Brain Expert: How to Stay Sharp When AI Does the Thinking | Jim Kwik

Cognitive offloading leads potentially to cognitive surrendering.

Should I still learn the language? Should I still learn math? There are all these things that I can now offload.

You wouldn't go to the gym and ask your friends to lift weights for you.

If you had to conceptualize what the modern mental gym looks like—

It would be like a CrossFit, kind of like a CrossFit for the mind.

I feel there is a bit of a meaning crisis right now with a lot of people who maybe got meaning from their profession.

I think leading an intentional life is very rare.

Super excited to have Jim Kwik here, bestselling author of Limitless and now Limitless Daily.

Yeah.

One of the top experts in memory, focus, accelerated learning, which I feel like is so prescient in a world where my attention span is being destroyed by the algorithm and AI might be leading to cognitive decline. So we got a lot to talk about.

Yeah, let's jump into it. Thanks everyone who's tuning in.

It's gonna be fun. Let's start with, you know, you've been coaching some high performers on how to make the best use of their mind for the past 30 years.

Yeah.

What is something that has surprised you about how the most exceptional people treat their mind, like their relationship with their mind, that is different than maybe your average person?

They definitely prioritize their mind. Sometimes we use mind and brain kind of interchangeably, but they prioritize their— they use their brain. For me, intelligence is about using your brain, directing your mind to create the life you want, right? It's very more practical. Some people look at it as intelligence as pattern recognition. Some people see it as cognitive flexibility, ability to change your opinions based on new data, right? Being flexible that way. But high performers, they treat that as their most valuable asset, their mind, and they invest in it and they protect their mind from especially their attention.

Hmm.

'Cause your attention is, for founders, it's everything. Your ability to make good decisions, having solid judgment, be able to attack and solve problems. and puzzles, be able to be creative, be able to innovate. So it's the highest leverage point. It's not like an agricultural age industry where it's based on muscle power. Our worth in society is more— it's not brute strength, it's brain strength.

Yeah.

It's not muscle power, it's mind power today. And they protect their attention rigorously. I always think the one thing that's equal, everyone watching, you have different incomes, you have different access and networks and education. Not everybody has 24 hours in a day. And, you know, so they're very interested in leverage. And then they protect their assets like they would, you know, a capital asset. You know, like, so they protect their focus. They keep the most important thing the most important thing, right? Which I think is the most important thing. And especially first thing in the morning, you know, where it's easy to be distracted or be reactive.

Yeah.

You know, the first thing if you're picking up your device, you know, our mutual friend Brennan Burchard says, your inbox is nothing but a convenient organizational system for other people's agenda for your life.

That's why I have Brick now. I can't touch any of my apps in the morning.

And that's what elite performers do, right? They're militant. It's a non-negotiable.

Amongst these people, are there any cognitive weaknesses that you see become more common the more successful you become?

Well, throughout time, technology has changed the way our minds think, right? Like from the written word to printing presses where we don't have to remember as much, all the way to calculators and GPS, right? We have a device telling us when and where to turn. and we don't have to develop our visual spatial intelligence, you know, with a calculator. The other day I was with a client event and it was 10 of us at dinner. The bill came and 4 people took out their phones to go on their calculator, divide by 10, you know, which, so I think one of the challenges is cognitive offloading.

Hmm.

Where we're relying on technology to not just remember things. It's called digital dementia, the high reliance technology. Remember, I mean, your phone keeps your to-dos, your grocery list, your calendar, All your phone numbers. I mean, how many phone numbers did people remember growing up?

Never, except my mom and dad know.

Right, but now it's just like 1 or 2 phone numbers. And not that I wanna memorize 500 phone numbers, but it should be concerning we've lost the ability to remember 1 phone number or a PIN number or a seed phrase or someone's name. But cognitive offloading leads potentially to cognitive surrendering. And what happens to a society or a civilization where if your brain is an organ but acts like a muscle, it or lose it. So what happens if you put your arm in a cast for a year? It wouldn't grow stronger. It wouldn't stay the same. It would atrophy. So what happens if we're offloading judgment, creativity, problem solving, critical thinking? What happens to the society that no longer has those muscles? Be easier to manipulate, right? Other people, authority, agendas, and everything else.

You're not pushing as much.

Right. Because it's like Like learning should require effort.

Yeah.

Right? It's like if your brain grows through neuroplasticity, it remodels itself based on novelty and nutrition, right? And sleep. That's when your muscles build, when you sleep. But, you know, what happens if we remove the effort, the friction that AI provides? And I use AI. I'm very big on technology, but I see it as more augmented intelligence, like a creative partner or maybe a potential coach.

Yep.

Which you know a lot about.

Yes.

Which is great, which is why I love your platform because it allows, being a learning architect myself, it allows personalization, it allows 24-hour access, it's one-on-one, right?

Yeah.

And so, yeah, I'm considering, like you wouldn't send, you wouldn't go to the gym and ask your friends to lift weights for you.

No.

Right? But that's kind of like what we're doing if AI's doing all the work.

Offloading. Yeah, so I say just build your intelligence before you borrow from, So where's the line between deciding whether to offload and whether to learn yourself? For example, you know, I'm trying to improve my Farsi.

Yeah.

But eventually I can just speak to my grandmother in English and it's going to translate immediately.

Should I go—

as like someone who wants to be a high performer, who's very cautious about his time, should I still learn the language? Should I still learn math? There are all these things that I can now offload.

So I feel like it's, it's I mean, the metaphor I would use is relating to physical fitness, like mental fitness. If your office is on the 7th floor, your apartment's on the 7th floor, an elevator is a form of technology. It's very convenient.

Mm-hmm.

But then we don't take the stairs. You have to go 10 blocks after this to run an errand. You could go into an Uber or Lyft, take a car. It's a form of technology, but then we don't get our steps in. So my thing is there's gotta be some kind of a balance. On the flight here, somebody next to me was watching WALL-E. I don't know if you saw this. It's just— and they had, you know, obviously—

Scary movie when you look at it at a certain angle.

It is. And I literally was just watching the person respond, but with the earphones on. So I haven't seen it since it came out. But I was watching, you know, through the side of my peripheral vision, just these morbidly obese individuals in these pods that was taking them from here to there, had big screens in front of them and a big soda gulp thing. And, he ended up like, one of the guys ended up falling on the ground, needed 5 robots to pick him up. I just feel like we have to maintain our mental fitness. And, learning a language is an amazing brain exercise, right?

Yeah.

Learning how to dance, learning new business vocabulary, be able to practice that. You just wanna get the reps in. So, I'm not saying— I think technology is an amazing way, but to leverage which is what technology is. It's a tool, and it's not good or bad. Fire is an early form of technology, right? It could cook your food, it could burn down your home. It's just how it's applied. So, I'm just concerned with people getting cognitively weak. I think it's important to have cognitive flexibility. It's important to be agile. It's important to have cognitive antifragility.

Yeah.

Where we don't just bounce back under stress or pressure, but we actually bounce forward like a muscle. What was once hard to— something hard to lift, now it becomes easier 'cause you adapt.

Yeah.

But I think we're living in the age of adaption. But I think absolutely your focus is your number one currency, right? Even the words we use, we say we pay attention, right? I think if everybody tomorrow had to pull out their credit card or Apple Pay or whatever, every single time they put their attention towards something, like they go into Facebook, they would have to enter their credit card information. Then they go to Instagram, they have to enter it again. I think they would treat it differently.

They don't need to do that anymore now that—

Nowadays.

They pay for you.

Right, absolutely. But our attention is everything. So I would say it's a muscle.

Yeah.

But it's use it or lose it. But a lot of us are flexing our distraction muscles. But I'm all for learning another language or anything else that, you know, a lot of great founders, right? They're known for like a lot of their hobbies because it gives them references, it gives them discernment, it gives them a lot of creativity came from, you know, Steve Jobs. It was like, you know, obviously technology, but it was calligraphy, right? And visual design. It was borrowed from other things.

It's less about the outcome of learning language, but the process of what it does for you.

And who you have to become to be able to, the discipline, the effort, the focus. Besides some, we have an annual brain performance conference and we had Quincy Jones come for many years. And one time I pull him on stage, have a fireside chat with him, and he could speak almost 23 languages.

That's insane.

And we were talking about the correlate between that and music. And it's interesting, when I asked him, I didn't wanna know about his successes. Everybody knows, you know, We Are the World and all the Grammys and everything, you know, Thriller. I want to know about the problems that he had. And he's like, I don't have any problems. And I'm like, well, you're 80-something years old. Everybody has problems. He's like, no, I have puzzles. I was like, wow, even the shift in the word.

