Unlocking The Superpowers Of Speed Reading, Memory Enhancement, Learning Skills Faster & More With Jim Kwik.

Hey, it's Ben Greenfield. At the time you are listening to this, I am off the coast of Florida somewhere taking a free diving course. So I'm likely 100ft down in the Pacific Ocean underneath a boat getting eaten by a shark. But I still wanted to bring you an episode, so do I have a doozy for you. It's Jim Kwik. In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show.

A light switch just went on like this. Aha. And I started to understand things for the first time. I started to focus. I started to read two, three, four, five times fast. And all of a sudden, my grades started to explode. But then so did my life. And so what I do is I'm like a personal trainer for your brain to make your brain more fit, more agile and stronger, you know, more explosive. And it can be done, right, because your brain is like a muscle. This mindlessness that we're in, we're multitasking everywhere, and we know that multitasking is not real. It's an illusion that we're actually just switching from one thing to another, and they're switching costs to be able to regain our focus.

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield.

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Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield here, and my guest in today's podcast is Jim Kwik. And yes, that's his real name, K W I K. Jim Kwik. And Jim is very, very quick. He can actually learn things much faster than mere mortals like you and I. Take reading, for example. Most folks read at about 200 to 250 words per minute, which is also called WPM. But Jim can read heavy science material at 500 WPM and light fiction at upwards of 3, 1300 WPM. And he remembers the stuff he reads. I've seen Jim on stage memorizing the names of every face in the crowd and big strings of random numbers a lot of us struggle to remember, like the seven digits of a phone number, but Jim can remember phone numbers all day long, hundreds of them. The fact is, though, that Jim isn't necessarily special, as you're going to learn in today's. Podcast episode. He doesn't have some kind of natural superpowers. He's had to learn all this stuff. And in today's episode, you're going to learn how you, too can pick up a lot of these things that Jim does, regardless of your age or your background or your education, and you can get your brain to work better. Jim helps a lot of people. He worked with the cast of the X Men. He advises celebrities and high performers like Will Smith and Elon Musk. And today, you're going to learn his amazing story, how he kind of became one of the smartest guys with one of the fastest brains on the face of the planet, and how you can use a lot of his techniques to achieve what you want to get a better brain for yourself. So this is going to be a really cool episode. Jim's a great guy. He's a wealth of knowledge. So sit back and get ready to soak this stuff up. Jim, thanks for coming on the show, man.

Ben, thank you so much for having me. And hello to everyone who's listening. Looking forward to this.

Yeah, it's going to be fun. And like I just mentioned, you didn't start off. You weren't born holding a science novel and reading at 1500 WTM. So how'd this all happen? How'd you become a memory and a learning expert?

Okay, well, you could say that. My, you know, it's a cliche phrase, but my inspiration really was my desperation. When people see me do the things that you've seen me do on stage, memorize a room full of people's names or 100 random words in and out of order, or numbers, 100 numbers forwards and backwards. I always tell people afterwards, I don't do this to impress you. I really do this to express to you what's really possible. Because as you said, everyone could do this, no matter their age or their background, their career, their diet, their level of education, you name it, their gender. It's just we weren't taught that. If anything, we were taught this lie. This lie that we're not smart enough or that our intelligence, our learning, our potential, our memory is someh fixed, like our shoe size. And we know from all the research we've learned more about the human brain in the past 20 years than the previous 2,000 years. And what we've learned is that it has an incredible capacity to focus, to think, to absorb information, to retain information way beyond what people once thought. And so it's not fixed. And if anything, we were taught that lie. And I Know this from personal experience when I was, I wasn't always able to do these things. In fact, when I grew up, I grew up with severe learning challenges and a lot of people don't know that about me. When I was. The impetus of it was when I was five years old. I had a really bad accident in kindergarten and I had a head injury and some brain challenges and it led to this string, literally like a decade and a half of learning disabilities.

What happened?

I took a really bad fall headfirst into an iron grade radiator and I got knocked out. And as a five year old kid.

Like one of those super duper hard radiators that you see against the wall.

Yes. And it was a little bit crazy. So it was. And I remember just waking up in the hospital and it's scary at the age of five, right. When you don't have a sense, real sense of identity. And I was out of school for a while, but when I came back, I just didn't understand things. I didn't. Growing up in elementary school, junior high, even in high school, I wouldn't understand what teachers would talk about. Had really a lot of problems focusing. I didn't have a memory to speak of. It even took me an extra couple years longer than all my friends to learn how to read. And so it was a real challenge. And when I got to college, I was really excited because I was like, okay, no one knows me here. I could start fresh, show the world, show my family, show myself that I could really succeed and not have to struggle and suffer. And when I did, I actually, it got worse. And at that time, I was ready to quit school freshman year and a friend of mine, I was in New York, friend of mine was like, why don't you come visit? I'm gonna go home for the weekend to California to see my folks and why don't you go and come with me and get some perspective. And I decided to do it. I've never been to California before. And when I get to the family's home, the family's extremely successful. I mean, beautiful home on the water and stuff. But they were just, besides the wealth, they were happy, right? And they just. And the father walks me around his proper right before dinner and asked me a very innocent question, asked me, how's school? You know something you would ask an 18 year old, right? And I just, I honestly, I just break down, I start crying and to this complete stranger because I have so much pressure and I tell him that I have to tell my parents that I'M gonna have to quit and I'm just not good enough for this. It's not meant to be. And he asked me a very innocent question again. So it's like, why are you in school? You know, what do you want to be? What do you want to do? What do you want to have? What do you want to share? And honestly, it took me by surprise because that's not a question I've ever asked. But you ask a new question, you get new answers. And when I go to respond, he says, stop. And he takes out of his back pocket a journal. And I always thought like 12 year old girls carried diaries and wrote in diaries. But he takes a couple sheets out of the journal and he makes me write down my goals. And after a while, I don't know how much time went by, but I had like 50 things on there, you know, like a bucket list before I knew what a bucket list was. And when I was done with the exercise, I just start folding the sheets to put in my pocket. And he reaches out and grabs it and he's just like, he starts reading it and I start freaking out because I don't expect somebody to look at my intimate dreams and my goals, my desires, my fantasies. And I don't even know what he's thinking. And the guy's obviously very successful. And he looks at me and he looks me right in the eyes, he says, jim, you are this close to everything on this list. And he's holding his two index fingers spread apart about 10 inches. And I'm thinking, you gotta be kidding me, right? You give me 10 lifetimes, I can't crack that list. And he takes his index finger and he puts them on the side of my temples, the side of my head, and you know, implying that it was my brain, you know, between, you know, this close, the length of my head here, right? And he takes me into his home, into a room I've never seen before. It's wall to wall, ceiling to floor, covered in books. And now I'd be really excited about seeing that room, but not at that time. But I mean, he starts grabbing books and starts handing them to me. And I started looking at the titles and their biographies of men and women in history, very early personal growth books. I mean, then the old school stuff like the Norman Vincent Peale power of positive Thinking, Psycho cybernetics, you know. And he says that Jim, he says, jim, you have to read one of these books a week if you want the things on that list. And I'm thinking, are you kidding me? Like, I'm a horrible reader. Have you not been listening? I can't even keep up with school. I'm ready to quit. And he's like, he looks me right in the eyes and he says, jim, he said, don't let school get in the way of your education. And I was like, wow, I didn't even know back then it was a Mark Twain quote. But I was like, that's fair. And yet. That's a nice quote, but yet I still can't read all this. And then he has the audacity. He reaches into his back pocket and takes out my bucket list, which he still has, and he starts reading every single thing, line by line. And honestly, a lot of the things on that list were things I wanted to do for my family. You know, things that they can never afford, they would never do for themselves. And with that extra leverage, I agreed to read one book a week. So now I'm back at school and I'm at my desk, and I have a pile of books that I need to read for school and a pile of books that I want to read, you know, for my life. And in order to do that, I don't do the things that you teach, you know, to your listeners, to your audience. I don't take care of myself. I don't make self care a priority. You know, I don't eat, I don't sleep. I'm just living in the library. I have no social time, not working out. I'm not doing all the things that are good for my wellness and peak performance. I just live in the library. And one day, as you can imagine.

