The Only Skill That Matters: The Proven Methodology to Read Faster, Remember More, and Become a SuperLearner.

On this episode of the Ben Greenfield.

Fitness Podcast, the illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn time and time again. Not only have I learned, but also my students have learned and demonstrated that if you can learn, you can kind of skate to wherever you want to go. We're not retiring at 60. We're going on or hoping to. So if every five years your knowledge becomes obsolete, that is 10 times you need to reinvent yourself. That's crazy.

Health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show. Well, folks, it's no secret that we live in changing times. Not just because of at the time this podcast is being recorded, a little bit of a pandemic going on, but also we live in changing times because over the next decade, knowledge workers on our planet are gonna change a lot. My guest on today's podcast thinks that every knowledge worker is gonna become either invaluable or obsolete in pretty much any industry. So he wrote this book called the Only Skill that Matters because he wanted to answer questions like how we can possibly hope to keep up with these emerging technolog. How can we learn and unlearn and relearn fast enough to stay relevant in the world to come? And how can we adapt and respond to things like worldwide pandemics or the replacement of jobs by automation or artificial intelligence? And this book is not just a book that teaches you how to make yourself valuable in any career, but it also teaches you how to read faster, how to remember more, how to become a so called super learner, meaning that you learn memory techniques taught by world record holders and competitive memory athletes. You learn how to double or triple your reading speed, enhance your cognitive performance, improve your focus. There's a lot going on in this title. So I had to get Jonathan Levi on the podcast to talk about this book and some of the questions that I had after going through it. Now, he is a podcaster himself. He has a wonderful podcast called the Superhuman Academy Podcast. He's got a bunch of different programs on super learning, this online training portal called the Superhuman Academy. And what I'm going to do for all of you listening in is I'll link to Jonathan's website, everything he has going on. If you want to take a deeper dive into super learning in the show notes, which you can find@bengreenfieldfitness.com TheOnlySkill because the name of the book again is called the Only skill that matters. Jonathan. I didn't even have a chance to tell you this, by the way, but I was so impressed by your book from a learning standpoint that I homeschool my twin boys, and I assigned it to them as one of their weekly book report books. And they actually not only absolutely loved it, but they both came to me and told me that it actually was helping them read books a lot faster, which is amazing.

Oh, wow, man. I'm honored. And that's just. That's what it's all about. Like, it's all about empowering people to go out and learn. It's not about just the learning how to learn. It's what are you gonna do with this skill that I teach? And that's so cool. That just touches my heart. Yeah, thank you.

Yeah. And I want to get in. Into what the only skill that matter matters actually is and how you would define that. But before we do, are you in Tel Aviv right now?

I am, yes. Okay. I'm still waiting for that visit from you, by the way.

Well, I've been to Tel Aviv twice because I used to go over to Israel and do health blogger tours like tour health spas and high end restaurants, and I did the triathlon up in a lawn. What'd they call it? They bill it as, like the hardest half ironman in the world. I'm forgetting the Israelman. The Israel man is called. Yeah, I remember.

I remember you telling me about it.

Yeah. And. And I think it's because the. The Israeli Chamber of Commerce who was putting together these trips, they thought I was a Jew because my name is Benjamin Greenfield, even though I'm technically not. Although genetic testing reveals I am indeed 25% Ashkenazi. You know, I. I had never advertised that or anything. And they brought me over for a while, I think, under the impression that I was. I was a good little healthy Jewish blogger.

I actually assumed that you were as well, so.

No, my grandfather. My grandfather is Jewish, but I'm not biologically Jewish in that respect because my father is adopted. But Tel Aviv was amazing. That's a vibrant city.

Oh, yeah, well, not so much right now, but in general. Yeah, absolutely.

Is it on total quarantine shutdown right now with the virus?

Pretty much, yeah. I'm actually really grateful that our government has acted really, really quickly and resolutely and just said, you know, every day it's been a new broadcast and every day it's been a new set of restrictions, but I'm happy about it. I think it's the responsible thing to do. So yeah, we're pretty much locked down.

What's a hyper productive guy like you do when you're on shutdown or because you're doing a lot of things virtually and also an author, did this not really change a lot for you?

This hasn't changed much of anything for me. I'm. If anything, I'm more productive. Right. Because no one's asking me to meet for coffee and pick my brain. The only real difference is my wife, who normally works in an office, is here with me during the day, which is really nice. And I don't go to WeWork once or twice a week, which I normally do. But we're a fully remote team, so it really hasn't impacted us that much. It's just changing what we're marketing, how we're marketing. We want to be really conscientious and we don't want to look or feel like we're using this as a ploy or a hook, but really we do want to see the opportunity. So we're playing that fine line of what can we deliver to people? Because I do believe we're uniquely suited. We create educational and engaging content that people can use, which is a much healthier, better alternative to Netflix or video games. So we are in a unique position, but we want to be mindful and respectful of the fact that we're in that position.

Yeah, yeah, I hear you. I've run into that a little bit myself. Even just this morning. Like a half hour ago, I tweeted out some of the antiviral effect that melatonin has been shown to display for coronavirus, right? And when I put out something like that and include a link to the research as a supplemental tweet to that I wrote, here's the melatonin that I use because I use this liposomal form of melatonin and I have all my pretty links memorized, right? So I just write, go to bengreefulfitness.com Melatonin, this is the one I use. And then when I'm doing stuff like that, I'm kind of thinking at the back of my mind, geez, I hope this doesn't look like I'm trying to profit off of worldwide pandemic. It's just like I have these systems that I use for linking. And yeah, it's tricky, but yeah, I understand you gotta be kind of sensitive to ensure that you don't look as though you're trying to make a worldwide sad and serious pandemic into some kind of a Cash grab.

Yeah. And yet you want to help. You have knowledge about how people can improve their health right now. And maybe you're not a virologist, but if anyone knows how people can exercise to keep themselves optimistic and healthy and positive during this time, like, you're the guy. So you don't want to just shut up during this time.

Yeah. Yeah. And I am definitely not a virologist, nor am I an immune disease expert, nor am I a physician, despite the fact that people are always tweeting me asking about the strange growth on their. On their underarm.

Right.

