How This Digital Age is Reducing Your Brain Power | Jim Kwik

So I think you learn to earn to be able to return. But going— what we focus on is the things that really matter for people. It gives them more peace of mind and greater performance. Help people with focus. How do you maintain your concentration in a world full of rings and pings and dings and app notifications, social media alerts, like, comment, shares?

Which you and I did not have growing up.

Right, not at all.

And now all of us are addicted to it and stuck to it. Tethered, literally tethered to it.

Yeah, and there's a certain obviously upside to having unfeathered access to the world's information. Speed reading, salsa, Spanish, it's all on, you know, we have YouTube and podcasts and everything is there, which is amazing, but that creates 4 different forces that I talk about in the book. I call them like the 4 Horsemen of the Mental Apocalypse. So one of them is digital.

4 Horsemen of the Mental Apocalypse.

Yeah, it's not caused by technology, but it's certainly amplified. So number one is exactly what we're talking about, digital distraction.

Digital distraction.

You know, these devices, it's hard to maintain—

I have one literally right here on my lap.

We all do, and we're always like within arm's length of everything, and eventually it'll be, you know, inside our bodies. in our brains. That's digital distraction. Number 2, that's why we teach focus and concentration skills. Number 2 is digital dementia.

Digital dementia.

This is a term in healthcare where we're outsourcing our memories to our devices and these become our external hard drives, but we don't— it's use it or lose it when it comes to the brain. Our brains act like muscles, but if I put my arm in a sling for a year, it wouldn't grow stronger. It wouldn't even stay the same. It would atrophy, right?

Just staying on the second horseman, the digital dementia, I've noticed it and I want to ask you about this. Before Google Maps, I used to be able to remember directions. Yeah. And I'm trying to find— I was thinking to myself several times, I'm like, why can't I remember directions anymore?

Or phone numbers. Do you— I mean, how many phone numbers did you and I know growing up? All of them. We had to. Literally all of them. And now, how many do we— the average person here?

I know my wife's because she's my wife, right?

And most people don't even know their significant others either, but they maybe they know them, it's their own, or maybe 2 or 3. And not that I want to memorize You know, 500 phone numbers, but it should be concerning when we can't remember one, or a PIN number, or a hotel room number, or a passcode, or a conversation we just had. I believe 2 of the most costly words in our life are, I forgot. I forgot to do it. I forgot to bring it. I forgot that conversation. I forgot what I was gonna say. I forgot that meeting. I forgot that person's name. It just goes on and on.

'Cause we outsource it.

Yeah, and so our brains aren't getting the exercise. It's kind of like if you take an elevator, if you live in an apartment and you take an elevator or a lift to go up 3 floors instead of walking, there's a toll. There's convenience, but you don't want it to cripple you. It's like if we take an Uber or Lyft going 5 blocks down the street instead of walking it, there's a toll. Again, there's no such thing as a good or bad memory. It's been my experience. There's a trained memory and an untrained memory. A lot of us aren't mentally fit because we're not exercising our minds. That's digital dementia.

Third horseman.

Yeah. Digital deluge. This is just a term—

Digital deluge.

This is a term I just coined. It's just information overload. The amount of information with Moore's Law is is doubling at dizzying speed. The half-life information, even when people graduate, gets outdated very quickly. We're drowning in our inbox, and so it's like taking a sip of water out of a fire hose to keep up. People buy books, they sit on their shelf unread. It becomes shelf help, not real self-help for people.

Also helps you on the room rater.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Hopefully get an 8, 9, or 10.

Exactly, and then so the challenge is a lot of people are really good at buying books, but they're not good at reading them also, so that's why—

Well, with the digital deluge, I was reading that at this moment in history, This is the most information that we as people have ever basically amassed, and we do not know what this impact will have upon us as a society, on our brains, because we are not used to being hit with this deluge, like you said, of information.

We're drowning in information, but we're starving for the practical filters to be able to get through it all. I do programs at information-rich conferences. companies like Facebook, like Google. I remember when I was doing a program that I heard Eric Schmidt, the then CEO, said the amount of information that's been around from the dawn of humanity to the year 2003, only 2 decades ago, that amount of information now is created every 2 days online.

Oof.

You think about all the videos and podcasts and blogs and just social media, just so much content. The amount of information is doubling, but how we learn it? how we read it, that hasn't changed at all.

We're not evolving at that speed.