You mean that was then?

That was back then, yeah. Because I was trying to keep up with all the schoolwork. And then all these books I told my mentor I would read. And so I'm living in the library and I hit a wall. And the wall came in the form of me just passing out from sheer exhaustion. I fall down the flight of stairs at the library. I hit my head again, and I wake up in the hospital. And now at this point, I wake up and I'm hooked up to all these IVs because I'm very malnourished, I'm very underweight. I weigh 117 pounds. So it's a scary place. I thought I died, and maybe part of me kind of wished I did. And I think there just has to be a better way. And when I had that thought, the nurse came in with a mug of green tea. And it had a picture, a drawing of a pretty famous Iconic genius. And it was Albert Einstein. And it had a quote on it, one of those quote mugs. And it said what everyone has heard a million times. A different iteration, something to the effect of the same level of thinking that's created your problem, won't solve your problem. You know, that whole idea of insanity doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. And that's what I was like, what's my problem? I was thinking, well, my problem is I'm a really slow learner. I was like, well, how do I think differently about this problem? I was like, well, maybe I could learn how to learn faster. And I thought, well, how do I do that? I thought, school. And I picked up a course bulletin with all the courses to choose for next semester. And I saw hundreds of classes. And all the classes were classes on what to learn. Math, history, science, Spanish. But there were zero classes on how to learn, right? How to think, how to be creative, how to solve problems, how to focus and concentrate, how to read faster, how to remember things. I always thought, you know, it should have been the fourth R. Teach you three R's in school. Reading, writing, arithmetic. But what about the fourth R? Retention, you know, what about recall? What about remembering? You know, Socrates says there is no learning without remembering. And so anyway, I started studying that. I had this. My whole mind is set around this riddle of how do I work my brain? How does my brain work so I can work my brain better? How does memory work so I can work my memory. I started studying everything on brain science, on adult learning theory, on multiple intelligence, anything I get my hands on to help me brain basically hack my own mind and fix my forgetfulness and all the issues that I had. And in a short period of time, about 60 days into it, a light switch just went on like this. Aha. And I started to understand things for the first time. I started to focus. I started to read two, three, four, five times faster. And all of a sudden my grades started to explode. But then so did my life. And after and how I ended up teaching it and us having this conversation now is, you know, once you get that kind of result in your life, you can't help but share with other people, right? And because I was like, I just didn't understand why we weren't taught this back in school because we're very ill prepared. And I started tutoring. And one of my first students, she was a freshman and in college, and she read, she struggled with the speed reading for about a week. But then a light switch went on and she ended up reading 30 books in 30 days. Isn't that amazing? Ben, if anyone could, listening to this, could read 30 books and go to Amazon, pick out 30 books, have them shipped to you, and just read it in a month. How amazing would your life be? And I wanted to find out not how she did it. I wanted to know why. And I found out that her mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer and was given 60 days to live. And the books she was reading were books to save her mom's life. And I can't even hardly talk about it now, but I get a call from her six months later and she's crying and crying and crying. And I find out their mother has not only survived, but is really starting to get better. Doctors don't know how or why they call it a miracle, but her mother attributes it 100% to the great advice she got from her daughter, who learned it from all these books. Wow. And that's where I realized that ideas, that learning, that if knowledge is power, then learning is a superpower. It's your superpower and it's the biggest fulcrum. To be able to move things in your life, to be able to multiply and magnify your life, is your ability to learn. And that's why I dedicated my life to showing people how to get more out of their minds and get ahead.

I want to ask you about a few of your techniques here when it comes to things like speed reading and memorization. But before I do, I hear this thrown around all the time. And I want to get your take on it. The fact that or the idea that we only use a certain percentage of our brains. I've heard 10%, 1%, 5%. What's your take on that? Do we only use part of our brains?

Yeah. And everything I talk about is very functional. And so I like to take the theory and turn them into techniques that are really practical. And so I've heard all the same things that you have. Also, Einstein originally said we use like 10% of our brain. I read that. I know. Stanford University later on came up with 2%. I read something recently. 1, 10,000. So 1%, like we have enough brain power to last us a million lifetimes. It keeps on going down. I don't know if the 70s had something to do with it or what, but the latest research actually saying that we actually use all our brain, it's just how we're using it is very inefficiently. It's equivalent of maybe I was a really good typer. Back in school because I wasn't good at anything in school. But when I used to visit my grandmother, she would have this no toys, but rusty dusty typewriter. And when I took typing back in middle school, I picked it up and I had this two finger technique and I did really well with it. But when the teacher asked me to use all my fingers, it felt a little bit differently and such. But I just think we learned in a different. We haven't. They say that we use all our brain, but it's how we're using it is not as productive or as high performance as it needs to be. And so I like to be able to optimize that for individuals and show them how to absorb information, how to concentrate, how to be able to solve their problems, and how to remember more in less time.

Okay, got it. So it's not really clear biologically how much of our brains that we actually use, but your goal is to just teach people how to use as much of it as they actually can.