Twitter is a great place to get medical advice, let me tell you. That's how I want to get medical advice is via 180 some characters. Anyways, the thing I wanted to jump in and ask you about is schooling. Education. Learning is a huge part of your book. And obviously with this pandemic, schooling has changed really dramatically. I mean, in the state of Washington, where I'm at, kids aren't going to school and they probably won't be for at least another six months. And now they are at home, hopefully not sitting on the couch as I've actually, it's kind of sad. I've seen a lot of people just like wandering around still vaping nicotine and weed. And there's a lot of people binge watching Netflix. And hopefully the kids aren't sitting around at home with their parents watching them smoke and watch tv. But I do know that these children are beginning many of them, I know, to look into some of these online learning platforms that have exploded in the past couple of weeks. I think even Zoom, the video conferencing software, their stock, I think, is actually looking really good right now, just based off of how many businesses are turning to that for remote meetings. And I'm curious for you, when you step back and look at educational models, do you think this will kind of nudge us towards a different or a better educational model? And could you noodle a little bit on what you think a good educational model would look like? You know, how would you if you had kids, and I don't recall if you do take a stance when it comes to their education or what do you think is. Is a good model at this point based on what you've learned about super learning thus far?

I think as we move towards a more progressive model of education, we cannot underestimate the role of customization. So when people ask me, how would you like to see technology used for education? It comes down to customization and tailoring the educational experience because we know from all the research that there are certain requirements that the adult brain needs. One of them is it needs to know that what it's learning is practical and immediately applicable to the person's own life. Our brains are incredibly powerful filters. And this is why. I don't know how old your kids are, Ben.

They're 12.

Okay, so you have literally just recently started hearing, dad, when am I ever going to use this? Although maybe not because you homeschooled them.

Yeah, I nipped that in the bud. I nipped that in the bud. Although the question came up when, because they went to private school from second to fifth grade. And then I began to delve into books like Free to Play and Unschooling to University and Real, that the joy that a child derives from the social aspect of school and being with their friends, etc. Is at about age 13, overridden by the tests, the homework, and them learning or being engaged in activities that they may or may not have a passion for. And one of them did, during math homework, actually asked me, why am I. I don't even recall the calculation he was doing, but he asked me, you know, why am I using this? What is this for? And I remember feeling helpless because I was at a loss for words. And I thought, geez, I actually don't know when ever use this. So yes, that has come up.

Yeah. And so that's a big part of this requirement for adult learning. Right. Is we need to know that it's practical and applicable. We need it to be connected to our own experiences. The older we get, the more we feel that we have a fully formed worldview. And anything that we learn needs to be connected in some way. We need to honor the learner's prior experience. And I think that's the best way to use technology. Right. Is allowing students to go off on their own. I call it learning journeys in the same way that I'm sure your kids do, Ben, because they're homeschooled and you give them assignments like, hey, you like this book? Okay, go ahead. Here's three more that you can read. So that's a big one. I think the way that education has worked where you have 30 kids in a classroom, makes that very, very hard for even the best teacher to customize the learning experience for all 30 plus, sometimes students. And that's a big one. And you touched on something also really important. You see, I'm the online education guy. I have built online courses. We've done hundreds of thousands of enrollments through our programs. All over the world, every country and some places that aren't even countries. I consult many top thought leaders. I build online courses for some big names. All I do is live, think, and breathe online education. And yet, over the years, what I've learned is that people really need three things when they learn. They need the information. That's obvious. We're all flooded with information. But they also need accountability and community. And those are the two hardest things to create in online education. That's why I think at the highest ends, you see people creating interactive Facebook groups. You see people like us. I've spent the last eight months of my life training and certifying an army of coaches who go out and hold people accountable every week. Check in with them. How's your reading speed? How's your memory this week? What are we gonna do? So I do think that technology can help with that a lot, because if you have a child or an adult who's learning something that no one else is interested in, say he or she is the only student in the class that's interested in astrophysics at the age of eight, in the past, what would you do? You would try and put that kid, you know, once a week, they'd go to the local community college and try to simulate community. And today, technology can allow us to do that. So that's my hope, is that this creates somewhat of an awakening that people say, hey, you know, I can learn with people all over the world and create that community.

Yeah. And I think that you can weave together online learning and community involvement pretty elegantly. That's really the way that we've structured the boys unschooling schooling curriculum, for example, is they've got online tutors, and they're using Zoom and Skype meetings to meet with many folks. And they are engaged online in many cases, and also, you know, offline at home doing things like, you know, watching documentaries and reading books. But then, you know, a small team that I've assembled to help out with their education is every single week identifying. It's very tough right now because we're on lockdown. So it's less in the past couple of weeks, but identifying local classes, local meetups, local organizations, local adventures that the children can then engage in, taking what they've learned online and then going forth into the local community and practicing that. So sometimes that also manifests in travel. With me, right? We did a whole block in the Middle east four months ago, right? Middle Eastern art, Middle Eastern cuisine, Middle Eastern architecture, everything from cooking at home and making falafel and hummus to.

To.

Building the Lego model of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. And then I took them on a two week trip to Oman and to Dubai. And so sometimes it's travel as well. But yeah, I think weaving together the online and the offline is the key because what you just said, the two missing things, accountability and community, that's huge when it comes to education. And I don't want to be that parent who has kids who are just burning their eyeballs out in front of the computer. I want them getting out and practicing this stuff out, real world, so to speak.

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's, that's the part that a lot of people, especially in the online education world miss. You know, like, and by the way, not just in the online education world, in the traditional publishing model world as well, someone writes a book and people can learn a lot from a book, but there's no community in a book.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. Well, before, before we get into what this only skill that matters actually is and why I want to have a little fun because you're, you're a very productive person. You know, I've seen what you're doing. I know you churn out a lot. You're hyper productive and you learn a lot of skills as well. And I'm curious if you could walk me through some of your non negotiables when it comes to your daily routine, whether it be fasting tactics, biohacks, supplements, like, what are you doing over there in Tel Aviv to juggle all these balls and produce the empire of learning that you've created.

Yeah, well, well, first off, thank you. That's very flattering coming from you, Ben. There are a couple non negotiables and I want to preface this by saying I am also human. And so some of these non negotiables sometimes don't happen when the world is on fire and there's kind of crazy stuff going on. But there are a few things that won't surprise anyone. Meditation, sleep, nutrition and exercise. So I want to give your audience who are very savvy, give them some not so common ones. I have a gratitude practice. Hal Elrod got me into this and already really reinforced it.

