching clients for years. And I realized just how the personalized medicine based on your genetics or personalized nutrition based on maybe your microbiome, there's also, we created a personalized learning based on your brain type. And I realized, and I created this model, and it's a model of framework, right, to be useful and explain our way our behavior and the results we're getting

and also the behaviors and results of the people around us. So just the quick of it is, I pulled inspiration from personality types, like Myers-Briggs, Introvert, Extrovert, multiple intelligence theory, learning styles, verbal audio, kinesthetic, lateral dominance, like left brain, right brain, anyway. So it's code, CODE, and these are, I use animals,

because everyone wants to take a quiz and what game of thrones character am I, or what Harry Potter or school, that kind of thing. So it's kind of fun. I don't know. It's maybe take four minutes, did it like something like that. Yeah, it did it on my phone. Yeah, it's it's free, there's nothing to buy. And so we are offering this out to the world because what it's not how smart you are, it's how are you smart, right? And this determines this gives you shine the light on how you are smart. So code is an acronym, of course, for the animals. The Cheetah are your fast actors, right? They implement really, really fast. They have strong intuition.

They love to adapt, right? The owls are your, they love logic. They're very analytical and methodical. They thrive when giving a space to dissect, to ponder, to analyze things. These are individuals who benefit from deep work sessions, right, away from distractions. You have your dolphins, the D and code, and these are your creative visionaries. They have strong pattern recognition. Some entrepreneurs are visionary thinkers. They can maybe see a future or an innovation when other people can't quite see it yet. So these are creatives, these are dreamers, right? And then finally, the E are your elephants.

And your elephants, I mentioned earlier, are your empaths. These are very empathetic. They're high collaborative souls. And they are the glue that holds like teams together. And just to give people a visual, take anything in pop-era culture. It doesn't matter, like I don't like to be a favorite show or a movie that we could draw on, whether it's Star Wars or James Bond or Harry Potter or friends. Like, we take friends. Like like you see the archetypes everywhere. So like if you watch friends, Ross would be an owl, right? He's a scientist.

He's a very astute, he studies research, right? You would say that someone like Joey would be the Cheetah, a very instinctual, just just acts, right? You would say Phoebe is the creative dolphin, right? With her music and her art and, you know, the visions and imagination that she has. Maybe Monica would be the elephant, right, brings everyone together, always wants to host all the parties and so on.

But you'll see this in everything. You know, James Bond, James Bond would be the Cheetah, right? M. Who runs MI6 would be the owl, very, very, very logical and methodical. Money penny, her right hand, you know, would be more the elephant. Q who makes all the inventions would be the creative, you know, visionary. So you could go through and you could do Harry Potter, you could do any of this, but also it informs the careers. Like I had art team, which we have a few dozen people around the world.

It's remarkable. A hundred percent of our customer service team were were elephants because they found their elements, right? They're there to be loyal and supportive and empathetic and have your backs, right? Because they're success, you know, is your success and your success is their success. You know, our financial person or CFO is an owl, right? Our CEO, she's, she's a creative visionary. She has this, you know, positively impact one billion brains, right? Our CEO, she's a creative visionary. She has this, you know, positively impact one

billion brains, right? And he has very, you know, imaginative things of using that. So it's interesting when you understand your brain type because it also can inform your learning. And so when people take the quiz, it's, we created, I think you sent you up mybrainanimal.com, right? My brain animal. and it takes four minutes. And you can send it to your spouse, and it'll explain their behavior. And so you don't have to get like, judgmental and everything, because that's just how they think, and this is how they learn. And this is also correlated to how they, you know, even communicate with people.

And so it's, it's, it's a kind of a fun way to kind of get to know each other and, and stuff, because the cheetah tends to be more direct, right? Straight to the point. And speech is very concise. And I know, and now you could overlap other communication and influence models over this, right? To give it make it even more rich. And you know, because you have to show you have

the distinctions that I don't have on this. But you know, a cheetah is very concise, focus on action, all the very action oriented words, they're very instinctive, they trust their God, they have strong intuition, they speak it in a way that's very independent, owls are analytical, methodical, and think about it, an owl would invest different than a cheetah,

they would buy different than a cheetah, they would be influenced, they would date, you know, different, they would communicate, right? Owls would be a little bit more patient, like yourself, like you do so much research, right? different, they would communicate. Owls would be a little bit more patient. Like yourself. You do so much research. You are willing to listen. You pause.

