The Jordan Harbinger Show - 85: Jim Kwik | How to Unlock Your Brain's Secret Superpowers

Episode Date: August 23, 2018

Jim Kwik (@jimkwik) is the CEO of Kwik Learning with 22 years of experience teaching speed-reading, memory improvement, and optimal brain performance to top politicians, actors, CEOs, industry shakers, and world leaders. What We Discuss with Jim Kwik: What accidental -- and often negative -- self-talk does to program your brain and keep you from achieving your true potential. How you can learn more in less time and apply it as a force multiplier to improve your life. Why forgetfulness is more of a glitch in attention rather than retention. How to hack your long term memory. The three supervillains of the modern online lifestyle that hold your brain back from being the best it can be. And much more... Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course!  Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally! Full show notes and resources can be found here.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode is sponsored in part by Conspiruality Podcast. You know how I'm always talking about critical thinking and spotting manipulation? Well, there's a podcast that's all about dismantling new age cults, wellness grifters, and conspiracy med yogis, basically the wild overlap of spirituality and misinformation. It's called the Conspiruality Podcast. The hosts, a journalist, cult researcher, and a philosophical skeptic, dive deep into how this stuff spreads, from Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation's dystopian vision of the future to how former leftists get pulled into far-right conspiracies.

An interesting episode to check out is called Speaking Truth to Goop, where Jen Gunter breaks down the pseudoscience behind the wellness industry in a way that is super entertaining and eye-opening. It's sharp, funny, and makes you a lot harder to fool, which, if you listen to this show, you know I'm all about that. From exploring cults to analyzing our cultural and political landscape, the Conspiratuality Podcast will help you stay informed against misinformation and resist fear tactics.

Find Conspirality on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with my producer, Jason DePhilippo. Today we're talking with my good friend Jim Quick. Jim is an expert in speed reading, memory improvement, optimal brain performance. He's the CEO of Quick Learning, very convenient name there.

He's been a memory trainer for the past couple decades, and you'll see him on Instagram with everyone from Will Smith to the cast of X-Men to the president of frigging Uruguay or whatever. today we'll learn why Jim considers learning and memory a force multiplier. In other words, it's a foundation upon which all other learning is grounded. We'll also discover why and more importantly how we can control our mindset and influence our internal states for optimal learning and recall. And we'll learn that learning, memory, and recall are not obsolete, but far from it,

even in this day and age with technology and internet in the palm of our hand or striped to our wrists. And by the end of this show, you'll have more control over what you learn, how you learn it, how quick you can access it, and how you feel about the process. By the way, if you want to know how I managed to book and keep relationships with all these awesome, amazing people that I have on the show, I use systems. I use tiny habits, and those are available in part for you for free at our Level One course over at Advanced Human Dynamics.com slash Level One.

I broke everything down into some small videos there for you to check out. AdvancedHumanDynamics.com slash Level One. And don't forget, we've got worksheets for today's episode, so you can make sure you solidify your understanding of the key takeaways here from Jim Quick. That link, as always, in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast. All right, here's Jim Quick. First things first, people always go, is that really, it's Jim Quick really his name? That's not his real name, right?

That's the number one question. Yeah, I didn't change it to do what I do. That's my father's name, my grandfather's name. You could say my life, my destiny was pretty much planned out. I was a runner back in school. A runner? A lot of pressure also when it says quick right on your shirt. Man, I get too many speeding tickets because the worst name to have on your driver's license

when you get pulled over for speeding is the name quick because you're not going to talk your way of that ticket. They don't cut you a break? No, it's so bad. And I'm like a joke about it too, but obviously drive safely. Yes. And stop texting. Everyone, this is pet peeve.

Stop texting. And I compare like even driving with reading faster and how when you go. go slow, you can be doing lots of different things, but you're going fast. You can only focus on some myth about reading that if I ask people to read faster, that their comprehension will down, but in actuality, it's better because you have better focus. But going off on a tangent, then I get to do my mission, which is teaching people how to learn faster, focus faster, think faster, remember things faster, read faster, because I feel like the most important asset we have in today's fast page, you know, knowledge economy, it's so competitive is our time, right?

You know, it's the time is the one thing we can't get back. And how many people feel like we're losing time? We're losing ground. We can't keep up. Yeah, every day. Exactly. And it just gets worse and worse, right? There's digital overload and there's just digital distraction.

The amount of your to-do list is growing and there's so much competition and how do you catch up, how do you keep up, how do you get ahead. And that's really the nature of my work. It's taking neuroscience, apply it towards personal development, apply it towards personal productivity and performance. Because, you know, we use such a small. You've had neuroscience on your show. We use such a small potential of our brain, mainly because I feel like your brain doesn't come with an owner's manual. It's not very user-friendly.

Nobody shows you. You got taught how to use it back in school. They teach you what to learn, you know, math, history, science, Spanish, but very little classes on how to learn. Like how, how Jordan, do you focus? How do you concentrate? How do you become an active listener? How do you make social connections?

How do you sell problems? How do you, all these things, how you read faster, remember more. Yeah, you sit down, you be quiet, and you listen to the teacher. And then when she gives you a handout, you do it. And then when you're done early, you sit there quietly. And, you know, this is, we all grew up with this 20th century education that prepared us for 20th century world. To manufacture things on an assembly line or something. Which is really, you know, not very practical.

So the world has evolved so much. You know, we have autonomous electric cars and spaceships that are going to Mars, but our vehicle choice when it comes to learning or education, it's like a horse and carriage. It's like a horse and buggy. And it's just outdated. And, you know, with good, I believe that there's good intent there. It's just system-wise. It just hasn't evolved as much as the world has evolved. You know, so much demand now.

And I feel like we just aren't prepared. And so that's why I love your show because you're giving people real life skills, real insights, instructions, distinctions that could really help people level up, level up their learning, level up their life. That's the idea. And also the idea behind your show, Quick Brain, where we learn a lot of brain. hacks and things like that, which my wife, Jen, has been pouring through in the past couple of days.

Yeah, we appreciate that. Okay, knowledge is power. We've all heard that. But learning is a superpower. What do you mean by that? How is learning a superpower? You kind of alluded to this earlier. I mean, we've all heard the phrase knowledge is power because nowadays we're not paid for

our muscles, you know, power. We're paid for our mind power, right? Nobody who's listening to this is paid for their brute strength. You're paid for your brain strength. And the faster you could learn, the faster you could. you could earn. But where I came up with that, that understanding was years ago, when people have seen me on YouTube or are on stage, I know you and I have shared the stage many times together. And we'll do again on Thursday. Yes. And so it's great. I love what we do because we get to

be around people who are just interested in growth and are interested in growing so they could be more, do more, have more, and also share more. But I do these demos. You know, I'll have a bunch of people stand up and, you know, I'll memorize their names in real time or they'll give me a hundred digit number, 100 words, and memorize it forwards and backwards. But I always tell people, I don't do this to impress you. I do this more to express to you what's possible because the truth is every single person listeningist could do that and a whole lot more. It's just we weren't taught.

If anything, we're taught a lie. That's so, it's funny because you say, oh, anybody can do this forwards and backwards because Jen was, I think she was watching a video of yours where you stood up and you said something like, all right, just throw out some numbers. And then she's like, okay, maybe that were. And then he went forwarded and backward, and she's like, I can never do this. Or maybe I said I could never do this. I don't remember.

One of us or both of us said I can never do this. Were you? And I already, I know you, so I sort of know the answer to this. But were you always good at this because a lot of people will go, well, yeah, he is a photographic memory or something like that. Of course he can do it. He's Asian. That's the Asian.

Yeah. What I would say is, no, actually, I grew up with learning challenges. And that's why I know it's possible for everybody. I, at the age of five, I had an accident, head trauma, brain injury. I had these set of learning challenges put in special classes. I had very bad focus, very bad memory. I couldn't understand things. People would explain, teachers would explain things four or five times.

I would pretend I understood, but I definitely did not understand. And it actually took me an extra three, four years just to learn how to read. I mean, I really, it was very severe. This was a head trauma that caused this? Were you, I almost said, were you smart before this? You're smart now. But before that, were you, quote, normal? I mean, I was, I was five years old.