Yeah.

And yeah, I figured. And you know it. I think there's probably someone like myself out there listening, going, okay, yeah, gratitude, great, I'm grateful. But when you make it a daily practice, especially in times like this, like I looked at my wife the other day and I said, you know, the whole world is so scared and all I can see, and all I can think about are the things that I'm grateful for. You know, I'm grateful that we're healthy. I'm grateful that we live in a home that we love. I'm grateful that our marriage is healthy enough that we're enjoying this time together. I'm grateful for the men and women serving right now in the hospitals. And I just. I had a list of, like, 60 things that I was grateful for. And I thought to myself, you know, as someone who struggled with depression and anxiety for many, many years, like, how amazing is that? That in this situation, the only thing I can think of is gratitude. So that's one.

Yeah. And by the way, my audience loves the practical. How are you engaging in a gratitude practice? This. When you're laying in bed in the morning, a slip of paper that you're writing on is at the end of the day, or what does it look like for you?

Yeah. So I wake up in the morning again, not every morning. Most mornings I wake up, I'll meditate because my eyes don't want to open. I will meditate after a glass of water, of course, Tall glass of water. Meditation. Then I'll do some gratitude journaling. And often what I like to do is I'll do my Wim Hof breathing during the journaling. I know that you're not supposed to move, and I can't hold my breath as long because of all the oxygen the hands require. I know all that, but it gets me over that hump of, oh, this is gonna be unpleasant. I'm gonna feel dizzy. So it just makes that all go really, really smoothly. So I will try to write out.

Oh, sorry. Sorry to interrupt real quick. So this Wim Hof, the pranayama technique that he uses, where you're doing, are you actually getting through a round of that? Like, you know, whatever, 30, 40 breaths, however many. And then on the actual breath hold and the breath lock, while you're holding your breath doing your journaling, I'm doing.

The journaling throughout the whole thing. So I actually use the Apple Watch app, which tells me, fully in, let it go. Fully in, let it go. I know the rhythm well enough that I kind of just tune it out while I'm journaling. And then when he goes, stop, I have it all memorized. Stop, hold the breath, stop the timer. So then I'll start the timer, and then I'll just keep writing.

And I didn't know he had an app.

I know that it's a great app, and it has A Apple watch app that will do the timing and measure your heart rate while you're going.

Is it just called the Wim Hof app?

I think so, yeah.

All right, I'm gonna find it. I'll link to it in the show notes for you guys. Interesting. Okay, cool. Got it.

So I find that, that, you know, I'm big on like the atomic habits and stuff, so making it easy and making it pleasant. And I realized the reason I was putting off the Wim HOF method was it was super unpleasant for me. I. Even when I interviewed Wim, I was like, tell me honestly, like, does it ever get better? Because every time you feel like you're gonna pass out. And so it was about making it easy for me. I journal. So to get to the practical you asked, I try to write out about 20 things I'm grateful for. Sometimes it's more, sometimes it's less. Sometimes they repeat, sometimes they don't. Is the case. It's kind of like exercise. If someone has never done it, you're not going to give them this regimented routine. It's like, dude, just move your body and then we'll work on the kind of finer technique. The same is true for me with gratitude, right? It's like if you're just starting, just think of three things every single day and write them out. And I have to give credit to Ben Hardy because he got me on journaling and it's just fantastic. It's such a wonderful way. He taught me that there are two different kinds of journaling, right? There's journaling about your goals and creative thoughts and ideas and dreams and what you're grateful for. And that's all good. And I do that. And then I also do the basic historian work. He calls it like, what's happening in my life, what am I feeling? Just having a record. And that's really helpful for me as well because I can go back. You know me and I know you and I share this, Ben. We're, we quantify a lot and we want to keep tabs and track and record and you know, quantified self type thing. Remind me, by the way, to tell you about my new favorite wearable device. We'll get to that.

Okay.

So it's nice to know, like when I am sitting around with my wife and I go, you know, I'm not, I've done the work, so I'm very self aware and I meditate a good amount so I can look at myself and go, you know, I'm not as happy as I feel I should be. And then I can think back to myself and say, when was I happy? And I can flip through my journal and go, oh, I was really happy in April. What was I doing? And then in April, I discovered that I was spending a lot more time in nature, a lot more time in the sun. And as a result, I was happier. You know, it becomes very easy to kind of like do this analysis. And so that's another one of the kind of routines. Sleep in this household is. What's the word in English? It is sacred. And this was like a really, really tough thing when I moved in with my now wife and we started learning each other's routines because some families don't treat sleep as sacred. It's like someone's sleeping, so who cares, you know, in my household, sleep was always sacred. And for me, sleep is sacred. And I don't mean sacred as in like, you know, I kind of get in bed at like 10:30 and then I'll maybe read on my phone and then I'll fall asleep and then I'll get up. No, like sleep is sacred. I try to be in bed by 9:30 at the latest. I try to be asleep at 10 o' clock if I'm not doing some kind of live broadcast, if there's not a pandemic breaking out or I need to be on phone calls with my team. I'm asleep at 10. I try to be up at 6. Consistency is more important than anything with sleep. I guess I would say consistency and.

Sleep environment, meaning regular sleep wake times.