It's a good mindset.

And he also traveled so much because he said you have to go to know. And when you travel, you know, being exposed to novelty, right? New music, new cuisine, new forms of art. You know, and languages, it's, it's how, it's how we enrich things, right? Like, I can appreciate what you're building in terms of a new library, you know, of Alexandria, because it's like storing human knowledge, right?

Experiencing other people's perspective.

Absolutely. And it's like, it's like, it's like an incredible, like, who wouldn't want to be able to talk to, like, I'd love to have a conversation with my grandfather. They've, they've passed. But, you know, so I think it's great in terms of preserving human memory. You know, what I'm interested in is the human mind, like the wisdom of how to apply that knowledge.

The Industrial Revolution maybe made us physically weak because we weren't stressing our bodies as much.

Yeah, because machines would do it.

And we figured out physical fitness. If you had to, you know, conceptualize what the modern mental gym Yeah. I go to the gym every day because I want to be in shape. I'm not carrying things in a warehouse.

Right.

And so let's say 5 years from now, I'm not using my mind as much as I want to at work because AI is doing a lot of the work. What is the mental gym routine?

Yeah, I like this. This is a great question. I would imagine it would be amazing to have mental fitness gyms because ultimately as a brain coach, that's what I am, a mental fitness trainer.

Yeah.

Like your body, what does a trainer do? Makes you stronger, makes you more flexible, helps with your energy, helps you become more pliable, more coordinated. I want people to be— I want their memory to be sharper.

Yeah.

Right? I want their learning to be stronger. I want their thinking to be faster and more agile also as well. It would be like a CrossFit, kind of like a CrossFit for the mind. I'm a big advocate for reading. There's an article in The Atlantic that went viral talking about how only 16% of individuals across age, gender, and ethnicity read every day, which I find sad.

That's tough.

Yeah, I think reading is to your mind what exercise is to your body. You know, if people have seen me with various founders, the Oprahs, the Elons, and so on, people wanna know how we bonded. We bonded over books. You know, I love reading. You know, if somebody has decades of experience they put into a book, many of your clients and collaborators have, you know, right? Then, and somebody could sit down and read that book in a few days. They could download decades into days, right? All that wisdom, all the research, all the mistakes.

Yep.

All the best practices and frameworks. So reading would definitely be part of it. Only 51% of people read. Well, 51% in the articles said they won't even read one book a year, you know, which is sad. 4 and a half years. Like, I had a traumatic brain injury, so it took me 3 years longer to learn how to read when I was a child. Yeah. So I had learning disabilities, You know, I was just, I had to work 3 times harder. I was called the boy with the broken brain. And that's what kids, you know, referred to me as, and a handful of teachers. But, you know, that label became my limit. But because of it, I just wanna remind everybody that adversity could be an advantage.

Mm-hmm.

That with challenge comes change, that with struggles you get strength. It's hard in a world that's optimized for convenience, right? We have temperature control in this room. We could, we have DoorDash, right? We don't have to exert a lot of effort. But I think there is a huge benefit of carrying water, doing some of the basics, keeping yourself mentally active. And it's one of the best ways to stave off brain aging challenges. I lost my grandmother to Alzheimer's when I was 7. So we donated proceeds from Limitless to Alzheimer's research for women. Women are twice as likely to experience Alzheimer's than men. But I would say reading would be a component. I would say also to care for your brain, the organ itself. While I teach people how to read faster, remember things, and focus, low states. You have to take care of the brain itself.

So, like, have protein shakes at the gym?

Yeah. I mean, the common acronym is MEDS. You want to take your MEDS. M is meditation. You have to disconnect to reconnect. I think white space is very important. I think that's underrated, like boredom. People can't be bored nowadays. I think boredom has the worst press campaign ever because people will jump on their phones or something. Yeah.

What am I losing by replacing boredom with scrolling?

Yeah. I feel like boredom is having that white space, especially if you schedule it. I mean, that's when I'm most creative. Like, it's interesting, like, when you pause a machine, you pause a camera, you pause a computer, you pause a television, it stops working. Human beings are different. When we pause, I feel like we start working in different ways. We start recalibrating, we start rethinking things, we start restoring, you know, rejuvenating, being more creative, all these great things that come online. You know, my go-to is like a walking meditation, like just outside in nature. Because I also feel like when you're in nature, like we're on screens all the time and that there's a foveal vision, right? Your eyes are the only part of your brain that's outside of your skull, but that foveal vision leads to very kind of convergent thinking as opposed to when you're outside and you're taking in a horizon in nature. I feel like our peripheral vision opens and so does our thinking.

Yeah.

You know, like maybe it's a walk, maybe it's taking a shower. You know, we come up with great ideas, you know, but some people have to listen to a podcast. And I have a podcast, right? I have audiobooks and, you know, we have YouTube. YouTube and all that. But I just feel like not so much consuming, but creating is what a lot of the high achievers, elite mental performers spend more time. There's a quote in Limitless, the original one that says, life is the letter C between B and D, where B is birth and D is death. Life, C, everything between is choice.

Mm-hmm.

Right? We make a choice. These difficult times can define you. These difficult times in your industry can distract you. These difficult times can diminish you, or these difficult times, they can develop you. Right, but we decide with the choices that we make. And I think one of the most important choices is, you know, is this good for my brain or is this bad for my brain? So meditation is good. And some people say, I don't have 20 minutes to meditate. If you're so busy and stressed, you don't have 20 minutes, you probably should do it like an hour, right? And then the E in MEDS is exercise. Part of the protocol for mental fitness, I feel, is physical fitness.

Yeah.

Right, there's this mind-body connection, but there's also a body-mind connection. The saying I say is, as your body moves, your brain grooves.

Yep.

Literally, the physiological benefits, the neurochemistry you create when you exercise, you create dopamine, serotonin, endorphins that you earn, as opposed to when you're scrolling, right? You get this dopamine, which is the molecule of motivation, but you don't have to earn it. There's no effort.

Yep.

Going to a website or, you know, binge-watching something, it's like junk food, right? And I feel like we live in a society that's Overfed and undernourished, not just physically with empty calories, but what we're consuming, right? We're overfed lots and lots of content, but it's a lot of empty calories, right?

Sure.

So exercise, very important. And I don't mean just going to the gym 3 times a week. I mean just moving throughout the day. They say sitting is the new smoking. And so moving your body.

Sitting is the new smoking.

Yeah, it is. You should stand up. Having a very sedentary lifestyle. You know, 'cause the number one reason you have a brain is control your movement. You know, I mean, if you see children when they're first learning to crawl, that's how the brain develops, is through motion and movement. So the E is exercise. And then the D is diet. A whole area of science I write about and research called neuronutrition, that what you eat matters, especially for your gray matter.

Mm-hmm.

You know, the avocados, the blueberries, the wild salmon for the omega-3s and everything. But also what you don't eat, right? It's like the highly processed foods that leads to inflammation, mess up your microbiome, the high sugar foods that could do insulin resistance or glucose spikes, which could affect your focus, you know, a founder's mood also. And then the S is sleep. I mean, how's your brain perform? How's your mind performing when you pull an all-nighter or, you know, you're up with a kid all night or whatever? How is your ability to focus or remember to— To learn, to study, to perform. And, you know, so we write whole chapters on how to optimize your sleep. So I would say reading and then proper— and all this stuff is free, right? Sleep and meditation, exercise, all of that. And it takes time and it's doing uncomfortable things, but life is difficult for one of two reasons. Either you stay in your comfort zone, right? Or you leave your comfort zone.

Yep.

You know, either way, you know, you have to just kind of choose your hard. And so mental fitness would be doing those 4 things. I think Brendon adds the R and the X. The R is relationships because it's not just your neurological networks, but it's your social networks.

Right.

Who you spend time with is who you become, right? 'Cause we borrow also, like your nervous system could regulate. Have you ever been around like a really calm friend or family member?

Yeah.

And then you start feeling calm 'cause you regulate with them. We also borrow, you know, courage based on someone's belief in us. Yeah, that's nice. Right? You know, it makes us feel safe. So it gets us in that parasympathetic. 'Cause if you're in your survival mode, Survival brain. Chronic stress will shrink your brain over time. Fight, flight, or freeze. That's a challenge because it holds you hostage from your creativity, your ability to solve problems when you're distressed or worry or rumination, your ability, your executive functioning and everything. And then the X are all the extras. That's the red light, the cold plunges, the nootropics, all that other stuff. Right.

The modern day.

Right. All this science. But I still go back to ancient Wisdom. And so, yeah, I would subscribe to this gym.