And it comes in because I think people can use all their brain, but their potential is nowhere near their potential. People could, for example, move around and use their body, but they're not expressing it as someone like you and a lot of your audience, because I know what I love about talking to yourself and a lot of your listeners is you're high performers. You're going out there and you're ready. Some people are already top of their class and they just want to uplevel to the next level. What I do is I'm a personal trainer for your brain to make your brain more fit, more agile and stronger, more explosive. And it can be done because your brain is like a muscle, but it's use it or lose it. And the two dips people usually have with their cognitive abilities, usually when they're out of school, because sometimes when they graduate school, they feel like their learning is done. And when they retire. When they retire, sometimes they retire their brain and their body is not far from that. In fact, there's a lot of correlation when we talk about health and high performance, that keeping your brain active actually helps you live longer. On the COVID of Time magazine, they had the super nuns done with these nuns living well into their 80s, 90, 100 above. They wanted to find out what's the secret to our longevity. Part of it had to do with their faith and their gratitude. But the other half had to do is they were dedicated lifelong learners. I mean, they were having deep conversations, they were reading a lot, they were doing the puzzles, they were Doing all these things, keeping their brain alive. And it actually helped keep them alive longer and also added more not only years to their of life, to their years also as well. But one of the biggest challenges when I say your brain is like a muscle is we live in this age of, they call it now digital dementia, people suffering. And I don't know if people can relate to this right now. It's a new kind of buzzword in health is that even if you're in your 20s, listening to this, if you feel like you're more absent minded, like you're taking a shower, you can't remember if you shampooed your hair, you walk into a room or open up the refrigerator and just forget what you're looking for, or go to the store to buy that one thing at Whole Foods and you come back with a whole grocery b except for that one thing. Or you forget a name, or you forget where you put your keys or where you parked your car, all those things. You know, part of it is this mindlessness that we're in. You know, we're multitasking everywhere and we know that multitasking is not real. You know, we're faking, we're actually, it's an illusion that we're actually just switching from one thing to another and they're switching costs to be able to get regain our focus. So people are more productive, are people who have more focus. But not only that, we're outsourcing our brains to technology. Like think about years ago, how many phone numbers we used to know back then. But now we outsource our memories to our phones. It keeps our phone numbers, our emails, our calendars, our TO dos. It does simple math for us, it helps us get it from here to there. But because our brains aren't getting the exercise it would normally get, we're having these memory lapses. And I was talking in front of thousands of doctors and somebody gave me this term, they said, actually this situation where because of technology like gps, when we're outsourcing our brains looking for a third party device to tell us when and where to turn, it's actually they're not getting early detection of things like dementia or Alzheimer's because they're not realizing when they would normally have memory loss. So they're not going to the doctor to get it checked out. So this is a real situation. I believe technology is great, it makes your life much more convenient, but in other ways it's crippling. It'd be the equivalent of somebody getting in the car. To run an errand that's two blocks away. They're using technology and it might be convenient, but their body is not getting the exercise right. Escalator, elevator, they're not taking the stairs, they're not building the muscles. And we know with your brain, with things like neurogenesis, neuroplasticity, neurogenesis, genesis, meaning birth, you could create new brain cells until the day you die. Neuroplasticity, saying your brain is like plastic and you can create new connections by having new thoughts and novelty. And that's what Einstein. Einstein's brain wasn't bigger than anyone else's. It was, if anything, was a little below aver. But he had more density in different parts of his brain because he would run these thought experiments and it would create this neuroplasticity, all these connections between brain cells that would just imagine it being a communication like device where these wires are just so interconnected and he's just have amazing ideas and thoughts and intelligence.

Yeah, I don't know, man. I don't know about the technology thing because for me, it helps me to keep a clear head, right? Like when I can google something quickly and get it off my plate, or when I can use something like Evernote to get rid of 10 things that are jumbled around in my brain. For me, the way that I work is I can then write a creative chapter in a work of fiction much better because I feel like I have a clear head. Or I can sit down and learn the finger styling on a specific guitar piece because I. I don't have all those distractions. So for me, I think it depends on how you use technology completely and.

Also use our brain. Some people, they outsource their brain and they don't use their brain for higher levels of thinking and creativity. Again, I love technology and I use all the different apps and my phone, laptop is my best friend. The challenge is so I believe in getting information out of your mind and organizing it and having clear thoughts. You know, like your brain, like on your mind, on water. For me, what I like to apply these things for is similar to, like when we talked about reading, for example, and you have books on your shelf and yes, we can always reference this information. And yet it's one thing to have something on the tip of your tongue, it's another to have it like at our mental fingertips, where it's a part of us in a book and you absorb the book and organize it in a way that you could actually teach a class on the one thing or on essentialism or on whatever, you know, good to great or whatever reading. So to have it as part of your organized knowledge base, that's what I want to get people to. And I'm all for creativity and decision. We have whole programs, you know, our programs online are speed reading memory programs. We're in 150 countries. But a lot of it is based on expressing that information. Once you learn it, how do you express it and teach it to others and write about it and publish it and stuff?

Yeah, it reminds me of. This is one of my favorite books growing up, Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. The section where he meets Watson and he says, I believe after learning his name. I don't remember if this is the context for sure, but it was something that Sherlock Holmes got introduced to and he said, now I'll do my best to forget it. And his reasoning there is that every time you have to add knowledge into your brain, you might forget something that you knew before. And his powers of deduction come from keeping a clear head that isn't jumbled about with a bunch of facts. So yeah, I think we walk a fine line between using technology and outsourcing facts versus keeping.

And I love just on this topic of the idea of mindfulness, I have a very. My mind is not racing other than when I want it to be a race. Mindful practices every single day, multiple times a day. And the thing is, here's the opposite. Like everyone knows if you could go out there and double your knowledge base and you can owe twice as much as your field, that you'd be more valuable to others and certainly in the workplace. And the opposite is also true. If we lost half our memories, we would lose a lot. And so all I'm saying is not just memorizing facts, but having it in a way that you could apply it and comprehend it and understand it. Also because there's a difference between being able to just wrote and memorize when a certain formula or a certain history date and history and actually apply that information to higher levels of thinking and comprehension. And so that's where I like to spend the time. And I like to show people how to remember the things that they want to remember and remember long term. People could read a book or go to an incredible event and then two days later they don't realize there's a learning curve, but there's also a forgetting curve. Like why go to a business conference or go to a high performance health event and then two days later they say you could lose up to 80% of what you learned, and that's a travesty because you're always trying to gain and can be able to catch up.

Returning that concept of retiring or dying or using the brain like a muscle so that you don't lose it. Do you personally go out of your way to pick up new skills or new tasks or learning, learn new things on a daily or on a weekly or on a monthly basis? Do you have any kind of system or rule that you follow to just, like, pick up new things?

I do. And one of the things that I just think it's very important for everybody is this is a lifestyle for me, right? Just much like what you teach is you live it. I had to spend some time with, as you mentioned, Will Smith on the setup, a new superhero film that's coming out. And I can't wait. I'm a superhero geek. And this is my life. Because I had trouble reading in school and I taught myself how to read by reading comic books late at night when everyone thought I was sleeping. And something about the stories and the illustration just brought it to life. But, you know, he has this phrase where he says that he doesn't have to get prepared because he stays prepared. Do you know what I mean? And part of it is our lifestyle, right? Like, I'm sure you could roll out a bed four o' clock in the morning and people could ask you about things and you just, you could do it because you live, right? And so part of what we're talking about and keeping things up to date with our brain, something I live all the time, is your brain thrives like neurogenesis and plasticity. It thrives on having the proper nutrients, the proper amounts of oxygen and novelty, right? Just like our bodies do. And so I think it's important always to keep on learning and that, you know, when learning only stops when we die. Because when we're green, we grow and we're proud, we rot. That being said, yes, I do. For four years, I read a book a day. I don't quite do that right now, but I like to get people reading, at least our students online reading one book a week, which is very, very doable because the average person reads about a book, a book and a half a year, and our students read upwards of 52 books a year. And so I think reading is really important because the half life of information now, it's tough. With Moore's Law and the amount of information doubling at dizzying speed. What we know now is often outdated. So I would say that reading and spending 30 minutes a day reading is just not only good to be current on what's going on in your field of expertise, but also it's great exercise. I mean, there's nothing better than reading, especially even speed reading. The difference between walking and jogging or sprinting is like the difference between people reading and speed reading. So I think reading is very, very important to stay up to.