Yeah, exactly. My whole house is set up for optimal health and performance. All the lights in the house are color adaptable, so I can make sure I have no blue light. After 7pm, all the lights start to fade. They turn lighter colors. In the morning, the lights are white. All the blinds in the house are connected to Alexa, so I'm getting tons of natural light throughout the day. All my workspaces, whether I'm working in the living room or working at my desk or working at WeWork, I've positioned my life and waited it out so other people have left WeWork so that no matter where I am, I have natural light. I'm not using fluorescent light. And on and on and on, and there's a million different things. They keep me productive. One thing I do want to share on the topic of productivity and I realize I'm kind of all over the place. Planning. Planning is so important. I often say, you know, that a good day starts the night before in terms of knowing what you're going to do, getting to bed at the right time. But I have gotten into the habit of planning far ahead, because if you are reactive, then you are at the mercy of whatever makes the most noise, whether that's emails, phone calls, you know, the latest thing that someone on your team or, you know, one of your colleagues wants you to do. Whereas if you're planning a week or even a month in advance, like, what am I going to be doing this week? What are my top objectives, my crucial results? And then, and my biggest thing right now, I heard this amazing thing from Keith Cunningham, the original rich dad, like the rich dad that Robert Kiyosaki wrote about. And he says that a change in priorities without a simultaneous change in resources is just fantasy. So it's like, all right, I'll give you an example. You say you want to train for that triathlon. Have you shifted around your resource allocation to block off the time? Or is it, I'm going to train for that marathon? And like, when? When are you actually going to do it? What are you going to sacrifice? So when I say things to my team, like, I'm thinking about writing another book, the first step is look at my calendar, and what month of my life or two months of my life am I going to block off? Yeah, when I say to them, you know, I'm really interested in developing this new product, it goes straight into my calendar. What am I going to sacrifice? So it's. I personally work. I do two strict focus days and two strict buffer days per week. So on a buffer day, you'll never catch me writing. On a focus day, you can't reach me. And then I have one flex day. So today's a flex day, which could have been a free day, could have been a focus day, could have been a buffer day. And that's taken from Dan Sullivan.

I like that.

So really, really being deliberate about where my time goes.

That's interesting, too, about the priority and the resources. Like, these past two weeks, I decided I really wanted to intensively dive in with my children on breathwork, heat and cold. Meaning just use this large amount of time I have at home with them to walk them through everything that I wish I'd have learned when I was a kid regarding how to use your breath to control your physiology and enhance your immune system, in this case. And the problem is, of course, that it takes a good 30 to 40 minutes every day for us to do this, for us to warm up the sauna, go in the sauna, do all the breath work Then go out in the cold and practice the relaxation in the cold. So I usually do a kind of intense 45 to 60 minute afternoon workout most days. And what I did was I sat down, I wrote down a bunch of really short, short 15 minute routines, right. For my own workout. So now in the afternoons when I normally do 45 to 60 minutes, I shout to the boys and I'm about to start my workout. I tell them, be in the sauna in 15 minutes. I go do my workout for 15 minutes. You know, it's like a Tabata set, you know, 100 burpees a second Tabata set. Boo. Like super intense. And then I meet them in the sauna. But I had to do that, you know, I had to, I had to make that shift because I can't invent time, I can't fabricate time. So yeah, I absolutely agree. When you make a big goal, you have to, you can't just assume there's going to be an extra, you know, hour in the day to be able to achieve it. So I'm on board with that.

It's never going to happen. Now I have a question for you real quick.

Oh, go ahead.

I imagine when I, when I think of Ben Greenfield and all that I know about you, I imagine you have a cold plunge or like you have access to cold year round, right.

I have a river near my house that stays pretty cold because it drains out from the Coeur d' Alene Lake, which gets a lot of glaciers, but that's about two miles from the house. We go down there in the summer sometimes. It's kind of function. There's also a rope swing so it can make your cold thermo just that much more enjoyable. And then at home we have one of these aquatic fitness pools, the type you see Michael Phelps advertising in airplane magazines. And I have that and simply do not heat it. And so in the fall, the winter and the early spring, that's typically at about 45 to 55 degrees. And then finally for the warm summer months, I have something called a Marozco Forge, which is a done for you ice bath. A big beautiful stainless steel tub that they ship to your house. It's got a UV and an ozone filter on it so you don't have to worry about putting chlorine or as many people are doing food grade hydrogen peroxide into the pool. And it maintains about 32 degrees, meaning like break through the ice to get in Fahrenheit, even when it's 110 degrees outside. And that's I can see it right now. It's right outside the door of my office. So that's, that's my summer go to when I really truly need to get cold. So yeah, I'm surrounded by enough shivering devices to be able to use cold year round.

I love it. Yeah, that was what I was hoping is I'm looking for the brand of which is the Ben Greenfield.

The Morozco. The Morozco is the one to go for. They have a $2,000 unit. And I don't think the $2,000 unit has the filtration system on it. And then I think the one, the fancy one with all the filters and everything is about $6,000. So you could get the cheaper one and then just, just, you know, use for example, food grade hydrogen peroxide in that one. Now you mentioned a. I think a biofeedback tool that was a non negotiable for you or a new toy that you really like.

Yeah. So I, I test a lot of wearables. People send me wearables as I'm sure people probably send you a lot more wearables.

Yeah, I'm curious, I'm curious right now if what you're about to mention is something I have. But let's hear it.

Okay. Have you tried the Dream D R.

E E N, the headband that measures your brain waves while you're asleep? I have. I couldn't get the damn thing to stay on because I'm a side sleeper. I just, every night I'd wake up and be cockeyed on my head.

Me too. It managed to. I fit it great and I love it. Now keep in mind you're in the US and they haven't gotten FDA approval for the pink noise yet, which stimulates deep sleep. I got to test that out. And I won't sleep without this thing. And I'm coming off of. I've worn an OURA ring for like years. And this, this thing changed my sleep. And I've done it. I've interviewed all the sleep experts. I mean, you know, you've interviewed most of them as well. This thing changed my sleep. I love it so much. And as the learning guy, I can tell you, like my brain is sharper, my memory is clearer. It's just amazing.

Interesting. Well, I might have to give it another go at some point. I also experiment with this EBB device, ebb, which cools the head. This is based on some Stanford University research showing that cooling of the head downregulates some of the racing thoughts that you get for Example in the frontal cortex, when you wake up during a night of sleep or as you're trying to lull yourself to sleep and it runs kind of like the chilipad will run cold water underneath your body while you're asleep. This ebb and runs cold water around your head. And I also found that to be effective, as I did find the dream to be effective for quantification, although I haven't tried the one with the pink noise feature. But again, just difficulty with my side sleeping position. So maybe I just need some kind of like healthy glue, healthy non toxic glue to keep this thing fixed to my head. I don't know. There's got to be some secret.

They come with adjustment bands, which is hard to find in the packaging. And I adjusted mine down because I had the same issue before.

Okay, gotcha. Well, maybe I'll give it another goone other question for you before we get into this most important skill, the only skill that matters, and that is, I think I'd be remiss not to ask you if you're into any type of like nootropics, smart drugs, microdosing, anything like that for enhancing cognitive function or memory or anything like that during the day. If you have any favorite.