I could tell you that my parents, after the accident, they, the way they described it is I was, I wasn't the same, right? I was, yeah, it was really, I mean, your brain is is very resilient, but it's also very fragile. And, you know, I've had a number of traumatic brain injuries just, you know, and that's just being a kid. And I can understand. What are you doing? I know. I've had several closed-end job. Why? I mean, it's just, it's funny because with, not funny, ha-ha, but it's right now, it's so important for kids to get out there and to be active

and your brain develops as your body develops and to move and such. And they're taking away swings. They're taking away like seesaws and everything out from the park because too dangerous. Yeah, it is. I believe that. Part of me believes it because, you know, that could have prevented my injuries potentially. But then also on the other side, I feel like. like kids growing up on iPads and smartphones, they're not, they're not active. And I think it's, I think it's stunting a lot of their growth, especially their neurological growth in terms of their brain development. Because as your body moves, your brain grooves and play is such an important tool and

resource for kids. It says, you know, we stop playing when we grow older, but I think it's actually the opposite. I think we grow older because we stop playing. Oh, interesting. And playing is so important, you know, especially when we're talking about accelerated learning. and rolling up her sleeves and getting involved and being curious and having that that that fun state and um and so i struggled all through school i um at the age of nine a teacher pointed to me talking

to another adults and gave me this label said that's the boy with a broken brain worst teacher ever that pretty much i mean that person would get that that award because it's it's crazy because parents or anybody who was a relationship with a child or maybe you were a child at one point most of us were yes your your external words become the child's internal words and that's why you have to be very very careful meaning that after that that became my my self-talk that was your identity the guy with it was it was for the longest time i would do bad on a test or bad on a book report or i wouldn't be picked for the team you know for in sports and i would just say hey i'm i have the broken brain and that became my self-talk you think teachers let you get away with that because they're like

he's got these close head things. We're not going to spend the extra time to do this. Yeah, I mean, I think part of it becomes self-fulfilling also. I think we mold to the expectations. It's one of this kind of interesting. Like we sometimes mold to the expectations of other people, you know, especially people we hold in high regard. And, you know, whether they have, you know, initials after their name or they're wearing

a white code or they have some kind of certificate. And so we all have people that like that and we all get affected. My thing is with everyone listening is, One of the ideas I want people to just own for themselves, and they've heard it in different iterations, but maybe just hearing it a different way is to the degree you want to be successful and happy and fulfilled is that you identify more with a thermostat than a thermometer. What do you mean by that? So like if there is, let's say there's a thermometer on the wall in this room, it, what is what's the function? It reacts to the temperature of the room. Exactly.

Just literally its own, the only thing it does is it reacts to everything. but a thermostat is different. A thermostat sets a standard. It sets a temperature. It sets a goal or a vision. And then what happens is the environment. It changes. Exactly.

And I think that to the degree we're happy is to the degree we feel like we have control and that we're not just reacting to things. Now, we're all human beings. We react sometimes to the weather and to how customers are treating us and such. But to the degree we could have the locus or the location of control inside that we feel like we're more a cause is to the degree. I feel like that we have responsibility for the way we feel and what we actually do. What if we find that we are, we have an external locus of control?

There's a lot of folks listening right now that are thinking, yeah, I should retake the internal locus of control. Wait a minute. How do I do that? I'm 24 or 34 and I work for this boss and he's working sucks and he's a jerk and my relationships aren't going well. And then they list all these things that are actually the external locus of control. and they're like, how do I regain control over that? Because we know we can't brute force this stuff, right? We can't say, like, fine, I'm going to tell my boss how to treat me.

Right. Tell my relationships to shape up. I'm going to make sure my friends are nicer to me. Like, that's not going to happen. Right. I mean, I think you could, you don't have, we don't necessarily have control, but you know, you know, better than most people, like how much influence we have over our external environment. Sure. You know, especially social influence and, you know, the dynamics between the two.

And so, you know, how people treat each other and how you could, you know, persuade or influence or teach other people by these influence principles. But I would say that, let's say that it's not a matter of resources as is a matter of resourcefulness. And it's easy to say, right? It becomes cliche. But, you know, I do believe that there's a difference between someone who tables and something and somebody becomes more of a master type, meaning that it's so easy when we're talking about this and how we kicked off this conversation about knowledge is power. I actually don't think knowledge is power. I really feel like it has the potential to be power.

It only becomes power when we apply it and we use it. And we, but the thing is a lot of people could listen to podcasts. They could read books. They could go to another conference. But just having books on your shelf doesn't, you don't get credit for that. You don't even get credit necessarily for reading it. You get credit for applying it. Exactly.

And I think that the same thing to be said is for people who listen to the same thing over and over again. And they're like, oh, that's common sense. but when, you know, being a coach, I like to tell people like that I could call you on your stuff and then it's, you know, help people be accountable. And common sense is not always common practice. I agree. You know, it's funny on that same note, I have this networking mini course similar to your quick learning and quick recall course, the free version online.

And we'll link to that, by the way, in the show notes, yours and mine. And people go, oh, I'm checking out your level one course where I go through a bunch of habits for networking best practices and one out of like, I don't know, 20, 25 people will go, yeah, yeah, you know, before I had kids or before I had this new thing going on, I did a lot of that. And I'm like, so you know this, but you don't practice it? And they're like, no, I mean, I used to do all this. I'm like, really, you did all of this? Yeah.

Because this took decades for me and some of the super connectors that I know to formulate this into best practices. We work on this every day. We have software reminders. We have things we have to keep each other account. But some dude who is on Instagram is like, yeah, yeah, I pretty much know most of this stuff. I'm just like, I'm pretty sure that that's not true. Right.

And I think that also the problem is sometimes our ego gets in a way from our learning. You know, one of the ways to learn faster is just to temporarily suspend your ego and say, like, you know, what else is there? Like your mind, another cliche, right? Your mind is like a parachute. It only works when it's open. But the thing is we hear it so often. You're like, how do we, you know, actually apply it? open mind. I'm good. I'm totally open mind. And you know this because you do your trainings and your

speeches and people like, oh, I've been in marketing for 20 years. And when you, when you have a conversation with them, some of these people really don't have 20 years of experience in sales or whatever it is. They have like one year of experience that they've repeated like 20 times. Yeah, good point. Because there's no innovation. There's no, there's no growth in it. Because people go to what's safe sometimes. And, you know, the way to improve your brain power is through novelty and nutrition. That's how, that's what fosters neurogenesis, neuroplasticity, these new connections. But, you know, we have all these thoughts a day. The challenge is they say, what, 50,000, 70,000 thoughts a day depending on the research.

I have not heard that. That's a lot of thoughts. Yeah, I think we're giving a lot of people a lot of credit. Yeah, especially me. I'm like, I'm up to 17 and it's already like 4 p.m. But they say that the problem is, though, when they do an audit of it, is 95% of those thoughts or more are the same thoughts they had yesterday in a day before that. And that's why we have the same results because, you know, our thinking becomes our behavior,

which becomes our results, but we're repetitive. So there's not a lot of big, you know, innovation, if you will, because our thoughts and the questions that we're asking. But going back in terms of the external environment, what I would say to be able to own this more is choose what has influence over you. See, we have, it's funny because, like, one of my favorite books is a book called Mansearch for Meaning by Victor Frankl. I mean, I mean, it's really a classic.

It's one of the books that I always recommend people, you know, on Instagram all the time are like, you know, what books do you read? You know, you read. That's a lazy question, isn't it? Right. It's a lazy question. I knew you'd agree with me on this because people are looking for a book that they can buy. Right. And then either not read it all, read part of.