There seems to be something different neurally that's going on when you read, though, like reading. For me, I think perhaps in that way, I may be a little bit like you seem to be with reading to where it almost is something that you digest with great veracity. And it comes very easily. And I'm kind of the same way with reading. I love to read, and I'll pick up books and digest them extremely quickly. But it's at the point where it's not that challenging to read. And the way that I understand it is that the more that you do something, the deeper that you carve those pathways in your brain that become comfortable with those specific activities. So, for example, I also write a lot. I have since I was about 7 years old. And writing comes very, very easily to me. But then, for example, I'm learning to box right now, and my head is just spinning the whole time with just six different punches. For boxing, my coach will tell me, throw a one, a four, and a six. And if you were to tell me to read for 20 minutes, I'd just breeze through it. But just doing something as simple as throwing a one and a four and a six for five minutes in a row makes my head spin. So can you get to a point where you get so comfortable with something that you're doing a lot to make you more intelligent or to keep your brain turned on, that you need to figure out a way to make it more difficult or you need to introduce something new?

100%. And so I'm all about the challenge, because I think, as they say, with challenge comes the change. And so with reading and deepening the grooves to talk about that and talk about habit building and stuff like in that field, I would say that again, the difference between reading at 200 words a minute, which the average person does, and reading at 400 or 500, essentially reading something in 15 minutes that normally takes an hour, and still getting the same value and comprehension and understanding and recall of it, is totally different exercise. And so part of just like with working out, a lot of it is you stretch and then you stabilize and then you rest and then you stretch again. And so that's a Lot with the learning. Even up leveling people and their reading abilities. People think that they should be such a great reader because they've been doing it for two, three, three, four, five decades. But that's not true. It's the equivalent of that saying, saying people say they have 20 years of experience in business or whatever, but some of them have only had one year of experience 20 times. Right? Because if you just repeat the same thing, you're not getting any better. Because it's not just the practice of doing it, it's the training and the stretching that does it. Right. Just like when you're working out with your body and so taking it to new levels. I would say that the levels of learning that we know in adult learning theory, we know the first level of learning anything is this level of unconscious incompetence. Unconscious we're not aware of something incompetent, meaning we can't do it. We don't know. We don't know. So for instance, speed reading. Most people don't realize every single person listening to this call could double or triple their reading speed with no sacrifice or comprehension. So they're unconsciously incompetent. They don't know. They don't know. The second level stage to get to. And this goes back to your, the habits and learning, you know, six different punches. For example, the second level learning is conscious incompetence. That means you're consciously aware that you're incompetent, you don't know how to do it. The third stage of learning is a stage of conscious competence. Conscious competence is stage where you are competent, you can do the skill, but it takes your conscious because it's conscious competence, attention and awareness. Right? And so that's, you know, so some people, for example, they could type or they could drive a car, but they have to consciously pay attention to that act. But the fourth level of learning is really the stage we want to get people to. That's the stage of unconscious competence. Unconscious meanings you're not aware of it and you're competent. That's the level of second nature. And that the only way to get there from stage three to stage four where you're consciously competent to unconsciously competent second nature is through that practice and the rehearsal. Because every single time you do it, you're creating these pathways in your nervous system that allows you to do it easier the second time in this interval training. And this spaced out repetition helps you to do that. Now the fifth level, I would say I would add another level on to that is the Level of mastery, which you're well aware of because you're a student of that. And some people say it takes 10,000 hours. I think it'd be done a lot less than that, obviously, because I teach accelerated learning. Learning. But that's the stage where you're an expert on one of the notables in your space for it. And so, anyway, going back to this, I would say that anything that doesn't challenge you is not really changing us. That if you're not stretching, if you're not feeling a little uncomfortable, then you're not about to have that breakthrough. And they say to have a breakdown, to have a breakthrough. I often feel like people's success is directly correlated to their ability to withstand that chaos or that uncomfortable.

Yeah, I don't know, man. There's some biohackers who would disagree with you and say that you could hook yourself up to electrodes and learn to meditate very easily.

Oh, sorry. I'm friends with a lot of these people, and they come over to the home and stuff like that. And I do that. And I also do my. And I'm advisor on a couple of brain tech companies, and I'm all for slowing down and making it easy. It's just for me to be able to build a muscle, it still requires some kind of stretch or some kind of effort. And. And the metaphor, I'm not saying wholeheartedly across the board, but, like, for example, I was. I got to watch the Manny the Pacquiao Mayweather fight. I got invited over there to. With Sylvester Stallone, and that was just like. It just. I won't go to the circumstance that allowed that to happen, but I'm over his house, and it's him, myself, and Arnold the Terminator. And after we're watching it. And the fight itself was really disappointing. And. But so we allowed for a lot of conversation, and the three of us, just literally the three of us on the couch watching this. And it's just a weird sight where it's just like, who Photoshopped me in that. Like, in that image? But I asked them, like, what's the difference between that and a champion? And Arnold comes out and says, like, the champion, as you've heard before, in terms of bodybuilding, people who could get through that pain, period. Right? And they're both very. And I remember asking Stallone about something I didn't really want to do and stuff, and he asked, is the pleasure worth the pain? And they're very highly sensitized, these two gentlemen who have accomplished a lot with their bodies and also maybe in their careers. But going through that uncomfortable spot, I think even with speed reaction, like I teach people in the beginning, it's. It's a little bit uncomfortable, just like lifting weights or doing, you know, different exercises and stuff like that. But it allows me to get the growth, and that's more of my attitude.

Yeah, yeah. That sounds like a couple of good guys to watch a fight with, by the way, man.

But I mean, going through those uncomfortable things, like, I just got out of cryotherapy this morning and I just like. And I don't know how you feel. I love to get your opinion offline about it, but it's just like sitting in that. In that chamber and it's. It's full body. I'm just sitting there. Just. I want to leave. But getting myself to push through sometimes, and I'm not saying where it's dangerous or anything like that, but just experiment myself getting my stuff. Because that's when you want to be able to show up in life. Like when you're out there and be able to push through what's uncomfortable, to get on stage or to meet that person or to show up. Because I think how we do anything is how we do everything.

Yeah. Yeah. I throw my kids in one of those every morning cold bath just to toughen them up a little bit before school. And I do that too. You know, I'm in there every morning for about 10 minutes in a cold bath we have outside. So it's good stuff. I do like it. So I want to delve into a few of your techniques. So here's a biggie. Simple, simple, I think, but a biggie. Names. So you meet somebody, you freaking forget their name like five minutes later. Maybe it's a girl that you think is cute and you're embarrassed because you can't remember her name. Or a business colleague who you know you need to impress. And now you're again embarrassed because you can't remember their name. How can you remember names better?

