How to Take a Brain Break | Jim Kwik

I'm your brain coach, Jim Kwik, and in this lesson, I'm gonna show you how to give your brain a break, because your brain is not built to be going 24/7 all the time without any kind of rest. The challenge is nowadays is we're behind screens for hours upon hours upon hours. We know there's a dip in concentration and focus after about 25 or 30 minutes, about the span of a sitcom. And they call it the Pomodoro Technique, that if you are studying and you are thinking and you are working, it actually helps to take regular interval breaks because it gives your brain a little time to recharge, to rejuvenate, and also it creates more primacies and recencies. Primacy means you tend to remember something in the beginning. Recency means you tend to remember something at the end. So if I give you a list of 30 words, you're probably gonna remember the first ones, primacy, and the last ones, recency. The challenge is you lose a lot in the middle. So the reason why you take breaks is you create more primacies and recencies so you can learn and remember a lot more information. Now, what do you do during these brain breaks? I recommend after 25, 30 minutes, you take a little pause, and for 5 minutes you do 3 things. Number one, in no particular order, I want you to breathe. Because a lot of times if we are fatigued and you have mental fog and you don't have clarity, part of it is your brain is only 2% of your body mass approximately, but it requires 20% of the nutrients and oxygen. And so give yourself the gift of oxygen and deep breathing. What else do you want to do during your break? I would remind you to hydrate. When you are dehydrated and you have more water, it actually increases your reaction time and thinking speed about 30%. What is the third thing you do during this brain break? I need you to stand up and move. A lot of people, they say that sitting is the new smoking. Mm-hmm. We're behind screens all day, hours and hours goes by, and the primary reason you have a brain is to control your movement. As your body moves, your brain grooves. As your body moves, your brain grooves. You create brain-derived neurotrophic factors, BDNF, which is like fertilizer for your brain. When you take long walks, we talk about geniuses and how they come up with creative ideas, and they have walking meetings outside in the sunlight and the clean air, and they're grounded. These are very important things to do. Even when you're listening to an audiobook or a podcast, if you are taking a nice walk or you're on an elliptical, Or a treadmill and you have that rhythm, you're likely to remember the information, understand it better. Now, one of the exercises I like to do, because there's multiple benefits, is juggling. Did you know jugglers have bigger brains? There was a study done at Oxford University that said juggling actually creates more white matter in your brain. So in a moment, I'm going to show you how to juggle. And you could pause this video right now, and I want you to get one ball. Maybe one ball, two balls if you've done this before, three if you're good at it, or a rolled-up sock. Even better than a ball, a rolled-up sock, because it doesn't roll all around when you drop it. I actually taught myself how to juggle to actually increase my reading ability. So I noticed that trained readers, when they're reading, they don't look at one letter or one word at a time. It's not their foveal vision. They're expanding their peripheral vision so they can see more words at at the time so they could read faster. And I noticed a similarity when I'm juggling. I have to relax my sense of sight so I could take more in, so I could see the balls, 'cause I only have 2 eyes. But if there are 3 balls, I can't be following all of 'em, so I expand my peripheral vision so I could take more in. So you get the benefits of a bigger brain, and it's great training for your reading. So let's grab your juggling balls or a sock or a tennis ball. Right now. Pause the video and do that now. Okay, do you have something to juggle with? I'm not talking about swords and flaming knives, but something really simple like a sock. And for juggling, you have 2 balls in one hand, one in the other. Now, if you are new to juggling, just start with one ball. But ultimately, to give you a picture of what it looks like successfully, and again, I'm not a professional juggler, it's not my backup plan, But I learned and I taught myself, so this is what I feel like juggling looks like. Are you ready? So I'm looking at you and I can see the balls and I'm relaxing my eyes and notice that I dropped the ball. Now you're thinking, Jim, did you do that on purpose? You probably did, or is it maybe it was an accident? Juggling is a great metaphor for life. Do you feel like sometimes you're juggling so many things that you have so many roles, so many responsibilities? Yeah. When we talk about quick thinking, one of the things that keep us growing and being successful is the expectations of others and the power of mistakes. And some people are really fearful that they're gonna make a mistake. And so I'm gonna encourage you to throw the ball up and just let it drop and feel good about it. The world did not end, and even if people are laughing at you, they're not gonna be thinking about that a few minutes from now, all right? So throw up the ball and just drop it, right? And it's on the ground, and you feel like that's okay. You don't have to be perfect. Because it's never about perfection, it's about progress. And you actually progress faster, you fail forward, because failure is not the opposite of success. Failure is part of success. So pick up your ball again and let's begin the basics of juggling. So what I want you to do, quick thinker, is take the ball or whatever you're juggling, maybe it's a sock, and put it in your dominant hand. And we're gonna start small. Small, simple steps. What we're gonna do is we're just gonna toss it into the other hand. That's it. Just toss it back and