This is How to Get FAST Results | Jim Kwik

I want to share with you four keys to get the fastest results and the things that you desire and the things that you deserve. I'm going to break it down into four simple steps, four simple steps to get fast results, and I call this fast F A S T. I'm going to ask you to grab a notebook because here's the thing: I'm going to share with you some tools and techniques, some basic. Fundamentals. Now, you may have heard me talk about some of these key fundamentals or basics. It may be in our podcast, maybe in our Limitless book, but I want to remind you that repetition and review is the mother of a good memory. Repetition, and when you review something, it's like the mother— there's the parent, if you will, of a great Memory, all right? And the masters, the experts, the champions, they never get bored of the basics. They lean into the fundamentals. So here are the 4 keys, write them down, to learning things faster, to remembering things fast. The F in FAST, it stands for forget. And you're like, Jim, I'm confused. Why are you saying you want to forget? I'm here to be able to remember. Well, after teaching this for a few decades, I realized that sometimes people do not learn or remember the subject or the skill to the best of their ability because they feel like they know it already. Isn't this true that sometimes you feel like you know sales or you feel like you know nutrition or you know how to Negotiate or to code or maybe to do social media marketing, or you might think you know how to remember already. And I'm going to ask you, when you want to remember a new subject or skill, to temporarily forget and set aside what you know about the subject so you can learn something new. Because the half-life of information, that's the amount of information that— the amount of time it takes for that information to be dated. Right? It's getting shorter and shorter because we're learning more and more. In fact, when we talk about the human brain and memory, we've probably discovered more in the past 10 or 20 years than the previous 2,000 years combined, right? And so the amount of information and the research is getting faster and faster. It's piling up. And so you want to have a beginner's mind because if your teacup is full, Sometimes you have to empty it to put some new information in because your mind is like a parachute. It only works when it's what? It only works when it's open. So keep an open mind. Temporarily forget what you know about memory because most people, what they know about memory is just, I have to repeat things over and over again, something called rote memory. And here's the thing, while repetition and review is very important, It's not the end-all be-all. It's not just the frequency or the duration of what you're studying and trying to remember. It's also the intensity, right? And that's one of the ways to go faster is to forget. The other thing I want you to forget is I want you to temporarily forget not only what you know about something, but forget about distractions. I want you to set aside that 15 or 20 minutes just for you. I mean, you have to turn off notifications for your social media. And everything ring, pings, dings. You don't want to be distracted because your brain is not actually capable of multitasking. And you might think you multitask, but your brain is not able to do 2 or more cognitive activities at once. What I want you to do to the best of your ability is set aside and forget about distractions because you're not actually multitasking. Multitasking is actually a myth. What you're actually doing is task switching. And if you're going from this conversation you and I are having right now, checking social media and going on Slack or going to talk to somebody or whatever, you're not going to get the most out of it. And what it's costing you is 3 things. Number one, it's costing you time. The thing you think you're gaining on, you're losing because it could take anywhere from 5 or 10 minutes to regain your focus. And here's the other thing: when you're switching tasks, task switching, not only wasting time, it actually encourages you to make more mistakes. You know, we get to work with a lot of medical doctors, helping them with their memory, and we know through studies that medical doctors who are trying, like surgeons, to multitask, they make more errors when they're doing surgery. And then finally, if that wasn't enough, Where you're trying to multitask and you're wasting time, you're making more mistakes. The third reason you don't want to try to multitask, you want to forget about distractions, is it also costs you what? It costs you energy. Let me ask you a question. Do you ever struggle with brain fog? Do you ever have like a mental fatigue? You feel mentally exhausted? One of the reasons why that could contribute to these, the depletion of energy, is trying to multitask. Because when you go from task to task back and forth, you switch, you burn more brain glucose. And so you're using up all that fuel and that reserve. So I'm going to encourage you to really focus. We're only here talking for no more than 15 or 20 minutes. So set everything else aside. If a new idea or something that comes into your