And they're like, yeah, yeah. So I got the number one from Jim Quick. And then they turn to like Kevin O'Leary from Shark Tank. And they're like, what's your favorite one book? Right. So then they might even, even the most go-getter gun. out of all them. They read all those and they're like, yeah, I pretty much resorbed like all the main stuff from all these top people. And you're like, no, I'm not just the, if there was one book

I didn't write that had everything that I wanted you to know about life, I've got a serious problem. Yeah. If everything, if all my wisdom is contained in a book that I didn't even write, we got issues. Seriously. I mean, and also people are always in the mentality is that they always want the silver bullet. They're like, what's the one thing that's going to give me that photographic memory or be able to do that. But there's so many different things, just like, you know, whether it's relationships or it's health or it's, you know, social influence, there's so many different things that work. And so we really have to do the work. But when it comes to, what I was saying is that the resources are, it's, are more inside of us than outside. And, you know, and this is

just through personal experience, because there's, there's, for anyone who has an excuse that they don't have the money, they don't have the time, they don't have the network, they don't have the education, whatever it is. There's somebody who also doesn't have that that's succeeding. Yeah, right? So, I mean, it's like really it's being, it's being more accountable to ourselves and not not buying into those excuses. And that self-talk is part of it is the self-talk we have. Oh, I'm just to this or I'm not smart enough or I don't have the, and your mind is always eavesdropping on your self-talk. Like I remember I was preparing to run a marathon, you know, with a name like Quick again. Yeah, you got to keep it up.

There's a, there's this book I was reading. And one of the chapters on the preparation was the psychology of running a marathon because that's a certain mentality, right? And, and I remember it said this verbatim because I'm a memory expert. Yeah, yeah, we'll hold you to it. Word for word. It said, your brain is like a supercomputer and your self-talk is a program, it will run. So if you tell yourself you're not good at remembering names, you will not remember the name of the next person you meet because you program your computer not to, right? And it's a simple metaphor about your brain being a supercomputer and your self-talk being in the program. But there's a truth to it. And because there is a biology to our belief, right, that thoughts become things. Literally, everyone who's listening to this,

your brain is going to be different because you listen to this conversation. Because in order to be able to process it, you have to make millions of your brain cells are lit up and making new connections. And it's forming. You know, Oliver Wendell Holmes said a person's mind once stretched by new idea never regained its original dimensions. I mean, it's, It's making permanent changes. And that's why it's so important to really talk in a way. What I'd say is the rule is don't say anything you don't want to be true. Oh, interesting.

Don't say anything that you don't want to be true. Does that dovetail at all with your concept of automatic negative thoughts? I've read about this a while ago. Yeah, this is actually a term that I borrowed from Dr. Daniel Eamon, who is the famed brain doctor. He's done over 100,000 brain scans. and he wrote a famous book called Change Your Brain, Change Your Life. It raised like $40 million on PBS. It was a really big hit.

But he has this idea of killing ants, automatic negative thoughts. And, you know, what I believe is that your mind is always eavesdropping on yourself talk. You know, if you think you can, if you think you can, either way you're right. Henry Ford said that. And all these principles are timeless, right? But how often are we, when we're having this conversation, are we really conscious of the thoughts that we have inside? And so one of the starting places I would have when we're talking about a thermostat and thermometer is to monitor yourself talk because so many people have, if they're going through and they're really auditing. That's why I think meditation is powerful.

I think journaling is so important because that self-reflection is very powerful because it gives you insight in terms of who you are. I think self-awareness is a superpower is the idea where I believe that in order to be able to advance in any sense. whether it's in your learning or in your life and your level of happiness, you want to be curious about, you know, about who you are. Like, be, to be curious enough to know yourself and then also have the courage to be yourself. You know, once you know yourself, being the kind of person that could live that truth as opposed to what everyone else, the Jones is, your parents, whatever got imprinted on it. And I'm not saying it's necessarily easy, but this is like the human condition. To be able to fully express yourself, you know, without these kind of limits that we picked up.

when we were children or through our teachers or education or through marketing. You know, everything, I feel like a lot of the work that you and I do at a high meta level is this idea of transcending. You know, think about the word transcend. It's like ending the trance. There's this like mass hypnosis out there that says you're broken, you know, that you're not good enough. And here's what will fix you and everything. And my thing is being labeled the broken brain is I feel like people aren't broken.

They're just not shown how to be the best. version of themselves. So if you're struggling and you're overloaded and you feel like, you know, you're hitting these walls, then, you know, this is great because you're listening to this and you're self-selecting yourself. The fact that people are listening to this conversation right now means they're amazing. Yeah, I agree. Because it's just showing up in general because most people don't show up and that they just literally just floating through this river at the effect of everything. And how can you ever be happy when when everything is just, you know, leaving its mark on you? Yeah, that's a good point. I think the Jordan,

The Carbanger Show audience is really big on frameworks, on practicals, mental models. So the more of these types of things, the better. Something that I read from you, or maybe I heard it from you in a video now, it's all blending together, of course, because my memory maybe needs a little work. But you say that it's not a failure of retention. It's a failure of attention, which makes perfect sense to me in that I don't usually have trouble remembering something if I actually took it in properly in the first place. Right.

But I don't often do that because especially when I was in school, it's like, oh, okay, well, I'm on AOL instant messenger at the same time. Yeah. And that's popping up and then I'm reading, but also I have my chats going and then cell phones came into play and forget about it. And you even have a shirt on that says, I miss my pre-internet brain. I don't know if we can ever get those brains back. I mean, eventually, I think we're going to have like little nanotechnology inside of us and we're to be all connected inside. But, yeah, I think there are three forces that if you're listening to this, whether you're an entrepreneur and I think of a lot of entrepreneurs that are building businesses and scaling or anybody who wants to be able to be able to grow, I feel like the things that are holding us back weren't there as much in previous generations because it's driven by this digital age, this digital economy. So three, I always talk about superheroes a lot because, you know, I've, we're friends of.

You are quite the fan of, where's that green Hulk that I always see in photos? Yeah, so in our social media on our Instagram and stuff like that. I have a 10-foot Hulk. Oh, that's your Hulk? Yeah. Oh, I thought that was just somewhere that you happen to frequent and take photos. No, I have a Hulk, and I have an Iron Man, and I have a life-sized Spider-Man. And because, you know, because the reason why I love this so much because they're metaphors, like superheroes.

Well, first of all, I grew up with these learning difficulties, right? And so I couldn't read as a kid. I taught myself how to read by reading comic books late at night. So my parents gave me comic books. And inadvertently, that's how I actually learned how to read. Because something about the stories of going from struggle to strength, going, you know, that one person can make a difference. It just brought the words to life. And so they're really a metaphor for, you know, and a lot of my favorite superheroes, and much like most people's superheroes, you don't realize it, but they had the biggest challenges.

You know, like, for example, the most famous. superheroes, they're all orphaned. I think about Spider-Man, Iron Man, Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman. I mean, you know, they start from, like, you know, with these challenges and going through struggles lead to our strength. I mean, we hear it about all the time, about post-traumatic stress and the challenges there. What people don't hear on the other side is there's this post-traumatic growth. And people could search it online. It's this idea where that, and if you, you could, some of you can identify with this. You've went through big difficulty or adversity, things we would never wish upon anybody. But on the other side of it, there was meaning. You found a strength. You found a purpose or mission. And, you know, that's what I went through with my injury. But going back to superheroes, I feel like superheroes are the modern day superheroes.

Many of you are listening to this would qualify. You're on this path. You're discovering your superpower and you're developing it. But just having a superpower doesn't make you a superhero. You have to use that power. You have to express it in some way. Otherwise, you're like, what's that Will Smith movie where he's like a homeless guy, but he's also a super.

He has superpowers, but he's just a total burnout deadbeat. Right, right. You know what I'm talking about? There's a bunch of them. I mean, this is a common theme where somebody has superpowers. They have a gift. And when I'm talking about superpowers, I'm not talking about leaping tall building and using lasers out of your eyes.

I'm talking about everybody has some kind of unique ability. they have some kind of talent. They have some kind of strength or skill set or knowledge. And just having it and keeping it to yourself doesn't make, you know, doesn't qualify you as a superhero, quote unquote, kind of cheesy. But using it for good because those are you use it for bad, because of super villains. But I think there are three super villains right now.

And talking about modern day superpowers, I feel like when I listen to your show, a lot of your guests are imparting superpowers, like modern day superpowers, influence, persuasion, negotiation, right, be able to be able to, leadership, building teams, productivity, and so on. And so I think speed reading is super power. I think, you know, having laser focus is a superpower. I think having a stellar bulletproof memory is so important nowadays. And so, but there's three supervillains.