Oh yes, quite a few. So I, I was prescribed Ritalin for most of my adolescent career. That's the only way I got through school. I maintain a prescription not for creative work, but for when I need to sit through boring meetings and things like that. I do have add. Anyone who has it will tell you the Ritalin doesn't make you smarter. In fact, I don't think it's one of the best nootropics out there. But for someone like me who's a eight, quick start on the Colby scale. It helps me play well with others. My favorite nootropic right now is actually four Sigmatics mushroom coffee. I think it's as effective as something like an Adderall and it's all natural and it has 40 milligrams of caffeine. Like in terms of ease of use because it's just brew coffee in terms of how kind of subtle it is, it's also phenomenal.

And are you talking about the coffee packet they have that is blended with lion's mane and chaga? That particular blend?

Yeah, that one's also great. I personally prefer the actual ground coffee that they send and it's got the lion's mane in it. So I will brew that in a French press. And I love it. I've tried all the paracetams and aniracetams and. And L. Theanians. This is another category. You know, as a podcaster, people will just send you stuff and it will show up in your mail. And none of it has ever performed for me as well as that. There is a runner up for me, which is Yerba Mate. Again, I kind of tend to go to one of the two extremes, like all the way to the pharmacological. You know, the ritalins, or. I'm blanking on the name right now. The limitless drug. It's the third one.

Oh, the modafinil Provigil. That one.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So either if you're gonna do it, go all the way, or if you're not gonna do it, stick to the natural stuff. Yerba Mate is great because as I'm sure many people in your audience know, it not only has caffeine, but it has the other two xanthine chemicals, theophylline and theobrobromine. So it's vasodilating can actually slow your heart rate while giving you the mental stimulation of a caffeine. And I used to have this habit, like if I was working with someone, writing together or doing something, and I wanted them to focus and not distract me, I'd give them that instead of coffee, and then I would just have uninterrupted brilliance from them for six hours.

Yeah, the composition of mate in terms of some of those extra theobromine molecules. And the other one is thewhy am I wanting to say zeaxanthin? It's not zeaxanthin.

You just named it Theophylline.

Yeah, theophylline. And it's also got some chlorophyll in it, as well as some saponins and a few other antioxidants that coffee doesn't have in it. Actually, I've heard that from many people. For me, Yerba mate, and it might be because just of my unique metabolism, it gets me a little jittery. But what I found was that that theobromine hit and the dopaminergic response that you get to it, I'm able to simulate that with cacao. And actually, Tucker, Max turned me onto this because he's not a coffee drinker, but he told me about these organic cacao nibs and cacao shells from this company called My Cacao. And what I do is when I'm foregoing a cup of coffee, which, actually, due to the recent coronavirus pandemic, I've been focusing more on immune system enhancers than just Coffee in the morning, I'm making big batches of that, my cacao and then dropping in a few packets of the four sigmatic chaga into that. So my morning brew right now is basically chaga with cacao. And that's, it's pretty amazing. It doesn't give me quite the pick me up as a nice big black cup of coffee, but that is a pretty amazing blend. And then on a really cognitively demanding day such as talking to Jonathan Levi and having to have my brain turned on super duper high, I actually didn't do this this morning, I just did the chaga and the cacao. So if I found some stupid on today's show, that's why. But usually I'll top that for a real, real good effect with the, with the qualia caffeine free mind. And it's not got caffeine in it, so I don't get any additional caffeine on top of what I'm getting from the cacao. But that triplicate, the chaga with the cacao and then the qualia mind thrown on top of that seems to work amazingly.

That sounds fantastic. I haven't tried qualia. I gotta research that one.

Yeah, you should give that one a go. It's a very, in my opinion, a very well formulated. It's got about 42 different ingredients in it. Well, we could probably geek out on our personal routines for a really long time. And I do want to later on just ask you a little bit about practically how you've learned something lately using some of the tactics in your book or what you're learning of late. But we'll come back to that because the title of this book is the Only Skill that Matters. What is the only skill that matters and why do you think that's the only skill that matters?

Yeah, well, I'll quote Alvin Toffler who wrote Future Shock and say the illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn. And my life experience has taught me, I mean going from being a depressed suicidal kid with failing grades, no skills to speak of, no self confidence, to where I am today. The difference between point A and point B was learning. Right. I believe that we are the sum of our knowledge and experiences. And if you want to be better, do better, live better, it comes down to the knowledge and the application of course of that knowledge. And so the only skill that matters is do you have that underlying meta skill of being able to Learn anything quickly and effectively. If tomorrow you decide, you know, the whole world is changing, and I want to go into a new industry because my job waiting tables may not be a stable income for me anymore. And I would love to get into software engineering. Are you able to dive into that subject or any other subject and acquire it quickly and confidently? To me, it's the only skill that matters because there are a lot of skills out there that matter. But if you can't learn effectively, you can't acquire them. And people always love to ask me, well, what about? There are so many things in life, well, what about this? What about physical skills? To which I reply, you know, eight years ago, I had chronic knee pain, chronic shoulder pain. Today I have no pain. I'm in maybe not the best shape of my life, given that I haven't left the house in three weeks, but I'm in pretty damn good shape. And it came down to learning how to use my body to become my own physical therapist, my own personal trainer, and my own nutritionist. People have often asked me, well, what about interpersonal skills? I didn't know how to hold a conversation when I was 13 years old. I definitely didn't know how to stand up on stages in front of thousands of people. You can learn these skills. And I did learn these skills. I learned my way into a happy marriage. After nine years of being chronically single and unhappy, I decided to treat it as a learning challenge and say, what do I need to do and what do I need to learn to become the kind of person who is happily married? And then I just did it. So time and time again, not only have I learned, but also my students have learned and demonstrated that if you can learn, you can kind of skate to wherever you want to go.