Okay, so I'll give you a number of distinctions. And that's really what I think a coach does is you know, they know stuff because they made their study and just stream of consciousness. I'm going to give you some real usable things, everyone, because I think first of all, we know why it's important. Right? Because I think out there it's like not only what you know, which is accelerated learning part. It's also who you know and who knows you. And so part of that is remembering them and things about Them and then also people also, it's so rare you remember someone's name. So when you actually remember someone's name, you really stand out. When you could walk into a room, meet 20 strangers and leave, saying goodbye to all of them by name, they all remember you. So it's something that's so important. And so I would say, remember here five things that are important. I would say Dr. Mom, Dr. Mom, D, R, M, O, M. And I'm just using an acronym here so people, in case they can't write it down because they're working out or they're driving, they'll still remember it. The D stands for decide. And I would say this like I'm not even going to the visualization of how to remember names and everything. I'm just getting to the psychology because I really do believe 80% of success is still going to come to the mental part of the of it. And so having the attitude that you decide to do something or you decide to remember it is going to greatly increase your chance of being able to remember it. So it sounds kind of funny, but most people aren't used to making real decisions. What a lot of people do is they'll talk about things that they prefer, things they might be interested in, but they don't really decide. Like, if you walked into room and decided you're going to remember three people's names, you're going to do it, right? And so The R in Dr. Mom stands for relaxation. And again, this is so common sense, but it's not common practice. You know, one of the biggest obstacles to your effective reading, to your effective memory to study in the next level, you know, is getting rid of stress. Because when you're stressed, you create cortisol and adrenaline and just, it's really great for fight or flight. It's not good if you need to take a test. It's not good if you need to give a talk publicly. It's not good if you need to be able to remember someone's name. So don't just, you need to be able to relax. I would say the mom is really important. The M stands for. Well, let me say this. Let's say if you're listening to this right now and you're horrible with names and you just can't, you can't remember anyone's name. But I, you know, we had a suitcase here of $100,000 cash. If you just remember the name of the next person you meet, you would get that cash or for your nonprofit or whatever. And of course, everyone's going to remember that person's name. So the M stands for motivation. So I just want to point out that everyone would remember that person's name when they're incentivized to do so. So it had nothing to do with their potential and nothing to do with their capability. It had everything to do with whether or not they were motivated. So the M stands for motivation. And so what I would say is, you want to remember someone's name. And this is the thing, we remember the name of the people that were motivated. Also, like you think about someone that you mentioned, someone you're attracted to or someone you want to do business with, you know, someone you're motivated, you're much more likely to remember the person's name. So a simple tactic to be able to remember names is ask yourself, why do I want to remember this person's name? Because if you can't come up with a reason, you're not going to remember the person's name. But even trying to come up with a reason, like, I want to show this person respect, I want to practice these tips I learned from Jim Kwik. You know, I want to show them, do a business deal, whatever. Just coming up with a reason will help you remember the name. Because here's the tweet over. Reasons reap results, right? We've all read the book Start with why by Simon Sinek. Always start with why. I believe there's a success formula, I call it H cubed, that you could affirm things in your head all day. You could visualize things, you could think things, positive thoughts about what you want and the goals that you want. But if you're not using your hands, head, hands, two of the H's, then usually what's like taking action on what you're thinking about. Usually what's missing is that second H, which is your heart. Heart, your heart, which symbolizes emotion, the energy of motion, right? Because you can't steer a parked car. You need fuel. And so what's your why? So ask yourself, why do you want to remember this? Why do you want to learn this language? Why do you want to remember this fact? Why do you want to remember this person's name? And the O in mom stands for observation. Observation. And this is the thing. A lot of people, they blame their memory as poor. They blame their retention. It has nothing to do with their retention. It has everything to do with their attention. And the example I use for this is the first time I got to meet President Clinton. And a lot of people know he's an incredible communicator and connector. He's got this charisma a lot of people don't know. He's got an incredible memory. An incredible memory for people. And, you know, the first time I met him, I was like, you know, how do you do it? What memory tricks are you using or techniques you're using? And he looks at me and says, jim, I don't use any of these. Of these techniques, even though I know that it works. It's like, you know, I find out that his grandfather would take the grandchildren in Arkansas and tell them stories, but afterwards, he would quiz them to really see if they were listening and paying attention. And, you know, last time I was with him, I was at a charity event. I was sitting. I had to sit next to him at a charity event, 2,000 people. And there were some really amazing people at that table. Like, I don't know, like, it just. It just worked out that way. Branson was on there. Forest Whitaker, Ashton Kutcher, his twin brother. I put the picture on Instagram. Looks kind of interesting with me sitting there, but it's like, I'm out. I'm talking to Bill. And I also noticed that he has an incredible memory but incredible, powerful presence about him. A very powerful presence. But I think his powerful presence comes from being powerfully present. And the reason why I'm saying that is when I'm at that table, there's seven other people much more important and notable than I am, and certainly even in that room and the table. But when he's talking to you, it's like nobody else in that ballroom. The 2000 people don't exist because he's looking right at you and he's present. You can tell he's not talking to himself. He's not looking over your shoulder. And that's so rare nowadays, right, Ben? Like, we're so out multitasking and looking around and just want to meet a lot of people and take a lot of names, whatever, but people really, you know the phrase, right? People don't want your gifts or your presence. They want your presence. And I think his incredible memory comes from being powerfully present. If you take the word. Like when we're talking about observation, we're talking about the word listen. If you scramble the word letters and listen, it actually spells the word silent. And most people, when they're meeting somebody, they're not. They have this inner voice inside their head, which is also that same voice that keeps them from reading faster, Something called sub vocalization, meaning we say the words so we can't read any faster than we could talk. We also sub vocalization, vocal meaning, speech, sub meaning like a submarine under your inner speech, if you will. And so but the other thing is like a lot of times when you're meeting somebody, you're talking to yourself, you're not even thinking about what they're saying. You're thinking about how you're going to respond. And so you're not even present. And so I would say, you know, another tip on remembering names is just observe and be silent. And finally, the last m in Mom, Dr. Mom is the mechanics. And these are the tools, the techniques, the step by step strategies on how to remember speech with own notes, how I teach actors how to remember line for word for word scripts, how to learn a foreign language, how to learn any of these things. Numbers that I do on stage. But the mechanics I put last because if you don't decide and you don't relax, you're not motivated and you don't observe, mechanics aren't going to support you.

I like it. Dr. Mom. D r M O M. Cool. I hope you're taking notes if you're listening in. And by the way, I am going to have the show notes for this episode over@BenGreenfield Fitness.com Quick that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com Kwik if you want to go refresh yourself on some of the stuff Jim is talking about. So Jim, in addition to remembering names better something that I personally struggle with. I know a lot of other people do too. You've also mentioned about the concept of reading a book a day and reading faster. Now when I, I first had to learn to read more quickly. It was in college when I got handed about 10 books during the first quarter of my learnings at like a liberal arts school. And I was told that the next Monday, which was a week later, I would need to come in having had read each of those books. And the only tip that was given to me was to simply follow along with my index finger finger as I traced down and through the books and to just use the finger as a tracer as I went through the book. That didn't seem to work out too well for me. But I'm curious if you have specific speed reading tips that go above and beyond the index finger trick.