You'd have a subscriber here.

Yeah. And it's all about cognitive reserve because they could take 2 seniors that have fairly similar brains, right? But one is completely independent and the other one needs assistance, right? They have cognitive decline, memory loss, and everything. But they attribute, scientists are attributing it to cognitive reserve. And cognitive reserve, it's like a retirement account. Every day you're making deposits into it based on 3 things, your physical activity, which you talked about, your mental activity, and also your social activity. Some of the best exercises is like racket sports.

Yeah.

On average, adds 9 years to your life. Great for your memory. At all our events, we have like ping pong tables and stuff like that. We bring in these table tennis champions And, you know, Dr. Daniel Amen and all these neuroscientists play. And dance, you know, it's amazing. You know, ballroom dance, Latin dance, because you're putting your mind into your muscle, right? And notice it's not just mental and physical, it's also social. Tennis and, you know, pickleball or dance, usually have a partner also as well. Then that could— those are deposits into your mental retirement account.

Right.

You know, and so you want to keep, you want to keep active.

You mentioned a lot about how a lot of this is accepting that in order to improve your mind, you have to be okay with struggle and adversity and like seeking for more. What has to change about the way we educate children to kind of make people realize like struggle is good?

Yeah.

You want to actually go after what's hard.

Yeah, this is a magic question. We have a 3-and-a-half-year-old and a 1-and-a-half-year-old. So even now I'm thinking about, 'cause they're growing up a lot different than— my parents immigrated to the United States. You know, my dad was 13, lost both his parents. We lived in the back of a laundromat that my mom worked at. We shared, 6 of us shared 1 bathroom, you know, and everybody has different stories, right? My challenge is like, I want my children to be able to figure things out. Right? I want them to be able to be bored, not have a screen, you know, ideally. I want them to be able to go through frustration, just like when they were learning how to walk, right? They would fall down, you know, 100 times, but they would still get up, right?

Yep.

And, I feel like it's been my experience in terms of pattern recognition and seeing elite performers that I don't know one strong person that had an easy life, right? And, we evolve through challenge. You know, out of necessity. And so I feel, how can we model that? I would personally, in front of kids, do hard things. So the life you live are the lessons you teach. So I want to be a good role model. And that includes for digital devices. You know, one of the challenges is the excessive use of screens for kids. And so I say, my general recommendation is— Because you're doing the opposite.

saying, hey, like, comfort.

Yeah, and I totally understand, like, if a kid's flipping out on the airplane or at a restaurant, why people would open up their phone and put on YouTube or something. But the content they're consuming is a lot different than what I grew up on, right? Like, it's highly stimulating. You know, they figured out, like, in terms of these videos, to make them very engaging and, you know, increase the retention on it. It's all just sounds and lights and colors, you know, different than watching Mr. Rogers or something that's more level, right? But I would say like, you know, you don't have to deny but delay, you know, 'cause kids, especially young kids when their brains are still forming, you know, you've seen some of these videos where kids are like addicted to it and where they're throwing absolute fits and tantrums because of like it's a sugar addiction. I would say also important is that kids don't necessarily follow rules, but they like the routines. And rituals are important. So like basic things. And I say even this to adults, like, you know, how about a rule, like a routine or ritual that no phones at meals, something simple like that. I love that ritual. Or something like no phones, you know, overnight in the bedroom, right? Because part of it is, and we've had on our podcast, you know, Charles Duhigg wrote Power of Habit and James Clear, Atomic Habits, and Dr. BJ Fogg out of Stanford that wrote Tiny Habits. Part of it is controlling your environment. Right. And just not having that temptation. I saw a video on Facebook Memories like 9 years ago. Somebody spliced up me on stage and Simon Sinek on stage, and it has 38 million views. And it's just me saying, don't touch your phone the first 30 minutes of the day and last 30 minutes of the day. Something simple like that. Yeah.

Those are simple things.

Yeah. And that was like new information back then. But Simon was talking about just having your phone at your dinner table, even if it's off, Airplane mode, face down, you still have the impulse to grab it, right? It's kind of like if you're gluten-free and somebody at a restaurant brings you bread, it's easier to say no once, no bread.

You have to practice willpower. You don't even have to introduce willpower.

Right, exactly. And so, but if the bread stays there, then you have to use willpower 50 times and you have to negotiate with yourself 50 times. It exhausts you.

It's energy-draining.

It is. And the brain is a— it's only 2% of your body mass. But it is an energy hog. It uses 20% of the energy on average. Like, I work with some elite athletes, but also F1 drivers, chess champions. They could sit like you and I just for a day, not moving their body at all, and burn 6,000, 7,000 calories. Just by thinking. Just, yeah. That's how much an energy hog it is. But that's why people struggle with decision fatigue. I feel like under pressure and stress, because under perfect conditions, perform perfect, right? Or well. But under stress, which is everything, it's not like we rise to the level of our aspirations as much as we fall to the level of our systems, right? We fall to the level of our standards, what we're willing to accept in a relationship, in business, income, whatever, to our stories that we tell ourselves. Like that brain injury that I had was a limitation for sure, structural limitation in terms of blood flow going to certain parts of my brain and coordination issues. I had migraines every day as a kid. But, I think a bigger limitation was the story I was telling myself about having a broken brain. This teacher that called me out that was trying to protect me when I was being bullied by other kids said, leave that kid alone. That's the boy with the broken brain. It only took her 5 seconds to say those words, but that conversation about that broken brain lasted 12 years for me.

Sure.

And, that probably had an impact because I would look for evidence. The brain is very efficient. When you activate that part of your brain called the reticular activating system, Because the brain primarily is a deletion device. We're trying to keep information out. If we let all the world's stimuli in, we would go insane, right? So, you know, what we ask questions about, what we focus on, we tend to let in. But we tend to let in the information that is providing evidence that we are this person, right?

Yeah.

So I was looking for evidence that I was broken. Just like if I put a prompt in there, you know, in AI and said, oh, why can't I ever find love? Or why can't I ever lose this weight? Or why am I so stupid? It'll come up with all the Are you a fan of Adler?

Yeah.

And so your mind is like, it's like if your brain's like a supercomputer, your self-talk is the program it runs. If you tell yourself, I'm not good at remembering people's names, you won't remember the name of the next person you meet because you program your computer not to. So with kids, I would be thinking routines like, you know, like no device in the bedroom at night. I'd be thinking no device at meals. I would also be thinking delaying it as opposed to denying it, just as long as you could go without introducing those screens. And I would also say, be a role model because if you tell your kids like, don't be on your device or screens and you as a parent are on that, right? They're gonna, it's not saying it, it's showing it.

It sounds like creating an environment where it's effortless.

And that's the goal with habit design. The goal for habit design is you wanna make what's good for you easier. And you wanna make what's Not good for you, more friction, more difficult. If you didn't have the junk, if you didn't have the cookies in your kitchen, you're not going to go and get that midnight snack.

Yeah.

Because you're controlling your environment. If you don't have the phone at your nightstand, you're not going to pick it up first thing in the morning or keep it on late at night. I had a client recently and we were looking at her sleep scores and it was really off. And I was like, well, what time do you go to bed? She's like, 9 o'clock. I'm like, okay, but what are you doing in bed? She's like, oh, I'm on my phone. I'm like, okay, like social media? She was like, yeah. And then we looked and she spent on average 2 and a half, 2 hours and 15 minutes on average every night just doom scrolling, right? And I was like, no judgment. I was just like, but what, you know, why'd you do this? She came up with something I think everyone could relate to. It's like, I, you know, I have a, this person is pretty preeminent, a lot of responsibility, a lot of employees. This is my way of de-stressing. I'm like, that's fine. And then I asked like, and clearly it's disrupting her sleep, right? The blue light's pulling your mind thinking it's still daylight. Totally ruins sleep, yeah. And then all the stimulus also, You're in your executive mind and you're ruminating. But then I was like, okay, you go to bed at 9, what time do you wake up? 6. Okay. Would you wake up 2 hours earlier at 4 to do this activity that you're doing at night? And it just like a light bulb hit her. And she obviously said no, right? But, you know, the net result is the same, right? Getting up 2 hours earlier to doom scroll rather than doing it. Oh, that's a horrible way to start the day. And it's just, yeah, it's affected everything. But that little change changed everything for her.

The other thing you said about high performers is that they're very good at filtering out things that try to hijack their attention. And this is something I've personally been struggling with, especially working in AI. Every week there's a new AI technique, there's a new AI company, there's a new agent, there's a new thing you got to learn or else you're going to fall behind and you're going to be in the permanent underclass. You got to read a new book. And I'm just curious from your own information diet, as someone who's really into learning, how do you filter what's worth Hey, this is actually worth paying attention to versus this is just infinite internet slop?