I was going to say, who are the super villains? By the way, the movie was called Hancock. You remember that? No, I haven't seen that one. Oh, man. Will Smith is like some bum. He's an alien or something, right? But he's a bum, literally, a homeless guy. And he just constantly blows things.

And then something happens where he's kind of called to account. and he has to protect people, but he's just, he doesn't care, he's not interested, he's lazy, and, you know, it'll be like, there'll be a car stuck in the road, and he'll just take a whole freight train and derail it and, like, everything will spill out, and they're like, really, you know, is that how you're handling it? So he just misuses his abilities completely the whole time. And notice when we watch a movie like that, I'm hoping, you don't have to spoil it for everyone who hasn't watched it, but there's some kind of redemption. I can't remember, but I'm sure that I think at the end, he's like, oh, I just didn't have enough responsibility. and now I'm called to... And that's key word, you know, when it comes to... Because superheroes take responsibility because with great power, it comes.

That's right. You know, great responsibility. So who are the three supervillains? So the supervillains in the digital age. I think everyone can relate to one or more of them that it's holding us back is, number one, they're all digital. They're a digital overload. Like, there's too much information, too little time.

We feel like we're drowning information. I mean, just think about all the sources that's coming from. But we're starving for real practical wisdom. And that's why, you know, I enjoy podcasts and good, you know, deep reading because everyone's looking for the knowledge that they could apply, right? You know, with your show, with our show, you know, for our show, every episode's like 15 minutes and they get like one brain hack for busy people want to learn faster and be able to achieve more. But we're looking for those nuggets that we could apply right away to get results. But there's too much information. So I think accelerated learning is important superpower.

The second one I would say is digital distraction. You said digital distraction. Yeah, digital overload is the first one. Oh, who now whose memory is all messed up. Whoops, digital overload, digital distraction. It's just like, think about it. Like app notification, social media alerts. I mean, the world, especially with our smart devices,

there's this number of videos that people clip for me on stage in interviews talking about digital distraction and how the harm it takes, you know, checking your phone first thing in the morning, right? And like literally. You're supposed to do that? Yeah, millions and millions of views on these things. because everyone could identify with it. And I'll give you the quick of it, quote unquote, real fast, is when you wake up first thing in the morning, right?

We've all heard the idea where if you want to win the day, you've got to win the first hour of the day. And specifically, though, when you wake up in the morning, your brain is in these alpha theta states, very creative, very impressionable. Their brain wave states, but we're very suggestible. And if the first thing you're doing is grabbing your phone, this is the harm that you're doing right now to your brain and you're conditioning it. You're rewiring your brain for two things. Number one, you're rewiring it to be distracted, right? Every single time you get a like, a share, a comment, watch a cat video, whatever you're doing. You get this dopamine fix, right?

Which floods the motivation learning centers of your nervous system, which makes it addictive. Right. So you're training your brain just to be able to not focus at all because you're putting your focus everywhere and you're rehearsing that. But the second reason why you don't want to pick up your phone when you're so impressionable, first thing in the morning is because you're also training your brain not only to be distracted, but you're training your brain to be reactive. And this is just as detrimental, meaning that if the first thing you're doing, like, how do you build a quality life, business, you know, future,

every aim, whatever your focus is, if the first thing you're doing is reacting to everything that's going on, reacting to the news, reacting to text messages and social media messages and emails and voicemails, right? And my friend Brendan says, that your inbox is nothing but a convenient organizational system for other people's agenda for your life. True. Right? Like all of a sudden, and you know this because how many people listening to this has ever gotten woken up, check your phone to first thing and you got a message and it just ruined your whole day.

Sure. Yeah. Right? Because you're in that very impressionable state. And what I would say is to have a quality life going back to being more of a thermostat and having control at versus a thermometer being reactive to everybody else is wake up and have a vision for your life. Do things that reinforce.

Like what would make a day wind? for you, like work backwards. Imagine you're coming back at the end of the day and someone asks you, how was your day? And you're like, I crushed it today. You know, I won today and like what had to happen or if that had to happen and design your life going back from there. And I don't think you could have a quality day, much less a quality life if you're just reacting to other people's stuff for you.

And so like for me, I don't check my messages until I wake up. Oh, I know you don't. I have a time. I'm like, hello, is this thing on? I'm texting you for three weeks. And here's the, and here's the thing. is that with with your to-dos like everyone has hundreds of to-dos, you know, and I don't think that builds a quality life either. But for me, I think about, okay, what are the three things

personally and professionally I need to accomplish today that those things would make it a win no matter what? And then I look at, I write those three things down first thing in the morning and I get one of those, they might not be huge things, right? But if I don't check my messages until I get one of those things done, right? And then so at least I have some momentum to it's something more positive. So you have digital overload, digital distractions, stop checking your phone first thing in the morning. And then the last digital supervillain, I would say, is digital dementia, meaning that our memories are nowhere where it used to be, you know, before our smart devices and technology. Because we don't use them? Because here's the thing, like what, this is a new term in healthcare

digital dementia, it basically states that we are outsourcing our brains, our memories, to our smart devices. And because your memory is like a muscle, it's use it or lose it. but we're not using it as much. So here's, here's an example. Your phone keeps what? It keeps your to-dos. It does simple math for you. I remember I was out to dinner with 10 friends and the bill came.

Three people took out their smartphones. So do you find a calculator to divide by 10? Yeah, that sounds about right. Yeah. And here's the thing. It's like we've lost like our mental muscles. If you take your arm and put it in a sling for a year, would it grow stronger? No.

Would it even stay the same? No. It would grow weaker. with atrophy, right? And same with our mental muscles. Like, for example, how many phone numbers did you know growing up? Oh, tons. And I still know that. Yeah, those numbers, right? I can still call my now old best friend's parents no problem on their landline. Exactly. And so I think everyone could identify with that. But how many phone numbers do you know now, like recent numbers? You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Jim Quick. We'll be right back after this.

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head on over to jordanharbinger.com slash subscribe. Now for the conclusion of our interview with Jim Quick. When Jen and I first met probably a couple of weeks in, I said, we have to quiz each other every time we hang out, every few hours on each other's phone numbers because otherwise I will never memorize your phone and if I lose my phone I'm yeah and the battery dies or anything like that you just don't you lose and that's a thing that's digital dementia it's not that you want to memorize hundreds of phone numbers nobody wants to do that we've lost the capacity just to memorize one and it's not just phone numbers

pin numbers pass codes you stay at a hotel you can't remember what what room that you're in right literally just happened to me I had text Jen I was like what room are we in exactly we on the third floor For the six-for conversations that you have with somebody or the things you need to do, I believe two of the most costly words in life or, you know, in business or I forgot. I forgot to do it. I forgot to bring it. I forgot that meaning. I forgot what you said. I mean, all these things. And here's the thing. On the opposite side, and we know this, you're like, Jim, like, why do I have to have a great memory? I could just search for it online. Right. But here's the thing. If you forgot half of what you know, how productive are you? Like, if you lost half the information of what you know about your your industry. If you forgot half the words you know, half the people you know, half the anything, you wouldn't be very functional, right? But here's the thing. Beyond the opposite, it's also true, that if you could increase your ability to do that to learn faster, think faster, remember more, you know, the faster you can learn, the faster you can earn. That's what I mean that if knowledge is power, learning is your superpower. Because today, knowledge is not only power, it's profit.

You know, and I don't mean just financial treasure. That's obvious, right? Because we live in this knowledge economy and were paid for our expertise. But I mean all the treasures in our life, you know, our health, our relationships, and everything. I mean, I came up with that idea in my mind when I, one of my very first students, when I finally fixed my brain, right? I read all these books on neuroscience, adult learning theory, multiple intelligence. I took all these courses on speed reading and memory enhancement. I trained with magicians. I mean, just wild trials all around the world to Russia to learn like the different ways of learning languages and poetry and everything. And, um, and, um, and, um, and, um, you.

And then I started to teach because I got really upset. I'm like, I suffered for a decade and a half in school because I didn't know these things. And I just wanted to teach everybody so they didn't want to struggle. And that's really my mission. My mission is, you know, as the boy with a broken brain, I don't, I want, I don't leave any brain behind. No brain left behind. Literally.