Yeah, it reminds me a little bit of something that I read from Naval Ravikant, who. Who I love. Great guy to follow on Twitter, really good kind of modern philosopher and thinker. And he has five, I think he calls them the five skills that everyone should know. But each of them requires learning. Right? So if we took your idea that we need this only skill that matters learning, then what would it be that we'd want to learn to enable us to have success in any element of life? And according to Naval. And I can link to an article that he wrote in the show Notes for you guys, which again are@BenGreenfieldFitness.com the only skill. But he says coding, statistics, game theory and persuasion, economics and storytelling through visual communication. He says, if you have those five Skills you can be successful in any career. And I've even seen it in it made even more simple and simplified as reading, writing, arithmetic, logic, programming, and rhetoric. Persuasion. Like, those would be the five skills that, whether you're going to be a lawyer or a physician or anything else, are going to serve you well in life.

Yeah, I was going to say I would add a couple on there. One of them is writing. Because if you can't communicate your ideas intelligently, doesn't matter how much knowledge you have in economics or negotiation, you need to be able. And I guess he covers that a little bit with persuasion.

Well, with persuasion or with. Or you could argue that storytelling through visual communication is technically writing. I mean, to a certain extent.

True. And I would add on to that. I mean, I guess this is persuasion, but I would say people skills, right? Like the ability to learn people's names and bios and know what they're interested in and maintain communication. And. And I mean, one of the books. People are often surprised when I say this, like, what book has most impacted and changed your life? And for me it's Dale Carnegie, how to Win Friends and Influence People. Because it doesn't matter how smart you are, if people don't like you, it doesn't matter.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. And maybe you could say that the persuasion psychology that he recommends, you could make an argument that that actually falls into that bucket. But yeah, it is interesting because regardless of which 5 you think exist or whether you think there are more than 5 or less than 5, in order to gain knowledge or proficiency in any of those, you must be able to learn. You must be able to know how to learn.

Right.

Whether it be coding or statistics or persuasion psychology or economics or storytelling through visual communication, you have to be able to know how to learn.

Absolutely. And do so confidently and unlearn what you already know. And I think so many people treat learning as this. Like, you know, charge up for the first 20 years of your life and then just go, and people don't understand. You should, in every generation be a lifelong learner. But now someone exiting medical school today, their information and knowledge will be largely obsolete within a decade. And that same person is hoping to be in the workforce for longer than ever.

That's a very scary example because there are many doctors who actually have allowed their knowledge to become obsolete.

Yeah, but by the way, that's the best case scenario. If you're a software developer and you went to Stanford Computer science and engineering, give it five years. Everyone's writing on new code platforms. There are new standards, new technologies. I mean, it's crazy. And so imagine, you know, our generation is going to be in the workforce for longer than ever before. We're not retiring at 60, we're going on or hoping to. And so if every five years your knowledge becomes obsolete, that is 10 times, you need to reinvent yourself. That's crazy.

Yeah, it's nuts. And this idea of learning, I think you, I don't know if you coined the term, but you wrote a whole book about becoming a super learner. What exactly would a super.

Yeah, so a super learner is someone who is able to quickly and effortlessly learn any subject and implement what they are learning. I don't know if I coined the term, but we certainly trademarked it.

Now, what would be. And I realize you have an entire book on this, so I don't expect you to teach everyone in a few moments how to become a super learner, but what would just be like the path that one would embark upon to learn how to learn with that amount of proficiency and efficiency to where they could classify themselves as a super learner?

Yeah, great question. So when I embarked on this journey, I had already taken a couple speed reading courses. And I, you know, I'm a geek in that way. I like to learn about my brain and my body. And yet I discovered that I was sorely lacking in some key, fundamental kind of foundational skills. So the first thing I teach in all my courses, in all my books, is I stop and I explain to people how their brain actually works. And the metaphor that I like to give sometimes is when I teach someone how to drive a manual car, you can tell them what to do or you can tell them why to do it. If I tell you just push the clutch every single time you need to change a gear, well, you don't actually understand what's happening. And there's a lot of times you should push the clutch when you're not changing a gear. As an example. If you actually understand the mechanisms, then you become free to kind of use the hardware in ways that you wouldn't have been able to before. So our education system says just review and study and repeat. Actually, that doesn't work. I mean, we know it doesn't work. And simply by helping people understand how the brain works, I'll give you some concrete examples. Most people go through life thinking that they are an auditory learner or a tactile kinesthetic learner or a visual learner. The research is actually very, very clear. We're all naturally wired to be Visual learners. Some research done in as recently as 2017 by the RIKEN MIT center has shown that there's actually no such thing as memory without some visualization or some novel visual stimuli. What that means is if you go to the highest levels of memory, sport people who can do things like memorize 187 names and faces in 15 minutes, people who can memorize PI to thousands of digits, people who can memorize a deck of cards in under 14 seconds, they all use the same technique. It's visual mnemonics. It's creating novel and unique visualizations, connecting those visualizations to our existing knowledge, which is tricking our brain into thinking that it's related. We talked about that early on in the podcast. Using your existing knowledge. And then at the highest levels, it's organizing those memories into a structure. And no one is telling students this. I mean, if you sit down with your sons and you tell them, okay, today we want to learn. Let's just say today we want to learn all the different neurotransmitters in the brain. And just so we understand, you know, what is serotonin? What is dopamine, what is acetylcholine? All these things. And you turn those things into fun visualizations, right? So serotonin becomes their friend Sarah from their soccer group. And Sarah is, you know, she has DJ headphones on and she's listening to the tone. She's like, toning in, tuning in, Right? So it's a visualization of Sarah tuning. And then you explain that what kind of music we're visualizing her DJing. And that indicates that serotonin is one of the hormones associated with X, Y and Z. So you create these fun visualizations. How much more. More interesting is that than me just telling you? Oh, yeah. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter, and it's involved in positive emotions. It's so boring, right? And you can do this for anything you want to memorize.

Is this very similar to the memory palace technique?

This is it. Yeah. Okay. This is once you get up to the higher levels and you've mastered this ability to memorize anything. And I know it sounds like a cheap parlor trick, but at the end of the day, people say, well, okay, that's memory. What about learning? And I say, what do you think learning is if not memory? Right? You need to be able to get this stuff into your brain.

You know, speaking of cool skills for life, by the way, you know, and we talk about, like, breathwork and cold and heat being good skills to Teach kids. My boys actually took a course with Jim Quick when we were at Mindvalley University in Tallinn, Estonia, last year, and they learned the entire memory palace technique. Now, talking to you right now is actually refreshing my own memory that I'm not quite sure how much they've actually kept up what they learned in that. And so whenever I have things that come up during the day that I want to revisit, I mark them down and we talk about them at family dinner. So I'll be bringing your book at family dinner tonight and reminding my kids about the importance of visualization. And maybe we'll do a little exercise together. Is there some kind of exercise someone could do with just a few simple objects to begin to learn how to use visualization, to memorize some something or to learn?