I mean, the amount of information is doubling at dizzying speeds, but how we learn it hasn't changed a whole lot, how we read it, remember it, study it. So that growing gap creates information anxiety, higher blood pressure, compression of leisure time, more sleeplessness. What I would say, I mean, so that's why we teach people to learn faster, be able to close that gap. I feel like, so AI is no longer a competitive advantage because we all have access to it. Knowledge, information is no longer an advantage because everybody has infinite access to it also. So I feel like discernment and judgment, like filtering the information is very important because we can't possibly learn it all, right? And so when I'm learning something, I'm looking for frameworks, first principles, something that would enhance my thinking. Like I don't remember, nowadays you don't have to remember facts and figures as much because you have meta, you have— you have this meta-memory where you know where to find this information, right? So we compensate that way. And I think that's fine for cognitive outsourcing, that kind of stuff, right? So generally, I don't wanna remember facts, but I wanna remember frameworks. I wanna remember things that give me leverage, that enhance my thinking.

Metamodelling.

So when I'm looking at things, I'm looking for, to remember and study the things that would enhance my Thinking.

And judgment.

Judgment, you know, our discernment, right? All the human qualities. 'Cause AI can compute and process and give you a lot of data, but ultimately human beings, we have to decide what this data means. We have to decide what's important out of all this information. And we also have to decide, probably most importantly, what to do with it, right? And remember, AI doesn't have stake in it, right? It could give you its advice and its suggestions, but ultimately human beings have to own that decision. It's a different game. Right? Yeah, exactly. And so it could give you any kind of advice, but it has no consequence, right? And so, but that falls in the realm of human intelligence, right? Curiosity, creativity, compassion, empathy, emotional quotient, judgment, critical thinking, all the things that I feel like are gonna be more valuable in the age of AI.

Totally agree.

Like, I really feel like my optimistic view is that AI Is going to— because it only can magnify, right? It amplifies and magnifies, but it only can amplify and magnify—

What you already have.

Right, what you bring to it. Like, somebody could use it to make a nice social media post. Somebody could use it to cure cancer or make the next billion-dollar venture. It's the human intelligence, right? Like a race car driver, you have a multimillion-dollar piece of technology, this race car, but it's the human that's driving it that determines the performance. And if somebody's confused or incapable, that's going to crash and burn. So that's what magnifies. Somebody's going to AI with confusion or uncertainty, whatever it is, it could all magnify that. But if somebody has clarity, if somebody has competence, you know, and a certain amount of acumen and schema in a topic, then it would magnify that, which is great. 'Cause that's what technology is. It's there for, as a tool to amplify, you know? But I think we have to choose, you know, and choose wisely. So I always say human intelligence before artificial intelligence, you know, build before you borrow.

100%. Join the conversation. Got a question? You can ask Jim's digital mind. Just check the link in the comments or description. And on potentially where technology is going wrong, I know a lot of people who will claim that they've learned something, but they really just saw a TikTok and they saw a tweet. And I'm curious if you had to, maybe you would say you wouldn't even put it online at all, but if you had to like redesign Educational content the way it is right now? A lot of people are consuming educational content on TikTok, on Twitter, but it's for engagement and it's not for learning. How might it look different if it were optimized for learning?

Well, I think, okay, so knowledge by itself is not power. It only becomes power when we apply it, right? So many people do mental masturbation where they think they get points for buying a book or even reading a book, but a book that's either unread or it's not used, that there's no power in that. You're no better off than someone who's illiterate, who couldn't read the book to begin with, right? And so, I would just wanna remind people, application is the name of the game, right? And through it, you create evidence because you become something bigger that could build something bigger, right? And so, a lot of people, when they're going through content, they're not learning it as much as they are recognizing it, right?

Hmm.

They recognize the face or they recognize this thought and they can maybe repeat it, but they don't know it, I feel like, unless they could, do it and they could live it. So my process is I could read something, so I learn it and then I need to live it and then I earn the right to be able to teach it to somebody else because through experience, knowledge is one thing, but wisdom is a completely different game. Wisdom is reflecting on that knowledge through personal experience, which AI doesn't have. AI could feign empathy or compassion, but it doesn't know what it's like to console a grieving child. It doesn't know what heartache feels like or ask for forgiveness or anything. It's a useful tool though, without a doubt. You know, I'm really concerned about the identity crisis. Like what happens, like a radiologist who studied this for years in medical school and they practiced for years and now AI could do it 1,000 times better than the human eye with 100% accuracy. What happens to that person? at an identity level.

Yeah.

'Cause so many people identify themselves with their job.

Yeah.

But going back to TikTok, besides the recognition and how it's based on engagement, right? It's based on clicks and the amount of time you watch. So it's optimized for that. For me, this is an interesting thought experiment. Like, I would make, okay, the content would change for educational purposes, right?

Yeah.

But I would also make it like, what if they had to watch a video on something and then had to write a one-sentence summary about what they just learned in order to get to the next video?

Right.

What if after 30 minutes—

No AI content allowed.

Right. And what after 30 minutes of scrolling or whatever, or learning this stuff, it forced you to take a break, a brain break? So literally you can't get to the next piece of content. You know, what if it was gamified around application? If there was some way of, you know, showing proof—

Recording yourself, proof of work.

Yes, exactly. Like, so, so if I was to do it that way, then I think an amazing educational tool, you know. And those are just some principles of adult learning theory, but I would feel like that would make it for deeper wisdom and deeper learning as opposed to just entertainment.

Yep.

Right.

Quick exercise that I wanna do right now. Tomorrow I'm giving a speech in front of 300 people at my sister's wedding.

Oh, nice.

What would you coach someone on how to memorize a 10-minute speech in 24 hours? What are your tactics?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And by the way, like, I mean, 10 minutes is a lot harder to do than, in my opinion, than an hour. This is so— yeah. I get to work with a lot of TED speakers, mainstage TED speakers, to memorize because they— it's almost verbatim. I get to work with a lot of Hollywood actors to speed read scripts and memorize lines and be focused on set. So this is definitely my wheelhouse. Simplest thing you could learn in a very short period of time. Like, so I pull in Limitless Daily and Limitless, I pull on latest neuroscience and adult learning theory, multiple intelligence theory, right? The process of encoding, storing, retrieving information for memory. But, it's also I pull from ancient wisdom. I wanted to know before technology, how did people remember things? How did they order? Right.

Oral tradition, oral history.

Yeah, like the Odyssey, the Iliad was passed through verbal. That's amazing, right? Same.

They must have known things.

Absolutely. And, their memory was very strong because it had to be because they didn't have, let's say, whether it's written word or printing presses or anything else like that, much less what we have access to today. So something called the memory palace, which people are learning a lot more about, it's 2,500 years old. It's accredited to ancient Greece. Simonides was an orator. The story goes, the anecdote goes that he was giving a reading, and when he left the building, something really tragic happened. The building collapsed, and there were no survivors. And he had the— because he was the lone survivor, he had the responsibility of helping family members identify their loved ones. And, he was able to do so because he remembered where they were all sitting. And, I think most people listening remember where things are because as— think about how human memory evolved out of necessity and survival. We didn't need to remember facts and figures and stuff. We need to remember where things were. Where's the fertile soil? Where's the crop? Where's the enemy tribe? Where's clean water? That was our survival. So, we store information based on place. And so, this is the method of loci memory palace where you take a familiar place, like your kitchen, your bedroom, your body, anything, your classroom. And you're so familiar with this, the mall, whatever you go through, right? And you take the ideas that you want to remember and you place them in sequential order of where these places are.

Okay.

Right? So let's say if you name 5 places going clockwise in your kitchen, and I said clockwise the other day to a bunch of teenagers, they had no idea.

What is that?

They had no idea what clockwise, because everything is digital. But let's say going clockwise, you have, as an example, the microwave is number 1, stovetop is number 2, refrigerator is number 3, dishwasher is number 4, sink is number 5, right? And everybody knows their kitchen, right? So the idea here is you need to give a 7-minute toast at a wedding. You would take the main ideas, 'cause you know what you wanna say, you just need a reminder of the main topics, right?

Yeah.

Just like as a— and they say public speaking is the number 1 fear, you know, that it is. And I think a big fear comes from lack of competence around their memory. They feel like they're gonna forget. Or someone's going to ask a question, they're going to answer the question, and then they forget where they were.

Yeah.

If they're not relying on a confidence monitor or PowerPoint presentation.

Which is another narrative you tell yourself, like you were a teacher.