I want better, brighter brains because if we could elevate the collective intelligence of the world, like, who knows, like somebody listening to our podcast, right? in some remote village, you know, in some third world country, and they become the next, you know, Malala or, you know, or Elon Musk or whoever, right? And so I really believe that our greatest asset we have is found between our ears. And so, but one of my very first students when I started teaching it, she was a freshman in college. She read 30 books and 30 days. Could you imagine? Like read it, understood it.

Sure. Retained it. I mean, if I had nothing to do but read, I could, I definitely, I could bet you. I could do that same thing. Yeah. And that's the thing. But she, like, yeah, she, I mean, is it amazing. Hell no.

Right. I mean, but she read it and, you know, I mean, obviously she, and I wanted to find out not how she did it because I taught her how to speed read it, but I wanted to find out why. I'm very, just like with you, being a student of psychology and wanting to know, you know, human motivation, why people do what they do, I found out that going back to knowledge, right? We were talking about this whole, at this whole meta level, how people learn stuff, but they don't apply it. So they don't really understand it, right, unless they could do it.

And I wanted to find out she was doing it. And I was like, why are you doing this? Like most people don't complete anything, much less do this. And I found out that her mother was dying of terminal cancer and was given two months to live. And the book she was reading were books on health, wellness, energy, alternative medicine, functional stuff. And basically books to save her mom's life. And I was like, wow, two months. I was like, you know, good luck and prayers and everything.

Six months later, I haven't heard from her. I get a call from this young lady. She's crying. She's crying. And when she finally stopped, I found out, Jordan, there were tears of joy that her mother not only survived, but is really getting better. Doctors don't know how. They don't know why. The doctors called it a miracle.

But her mother attributed to the great advice she got from her daughter. Interesting. Who learned it from all these books. And that's when I realized that knowledge is power, learning is your superpower. That's superpower we all have. Even if it's a coincidence, it still seems to have some sort of placebo effect or otherwise, which is great. And who knows? Maybe she did stumble upon something.

But I still think this skill is useful. But unfortunately, well, I should say fortunately, hopefully we don't need that type of motivation, one of our closest loved ones dying in order to begin this type of journey. I have noticed also that some of the most successful people in the world, presidents, CEOs of companies, these charismatic types, they're really good generally with memory. Names, events, personalities, things like that seem to be the natural. or not natural, but at least cultivated qualities that a lot of these people have. There's all these stories about like Bill Clinton going, hey, Bob, is it? Yeah, that's right. How are your kids?

They're still playing tennis? And the person's mind. Just like, explodes. Because how does he remember? We met once three years ago and he remembers my daughters played tennis or something. And you hear those stories all the time. Some of them probably urban legend, but others not. Yeah.

Others based on, and I don't know, maybe as a naturally good memory. But there's plenty of stories about folks like that. and they're probably cultivating this to some degree. There is. I mean, I believe that, again, for anyone of listening to this, we all have that same kind of potential, and it starts really with making a decision. But the facts and the science is basically saying that

one third of our memory, for example, is predetermined by genetics and biology, but two-thirds is in our control. So we have high levels of influence to be able to access, like, how things get expressed. And I believe there's no such thing as a good or bad memory as much as there is a trained memory, and an untrained memory. Again, like, I think it should have been the fourth hour back in school.

We teach you three hours, reading, writing, arithmetic. But what about remembering? What about retention? What about recall, right? Socrates says there is no learning without memory. And so, yeah, obviously, for a lot of these successful individuals to go to med school, law school, I mean, they have to have a trained memory at some point to be able to memorize all these important facts and figures and everything that makes them be able to do what they do. With Clinton specifically, his is for real. I remember the second time I got to meet him. We were at a charity event,

and I got assigned to 2,000 people. I got assigned to a table, and I sat down, and I was the first one there. And then afterwards, he loved this short. Like, I posted it on Instagram

because no one would believe this. Forrest Whitaker sits right next to me, and I'm a big Forrest Whitaker fan. And then Richard Branson says next to him, and then Ashton Couther sits next to him, and then Ashton's twin brother, who I didn't know he had a twin brother. I didn't know that either.

That must come in handy. 20 minutes into dinner, President Clinton sits right next to me. And he remember my name. And now, honestly, I was like, okay, he was fed my name. Sure. Obviously, security. It's like, that's Mr. Jim Greer. Right, because he wanted to know who's at the table and everything.

And then he remembered the conversation we had like X amount of years before. And I was like, okay, nobody fed him that. Yeah, yeah. And then I was just like, I was like, you know, President Clinton, I was like, you know, I'm the memory guys. Like, what memory technique are you using? And he tells me this long story about his grandfather in Arkansas with all the kids. in the living room and telling stories. But afterwards, he would, they would actually,

he would quiz each of them to see if they're really paying attention or not and all this. And then, and I noticed something funny when he was talking to me, that, and maybe you've experienced this before. Maybe you've, you've experienced this for other people. When he was talking to me, I felt like I was the only one in the world. Oh, yeah. You know what I mean?

He's famous for that. Yeah. And it's like, there's like a lot of people more important in that in that ballroom. There's a lot more people, certainly at that table. more important than I am, but he's like looking right at me like no one else exists. And you could tell, like sometimes though, when we were talking about networking, when people are out networking, they're not really paying attention. They're like looking over your shoulder and who's more important and all that. And here's the thing. It's just like people don't care

how much you know until they know how much you care. We've all heard this. But one of the ways of showing that you care is being present with people. And I really do believe that his incredible memory. Regardless of your political ideology, President Clinton, I think most people agree is a great connector, great charisma, great communicator. He's got incredible memory, powerful presence. But I think his incredible memory and his powerful presence comes from being powerfully present with people. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's that incredible memory and powerful presence of people comes from being powerfully present with people that he's not looking around. He's not in his own mind because you know this just through them, just watching people. A lot of times

they're not even listening. They're like thinking about how they're going to respond or they're waiting for their turn to talk. And you can't, one of my favorite books growing up was by mentor mine, Dr. Stephen Covey wrote Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. And one of the habits of the most effective people that he's, his research found is they seek first to understand then to be understood. They seek first to understand someone and then to be understood by them. And that's the thing. It's just like he's just listening. Right.

It goes back to what you said before about it being about. attention and not retention. Exactly. And I think like what makes you such an incredible host is like when you ask questions, your guests could feel that you really want to know what those answers are, right? And nothing going back to sales, nothing sells like sincere interest in somebody. If only that could fake sincerity. Exactly. I haven't made. But that's the thing. So people are even from an ego standpoint are trying to be interesting, you know, interesting. Yeah. Talk about how amazing whatever it is. But I think more is just being interested in somebody else. And you tell people like you, people like President Clinton, they're very interested, and they're asking

those questions, and they really want to know what those answers are. And so, you know, and I felt like really understood. And I feel like who could be more present with people? All of us, right? And that's a quality of memory. If you want a lot of people, they say, oh, I have, you know, they blame their retention. But it's not your retention. It's your attention. The art of memory is the art of attention. So how do we focus on, let's say, remembering or retaining names more effectively? Because we sort of touched on this a few times. And names are great. Because you're right.

There's a lot of people, myself included. I used to say, oh, I'm bad with names. Then one of my friends, her friend said, you know what, that's just a crappy excuse that's letting you off the hook. Chelsea. And I remembered that because I thought, that's so true. I've never, when I was younger, I wasn't bad with names. Right.