mind that you need to do, just write it down so that way you don't resist it. Because what you resist, what? It persists. You don't want to try not to think about it because you're going to think about it even more. Let's just be here together. Let's go on this journey. Forget about anything else. It'll still be there when you're done. And finally, I want you to forget about your limitations. You're like, Jim, what does that mean? A lot of people have preconceived ideas of what they can do, what they're capable of, what is possible, and often it's not in their favor. I want you to blow your own mind. Right? I want you to be in awe and just shocked in terms of what's possible. But that requires for you to forget temporarily what's possible. If you say like, oh, I'm not good at remembering names, you will not remember the name of the next person you meet because you're programming your supercomputer not to. All right, so what does the F stand for? This is the review. Forget about what? Forget about what you know about a subject temporarily so you can maybe update those skills. Temporarily. What also? Forget about distractions because you cannot multitask. You're going to waste time. What else? Make more mistakes. And what else? Yes, you're going to use up more energy that you really need. And finally, forget about your limits, all right, so you can learn something new. The A in FAST stands for active. Active. Please write this down right now. Learning, remembering is not a spectator sport. Learning and remembering is not a spectator sport, yet sometimes we're trained that it is. You remember back in school? You think about school and you're lectured to and you're sitting there passively and you're just supposed to consume information. Let me tell you a little secret. The human brain does not learn best through consumption. The human brain learns better through creation, creativity. Co-creation. And what I mean by that is sitting back passively and just being lectured to, or listening just to a book or a podcast or a coaching program, you're not going to get the best results. The better results is when you're active and you lean in and you participate, because it requires effort. You believe— I'm sure you do, otherwise you wouldn't be watching this video— that what you put in is what you get out. Right? But learning, like life, is not a spectator sport. So how can you be more active? Well, you could ask questions. So in the comments here, you could put questions down there. You could also be supportive and help other people who have questions. If you know the answer, be active and support your positive peer group. We talk about the positive peer group, that we are the average of the people we spend the most time with. And so you want to be active and ask questions. Be active in the comments section so you can support each other and have each other's backs. Have each other's brains, right? And also, how else can you be active? You could take notes. And you're thinking, Jim, what's the best way of taking notes? And I would say that a lot of people do digital note-taking, some people do handwriting. Which one do you think is better? Handwriting, right? And you intuitively know that. And so digital note-taking is wonderful for storage, it's wonderful for sharing, but it's not the opportune way of learning because when people are tested, both digital note-taking versus handwriting, those who handwrote notes actually had better comprehension and retention. But just handwrite notes. And here's a fun way of taking notes. I call it a whole brain note-taking technique. Take a piece of paper, put a line right down the middle, and on the left side I want you to capture, and the right side you're going to create. Now that's a very subtle difference. On the left side you're going to note taking. On the right side, note-making. Now what's the difference? On the left side, I want you to capture things like, this is how to remember names, this is Jim's technique for learning languages, this is how you could remember a TED Talk or a toast at a wedding, this is how you can remember poetry or facts or figures. That's on the left side. This is how you remember what you read. But if your attention is going to be distracted and your imagination is going to take you elsewhere, I'd rather it go where? On the right side of the page, and that's where you're going to create. So you're going to create your impressions of what you're capturing. So what could go on the right side? Things like, how can I use this? You know, why must I use this? How does this relate to what I already know? When will I use this? What opportunities do I have to practice this? When will I practice this? Right? All the different ways you could use it and apply questions that you have, then you're creating. Does that make sense? Wonderful. So you want to be active. Now, F is forget, A is active. That's the review, which is the mother of what? Memory. Very good. The S stands for state. Please write this down: all memory is state dependent. All memory is state dependent. In fact, do this: shake out your hands, shake it out. And do this with me because this is your kinesthetic memory. And now I'm going to activate your verbal