You reflect before speaking. These are owl traits. I'm not sure what you're talking about. I read the PDF. The PDF was cool because it was talking about, it's nice to be told what you are or a description that makes you feel seen or makes your whatever disposition feel like less of a just weird personal curse.

But it's also interesting because it says things like, here are some of the areas that you might want to look out for. Here are some of your potential weaknesses. This is the way that you can communicate better with the elephants in the room and the cheaters in the room and so and so forth. And yeah, it's cool, I think the quiz was great. The PDF that you guys give afterward also, really cool. So people should go and check that out.

And you've got new book will be out now when this episode drops as well, newly revised version. There it is. I didn't get it. What's happening? I didn't get that. I got a digital version. Send me that version. We're going to send this to you along with the t-shirt.

We got your back. I'm fully quick-pilled once I get back. Yes, I can't wait. The expanded edition was updated with all the new case studies from previous readers. It's all about momentum. We added chapters in there. Once you have a limit, your mindset, your motivation, and the methods of speed reading memory, all the stuff focused, getting in flow habits, all the stuff we could discuss

offline, we talk about momentum, how to create greater momentum in your life, and we do it through understanding your brain type. So I put all the research and examples in there, the quizzes also in the book, because knowing yourself will help you to have less friction in your life and relate with others and influence others better. We also have the tropics section in there, which people could enjoy, because that could actually have more momentum. Talk about learning agility, like in a post-pandemic world, from whether you're working hybrid or remote or an in-person. There's a large chapter on AI, too.

I'd use AI to enhance your HI and for me HIs are human intelligence. Right? And it's not artificial intelligence. For me it's really about augmenting your intelligence and different ways you could use it to accelerate your own learning and earning in life. But yeah, limitlessbook.com. Thank you so much. I've been looking forward to this and I want to thank you for the work that you do. Can I ask what animal you... How? You tested it? How?

Okay. That's what I was saying because even with the questioning, you ask probing questions, get clarity and often, you know, you could play devil's advocate and you could test an idea as validity. Like, I just, it's, and you're very structured, you know, the way you speak and I try to follow you when I'm listening, when I'm working out and everything. And I kind of like, I love the pacing cadence and the way you make ideas, you know, very sticking relevant in people. But yeah, it's been a wonderful pleasure. We have to have you on our podcast too.

I'm down. Get me on when you need Jim. And I really appreciate the kind words. I've been a massive fan of your work for a long time. Everyone should go and check out your book. They can go and do the brain quiz. And dude, I'm excited to see what you do next. It seems like there's always more desire for people to improve that brain function. I don't think it could come at a better time than right now. So keep doing what you're doing. Thank you.

Can I challenge everyone to do one quick thing? Absolutely. Take a screenshot of this. Remember I said that knowledge is not only is potential power and power and power and power and we use them when we take a small, simple step and something that everyone can do right now. Yes, you can obviously go to do the brain quiz and stuff like that. But take a screenshot wherever you're consuming this, listening to it or watching it, and

tag Chris, tag myself, we get to see it, and just share either your brain animal or one thing you're going to do for a better brain. We went through at least 10 different science bases that you could focus on. Maybe it's reading a little bit more, adding these brain foods, these nitropics, Chris as, or something, you know, prioritizing your sleep. Add that in the post. And that way, and tag us so we get to see it. And I'll actually repost some of my favorites and gift a few copies out to the community just as a thank you and reinforcing that knowledge times action is power. You know, I truly believe that there's a version

of yourself that's patiently waiting in the goals we show up every single day until we're introduced. So it's an honor to be on this journey with all of you. Al, yeah. Jim Quick, ladies and gentlemen, Jim, I really appreciate you. Thank you. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,