Right. And so that gap creates stress. That gap creates anxiety, the information overload. And so that information anxiety symptoms are higher blood pressure, compression of leisure time, more sleeplessness, anxiety. And so my goal is to teach people how to learn faster and read faster, understand things better so that they could close that gap. So that's the third one. So you have digital distraction, digital dementia, digital delusion. And the fourth one I coined, I talk about digital deduction. And this is kinda like digital dementia, but instead of memory, it's around our thinking. I read this study done where children, this generation, it's the first time that they scored less than the previous generation in the area of rational abilities, logic. And part of it is they're attributing in the studies, it's technology, 'cause with algorithms, it's teaching us what, not how to think, but what to think.

Yeah, it's setting the frame for you.

Exactly, it's similar to, you know, we don't have the visual spatial intelligence from getting here to there, Often people have to rely on their Google Maps or the Waze or whatever when they don't have to train their brain to think in terms of visual spatial. Those, again, all those muscles aren't getting flexed.

The irony is, and I'm going to use myself as a test case here, is I always feel overwhelmed. I always feel I want to learn more. I feel like the world is at my fingertips. I feel like, oh, I'm getting smarter, but then I realize, oh, I need to put the audiobook at 1.5 speed. I caught myself putting my Netflix show at 1.7 speed.

Yeah.

Just so I could get to the next thing. And there has to be— I'm like, why am I in this race? There's no way. I have to either evolve as a human being or I have to make a very specific decision about quality over quantity.

Yeah.

And you're saying there's a way to bridge that where you can go faster and still have quality.

And also have more peace of mind. Because when I teach people how to read or learn faster, it's not frantic fast, right? It creates an ease. There's a myth. I talk about 7 lies to learning in our brain, and I call lies, stands for limited idea entertain, L-I-E, limited idea entertain.

I'm always a fan of acronyms.

People say that I'm too old. People come to me all the time at events like this and they say, Jim, I'm just too old, or I'm not smart enough, or I have a horrible memory. I always say, stop. If you fight for your limitations, you get to keep them. So many people, your brain is like this incredible supercomputer. And our self-talk is the program often that it will run. So if you tell yourself, I'm not good at remembering people's names, you will not remember the next person you meet at South by because you programmed your supercomputer that way.

Words matter.

Absolutely. Words have a grand effect on our brain. Even something simple earlier today, people, somebody was talking to me about, you know, they gotta pick, they can't say because they gotta pick up the kids and they gotta work out and they gotta do their work. And I'm just like, wait, hold on. Just take a moment, take a breath, and change the O in got To an E. I mean, call it get. I get to pick up my kids. I get to work out today. I get to do some work in my field. So change it. The words matter.

Does the science back this up? Because oftentimes people, when you say this to folks, and I remember when I was going through this in my life, there was a resistance. They're like, this is just self-help crap. They're telling me to change my language and my words, and that will change my behavior and my psychology, make me feel better, but I don't know. Does the science back up that the words and the stories that we tell ourselves actually make our brains healthier, better, faster, calmer?

100%. So Dr. Daniel Amen, who's a notable brain doctor, he's done more brain scans in the US than anybody else. He's done a couple hundred thousand, so he's looked at a lot of brains. He calls it killing ANTs. Killing ANTs. ANTs, another acronym, automatic negative thoughts.

Okay, automatic negative thoughts.

Yeah, because the challenge is, is The words, if people truly understood how powerful their mind is, we've discovered more about the human brain in the past 10 years than the previous 1,000 years combined. And what we found is we're grossly underestimating our own capabilities. Our minds, if people knew how powerful their minds is, they wouldn't say or think something they didn't wanna be true. And that's not to say you have one negative thought, it ruins your life any more than eating that, you know, that one donut over there.

I've had several of those, but yes.

But it's the consistency of it. It really does change, you know, how we see the world. We have about 50,000 to 70,000 thoughts a day. The challenge is 95% of those thoughts are the same thoughts we had yesterday. The day before that and the day before that, and people, they want to create change, but our thoughts, think about it, just even just logically. We have a thought and that thought leads to some kind of action, and that action leads to some kind of experience, and that experience leads to some kind of feelings, and those feelings feed certain thoughts. Right? So it's cyclical, and at any point we could choose. So there's a quote in Limitless that says, life is the C between B and D. Life is C between B and D. B stands for birth, D stands for death. Life, C, choice.

Mm.