Right, exactly, exactly. And so what you would do here is take the main ideas or anecdotes or quotes and you turn it into an image because we tend to remember things that we could see. A lot of people are better with faces than they are with names.

Yeah.

You go to someone and say, I remember your face, but I forgot your name. You never go to someone and say, I remember your name before I got your face. You never say the opposite. So we tend to remember what we see. Try seeing what you remember. So you have the place that you can remember easily, and then you take the main idea or the topic of the point you want to get across to your audience, and you come up with an image, and you put that first image near the microwave or inside the microwave, and you make it fun and funny. The more emotion you add to it, the more sticky it is.

Yeah.

Because we remember things that touch us emotionally, right? Like most people could hear a few notes of a song that could take them back to when they're a teenager, or a food or a fragrance could take you back when you're a child, 'cause that emotion. So you have this middle brain where you have this seahorse-looking part of your brain, which is your hippocampus, which is memory. Attached to it is an almond-shaped part of your brain called your amygdala, which is like a switching station for emotion. But isn't it interesting that memory and emotion are tied together?

Yeah.

The challenge though in school, what's the primary emotion people felt sitting in class all day? Like boredom, right?

Boredom.

Right. And so on a scale of 0 to 10, boredom is 0. So if it's information times emotion becomes a long-term memory and the emotion is 0, anything times 0 is 0, right? And so you wonder why you forgot.

So we got to make school more emotional?

Yeah, I think it's— I think the things that we remember back in school are the teachers that were able to convey things at an emotional level using stories, using imagery. But that's why we forgot the periodic table, because we were in just that bored state, because all learning is state dependent, right? And so what I would say, you know, is take the main ideas, turn into a picture, and then attach that image into the different places. And yeah, text me. Let me know how it goes. I'm gonna try that tonight. It absolutely—

Does that change? So this is an exercise kind of optimized for memorization.

Yeah.

Does it evolve at all if you're optimizing for understanding?

Yeah.

Let's say by tomorrow I needed to know the entire history of the Persian Empire. Because we're in an Iranian wedding. I need to understand the dynamics. Anything different about the exercise when you're optimizing for understanding?

Yeah. So I always learn to understand, right? I don't wanna be able to memorize just a lot of facts that have no context or no meaning to it. And so I would always, I think the goal is deeper understanding. And then the more understanding you have, it allows you to, 'cause when you know more, you could do more, right? When you know better, you could do better.

Understanding is kind of a precursor of memorization. It makes it easier.

Absolutely. And things that, that's why the things that we're deeply interested in, interested in, we tend to remember better because we're more vested and we want to know context because human beings are very context-dependent. It's not just the content. If content is king, that we hear a lot on social media or whatever, then context is the kingdom, right? And it's the frame around something. So yeah, I would find that having understanding will improve obviously your comprehension, but definitely your retention.

Yeah.

And that would be the goal. It's not just to know a lot Random facts with no context.

Yeah, I understand my relationship with my sister, so hopefully that'll help with the memorization.

Yeah, and that's the other thing. I would do it in a way— when I wanna give a presentation, especially 'cause I wanna affect change, the 3 questions I ask myself is, what do I want people to think? What do I want them to feel? What do I want them to do? And I work backwards from that. So everything that I'm saying has purpose around that. Like, what's a new idea I want them to think? What do I want them to feel around this? Because without the feeling, they're not gonna act on it. And then what's one small thing that they could do, you know, with this? And it could be, it could be an inspiring speech also as well.

Yeah.

It doesn't have to be just an educational thing.

I wanna go back to the radiologist that you spoke about. Yeah. Because I, I feel there is a bit of a meaning crisis right now with a lot of people who maybe got meaning from their profession. Maybe they no longer feel like they're uniquely like the one for that profession. I'm curious how you would advise someone to find meaning in an era where you're kind of getting meaning from algorithms, from other people. You don't know whether something you believe is because someone else told you or because you actually feel it yourself.

Yeah, I feel like that discernment is so very important, right? So we're living this almost like a barbell economy where maybe AI is affecting not the ends of the barbells, the weights, HVAC, massage therapists, hairstylists, or leadership, but definitely like what we talked about before, like the coders, right? Maybe writers also as well.

Yeah.

Radiologists, people where technology is really— and I feel like AI won't— whether it replaces— technology has always done some of that. It definitely will reveal, right, in terms of what we're amplifying. I would say that I get to work with a lot of people in transition that are reinventing themselves. Think about the athletes that have spent their whole life training since they were a kid for a specific sport that are unable to compete at that level anymore. And they go into other things where they have to take the discipline, the effort, the attention, the training, those qualities, and apply towards a fund or a startup or something else, right? But their identity was that. But they're not only leaving an identity, that's evolving, they're leaving a community like the military. I get to work with a lot of vets.

Right.

Right. So they're, they're in this community also. So they're not only figuring out who they are now, but they're also losing their support group, you know, of people. And we know that's, that's huge, you know, in terms of who we spend time with. So reinvention is interesting because I think like Limitless is, is, it's my Limitless daily. I made purple because it's, you know, stands out on your shelf. But it wasn't for branding, it was for becoming. You know, and purple is very— it means in color psychology, sovereignty and wisdom, right? And I want people to remind people of their agency and also give them a little bit of wisdom to start their day first thing in the morning. And that's a very specific window of what's called sleep inertia, which we could talk about, a big leverage point for founders. And then the other thing about it is purple also was the rarest color. And I'll bring this back to your question. For thousands of years, it was the most expensive because it was the hardest to create. they would have to, like, let's say in the Mediterranean Sea, they would have to extract it from snail shells. That's why royalty used like—

It's adversity. You have to fight for it.

And that's the value, right? Because it's scarce. And that's why royalty would have the purple robes and everything else like that. Purple also is a crown chakra. It's also a symbol for higher learning and so many other things. That's why purple. But it's about becoming, right? Because I feel like while the color purple back then was very rare, I think leading an intentional life is very rare. Right? And that's what I wanted with Limitless Daily is not another book that sits on their shelf and becomes shelf help, not self-help. But I think people needed a daily practice.

Right.

Right? Because the things that we're most probably grateful in life, or it doesn't come from these random sporadic bursts of energy. It comes from what we do every single day.

Compounds. Yeah.

Right? And consistency compounds like capital, right? But so does curiosity compound. So does discipline. You know, so is all these other assets. I call it cognitive capital, right? So what I would say for somebody going through a reinvention like that radiologist is what makes us human? My vision is that this AI evolution, and I love these questions because I haven't been asked these before, so I have to think about it. This AI evolution or revolution could lead to a human evolution, like a new human renaissance. I really feel like that's the optimistic view.

Yeah.

Meaning if AI can— we're not going to out-process and compute computers, right? But in order to be valuable in the workplace, we're going to have to lean into what AI can't do and make it so. I think, like, my acronym for it is HUMAN. H is heart, which is emotional quotient. So I think people right now should be investing in empathy, compassion, everything that develops your emotional intelligence. U is understanding, meaning things like curiosity, things like judgment, really focusing on those things. Because again, human beings ultimately have to judge and decide in ethics, what's important. My timeline is at least 10 years ahead. I'm thinking what's still going to be relevant 10 years from now. Learning, curiosity, compassion, agency.

Connection.

Connection, social.

Self-esteem.

All of that. So I would lean into that understanding. M addresses your question, meaning, purpose. And some people use, just like with brain, which is the hardware, mind is kind of expression of it. People use passion and purpose interchangeably. But for me, functionally, passion is what lights you up. And you can have a lot of passions, right? Like learning is one of my passions. It wasn't always because I was really challenged with it. But purpose is how you use your passion to light somebody else up. So like, if learning is my passion, teaching people how to learn better lights them up. That's my purpose.

Right.

So I feel like a human quality innate is finding more deeper meaning and purpose. And especially now, because we don't know where the world's gonna be 5, 10 years from now, right? But we know it's gonna be different.

Even a year from now, right?

Right. It's gonna change. And with that change comes a lot of challenge. Purpose is what gets you through adversity, gets you through hard times. So, I feel like that radiologist has to go deeper in saying, who am I outside of my career, right? And find what lights them up passion-wise and how they could use that passion to light somebody else up, which is purpose, which is what gets you through difficult times.

Mm-hmm.

And so, that makes us more human. And then, the A in human. So, you have heart, which is emotional quotient, understanding, curiosity, judgment. You have meaning, purpose. A in human is adaptability. We live in the age of adaptation. That's our superpower as human beings. Every creature has a superpower. Some could breathe underwater, some could fly, some are super strong, some could climb. We can't do any of those things as humans, but with the power of our mind, our ability to adapt, we can go underwater. We can fly.