forth. And it's okay if you drop it, all right? And when you drop it, be happy about it. Be joyful. Because here's the thing, if you're so stressed out about being perfect, you're gonna tense up, and that's gonna limit your performance. You wanna do this in a relaxed state. And I'm doing this also because we have so many people who we've taught how to juggle, and they're able to do it, and it's a nice way of breaking your belief that you can't learn something brand new. And so you're going back and forth, and it's okay, you don't have to get this perfect. And it's not about catching it better, it's getting that toss, getting that arc. And you could keep it to about the top of your head if you like. And it varies, right? Wherever you're comfortable. Just going back and forth, and you're getting good. And maybe you're doing this for like your break, you know, doing it for a few days, doing it for a week. You don't even have to add a second ball. And when you do have 2, this is what it looks like. You have one in each hand, and here's what you do not want to do. What some people will do is they'll throw them at the same time, but what happens? They hit each other, right? So you do not throw them at the same time. This is what other people do that's also not correct. They're not actually juggling, they're just passing it over. Do you see that? I'm just handing it into another hand. So in order to juggle, both balls have to go up in the air. So you're not passing it like this. What you're doing is you're imagining you're throwing this ball up to this peak, and the other ball goes up to this peak. Because if you had the same point, then they're gonna collide. And the goal is, once this ball hits its peak, that's your signal or trigger to throw the other ball up. So it looks like this. You see that? And it doesn't have to be perfect at all. Now, 3 balls look like this. You have 2 in your dominant hand, and it's actually, for me, easier than 2 balls because there's no pause. You just— again, you go for— imagine a box like this. A box. You're keeping the balls in this box, and there's a point here and a point here. This is what it looks like. 1, 2, 3. Now, I don't have control over physics, so I can't slow this down because there's gravity. But you see the 2 points? And you notice how I can look at you, right? Because my peripheral vision could pull in the information here. So it's a nice way of learning how to relax your vision so you could see more. Because if I'm so narrow-focused, I won't be able to see where the ball is. And so that is juggling. Now you could go on YouTube and search for great jugglers and get great instruction on how to juggle. The reason I bring this up for you is it's a fun way to kind of break up the monotony of something you might be studying, and also you're giving your brain a break. Plus it creates more white matter in your brain, and it's a great metaphor for life, and it could help potentially with your reading ability. So what else can you do besides juggling? The goal is to get movement in your body. You could do jumping jacks, you could do burpees, you could do some calisthenics, some push-ups, sit-ups, anything that moves the blood around. So generally what's good for your heart, it's gonna be good for your head. So you get your heart beating, creates more blood flow to the brain, which means you have more oxygen in your brain. So the goal is to move. But here's some things you can do that could help you potentially improve your, your brain function. We call 'em cross laterals, cross laterals, and this is where we're going along the midline, when you're crossing the midline. And potentially what it has the ability to do is, we know the left side of your brain controls the right side of your body, and that the right side of your brain controls the left side of your body, right? But it's not just a mind-body connection, there's a body-mind connection. So what you're gonna do is you're gonna take one hand, go to the opposite knee. And you're just gonna connect them, and then vice versa. You're gonna go back and forth. Now, depending on your flexibility and what you're wearing, instead of your hand, you could use your elbow, right? And you don't have to touch it, but just come close. These are cross-laterals. This is where the left side of your brain and the right side of your brain— it is split by this thing called the corpus callosum, which is like a bridging station, how they communicate. And potentially, what some research suggests is that by using your body in certain ways, especially crossing the midline, helps you to create connections here. And even if that's not the case, you're moving, right? And using conscious effort into your moving. One of the great exercises to learn is to dance, right? Ballroom dancing, amazing for your brain. Table tennis, amazing for your brain. What's something else you could do? You could put your mind into your muscle. So how about this? There's something called super brain yoga. You can look it up, super brain yoga. How do you do it? I want you to take one hand and massage your opposite earlobe, and then the other hand and massage the other earlobe. And as you're massaging it, just squat down and then squat up. So what's the major message out of this lesson? is take time to move. It's not just doing your Pilates 3 times a week or doing your yoga twice a week or running twice a week. It's about making movement part of your daily routine. Every half an hour or an hour, just going for a walk and moving. And if you want to do something more challenging, take on one of the exercises that I shared with you today. Now, in the comments, what I want you to do is what's your brain break? When you start taking your brain break after 25, 30 minutes, the Pomodoro Technique, what are some of the things that you wanna do to be able to just be physical and get inside your body? Share it in the comments so we could all learn from each other. I'm your brain coach, Jim Kwik, and I'll see you in our next lesson.