I'm bad with names now because I'm not freaking listening half the time. time. This is true. I introduced myself and the person says, hi, I'm Gabriel and I'm like, whatever next. And then two seconds later, Jen's like, who is that? And I go, I have no idea. Right. Who is that? He just told me, I cannot ask. Yeah. I'll give a couple of just really big distinctions. And you don't have to use all of this, but any, any of them is better than nothing. But so really rapid fire, I focus first on mom, right? M-O-M. And this is the basis. And I like these elements because I feel like if you're forgetting anything, 95% chance one of these three things are missing. So let's say somebody has trouble remembering names. Okay, so you're listening

to this right now. You have trouble remembering names. You admit it. And let's say there's a suitcase of $1 million cash for you, your favorite charity, tax free. It's all yours if you just remember the name of the next stranger you meet. Who's going to remember that person's name? Yeah, every single person. Every single listener is a memory expert right now. And notice as your brain coach, you know, I'm going to call you on your stuff. It had nothing. If we're truthful and honest, it had nothing to do with your capability or your potential. It had everything to do with whether or not you wanted to or not. So the first M and mom stands for motivation. Motivation. And that's going back to even why this young lady read 30 books and 30 days. She was

motivated. And I remember I did, I was doing training up in your neck of the woods, up in Silicon Valley and afterwards, Bill Gates comes up to me. And I mentioned these names, not to drop names, but they're strategic because it triggers for your memory. Because if I mentioned, you know, Bill Smith, people like, how's that? But if I mentioned Will Smith, they're like, next time you see a Will Smith movie, right? You're like, oh, no, but it reminds you of the lesson that comes from it, right? Also paints a picture. So. And Jim quick. Right. And next time you're following Virgin or whatever, you have to remind you of the lessons and such. And superheroes, you think about the Hulk and everything. There's stories behind it. But afterwards, we had this deep conversation about the future

of education. And Bill Gates was saying, you know, talking about technology. And I was like, okay, that's important. And I was talking about theory, meaning adult learning, theory, accelerated learning, brain neuroscience. And then somebody listening is like, is it just tools and theory? Is there anything missing? And we talked about it some more. And we're like, same, it came with the same exact conclusion, motivation. You know, like a lot of people, like we talked about, They know what to do, but they don't do what they know. Sure. Right.

And so what is what's the difference is understanding the psychology of what gets people to take action. Motivation, motive for taking action, right? For action. And so going back to motivation, how do you make this practical? When you're meeting somebody for the first time, ask yourself, even though if you're not getting the million dollars, ask yourself, why do I want to remember this person's name? Maybe it's to show them respect. Maybe it's to make a new friend. Maybe it's to do some business, whatever it is.

Maybe it's to practice these things. things, you know, I learned, you know, in this episode, because if you can't come up with one reason, what's going to happen? Sure. You won't remember. Nothing. Yeah. So even just to be, to appear more charismatic or friendly or to create a better impression on

the people that work around you. And if you just come out to one reason, it exponentially increases your success and remember that name. Because here's the thing. The reasons are important. Intent matters. Reasons reap results. Just like with life, you know, like one of my favorite books and other books are all my favorite,

right, is start with why by science. I'm in cynic, right? I believe there's a success for me. It goes from your head, to your heart, to your hands. That in your head, you can have thoughts and set goals. But if we ever, have you ever set a goal in your head but not acted with your hands? All of us have, right? Sure.

You mean set a goal in my head and then not done squat to get there? Yeah. Right. Right. My life. Yeah. So everybody could identify with that, right? We take one step forward and two steps back.

We self-sabotage. We procrastinate. We put things off. Why aren't we acting in accordance to what's in our head and with our hands? And I would say, like, check in with the second age, which is your heart. You know, but it's, what does it symbolize? It symbolizes feelings. It symbolizes emotions.

We know that people are not logical, right? You don't buy logically. You buy emotionally, right? You don't fall in love logically, fall in love emotionally. Like all our behavior is fueled by our emotions. And so we're not logical. We're biological, right? Dopamine, oxytocin, seroton, endorphins.

I mean, we're this chemical soup. And so tap into those, those, that fuel. and ask yourself why, get to the emotion part of it. Because that's really the key to even improving your memory. Information itself is boring. You do not remember data information. You just don't. And a perfect example of this is, think about high school.

If we were to be quizzed right now, if people quiz you, like, Jordan, what are the elements of the periodic table? You know what I mean? I got a few, but that's it. Exactly. Because here's the thing. What was the emotional state we felt mostly in school? How do we mostly? Bortem.

Exactly. And on scale of, so here's the key to into long-term memory. Long-term memory, if anyone wants to know this secret to long-term memory, here it is. Information combined with emotion becomes a long-term memory. Information alone is forgettable, but information combined with emotion, good or bad, becomes unforgettable. And you know this because everyone knows where they were, you know, if they're alive, listen to this, you know, at 9-11. Sure. Right?

Because emotion, you know, added to information becomes a long-term memory. That's why people say things like, it feel like it was yesterday because the memory is strong. And even when the people say, I know it by heart. You know, we're talking about that heart again, the emotion. Or, you know, people, it always comes back to that. So like even, and you know it because let's say there's a song. Can you listen to a song? Sure.

I could bring you back years. Yeah. I mean, ice ice baby's still on. There you go. And it brings back all these memories, right? Because information plus the emotion. Or maybe it's a fragrance or maybe it's a food. food you could eat or smell and it could take you back to when you're a child because information

combined with emotion. So how do we add more emotion to things to make it more more unforgettable, if you will? So asking yourself, why do I want to remember this? It makes it more emotional. So if you want to remember someone's name, remember the way they smell. Exactly. Actually, smell is a very power. It's the most powerful of the five senses.

For memory. Why is that, do you know? I mean, I would think because as a hunter-gatherer, it's everything always comes back to what, survival, replication, everything. As a hunter-gatherer, you need to be able to smell for protection, a poison or bad food that could kill you or something to nature. But using that, there's actually certain smells that actually stimulate olfactory, that stimulate memory, like Focus, lemon and everything,

different peppermint, very good for it. Actually, a really good brain hack is they did this study where they took individuals, they submerged them underwater with breathing apparatus and had to memorize long list of words and then took them out of the water and then quizzed them to test them, see how many words they remember, and then put them back underwater to see how many they remembered back underwater. In which environment do they remember more? Underwater.

Underwater. By far, right? Really? By far. Across the board and by far. And so why do you think that is? Context? Yeah, context.

Because the context is really the key to the kingdom, if you will. Because the context, the environment got anchored and linked to the actual information. Now, how can you use this in your day-to-day? Well, let's say you have to study for a test. It always is better if you study in the room that you have to examine. What if you have to give a TED talk or a speech in front of a group of people? It always helps to prepare in that environment, just like how actors prepare on stage, you know, that they're going to perform it. And now you're like, Jim, that's not very practical.

I can't always, you know, study in this room or prepare in this meeting room or whatever. Well, then you could take, you can merge these two tactics together, you know, factory. you could actually take the environment with you by accessing your sense of smell. So what if you were, you know, let's say you and I had to give a talk, which we do, like in, you know, two days, right? And we wanted to be able to study and rehearse it and practice it. If we were to go through our notes and actually have a unique smell, like let's say a certain lip balm or essential oil or a certain chewing gum that's distinct that we could smell, we use that while we're studying. And then when we need to prepare, when we need to perform, then we actually access that. same smell. We wear that same cologne, the same essential oils, the same lip on, whatever it is,

then we're going to access more of those memories. That makes sense. So since we can't take the rest of the environment with us, we create an element of that environment that is portable. That we take with us. So you grab the mint flavored or scented chapstick, rub it under your nose, study at a Starbucks for a couple hours. When you change Starbucks, it doesn't really matter because you got this mint stuff with you. Exactly. And then when you take the exam, on the goes to the form. Yeah. It'll be an anchor. Cool. That's cool. And that's cool. And that's cool. just conditioning, right? So that's the M in mom is motivations, tapping into your motivation, asking yourself why, because reasons, reap results and rewards. The O in mom stands for

observation, and we already covered this. The art of memory is the art of attention, the art of observation. Like President Clinton, to have a powerful memory, to have a powerful presence, means being powerfully present. Just listen, right? Everyone could remember a name. It's one word. It's two words, right? But what I would say is if you just listen, they're like, oh, well, but they don't teach listening techniques. How do you do that? Well, I would just write down the word listen or type out the word listener or just imagine in your mind's eye, scramble the letters as kind of a brain exercise,

mental exercise, and it spells another word perfectly. It's silent. So what I would say is to be a better listener. It starts by being quiet, right? And like, because if you're talking to yourself, if you have a conversation going on inside your head, thinking about what you're going to say and everything, you can't listen to conversations at once.