We evolve.

Exactly. We can do it with the power of our mind, taking the invisible and making it visible. And I think human beings need to be able to adapt more than ever. What does adaptation mean? It means our ability to learn, your ability to unlearn, right? Things that aren't serving you. Your ability to learn, unlearn, and relearn things also as well. So adaptability. And I would also include in adaptability, you know, what we teach is cognitive flexibility, which is a big part of Limitless Daily. Cognitive flexibility is just like physical flexibility. You're more pliable. You bend, you don't break. right? Your ability to be nimble, kind of like parkour for your mind. Meaning what's the opposite of that is cognitive rigidity. And cognitive rigidity is, I mean, that's how you have a Blockbuster Video. Like, where are they now? Because that's cognitive rigidity.

Right.

Kodak, right? One of their engineers in 1975 created the technology for digital photographs, right? But they shelved it, right? Because cognitive rigidity. And obviously they had his mistake because their model was like Dollar Shave Club. They were selling the blades just like they're selling film back then. And so, I would say, but they were rigid because they knew where things were going. They still are stuck and they're extinct. So, you adapt or you die. And so, I think we as human beings, we have to be willing to adapt to new technologies, new trends, new shifts in the market, everything else.

Right.

And also human culture, And that's a big context. The N stands for nexus, meaning I use that as a symbol for social connection, leadership, parenting, sales, influence, coaching. I feel like that's a wonderful way to lean into. And so imagine a society that's being— since AI takes care of the computation, the pattern recognitions, the processing, then it forces us to lean into those 5 different areas.

And maybe we'll have a human renaissance because we'll become more To go deeper into each of those, which maybe we haven't spent enough time on.

Completely.

Yeah.

I think that is a big conversation. One of the biggest conversations of our time is how do we remain deeply human in an age of AI? And so it's a very thoughtful conversation.

If you had 2 20-year-olds and they both use AI every day for the next 10 years, And one of them ends up unable to think without AI, and one of them ends up way more capable.

Yep.

What is the prime difference? And this is something that I'm noticing a lot in the workplace is people aren't— it's like a shiny object. It's like your competitors are using AI, they're moving faster than you. But in order to not use AI, you have to have a longer-term mindset because it means you may not move as fast as your competitors.

Yeah, I would say the difference that makes a difference is building your human intelligence versus always borrowing from— I would say build before borrowing.

Which means going slower to go faster, in a way.

Yeah. And I mean, in the military, they say that slow is smooth and smooth is fast, right? And so I would say that the prime difference between those 2 20-year-olds is one is building their intelligence before they borrow artificial intelligence.

Right.

From others. And so I would say, and I'll make an acronym because I know some people are listening, they're working out, they're driving, and it's a simple mnemonic if they're not taking notes, but I'm sure their AI could do that for them. So the B stands for brainstorm. And what I'm using before I go to AI to do the lifting for me is I want to come up with my own ideas. I want to be creative, right? I want to see my own patterns and see what I already know. The U in BUILD is understand. This is where I really understand the problem, 'cause I think a lot of people are optimizing for the wrong prompt or they're optimizing for the wrong problem in life.

Mm-hmm.

'Cause before we went to an AI with a question, we've had prompts to our own human intelligence all the time, right? We're asking ourselves questions. We have about 60,000 thoughts a day. A lot of those come in the form of questions. That's all thinking is, is asking questions of ourselves and answering them ourselves. But I would understand the problem, like the real problem, meaning, What was it? Einstein, everything is attributed to Einstein, but if he had an hour to solve a problem, he'd spend most of that time clarifying the problem. Like, what's the real problem here?

Right.

And so I would brainstorm the situation myself. I would clarify the problem and really understand what the real problem is. And then the I in BUILD is I would imagine my own 3 answers to that problem before I go to AI and imagine, come up with solutions. And I would also But imagine perceptual positions. I often, when I'm attacking a problem, and I call them puzzles now because of Quincy Jones. I love that. I'm taking that on. Because it just feels like it's fun. There's definitely a solution to it. It just feels, it lands differently.

It's a game.

Yeah. It's just the words make a difference. And so I would say that I would imagine 3 solutions. And if you need help with that, I would ask, how would a 5-year-old look at this problem? Because sometimes they'll see the elusive obvious, kids. They're much more creative until they go through some kind of education process. Meaning they give a paperclip and say, oh, the ways you could use this paperclip, as opposed to adults, right? The delta, its difference is huge. I would say like, hey, what would someone 10 times smarter than me, how would they look at this problem, right? Or I could go and just take any expert in any field. Like, how would Charlie Munger look at this problem? Look at their delta. Yeah, exactly. Perfect example. Right? So then you could go and you could come up with 3. And then the L in BUILD is leverage AI. Now, my challenge a lot of times with how people use AI is they just go there directly with the problem, which is not usually the best prompt anyway. And AI has this propensity to make— it can make the dumbest person feel like they're the smartest person in the world.

Yep.

Right? It placates, it's a sycophant. It just rah-rah's around this idea. And so I would say leverage AI for me, especially with this clarified problem, I would be saying, okay, you are the world's expert at arguing against my idea here. Debate me on this. Point out my blind spot. Shine a spotlight on my cognitive biases. Pressure test this idea for this new business model. So I'd ask for pushback, and that's where I feel like it could become a coach. 'Cause the idea here is like with cognitive offloading, if our critical thinking, our judgment, our creativity, our innovation, all the problem solving becomes atrophied, then anything we're gonna create with AI is gonna be derivative. It's gonna, 'cause that's what we're bringing to it. It's gonna be generic. It's gonna be generic, right? And so I would really push back on it. And then that's how I would leverage AI more. And then the D in BUILD, right? After you brainstormed, after you have a deeper understanding of the problem, after you imagine your own solutions, after you leverage AI, then the D is you decide.

Did you just make this acronym up right now, or you had that?

This is what I— I don't teach this in courses, not in the book, but it's something that I personally use for myself.

I like it.

Because build before you borrow. And the idea is you're getting some mental fitness in and not letting those muscles go lax.

I think you're right in that AI is making people feel like they're a lot smarter than they are. And so the shift to fixing things is to change people's minds and help them realize what's going on. And I like your story of, you know, you once thought that you were the guy with the broken brain. You had to change your mind. You had to rewire your brain.

Yeah.

How have you seen the most successful people change their mind, change their ways of doing something? Rewiring is the popular word these days.

Yeah, and that's the exciting thing. You know, we know through neuroscience, neuroplasticity, that our brain can remodel itself through novelty at any age or stage. So that means we can remodel our thoughts and our beliefs, our habits, you know, our actions, you know, our moral compass. Everything is malleable, but it requires consistency and it requires like novelty, right? It requires effort, you know, every single time. And so it's not like positive thinking where it could be toxic, where you just don't even see the realism of what's going on. The contradictions, yeah. Right. Your mind is incredible. If people truly understood how powerful their mind is, they probably wouldn't say or think something they didn't want to be true. And that's not to say you have a negative thought and it ruins your life any more than eating a donut would ruin your life. But if you eat that donut 50 times a day, every single day, there's gonna be a consequence, right? Same thing with negativity, right? It's hard to create a positive life with a negative mind. And so if somebody has ruminating thoughts or belief that they're limited, And I think everybody feels like at some level they're not enough or they can't be loved or whatever it happens to be. Again, we don't rise to the level of our aspirations or pressure. We fall to the level of our systems. We fall to the level of our standards, like what we're willing to accept. We fall to the level of our stories. My story was I am broken, so I saw evidence all the time.

Right.

And probably the biggest one, you fall to the level of your self-image. It's hard to outperform how you see yourself consistently.

Right.

Right. And so like if you're persistent, you can lose the weight. If you're persistent, you can make the money. But if you're consistent, you get to keep it, right? 'Cause the consistency compounds. And so I would say is the starting point, yes, your words count. You know, even if you say, I don't have a great memory, and you caught yourself and you had a little word like yet, it just, there's more possibility built in. It lands differently, right?

Right.

But they say the 2 most powerful words in the English language are the shortest, I am. 'Cause whatever you put after that is like your life, your destiny. It's how you see yourself. If somebody is a, I am a smoker, or I am a procrastinator, it's hard to outperform that behavior. Because that's your personality, right? And so you're gonna look for evidence. The reason why is you're always looking for evidence that you are this person. And so I think the highest achievers not only are curious, not only protect their attention, but they're very intentional about who they are, right? There's a good book out there called The Alter Ego Effect, talking about how all the Beyoncé and other individuals, they step into an alter ego. And it's not even faking it till you make it. It's kind of like Like you're facing it until you make it.