I do, I do. And obviously we do a whole seven week course on this. But I'll give you some real fast reading hacks if you will will that people could use. So it's the difference between learning a skill and learning something that could help, you know, improve it a little bit. So I've taken every reading program over the past 23 years that exists, and I could tell you, I'll give you some commonalities of what works and what sometimes doesn't work. So the purpose of reading, right, you want greater speed and velocity, but you also want greater comprehension, right? Because you don't want that one without the other. There's a Woody Allen quote, quote that said, you know, I took a speed reading course. I read War and Peace. It's about Russia, you know, and that's, that's, that's not the goal. And so traditional speed reading is exactly that. People associated with skimming or scanning or just getting. Skipping a lot of words and getting the gist of what you read. And for me, a lot of my client base for online programs, they're like, they're like doctors. They're like lawyers, you know, they're attorneys. And you don't want your doctor just to get the gist of what they're reading, right? This is kind of important. And so I would say that a few things that you have to overcome in terms of obstacles to effective reading, and I'll get to a couple of hacks on it really quickly. What keeps you from reading faster and getting better comprehension, Number one, is lack of education, right? We're not born with the ability to read, and so it comes through training. But the last training class you took on reading, reading probably were seven years old, right? So most people still read like they're seven years old. And so that's why their challenge, because the difficulty and the demand has increased so much. But how we learn is still that of, like when we're children. The second obstacle is lack of focus. So you have to fix this, right? And so one of the, one of the myths or the rumors or the lies that are out there says that if you read faster, you wouldn't understand as much. And I test tens of thousands of people every single year, right? I mean, our online programs are, and I mentioned in over 150 countries, so I get a lot of feedback. I find that the faster readers actually have better comprehension because they have better focus. And just, just to put this to rest, just so you understand, like, your brain is like this unbelievable supercomputer. But when we read, we feed the supercomputer one word. I can't even talk that slow because I'm from New York. But even notice that if this conversation was like that slow, people's minds, what would it naturally do. They would start to daydream, they would start to wander, start to fall asleep, they would start thinking about other things. Isn't that exactly how most people talk about their reading? That when they're reading, they start to wander, they start to daydream, they start to think about other things, they start to fall asleep. Like how many people actually use reading as a sense of sedative? You know, like can people have a token book by the side of their bed that they've been reading for weeks and weeks and weeks, they use reading and think about the emotion boredom tied to that activity. And because for long term memories, it's just information combined with emotion becomes a long term memory, right? Information combined with emotion becomes a long term memory. But if reading is a dull, boring activity for you, that same emotion is going to be linked to that information and you're not going to retain it. And so if you're feeding your brain so slowly, if you don't give your brain the entertainment it needs, it'll seek entertainment elsewhere in the form of distraction. And that's what distraction a lot for a lot of people is. They're reading so slow, they're not giving their brain enough stimulus so it thinks about other stuff. It's similar to like driving. If you're driving like 15, 20 miles an hour, you're not really thinking about the act of driving. You're drinking your coffee, right? You're thinking about the dry cleaning, you're talking to somebody, God forbid, you're texting, you're doing five or six different things because you're only going 15 miles an hour. But if you're racing cars, going down straightaways at 200 miles an hour, taking these hairpin turns, you're not thinking about anything, you're not trying to text, you're not thinking about the dry cleaning, you're just focused on what's in front of you. That's reading, right? And so second obstacle is focus. And then the third obstacle I'll just give you is the thing I mentioned before, sub vocalization. How do you get rid of that inner talk? Because have you ever noticed, Ben, like when you're reading something, you hear, hear that voice inside your head reading along with you. Hopefully it's your own voice, it's not like somebody else's voice. But again, the reason why it's a challenge is that means your reading speed is limited to your talking speed and not your thinking speed. That's why we can listen to podcasts at 1.5 or 2x because you could think that fast easily for most people, it's just. But you can't talk that fast. So that's the challenge. But do you really need to pronounce a word like computer to understand what a computer is? You don't. You know, John F. Kennedy is said to have read 8001000 words a minute. But, you know, he's on record as having, you know, his speech maybe 300 words a minute. There's 700 words a minute he's not pronouncing. So, you know, why do you have to do that? You know, 95% of all the words you read on a regular basis are words they call sight words. You've seen them 100,000 times. You don't have to pronounce them every time. So those are just some of the obstacles that effect. And so, for example, if you were to hack this, a couple things, okay, so across the board, a visual pacer has been shown to improve your reading speed because it helps you with your focus. It also helps prevent a fourth obstacle, effective reading, which is regression. Regression is going back and back, skipping and rereading lines, backs. And then they say upwards of 20%, depending on what research you buy into, could be spent just rereading stuff out of bad habits and being unconscious about it. So using your finger, now, traditional speed reading is what you said. They'll take your finger and go down the page, or they'll make fancy finger motions like an S going down the page or a Z going down the page. The challenge is you're missing big gaps of reading, right? You're missing big gaps of understanding that's there. But they say using a visual pacer, your pen, a highlighter, a mouse on a computer, your finger, as you're underline, the words don't skip anything. And that number would be 25 to 50%. Now, I don't expect anyone to believe everything I'm saying because ultimately you're the expert. What I would say is it's all theory until you test it. So pick up a book. Read for 60 seconds. Count the number of lines you just read in 60 seconds. Pick up where you left off. Read just underlining lightly with your finger. Don't skip anything. Don't do any fancy finger motions like they teach and other things. Don't skip anything. And just underlining the words with your pen, a highlighter, your finger. That second number, after you time it for 60 seconds will be on average 25, 50% gain, which people don't think it's like a lot. A 50% increase in anything is tremendous. Right? Really adds up now to get better at that, if you want to be even more efficient, what you do is you move in from the margins. So for example, your eyes, when it's focused, it has something, it's called a fixation, right? But you have a little bit of peripheral vision going to your left and to your right. So as you're underlining the words, if you imagine going in from the book, an inch from the left and an inch on the right, so your finger doesn't go all the way to the margin, it goes up to about an inch, your peripheral vision will pick up the rest of the word. So you'll be able to pick up another 20% on that alone at least. Another thing you could experiment with, which I've had really good success with over the past 20 years and just now science is be able to back this up more is I actually recommend use a very specific hand while you read when you're talking about left hand or right hand. Because I started seeing anecdotally I started seeing early on a correlation between the fastest readers. They tend to be musically inclined, they tend to be women, but they also tend to be left handed. And I would experiment with this and I'll give you some the of I'll give you a couple reasons why. But by using your left hand, we know through these cross laterals that God forbid, you know, somebody had head trauma on their left side of their head or the stroke on the left side of their brain, if there's paralysis, it'll manifest on the opposite side, right? Because one half of your brain controls the opposite half of your body and vice versa. And we know that there's a brain body connection and what recent research and studies have shown that there's also a body brain connection, that using your body in certain ways, waves actually stimulate your brain. And so I say using your left hand, it helps stimulate the right side of your brain. And now this is a gross simplification. But I would, I would hypothesize that you could test in your own real results. Is that your left brain they say, and this is again simplification, right? And what we have in like 30 seconds, left side of your brain is logical, right? Language, sounds, linear words. But the right side of your brain, if your left side is logical, your right side is, is creative, right? It's imagination, it's visualization, you know, it's emotion. And so most people for reading, it's a left brain process. But right brain is actually where all the Meaning is, so you're not just hearing words, left brain, you're experiencing them, right brain. Like, for example, I had a student go through our online speed reading course, and I see him on the street and he's like, jim, I have a really quick story for you. He's like, I know. You know, I was recently rereading a book that I read during your class, and it was totally different the second time after I graduated your program. I was like, well, tell me about it. What was the book? And he said, it was the Old man in the Sea. I was like, oh, Hemingway. I was like, why was it different the second time? I don't think Hemingway updated the book recently. And he said that when he was in the class, he was practicing with it because I let people choose their own material. So it doesn't take time. It actually makes time since they have to do it anyway and work their practice into their training and their real life. But he said the second time I read it, after, after going through the training, he said, I felt like I was in the book. He said I could smell the ocean. I could hear the ocean waves. I could smell the ocean. He said, I could feel the sand beneath my toes. He said, the one thing I didn't like was the smell of the fish. And it's kind of funny, but that's the rich right brain creativity. You're imagining it, you're in it, you're feeling it. And so by using your left brain, it might help to stimulate the right side of your brain. That helps you comprehend more also. And the other thing I'll just mention is there was this study done by Dr. Lawrence Katz and he did a study with these seniors, wanted to find out how to keep their brains alive and agile and memory functional as you grow older and came up with all these little, these neurobics, little activities you could do with your body to help stimulate your brain as you grow older. And a lot of it was like using your opposite hand while you eat. There was opposite using brushing your hand with the opposite hand, that kind of thing. It helps to stimulate your brain to do new activities, just like what you're doing with music, right? Or martial arts, you know, they say like ballroom dancing, very good for your brain. Anything where you have to put your mindfulness into your muscle is going to be good for your brain. Here's because here's a tweetable. As your body moves, your brain grooves. As your body moves, your brain grooves, it actually helps support, enables you to learn besides all the different chemicals that you're releasing as your body moves. Also because we know that people listen to podcasts on the treadmill or as they're working out are going to learn more like doing that. Right. That's just a simple biohack even. There was a study done at Oxford University a couple years ago saying jugglers have bigger brains, that literally by learning the act of juggling, actually built more white matter inside of your brain. So I mean, it's just amazing. So that's why I love everything you're doing about keeping people moving, moving, because that's why the brain is there. It's primarily there to just be able to guide your physical movements.