Absolutely, yeah. Normally what I love to do is I challenge people to go to the grocery store without a shopping list and actually visualize where they're going to pick up each of the things. Because the truth of the memory palace is we all have memory palaces and we all know how to use them. Every time. I don't know how your marriage is, but I, for some reason, once I got married, once that ring went on my finger, I lost the ability to know where anything in the house is. So every time I ask my wife, honey, where are those scissors? You know, the good scissors? And she tells me, that's a memory palace. Every time you go to, you know, one of those hardware stores and you ask someone and he goes, oh, it's aisle three, about halfway down, that's a memory palace. We all use this, and our brains store thousands of these memory palaces. You could tell me the five different grocery stores you go to where the fresh avocados are, for example. And so we all use them. It's just a matter of learning how to repurpose them. And so an exercise that I would give people is take literally anything that you want to memorize. For example, memorizing the names of all your co workers kids, right? And then create a memory palace. Just imagine you're walking through the grocery store and every aisle is a different co worker and you're visualizing their kids sitting on the different shelves. And so, you know, Sarah becomes someone, you know, named Sarah. And if it's Christian, then you imagine a cross and on and on and on. And you can do this again for anything. So whatever you're excited to memorize and learn, if it's foreign language, vocabulary, if it's Bible verses, if it's physiology, geography, you can do all of that with this one powerful technique that was discovered 2,500 years ago.

Interesting. Yeah. I wonder, have you ever come across any type of. Of like, not an online learning, but like a physical game for kids that teaches them how to use the memory palace technique, like something like a board game or a card game or anything like that?

I haven't.

That'd be interesting. I'm gonna look into because we always play board games at night as a family. It'd be interesting to see if there's a good one that we could gather around the dinner table and play with just to keep this stuff top of mind for them. So that's a great tip. I think even in your book, you say that's how to triple your memory. This idea of imagination, imagining pictures in.

Your head at least. Yeah, I mean, I say triple because a clinical study at Radboud University actually proved that people were able to triple their memory. But I've seen students 10x their memory. I just, I can't make that claim because the research shows triple your memory and that it's long lasting. When they tested these people, I think it was six months later, they still had the effects of the memory palace. And it was like 20 minutes a day for a few weeks that they studied. It's just incredible. This is like, this was the first time I discovered Ben. When I discovered this technique, it was the first time I. My eyes were open to the fact that there are real world superpowers. Right. Like, as a kid, I'd always wanted superpowers. My superpower that I would love is telekinesis. And then it was like, at age 24, you discover, oh, my God, there are actual superpowers out there. Like, there are people who can memorize 1500 people's names. They go to a conference for the weekend. Like you went to Mindvalley. They memorize everyone in the room's name before they even get there. Just going through the app, like, and then you discover folks like Wim Hof. And then you discover, like, all this crazy stuff that people are doing with immunity and just insane stuff. Right. And then my whole. This is why my podcast is called Superhuman Academy, because what I discovered a decade ago now is you can actually learn how to be superhuman, human. And that's like the coolest thing ever to me.

Yeah, Yeah, I dig it. I don't think anybody's gonna be shooting laser lights out of their eyes anytime soon. But yeah, as far as everything from manifestation visualization, changing the immune system, altering physiology, I mean, Even the gratitude practice you were doing to the effects on blood pressure, decrease in plasma cortisol. I mean, these ways that we can tweak ourselves and change our humanness, our human biology, without actual exotic substances, it actually is pretty nuts. The question I have for you next is for you being such a big fan of learning. I'm curious what you are learning right now and how you are learning it. Something you're excited that you're really digging into right now. That language or musical instrument or whatever. What are you learning and how.

So I have recently, because I'm at home more and I'm not learning as much Olympic weightlifting as I would like to be. I have dived back into the piano, and I'm trying to learn a bunch of different songs from my favorite artist in the entire world, which I recommend to everyone, even if they don't speak Hebrew. Check out Idan Raichel. I think he's just the most magical pianist on the planet. But so I'm learning a bunch of his different songs right now. And the way I'm learning it is essentially what I teach, right? So I'm creating visualizations. Fortunately, I already have the foundation. That was my project last year, is learning some basic music theory. Like, what are the scales? What is the circle of fifths? I have that all committed to memory palaces. So when I look up a song and I realize that it, you know, it's just C and then a G with the emphasis on B, and then it's F. So I mean, I'm able to leverage. I mean, learning is very much this kind of like, snowball type thing. So that's one thing I'm learning right now. I'm getting back into copywriting because my team is so overwhelmed with all the different stuff we're putting out. So I'm studying copywriting a little bit more and a little bit more of. Again, we talked about writing and persuasion and influence and languages. Right now I'm on hold, so I put my Russian on hold. My Hebrew is already pretty much there, and those are the main learning things. And I'm always reading a ton. I'm reading right now about five different books. So I'm in the middle of the road. Less Stupid by Keith Cunningham. I just finished Guns, Germs and Steel.

Oh, yeah, that's a good book.

I finished another book two or three days ago. I reread Dale Carnegie, how to Win Friends and Influence People. I'm also reading Anna Karenina, and I'm reading two different books in Hebrew as well. So I'M in the middle of. I'm not at all monogamous with my reading right now.

With this information era and the mass availability of courses and the ability to learn, I sometimes feel guilty at the end of the day that I haven't spent enough time learning a new skill. And, you know, sometimes like, like last night, I had set up the entire day. I really wanted to get a good half hour on the guitar. And it turns out by the time the day finished, I basically played my children a new song that I learned in the five minutes before they went to bed and played to them for five minutes, which gave me a total of, you know, 10 minutes of, you know, kind of half assed learning. I'm curious, how much time per day does a guy like you spend learning a new skill?