That was a tough habit for me to break as a host. What am I going to ask next? Okay, he's saying this. All right, so what am I thinking? Oh, let me just trail off. And then I go, crap. Right. What are we talking about?

And that's the thing. Like the art of attention is just like a muscle. Just like we talked about not, you know, because you're exercising in the wrong way in terms of distraction when you check your phone first thing in the morning or late at night, you know, from the blue light and, you know, that inhibits melatonin production and all that stuff. But I would say is to, so many people need to break. up with their phone. I'm not saying just get rid of it completely because it's very, it lets us to be able to, it's very convenient, right? But I would say is your phone is a tool, right? It is there as a resource for you. But when you're picking it up at a habit or out of boredom or you're sitting at a dinner table and you have it, even having it on the table, it really,

it elevates stress and everything. Tell me about it. Oh, my stress level always goes out with my phone. Exactly. So the purpose of a phone or smart device is to use it as a tool. Because the opposite is also true that if it's using you, then who's the tool? Seriously. So the O in mom stands for observation, meaning be silent and just listen. And you'll remember the name. And then finally, the last MN mom stands for mechanics. And not the person that fixes your car, but the tools, the techniques, the strategies on how to remember names, how to give a speech without notes, how to read faster, how to have better focus, how to learn another language, how to learn a musical instrument.

Whatever it is, there are real strategies. because when our students and our podcast listeners, they're able to do what I do, you know, like memorize decks of cards and they'll do all this things as well as I do, if not better, because there's always a method behind the magic.

I believe at a high level, one of the principles of Quick Brain is that genius leaves clues. Genius leaves clues. If somebody excels in some area, I don't mean like IQ genius. That's the last thing I'm talking about. I'm talking about if somebody is excellent

in their field of expertise, then there's clues. They didn't just happen to just show up that way, that they're doing other things consciously or unconsciously that other people aren't doing. And then if you learn those things, you can get the same kind of results. And really what I'm talking about is taking nouns and training yourself to take a noun and turn into a verb. So what do I mean by that?

I'm saying that if you want to be a leader and a successful entrepreneur or parent or, you know, whatever it is, influencer, what I would say is get out of this thing that everything is static, meaning that so many people say, oh, I wish I had energy or I don't have motivation or I can't write today. I don't, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I don't have creativity today. I don't have focus. You know, you don't have focus. You don't have a memory.

You do a memory. You don't have motivation. You do motivation. You don't even have energy. You do energy. You don't have love. You do love. And one of the reasons why the reason I bring this up is when I talk about there's no magic pill,

but there are magical processes, step by step. So you don't have energy. You could actually do things that give you energy. You don't have a memory. There's a step by step process for actually remembering something. But the problem is when we make it static and we make it a noun like something we have, then we're at the effect. Then we're,

then we are a thermometer again. We're just, I hope, you know, like even writers. And I know if you've had some amazing writers and New York Times bestselling authors here, the ones that I find that get into flow, they don't just hope they wake up to,

and they could like not not have. have writers block or whatever it is, they have a process, right? And I feel like genius rituals to right, exactly. I get up and I exactly make one cup of matcha tea and then I make another exactly because those are the things that they could do to help create an environment where that flow it's the loop. It's just always weird stuff with writers. Exactly. Athletes I train a lot of athletes to get in flow and focus, you know, whether the race car drivers or tennis players or what have you and the same thing. They all bounce the ball a certain amount of times or when they're about to hit the ball or shoot they all have their rituals but those becoming coded you know and those those habits are

very important because first you create your habits and then your habits create you the most popular downloaded episode we did were the 10 my morning routine the 10 things i do every single morning jump start my brain everybody has their Oprah has theirs and tony has theirs and everybody has theirs right but mine are specific to my brain i want to activate my brain example we'll link to those in the show notes but can you give us a couple of things just a few of them in no particular order or like I'll wake up in the morning and I'll remember my dreams. Like I have a six-step process for remembering my dreams. And you're like, Jim, who cares about your dreams?

Because one of the reasons, see, people don't realize this. When you're learning all day or you're trying to sell problems as an entrepreneur or some problems in your life, your brain doesn't shut off at night. If anything, it's more active at night. I hear you. Your brain like literally is more lit up at night and more active. And what is it doing? It's consolidating short to long-term memory.

It's integrating what you know. It's coming up with solutions. But when you wake up, you forget all your day. dreams. So all that knowledge and that wisdom and the insight is lost. In fact, a lot of things in human culture were actually created in dream states. So, for example, Mary Shelley came up with Frankenstein in her dream. Yesterday, the song yesterday, Paul McCartney came up with a dream.

The periodic table came to a chemist in his dream, right? Elias Howe created the sewing machine in his dream. Like, what are we dreaming about late at night that we're just forgetting about? So remember your dreams. And just having the intent to remember your dreams. There's a whole process. People could listen to it. But what I would say is to just have the intent of deciding I want to remember my dreams,

and that'll help. And then there's journaling and all kinds of things. The second thing I would say is once you get out of bed is to make your bed. You're like, Jim, what does that have to do with my brain, right? Well, first of all, clean environment's important for a clarity of brain. It is. Although they say you've got to let your sweat evaporate off the bed, otherwise you're creating dust mite reproductive territory.

That's a totally different conversation. So maybe make your bed after you do something else. else let it air out let it let that that's an important distinction nobody wants nobody wants to have dust mites so you have making making your bed is is important because um number number one a clean environments you know this when you clean your laptop or or your office or whatever you have clarity of thought right your external world's reflection of your internal world but the other reason is at a high level at a meta level how you do anything is how you do everything oh i love that one and you're training yourself right and so how you do anything you're training yourself to be excellent first thing in the

morning and you're starting your day. You know this also. There's a science to momentum, either positive or negative. Like people could spiral down. You start eating that jelly donut. You start not working out. I start just binge watching this. It just goes down, you know, down and down. But also success has momentum also. You could build, success, breed success. So why not make your bed? How long does it take? A minute, two minutes. And you start with excellence and you could build on that. So you start with a win. And the other reason why is when you come back at night, you come back to your bed, you come back to success. Right. So you're going to go in full circle. A third thing you could do first thing in the...

Come back to dust mites. The first, the third thing you could do to jumpstart your brain is brush your teeth. And you're like, Jim, that's so obvious. Well, I have a little... I spent a lot of years not jumpstarting my brain, if you know what I'm saying. I would say I have a little twist on it. I would encourage people based on the research is to challenge yourself to brush your teeth with your opposite hand. And what is trains is two things.

Number one, it trains presence. because in order to do it, it's going to fit first, it's going to be a little uncomfortable. So it's going to train you to be in the moment. Just like with your attention, most people are trying to think of the future and they're in the past, be present. So using something uncomfortable gets you there. Also, what I would say is by using your opposite hand, it stimulates the opposite side of your brain. We know through science that one part of your brain, half of it controls the other half of your body, meaning that if, God forbid, somebody you know how to stroke or head trauma on the left side of their brain,

if there's paralysis, it'll manifest on the right side of their body, right? And so we know that there's not just a mind-body connection. There's a body-mind connection that using your body-in-shron ways could actually stimulate your brain also. So use your opposite hand. This was research done by Dr. Lawrence Katz, who worked with seniors, wanted to find out how to keep their brain alive. And he came up with all these exercises to be able to, and they're very simple exercise, like brushing your teeth with the opposite hand, eating with the opposite hand, and so on. Another thing you can do, hydrate, you know, because you can lose up to a pound of water at night.

Just you talk about sweating, like perspiration and respiration that freeds all those dust mites. Yeah. Because, and so your brain and your body is about 70 plus percent water. And so hydrate. You lose a lot of water when you sleep. A lot of people just drink coffee in the morning and they think they're covering that base. But it's a diuretic, right? Right.

At least I, so I was true at one point. So I would focus on hydrating. And at that point, I'm also, I'm taking my probiotics. Meaning that your second brain is your gut. They call that your second brain, second highest concentration of neurons and nerve fibers. And so what I would say is to take your probiotics and that feeds you, that's your second brain

and make sure you take care of what's there. After that, take a cold shower. I don't love if you've done cold therapy. Brutal, yeah. Like, Jim, I love you this whole episode up to this point. How long of a cold shower really? So here's the thing. I believe for me, cold therapy works really well.