Yeah. You know about the brain derived neurotrophic factor, right. And how that gets released when you're moving. The interesting thing is it gets released specifically when you're doing chronic repetitive motion like running or jogging or cycling, because the BDNF somehow gets freed up and the blood flow allows that to, to basically find its way to your brain versus when you're, say, lifting weights, it somehow stays on a more muscular level. And so if you do want to get smarter while you listen to something like the podcast episode you're listening to right now, move with something like running or swimming or cycling even more than lifting weights, even though you're probably going to get smarter either way. If you're listening to this, and by the way, Jim, I want to throw in and get your quick opinion on my tip for speed reading, which is never turn the page backwards. And that helps me with retention too. If I know that that's my last chance to see that page. For some reason, I retain it when I follow that rule as I read a book.

I love that. And that's the other thing also is just having the framework we're talking about. I teach this thing called fast, and it's a framework and I love to give it to your people. But one of the tips to be able to learn something faster is just to also to teach it to somebody else. Like come in with the attitude, like you're gonna listen to this podcast every single week and you're gonna teach it to somebody else. It has a different level of ownership and personal. Make it personal because information could come inside your mind either through listening to it on an audio like we're having now, or through words through your eyes. But in order to be able to put it back out, to be able to write about it, or to be able to express it verbally, you have to really do something in your brain with it to own that information. And if you went to listen to a podcast but before had the attitude, I'm going to teach whatever I'm going to learn here to a very specific person and think about how you're going to do it, you would take notes differently, you would ask different questions, you know, post different questions. You know, you would organize the information totally differently to be able to express it out. And that's why, you know, as a writer, as you know, by doing it, it makes you such a better expert because you have to own the material. Even when you write, you listen to something and you teach it to someone else, you're not using their exact words, you're using your own words for it. So you have to use so much more of your nervous system. But that's, you know, this feedback loop is so important.

It's true. A lot of people ask me how I know a lot about fitness and nutrition. And a big part of it is I have a weekly Q and A podcast that I've done for eight years.

Wow.

So for eight years, every single week. And I've missed maybe two weeks out of those eight years. Years I've had to answer people's questions about fitness and nutrition. And by teaching people over the airwaves about their bodies and fitness and nutrition, it's helped me to retain that so much more clearly. So, yeah, it really is true that when you teach it, you gotta learn.

It well, and when you teach it, you get to learn it twice.

Yeah, well, that's part of it too. Yeah, you have to learn it and then you got to spit it back out.

Out.

So I have one other question for you because we do have a lot of listeners who are into their bodies and into physical function and into things like nutrition and diet. And there's a lot of stuff floating around out there about nutrition for optimal brain function and diet for optimal brain function. So do you follow a specific diet? Is there a Jim Quick diet?

So this I want to be very responsible for. And so like, I. It's hard because I, yes, I have something that works for me. I don't know if people are bio. Individual, but this is not my area of expertise. So you'd be in, even in much better position to be able to talk about this. But I could share my personal lifestyle, a little bit of what I do each day to kind of have optimal brain performance and focus and to be a better learner, because I think the vessel is really important for it. That being said, I'm not a nutritionist or a Psychologist or anything that ends in an ist. So I just want to be very like not being careful not to diagnose or to treat anything. So for me, yes, I think a diet is number one because I think you are what you eat. And so foods and I do indulge in what they say is just praying healthy food foods like certain nuts like walnuts and avocado. And I eat my fresh wild salmon and such like that. Even before food, I really make sure I get oxygen in my body. I mean I'm not just saying about going into a chamber, which I do also do that. And I have certain breathing patterns and routines I do when I wake up first thing in the morning, when I go to bed at night. But on top of just the foods I eat, I'm maybe more conscious of, about making sure I'm hydrated, I'm getting enough clean air because I feel like those two are more important for me personally. And I know like if I ever get tired, I always go to just staying hydrated and make sure I'm breathing. Because your brain is percent of your body weight probably, but it uses 20% of the nutrients, as you know. But a lot of people's posture is so bad and they're slumped over and they collapse their diaphragm and their lungs and the lower one th really absorbs the majority of a lot of the oxygen into your bloodstream and stuff. So. But I eat everything organic and local and I juice every single day. On top of that, I'm really big on greens and they work for me. But again, I find I stay away from gluten. But for me, I'm bio individual. I just had full spectrum hormonal food sensitivity. And so I just from that kind of, of quantified self kind of place, I just kind of see what's in my green zone, my yellow zone and my red zone, what I should absolutely stay away from. And I do that I do intermittent fast in the morning. I don't usually have a whole meal until midnight. Personally, I don't really talk about stuff, but my 10 keys. So one third of your memory, for example, is predetermined by genetics and biology. And that's about the number that researchers have agreed to on about one third of it. But that means 2/3 completely in your control. So the 2/3 for me that I focus on in terms of lifestyle encompasses 10 things. Number one is a good diet, right? Number two is killing ants. And ants I got from Dr. Daniel Amen, automatic negative thoughts, because your thoughts are things. And here's the thing, when you say you have a horrible memory or you're not smart enough or you can't learn this or it's difficult your mind I remember preparing for a marathon and it said this verbatim because you know memory expert. But it's just one chapter was on the psychology of it said your brain is like a supercomputer and your self talk is a program that will run. So if you tell yourself you're not good at names, you will not remember the name and next person you meet because you program your supercomputer not to. And so you always have to be careful your automatic negative thoughts because thoughts are things, right? And here's the tweetable, your mind is always eavesdropping on your self talk. So I'm going to go, is it okay, Ben, I'll go through these 10 quick things for my lifestyle.