Yeah.

Right. That challenge.

Becoming who you want to be.

Exactly. And here's the key. The key is creating evidence that you are this person. Like when we're talking about reading and how that, you know, not many people are reading, or I mean, a small population is reading more and they're offsetting some of those numbers and some people are just reading less, right? Especially because TikTok and everything else, short form and their attention span. You know, they read a page in a book, get to the end, just forgot what they just read, right? And they go back and reread it, still not know what they just read. And part of it is skillset because they're just not good readers. Because if your mind wanders and you fall asleep and everything else, if you're not good at something, you're not gonna do it consistently, right? That's why we uplevel these skills. But going back to identity, like with Limitless Daily, my secondary agenda is get people to read 5 minutes a day in the morning. That's all that's required.

Just build that focus.

There's a date, right? You go on the date, you read a page, It has information, it has science based behind that idea, it has a story to help it stick, and then it has an implementation that you can do in 2 minutes, and then a new identity statement based on who you are. So it's 5 minutes there during a time of attentional priming. It's sleep inertia. So if people walk away with anything out of this, this is what you want to walk away with. When I was doing research for this book, and I'll go back to identity, how it shapes identity, When you wake up, there's something called sleep inertia, and that's where you're shifting from a sleep state to a waking state. And, it's kind of like your computer's rebooting, right? It's fresh. Nobody else has opened up tabs and sent you messages, and anything is possible. It's like waking up to a whole bed of snow. No tire tracks, no dogs doing their business, no footprints. It's like anything is possible, right, before everybody hijacks all that. And so, sleep inertia could last 15 to 45 minutes depending on what stage of sleep you wake up in, your circadian rhythm, and all the other things. But the mental inputs you put into that time will have a disproportionate effect on the rest of your day. All right, so I'm talking to all the founders and listeners, like, how this affects your day, specifically in the areas of focus, your feelings, and how you frame the day. All right, so what you're doing there in that window, the mental inputs, has a disproportionate effect because you're doing something called attentional priming. You are training your mind first thing in the morning about what's most important.

What to look out for.

Right, exactly. You're setting your RAS, your reticular activating system. It's a spotlight that's going to focus, and you'll see more of that later on. Just like you buy a new car and you start seeing that model of car everywhere. Like, I see this color purple everywhere now. Like, even at the urinal here, it's like the splash pad. I don't want to get too graphic, but it's just that color purple, right? But I start seeing it where I wouldn't have normally seen it, and it was always there. Guess what? What you could be grateful for is always there. What opportunities are always there.

What evidence you want to find.

Exactly. And, what people are looking for mostly is evidence that they are this person, right? So in that window, if people pick up their phone, what are they amplifying in terms of focus, feeling, and framing? Comparison, right? Conflict, whatever happens to be reacting. You get a message like a WhatsApp message or a YouTube comment, it can affect your mood for hours, right? 'Cause that's the lag effect of what you're amplifying.

Yeah.

And so top performers, they protect that window, right? 'Cause what's useful time? Maybe it's that they could amplify. Maybe it's prayer. Maybe it's bonding with their spouse. Maybe it's a gratitude exercise. 'Cause then you'll see more blessings throughout the day.

Yeah.

Right? Maybe it's setting your 3 big goals for the day and you're gonna frame things and focus around those things. And so that's why I want people to read Limitless Daily because my idea here is mind before media.

Right.

Right? It's intention before interruption. It's setting the direction of your day before distraction. And so you wanna be able to, like nobody in that window would eat a bunch of cupcakes and donuts and everything else 'cause there'd be a lag effect affecting your feelings, your focus.

I've done that before and it ruins the day.

But same thing with your mental diet also. You want to protect that time.

Yeah.

But doing this though, every single day, then you're creating evidence. It's not like, oh, I have to try to read every single day. It's you're creating evidence that you are this person. And then all of a sudden your identity shifts to I am—

You have more fun doing it now. It no longer feels like a goal.

Because there's no friction. And then habit design is you take your phone, put it in your bathroom, and you replace it because you can't just stop You have to replace it with something else, right? And so you do that. And then also you start seeing yourself as a reader because you're creating evidence that you are the person that you say you are. And then you're more likely to read throughout the day because this is your identity, right? And so I feel like in an identity crisis, we have to be doing things that repeatedly create evidence to validate that we are this person.

First, you gotta figure out who you wanna be.

And, that's the thing. The only movie I've seen multiple, multiple times in the theater was in 1999 when The Matrix came out. And, that was just mind-blowing. And then, there's a scene because I'm sure everyone saw this movie where Neo, the One, goes to see the Oracle, the all-knowing wise Oracle in her kitchen. She's baking those cookies and everything. When Neo walks in, most people miss this, on top of the kitchen door that he walks through is a sign.

Oh, yeah.

And it says, know thyself, right?

Did you know Delphi, the Oracle of Delphi, in the Temple of Apollo is the Delphic Epsilon, and below it, it says, know thyself?

I love that. I just got goosebumps.

That's crazy.

I call them truth bumps.

You have to know yourself in order to know your future.

Yeah, I got goosebumps. I call them truth bumps. But it's like, I think the 2 parts of life for fulfilling life, you need the curiosity to know yourself, right? And people go through whatever they go through, life wisdom, reflection, journaling, therapy, plant medicine, whatever, to get to know who they are. But, the other half of life, once you have the curiosity to know yourself, you need the courage to be yourself. In a world of— I wear this hat all the time, it says Arena on it, but rent-free in my mind is this Theodore Roosevelt quote that talks about it's not the critics in the cheap seats that matter.

Right.

That counts. It's It's the person in the arena that stumbles and falls and falters and that has dust and sweat and blood on their face, but they're going, they're in the game, right? And so the idea here is I have huge admiration for people. Like I always say, don't take, I wouldn't take criticism from someone you wouldn't take advice from.

Yep.

Right? But I would recommend, you know, having the curiosity to know yourself, you know, who you are, what you stand for, your mission, your purpose, all that. And then having the courage to be yourself. 'Cause I spent a lot of time at, senior centers still to this day, 35 years, because I lost my grandparents at a very early age. But I go there to help polish off memories. But I also hear a lot of wisdom.

Yeah.

Because I feel like there's just something to be said about having like cognitive humility, knowing that you can learn something from anybody, right, that have different experiences than you. And so I learn a lot of wisdom, but I also hear a lot of regret, meaning when, you know, like somehow they mitigated, they limited their life. They didn't pursue this relationship because what other people thought about that relationship. Or they pursued a career path because that's what their parents expected them to do, right? And I just want to remind people who are listening, you know, that when we're taking our final breaths, if we're going to work backwards and reverse engineer life, when we're taking our final breaths, none of other people's opinions and expectations are going to matter.

Right.

What's going to matter? You know, how we lived, how we laughed, how we learned, how we loved. Right. And that, that I would build a life around those, the most important things to get the most important things, the most important things.

Is there any part of the mind that is still elusive to you? And like, what— there's probably a lot, but maybe, maybe is there one thing that maybe you think will be less elusive in like the next 10 years?

Wow. I mean, going back to intellectual cognitive humility, like, I feel like what most people feel like, the more you learn, the more you realize you don't know.

Yes.

Right? So I always come from that curiosity. I also find that if you want to improve your self-esteem overnight, you can study your brain because it is incredible. Because like, it's just what has to happen. I mean, there's 86 billion neurons with all these thousands of synaptic connections, more connections potentially than there are stars in the known universe. I mean, it is absolutely fascinating to me. Most people want to go to outer space. I'm thinking about this inner space between their ears. I'm always on social media posts pointing to my brain. I'm always wearing brains on my shirt because I think what you see, you take care of. It's your awareness, right?

Yeah.

It's fascinating because I like to take the latest neuroscience and make it practical for everyday people. And, it comes from my inspiration is my desperation, right? I think we're I think we're best suited to serve the person we once were, you know, in general as a coach. And that's approaching it with kindness, with raw honesty, but also moving forward. That's what a coach does, moves you forward. When it comes to the mind, I mean, I'm very interested besides the supernatural stuff, right, which I'm exploring, which I have unique access to with these kids. All right, let's talk about that. Which are kids that are blindfolded, which I've tested the blindfold and could pick out these shapes in real time, those kind of things. It's not true that we use 10% of our brains. We use 100%. Just like we use 100% of our bodies. It's just some people use it more efficiently. But I am very interested in where it can evolve into. But in a practical sense, when it comes to the mind and the brain, for me, the brain is kind of like the riverbed and the mind is the water flowing through it. So one affects the other.