Yeah, so deliberately, kind of clean, pure learning. I'm lucky if I get in a full hour a day. You know, there's also a lot of learning in what I do. And my job. I try to block off at least an hour a day, but I, you know, I have that. I try to do that resource allocation. So I have a two hour date with myself every Saturday. It's on my calendar. Everyone on my team can see it, my wife can see it, and it literally says, I'll read it to you. It says reading, leave me the hell alone. And that's just what I do on Saturdays. I try to read. I also try to take at least two Tuesdays a month as learning days. Again, it does not always happen. Today it did not happen. I'm doing so many different podcasts and so many different everythings, but I try to do a full learning day once to twice a month. And those are, those are like my favorite days. If I could just get paid to learn all day, which I kind of do. You know, I get paid to learn and create online courses and stuff like that. And that's really cool, but I'm happiest when I'm learning.

Yeah, I agree. And of course, for us being podcasters, we are learning when we're like, I've already learned a ton from you just in the past hour, but I sit down every Sunday and on Evernote, on Evernote, I kind of plan out my week and then that all gets put into busycal. And I wrote a note to myself for this Sunday to consider setting aside that one to two hour block, perhaps on the following weekend, in which I can actually lock myself away in my office and feel justified doing so if I calendar it. Because we know that when you write Something down and calendar it. It all of a sudden makes it super legit. So I'm actually going to try that. I'm going to see if locking myself away on a weekend for one to two hours just lets me. Me at this point, really, I want to record an album on the guitar. And so for me, it's guitar for sure. That would be. But I love that tip.

Well, and keep in mind, your job, Ben, is to learn.

I know, yeah, yeah. It's just sometimes, sometimes it's less of the, like the health fitness supplements, you know, biohacks that I want to learn. And I just want to learn, you know, a skill, you know, you know how it goes. Sometimes you just want to learn something that has nothing to do with your actual job. So. So you mentioned that you returned to a book. I believe it was Dale Carnegie. And this is actually, I think in respect of your time, the last thing I wanted to cover with you. I have now a top shelf on my bookshelf. I don't recall where I heard this tip of simply taking the books that are the big wins, the hell yeses for you, setting those aside in a certain part of your house and having those as books that you come back to on an annual basis rather than simply reading new books year round. So I have a shelf with about a dozen books, like a few of Joe Dispenza's books. And I think a values factor book is up there. And just some books I found some really thought provoking this year. But you actually talk about in your book, this app or this service called Readwise that allows you to take books that you've learned and keep them top of mind. And I'm trying to wrap my head around how to actually use that. How do you use Read Readwise exactly?

Yeah, I love Readwise. So basically what it does is you connect it to your Kindle account, your ibooks, your pocket, like every place that you're doing reading, and it downloads all your highlights and then it just spits them back to you by email either every day or every week. And what I like about it is for years I've been teaching and teaching people like, you know, spit all your. Take all your highlights, put them into Evernote, review them periodically. But it's a discipline thing, right? Like, it's so much more exciting to read a new book than it is to go back and review an old book. And I'm guilty of that. Like, once in a while I would go through the books, like if I needed to write a sales letter I would pull up my highlights and flip through them, you know, from a great copywriting book that I'd read over the years. But this makes it easy, right? Because we all want to be@inbox0. As you said, I'm a huge productivity nerd. So I try to get to Inbox Zero and this just puts it in my email inbox. And I have a rule with myself. I've never broken it. That is the one email I never just archive without reading. There's a lot of other emails I don't read, I just archive, but that's the one. It's holy. Every week I get about 20 highlights from all my favorite books, and it prompts me to sometimes go back into those books and read a little bit further.

So if it's syncing with something like your Kindle books, obviously there's a little bit of an issue there in terms of if you like me, read a lot of paper books. Have you found a good way to actually allow you to get these weekly reminders with your paper books?

Yeah, they got that figured out too. You just connect it to your Goodreads account and it'll pull in all the books, it'll match them up against all the ones that already has highlights, and then it'll give you the most common highlights.

Okay, so you're getting the most popular highlights. I gotcha. So, yeah, that makes sense. Because even though it might not be highlights that are exactly personalized to you, or what you folded over, highlighted, you're at least getting the best of the best of that particular paper book by syncing it with, for example, a goodreads account.

Precisely.

I like that.

Okay, yeah. And you can add your own as well. You can actually import them, which is pretty cool.

Maybe I'll pay an assistant to come over to my house, take all my physical books with every page folded over and highlight and just have them upload them all to Goodreads sometime and outsource that to some, I don't know, some bored high school student who wants to go through my books. Wow, man, there's a lot here. And@BenGreenfieldFitness.com TheOnlySkill what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna link to this book, which is fantastic. Super quick, easy read. Like I mentioned, my twin 12 year old boys have both read it. They liked it. And the other thing is that Jonathan has a lot of, as I mentioned in the introduction courses, particularly his Superhuman Academy. He also has a Branding youg Academy and he has a podcast and he has previous books that he's written, including the one I mentioned about how to become a super learner. So what I'm going to do is just give you all the Jonathan goodness. If you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com the OnlySkill and he's also got, like I mentioned, a podcast, you can hear him interview a lot of super learners and super smart people. Jonathan, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing all this stuff with us, man.

My pleasure, Ben. It's really my pleasure. I know your audience. They're. They're really sharp people. They're really interested in optimal performance. Make sure in that blog post you link them. I want to give everyone a free copy of my book. Oh, cool. We're shipping them out. So we've got I think 2000 of them in a warehouse somewhere. And I've been assured by my shipping team that they are two meters away. They're keeping six foot distance, but they're still shipping out books. So you can include that link in the show notes. It's freelearningbook.com freelearningbook.com cool.

I'll put that. Which book is that?

That is this book. That is the only skill that matters.

Amazing. Okay, cool. I'll put that in the show notes. And I think the half life of coronavirus on cardboard is only like five or six hours anyway, so you guys will be fine. You'll be fine. Trust me.

True.

All right, man. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show again for everybody, including a link to get this book for free. BenGreenfieldFitness.com the OnlySkill I'm Ben Greenfield along with Jonathan Levi signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have an amazing week. Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all the show notes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful Ben recommends page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I've ever recommended for hormones, sleep digestion, fat loss, performance, and plenty more. Please also know that all the links, all the promo codes that I mentioned during this and every episode help to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content every single week. So when you listen in, be sure to use the link links in the show notes, use the promo codes that I generate because that helps to float this thing and keep it coming to you each and every week.