Yeah, let's do them.

And the thing is, not one of these things would people debate. But again, a coach is not someone who says something brand new. It just reminds you of out of these tens, which of these 10 things are you not optimizing or are you neglecting? So number one, a good diet. Number two, killing your negative thoughts ants. Number three is exercise. Because we know that movement exercise is just good for your brain, period. Anything that's good for your heart, it's good for your head. And they always do these things, tests with people who are more physically active. They'll do better on mental acuity memory. That's across the board. Number four, brain nutrients, which I know you know a lot about. But if you're not getting the nutrients, the protective elements, the nootropics, whatever in your diet, maybe you want to supplement them. Number four is brain nutrients. Number five, positive peer group. And that's big because a lot of people you know, yes you are what you eat and yes you are your thoughts. But you are also this people. The average of the people you spend the time most time with and positive peer group is this. They talk about eagle spending time being an eagle or being a duck or what have you. But I'm just saying are the people you spend time with, are they encouraging you? Are they teaching you? Are they challenging you? Are they kind, are they supporting your better brain, right? And that's number five. Number six, clean environment. They say that your external world is a reflection of your internal world. You know this if you clean your room or you clean your desk these times start getting or you clean your notes like just with Evernote or something like that you have clearer brain. I would say number seven is sleep, because we have an epidemic of sleeplessness. I don't know how people are getting away with as little sleep as people are getting. But we know sleep is critical for the brain. It's critical for good decision making, it's critical for creativity. It's critical also for long term memory because we're consolidating. And you know, they say when you build the muscle, you know, people say it's at the gym, but they build. You build it when you sleep, right? When you restore, when you rest. Same thing with your brain. You make all these connections. But when you're dreaming and when you're converting everything short term to long term, very critical. We do this whole thing on how to remember your dreams, which I think is important also. That's number seven. Number eight for your lifestyle is brain protection. I would just say somebody who has had a number of concussions and had traumas. Make sure you just protect your brain. Be there and be active, but wear your helmet and use common sense. Sense. That's number eight. Number nine is new learnings so important, right? And I don't have to say that to anyone listening, because you're listening to this, you're a lifelong learner, right? Make those new connections because that's how you make. Neuroplasticity is either new thoughts or new behaviors create neuroplasticity. And finally, number 10, stress management. Again, we talked about cortisol, adrenaline, everything that goes on in your body when you're stressed. But make sure you have protocol in your body to be able to rest. And you know, I have a float tank that I, that I go into, you know, every single morning and I have my meditation. I use different brain apps, you know, headspace, whatever, you name it, you know, Muse and things that I like to support using technology to be able to do that. But make sure you have some quiet time, you get rid of that stress for whatever activity helps you to do that. And I just say these 10 things because maybe hearing them, because I don't think anyone would debate any of them, but just like, yeah, I'm not really getting enough sleep or really I'm not. This one person in my life is really negative and it's really, you know, in my mind or really, I'm not really managing my stress very, very much. Or am I really committed to new learnings? Am I listening to a podcast a day or reading something every single day or something like that? Or maybe I need to supplement with some kind of brain Nutrients or vitamin Bs or my Omegas or whatever.

Those 10 things are things that we could probably do entire podcasts on for each one of them. Those are really cool, though. I mean, everything you've got here in terms of your system, system, your methods for reading faster, your methods for memorizing names, the 10 tips that you just went over, I know you've systematized a lot of this stuff. I know you have some of it available on your website. But as we're running up against time, I'm curious, how can people go and learn more or even, I think you have courses and things like that online. What's the best next step for people if they decide that they want to just take this to the next level?

Well, thank you. And then, and I have a gift for everybody that you and I talked about. I made a series of four videos, and it's me on camera teaching you how I would learn any subject or skill faster. And so one of the videos is dedicated to that. There's another video on how to memorize these 10 things forwards and backwards and give a speech, for example, you know, talking points without notes. And there's another video specifically we talked about Dr. Mom and that final M was mechanics, which, which is the strategies on how to remember names. So I did another video for you on how to remember names and special for your audience, just as a thank you, Ben, because I really appreciate everything you're doing because being a conduit for all these information for people and getting it out to people in very usable ways, in ways that's also entertaining and engaging. So people who can get these four videos, they could just go to JimQuick.com Ben and the only thing with my last name is Jim Kwik. It's K W I K W I K. And that really is my last name. Jimquick.com Ben and there you can have instant access to those four videos. And I hope you enjoy. And if anything, you know, our programs are all on quicklearning.com, kwiklearning.com you can see our speed reading course, our memory course, our thinking program, and we have this program specially designed for students and study skills. And then the last thing I would say I would love to connect with each of you is, you know, on social media, on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter, it's all imquik K W I K. And you mentioned that thing with the X Men and that that's my cover, the COVID photo for my Facebook page and my Twitter. It's me and the entire cast of X Men. It's something that there's this whole story backstory about it that I think people will get some interesting insight on how to reach not only set goals, but also get their goals. There's a link on my cover photo for that also at jimquick.

Nice. Nice. And folks, if you're listening in, Jim is the real deal. I've had a chance to hang out with him and he really is an intelligent, real person who loves to teach people how to learn stuff faster and how to do a lot of the things that we just talked about today. So I'd highly recommend that you check out his videos. So Those are@jimquick.com Ben if you want the show notes from today's episode, they're@BenGreenfieldFitness.com quick and Jim, thanks so much for coming on the show today and sharing this stuff with us.

Ben, thank you so much for having me. And everyone, thank you so much for listening. Cool.

Well, folks, this is Ben Greenfield and Jim Kwik signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have a healthy week.

You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. Go to BenGreenfield Fitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.

Sam.