Mm-hmm.

It's a feedback loop. The riverbed, the brain's gonna affect how our mind works. And that's why you do the meditation, the exercise, the diet, the sleep, everything. But also the river flowing through it will affect the terrain also, will shape, reshape neuroplasticity, right? I'm very interested in intuition. I'm very interested in wisdom.

Intuition.

Like real wisdom. And going back to your question about, is this something that was imprinted on me or is this something that's more truth for me?

Right, the gut.

Yeah, and, but that comes from, It's just like if you've had a really clean diet and you go in and get some fast food, you're gonna feel it more because you're sensitive to it.

Right.

And you know what your equilibrium is and what a healthy ecosystem is. And so, you know when something is not good, as opposed to somebody who eats that all the time, they won't feel a difference, right? 'Cause they're habituated to it. And with all the chemicals, and I'm sure, you know, fast food companies are not gonna be sponsoring this podcast or mine anytime soon, but I'm saying it can be distorted and deleted and generalized, right? And so I feel like I'm very curious about intuition, and I think it— my hypothesis is it comes from reflected experience. Meaning knowledge is— information is one thing that's everywhere, right? But going through it, like, you can't learn how to swim by reading a book or ride a bike by reading a book. You have to experience it, right? And there's certain things that you have to go through that no matter what wisdom sometimes you hear— and I'm all for coaches. I've had coaches my whole life that I pay paid for and mentors and learning from others. I think it's a wonderful way to role model and advance your career, your health, your business, whatever. Separating what was imprinted on me, like, I'm broken, right? Which adults have to be very careful of their external words because they often become a child's internal words, right? Because that became my internal conversation.

Yeah.

So, but I think when you're still, and that's why there's a power in that pause, because in that white space, I feel like that's where We know more of a truth.

Yeah. What is truth versus what—

What's true for you as opposed to what was the noise, right? The signal versus all the noise that's out there. And so I think high performers or elite performers, they come back to some kind of white space. Maybe they even schedule because many people don't schedule that downtime for themselves. But like, we don't, that's where we create. Like, I don't see that as like not working. I think that's where I'm working the best is when I have some space to be free with my thoughts, to kind of think about a problem, to be able to let my mind go in different places. Showers, some people come up with ideas when they're in the shower because then they're— we talk about brainwave states, delta, theta, alpha, delta, gamma. I took 6 showers for you this morning just so I could be really creative and have a lot of these answers.

Let's go.

But it's like one of those things where you don't have focus, you do it. You don't have motivation, you do it. Brendan talks about, you don't have energy, you generate energy, right? There's a process for doing it. And so a big part of my work is taking nouns and turning them into verbs. Like you don't even have a memory. There's a 3-stage process for memorizing something.

Right.

You don't have focus. And isn't it interesting that it's a natural law that whatever we want more of, we use. If you want more energy, you have to use the energy you have. You can't just lie on the couch and binge watch. You're not gonna have more energy. If you want greater focus, you have to use your focus. If you want to create a memory, you have to utilize your memory. You want to create a strength, you have to use the strength that you have to be able to get those kind of gains. And, those are things that you can't buy. You can't buy a 6-pack. You have to earn it just like a business. All these different things, you have to go through the motion. And, yes, it's what you built, but it's who you had to become in order to be able to do that because even if it was taken away, you could do it again, which I'm sure a lot of your community has done repeatedly.

Yeah. It's like you ask God for something and he It gives you the obstacles so you can become the person worthy of it.

Yeah. And that's where adversity can be an advantage. Like, we hear a lot about post-traumatic stress. We don't hear a lot about the correlate, which is post-traumatic growth. I bet you there are people listening that have been through adversity, hardship they wouldn't wish upon anybody.

PTG. I love PTG.

Yeah. But they wouldn't change it for themselves because going through that, they found a mission, they found a trait, they found clarity, they found purpose, they found a strength. that they didn't realize that they had. Like, there's some things we can only learn through a storm.

Yep.

Right? And some storms come because they clear our path. And so, what we do is we control what we can control. We control the controllables. But the idea here is you wanna identify with a thermostat, not a thermometer, meaning a thermometer in this room just reacts to whatever the environment's giving it. And sometimes as human beings, we react to the weather. We react to how people treat us, politics, The market, right? But a thermostat doesn't react. It gauges. It knows what's going on. It has situational awareness.

Right.

But it sets a standard. It sets a temperature, and then it imposes its will, and the environment changes to it. And you have to be— it's very subtle. Even thinking about intuition, like even the other day, my son and I, 3 and a half years old, we go on these walks and we play outside and do all this stuff. But one time it was raining, and I didn't even realize it. I said to him, And knowing everything I know, I was like, oh, we can't go out today because it's rainy. You know, it's not a good day. And what am I actually teaching him? That your happiness is based on the weather, right? It's subtle.

Yeah.

But those are all the little things. But what are we doing to ourselves? Like, I think a big part of this conversation is about transcending. You're ending the trance. Like, there's this mass hypnosis through marketing or media that you're not enough or whatever. Or there's this internal hypnosis You know, that we're saying to ourselves, like, I'm too old, I'm not smart enough, or whatever that internal talk happens to be.

Yeah.

But I think agency starts with awareness.

Did you tell him to go play in the rain?

Oh yeah, we ended up doing that because after I caught myself, I was just like, yeah. I love playing in the rain.

I think I'm going to listen to this podcast multiple times because there's so many things I want to apply. You've been on many podcasts, you've been on stages. I've been lucky enough to see you speak. You have your own podcast, you have 2 incredible books. Not everyone is lucky enough to have your one-on-one time, but they will be able to talk to your Delphi. And what is one conversation that you hope they ask your Delphi or have with your Delphi?

So certainly people could go there and ask, how would Jim read this faster? How would they learn this language? How would they memorize this speech or these names at this event? And that could be very useful, all useful skills, right? If you're into skill acquisition and leveling up and everything's figureoutable, I think the conversation I would love to have with somebody is like, my questions to them would be like, who are you becoming? First we create our habits, then our habits create us. I'd be interested in who— that identity level, right? So there's environment, there's also behavior, there's capacity like skill sets, there's beliefs and values, but that identity level is where everything is kind of like where everything comes from, right? So I'd be interested with Delphi having conversation about internal wisdom, when you know what's true, things around cognitive antifragility, cognitive flexibility, being more creative. 'Cause I feel like one of my— I poured myself into comic books growing up 'cause I couldn't read and taught me the stories or the images, the illustrations brought the words to life. But I also poured myself into Bruce Lee movies. So I've been in martial arts my whole life. And Bruce Lee has a saying that the key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering. And it's taking those moments and turning them into memories. And memory for me is not just remembering facts and figures and foreign languages and speeches and all the useful things. It's about remembering who you are.

Right.

At an identity level. Like our confidence comes from remembered successes. Our fears sometimes come from remembered failures. Our wisdom comes from remembered lessons. lessons. Our expertise comes from remembered experience, right? Everything is memory, right? And, if anyone's ever had, like I have, a family member or a loved one who experienced dementia or Alzheimer's, memory is everything, right? When you lose half of that tapestry, who are you? And, that's why I appreciate the work that you do because you're preserving those memories, that wisdom. And so, I would say with my Delphi Like, let's not just have the typical conversations. Even when I go on media, I was on media this morning, it's just like, oh, how do you memorize these brain foods? And, you know, how do you just, you know, remember these audiences' names and pull them up? That's very useful to be able to do. But I would love to have, where I'm at this stage of life, like deeper conversations about who we're becoming in an age of AI also.

Right.

You know, about purpose, about identity, about adaptation.

Yeah.

About creativity, innovation. In Star Trek, we had in our audience at the same event, we had Rod Roddenberry, who's the son of Gene Roddenberry, who started Star Trek. And, I brought him on just to talk about his father's vision. In a world in Star Trek, I don't know if there are Trekkies watching, but just illness and cancers have been cured by technology. We have replicators, so everyone is nourished and has food and there's no scarcity. So, what are they doing? They're in exploration mode, right? So they're going out there in outer space, and I feel like the sky's not the limit, our minds are the limit, you know? And so I like to have conversations about redrawing the borders and boundaries of what's cognitively possible and what could drive human intelligence and how do we remain deeply human in an age of AI. I love that.

I will definitely be having that conversation.

That's a fun one.

Thank you so much, Jim.

I appreciate it.

That's great.

Thank you, everybody.

Thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed today's episode and want personalized advice from Jim, head to the link in the comments or description to ask his digital mind on Delphi.