Like, I really do believe that these difficult times, they could define us, these difficult times can diminish us, or these difficult times can develop us. Ultimately, we decide, but we have choices. We could choose what to think, We could choose from thinking. We could choose our actions all the time. Also, those actions lead to experiences. We could choose. There's a great book called Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. Yeah, and it's classic, right? And he associated different meanings to what he was—he and his family were going through, which was the Holocaust. Yeah, trying to survive the Holocaust, and it allowed him to be able to do it as best as possible because of the meaning he associated. And we all like for me growing up with learning challenges and public speaking. I could have had a meaning that this is it. I'm broken, or I could. eventually change this meaning where this challenge will lead to change, that adversity could be an advantage, to change the meaning saying, where's the gift in this?

Not just words can change, but I was reading that our behavior can actually change our brain chemistry.

Absolutely.

And to personalize it, and I'll share this, and I've shared it before, you know, anxiety disorders. I have OCD, my father has it. It's inherited, it's an anxiety disorder, but by changing the behavior, the research at least shows that you at least Even though you can't overcome OCD, you can still control it. You can change the words, you can change the responses, your brain calms down, your brain when it says, oh, danger, danger, you retrain your brain to say, oh, okay, my brain's not my enemy, it's actually my friend, and my brain kind of warns me a little bit more than most folks, but it's okay.

Yeah.

And so for those people right now who are watching right now, they're like, listen, you know, I might not have OCD, I might not have anxiety disorder, but I'm trying to survive this pandemic.

Yeah.

I'm overwhelmed. What are some behaviors that I can do that can change my brain chemistry in this moment where we all need some joy, some mindfulness, some peace?

You know, the work in Limitless is really an owner's manual for our brains, and that's the thing. Our brains are this incredible supercomputer. It's the most advanced technology in the known universe, but it doesn't come with an owner's manual, and it's not always user-friendly. That about 1/3 of our memory, for instance, when it comes to our performance, is predetermined by genetics.

Yeah.

But 2/3 is in our control. So there are many things that we could do to change the structure of our brain and biochemistry. Simple things like— and when these people are listening, maybe they can rate themselves 0 to 10 how much energy, effort, attention they're putting into these areas, because it's common sense. But common sense is not often common practice. A lot of us know what to do, but we're not doing what we know. There are certain foods that have been shown to lower anxiety. We have a podcast called Kwik Brain. We've done a few hundred episodes, 20 minutes max, and it's quick, right? Bite-sized brain hacks for busy people who want to learn faster, achieve more. We did an episode on anxiety-free foods with an author who wrote that book. Her name is Leanna Warner Gray, and there are certain foods that are neuronutrition.

What should they be eating?

So certain foods that are great for the brain, avocados.

Avocados.

And I'll give people an array because I know you have a very global audience. Blueberries, very good, the berries. I call them brain berries. The antioxidants, very good for the brain. Broccoli is good for the brain. Olive oil is good for the brain. If people's diet allows, eggs, the choline in eggs is good for cognitive health. Green leafy vegetables like kale and spinach. Another one, wild salmon or sardines. You know, you always hear about the fatty fishes. That's good for the brain because your brain is mostly fat. Turmeric is great for the brain.

They say South Asians—

Yeah, absolutely.

Crushing it on turmeric.

Absolutely, lowers inflammation in our brain and body.

So you have food, you have better words, and then if there's another— and there's one, I could talk to you for another 30 minutes, but I got 30 seconds. If there's another activity that people watching right now, or one or two activities that they can do immediately, that you can see, that science has shown will make them feel better, what is it?

I'll give you 2 quick ones. Exercise. And I don't just mean physical exercise. I mean movement throughout the day, not just your Pilates or CrossFit. But as your body moves, your brain grooves. When you exercise, it lowers stress in the body. When you exercise, it's good for your heart. And what's good for your heart is gonna be good for your head— oxygen and blood flow to your brain, which is reparative. And I would say sleep.

Sleep.

And, you know, it's tough at these events. Every night's been a late night. And you know how you feel when you don't get a good night's sleep. You know, you have more anxiety, you have more distraction, your memory's not working quite as well, you can't solve problems as well, you don't have the mental energy. So the largest section in there was on memory and sleep, how to hack your sleep.

So better words, change the story, the foods that you've mentioned, sleep and movement. And turmeric.

And turmeric.

All South Asian grandmothers, you were onto something.

Dark chocolate too.

But also, also buy the book Live and List. All the proceeds go to fantastic causes, helping Alzheimer's researchers. You're helping schools, you're helping underprivileged communities. And Jim, you live it. You were a kid who was picked on, but now you are literally giving advice to some of the world's leaders on how to think faster and think healthier and be better. Thank you so much for your time.

Thanks so much.

I really appreciate it.