I encourage people to do their own research and test on themselves. But we know, anecdotally, you hit your knee on a coffee table. What do you do? You put ice. Oh, sorry, put ice on it. You put ice on it. And what does it do? It reduces swelling.

It reduces inflammation. You know, well, your body and your brain has inflammation. And some research suggests medical doctors say that it's the beginning of all disease, right? When you have inflammation in your body and the goals, the lower inflammation and one of the ways of doing it is cold, right? And so some people do ice baths, right? We know a lot of athletes. They do ice baths, lower information.

Tim Ferriss loves his ice baths. Right. All those guys, all those weirdos. Are those cryotherapy where you go in with your underwear and gloves and earmuffs and into a negative 240 degrees for two or three minutes. So but a cold shower can get your results also as well. And also the other reason why you want to do a cold shower is because I remember we said how you do anything is how you do every,

you could train yourself to be more resilient. I think, you know, part of it is yes, you know, there's a number of Gs for success. There's growth mindset, right? Carol Dweck's work, a growth mindset. But there's a second G giving, right, because you grow, so you have more to give, right? The other G is gratitude, right? Because I believe what you appreciate appreciates, meaning like when you wake up in the morning. You've got all kinds of bumper stick.

When you, when you wake up in the morning and you go through a gratitude exercise morning routine, I did an episode on Thanksgiving, how gratitude rewires your brain. Literally four ways of getting to instant gratitude, but it literally, what you appreciate, appreciates, meaning grows. And so taking time, because you can have everything in the world, but if you don't appreciate it, you don't have anything. And somebody could have nothing and appreciate the little they have, and they have, like, everything, right?

And success breed success. You could create more from that. And so what I would say is, but another G, besides growth, besides giving, besides gratitude, the fourth G in this mindset would be grit, you know, like resilience, not giving up, perseverance, right? And consistency because it's just like if you, if you're persistent, you'll get it. But if you're consistent, you'll keep it. You know, there's a bumper sticker. Yeah, yeah. You're a machine. I'm not even at Jim quick. But that's where, that's where the memory comes in, right? We spoke at an event together. Actually, it was Thrive.

Yeah. And, um, and, um, and Les Brown, somebody asked a question. It's like, How do you remember all those quotes from the stage? He's like, dude, I met Jim Quick 20 years ago. But these sayings are really important because they stick with you. And there are a lot of life lessons here. But grit is so important. So how do you build grit? You put yourself in uncomfortable positions.

And I think taking a cold shower is very uncomfortable, right? Yeah. But it's not risky to your health. That's true. It's not like. It's the easiest to outside your efforts don't think I can do. But if you could get used to when you're naked. That's not true.

If you could get used to being. comfortable being uncomfortable, I feel like that's where we expand. That's where we grow. That's where we become better. I mean, if you really want to get to the next level of your life or your learning and whatever we're talking about, you want to be able to play and practice at the edge of your comfort zone at the edge of your limits. Pure out. And so like you would expand it, your grit, take cold showers and you will get more comfortable being on stage. You'll be more comfortable making that cold call or talking to that attractive person that you want to build a relationship because you get yourself to do hard things.

Here's the thing. I believe that if you procrastinate, put things off, you do the easy things all time. If you do easy things, life is hard. That's just true. You put easy, you just do the easy things. You don't work out. You just watch TV, whatever it is. Then life becomes very hard.

But if you do the hard things in life, life gets easy. You know, if you do the hard things, again, coming back to habits, first you create your habits, then your habits to create you. Your habits of meditation, having a brainpower smoothie, doing your deep whim-hoff breathing, taking your cold showers, brushing your teeth, your opposite hand. You do the hard things, then life gets easier.

And if the hard things really are just cold showers and brushing your teeth at the opposite hand, among other things, I mean, we still have it pretty easy. Yeah, these are good problems. Keep it less than cushy. Your course has a ton of things like this,

and this is the free level of the course. It's called Quick Recall, right? Yeah. And Jen was like, yeah, he's got this really interesting course. It's called Quick, I think it's a, it's quick, Recall. It's quick recall. And I went, oh, how good could it possibly be if you couldn't remember the name? She eventually remembered the name. So what I would say is the best way to get access everything that we have is just go to quickbrain.com.

And I know you'll put in the notes. The only thing you see about the spell it right, it's K-W-I-K, like a quickie-mark and then like Simpsons or something. That's right. Quick Brain. And then we'll actually give you three of bonus videos on how to remember names. So we talk about M-O-M, the mechanics were the last M, and I'll teach you how to actually remember names. into a room, meet 20 strangers, leave saying goodbye to every single one of them. We also teach you how to give a TED talk without notes and all these fun things. And then you'll have instant access to our podcast because that's the best way is bite size brain hacks for busy people. And I'll be on there too. Yes. And you definitely want to listen to that episode. So every episode is like, how do you, how do you remember names? How do you give a speech without notes? How do you learn a language?

How do you change your habits? How do you improve your focus? What are your top 10 favorite brain foods? And literally, I record most of them on my phone. You know, people put, we have a private Facebook group and people post questions. And I just literally, instead of typing the answer out every single time, I just pick up my phone, hit my voice recorder, answer it. We upload it. It's an episode. And people could get the podcast there. So just search my name on your podcast app, KWIK or go to quickbrain.com. And then I would say as a walk away, as a takeaway for everybody, I believe if you want to learn faster, the best thing you can do is to teach other people. I really do believe if you learn with the intent of teaching, then you get to learn it twice.

when you teach somebody else. And to challenge everybody who's listening to this episode, I challenge you to do this one thing. To take a screenshot of this actual episode, post it on social media, Facebook, Twitter, maybe it's on Instagram, tag Jordan,

tag myself, and post in the comments or the description, your big aha. And we covered a lot of things in this conversation. And I hope people took a lot of notes. We did a whole episode on the proper way of taking notes, which I think it's a must listen to episode. We keep people lazy.

We make worksheets for them. Yeah. Download them in the show notes. And so people, what I would suggest is to go through it and write your big aha and share it on social media because when you teach it, you'll own it more and you're more likely to employ it. And so take a screenshot, tag us both. And then while you're there, ask any burning question you have because I know you and I are very active in social media. So whether it's on Twitter or Instagram or wherever, follow us there and then ask your big question. And because questions really are the answer.

There is no stupid question. Jim, thank you very much, man. Dude, this is great. Well, Jason, I'd love to banter with you at the end of this, but I want to be quick about it. I see what you did there. Yeah, I bet you did. So a great big thank you to Jim Quick, of course, and if you want to know how I managed to book all these great guests, manage my relationships with all these busy, amazing friends that I have. I use systems.

I use tiny habits. No surprise there. I've outlined a bunch of those for you for free over at our level one course. Check that out, advancedhuman dynamics.com slash level one. And I know a lot of people are like, why should I network? I don't need anything. I'm happy in my job.

The number one mistake people make is that they postpone this. They don't dig the well before they get thirsty. You cannot make up for lost time with relationships and networking. Once you need relationships, you're too late to build them. So these drills are just a few minutes per day. Do this habit. Ignore it at your own peril. This is the stuff I wish I knew 10, 15 years ago.

It is crucial. advancedhuman dynamics.com slash level one. And speaking of relationships, tell me your number one takeaway here from Jim Quick. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram. I'm on IG a lot these days. I like it. I get the comments there. I do some videos there.

And don't forget, if you want to learn how you apply everything you heard today from Jim, go grab the worksheets at Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast. They're just linked right up in the show notes. This episode was produced and edited by Jason DeFilippo. Show notes are by Robert Fogarty. The worksheet today was by Dan Fox. Booking Back Office and Last Minute Miracles by Jen Harbinger, and I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger.

The feat for this show is that you share it with friends when you find something useful, which should be in every episode. So please share the show with those you love and even those you don't. Lots more in the pipeline. Very excited to bring it to you. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show, so you can live what you listen, and we'll see you next time. This episode is sponsored in part by Something You Should Know podcast.

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