memory. Put your hand out and say information. Come on, do it. Information. This is the active part. We just said A, active. Information combined with emotion becomes a long-term memory. Information by itself is forgettable, but information combined with an emotion becomes what? Unforgettable. And that's really the key. All memory, in fact, all learning is state Dependent. And here's the question I have for you. What was the primary emotion, the emotional state? That's what I mean by state, is the feelings, the emotions, a snapshot of your mood, of your mind and your body. What was the primary emotion you felt back in school when you're sitting in class and you're being lectured to? How did that make you feel? For most people, they would say what? They're bored. Right? They're bored. They're suffering from boredom. On a scale of 0 to 10, what would you rate boredom as? You're like, 0, right? And I just said information times emotion becomes long-term memory. But if the emotion is 0, what is anything times 0? 0. And you wonder why you forgot that periodic table, right? The things you learned back in school, because the boredom, that energy, there was not emotion there to attach to that information. So the state, or the emotional state, the feelings that you have when you learn something is how it gets encoded. And that's the first part of your memory. You encode, you store, and then you retrieve. But if you want to retrieve and recall that name, or recall that foreign language word, or that speech you need to give, you have to encode and store it. Part of that encoding process is when you add feeling to something, you're more likely to remember it. All right, now I have a quick question for you. Who's in control of how you feel? You are, right? And how do you change the way you feel? You could be more active. I want you to move your body. Specifically, what I want you to do, 2 exercises. The first exercise is called Super Brain Yoga. Super Brain Yoga. What are you going to do? I want you right now to do this. Massage your earlobe with your opposite hand. And with your other hand, massage your other earlobe and just massage it. And what I want you to do is I want you to take a breath in and squat down, and then exhale, squat up. All right, you could go deeper here. I'm going to stay on camera, but I want you to take a deep breath, squat down, and then exhale, squat up. Go down. Exhale, come up. Put a smile on your face. Go down. Exhale, come on up. Good. One more time. Go down. Exhale, come up. That is super brain yoga. Did you do this with me? Remember, active. You are the few who do versus the many who just talking, just complain about stuff. Make sure you do these active activities. The second exercise is something called cross crawls, and this is from an area of educational kinesiology called the Brain Gym. And what I want you to do is try this. I want you to raise one knee and I want you to touch it with the opposite hand or elbow, and then reverse it, all right? And then switch back and forth. So you're going to raise a knee, touch it with the opposite hand, and just go back and forth, back and forth. And you could, if you can, just raise your knee and just touch it the best you can. If you have to do this sitting, you can do it sitting, but I encourage, if you can, stand up. And these are called cross crawls. When part of your physiology is crossing the midline here, it's creating more connections between your left and right brain. And what is it also doing? It's changing your state. I just want you for 30 seconds, 60 seconds tops, just to do these exercises. Super Brain Yoga, right? And these cross crawls. That's a way you can do to change your state. By the way, I want you to stand or sit Right now, the way you'd be sitting if you're totally focused and engaged with what I'm teaching you. Do that right now. Now, why do you even have to move, right? But you know the fastest way to change how you feel is to change your physiology, 'cause your physiology, your body, affects your what? Your psychology, that state. And then finally, after the forget, the active, the state, the T stands for this. The final tip is to learn with the intention of teaching somebody else. And that's what the T stands for. When you teach something, you get to learn it twice. Say that out loud. When I teach something, I get to learn it twice. So your intent matters. And so I want you to think about somebody you wish was watching this with you, somebody who could really benefit from a better memory, which is pretty much everybody. But think about somebody you care about, and I want you to teach that person each time you learn a brand new lesson. And they call it the explanation effect. The explanation effect. That when you learn something with the intention of explaining it to somebody else, you're going to learn it so much better. And you know that, right? Those who can't do what? Teach. And then when you teach it, you could do it. When you have the intention of teaching somebody else, it's going to take that overload and reduce it because you're going to be able to explain it to somebody and you're going to think about how do I make this And you're going to use your own words. Plus, you get to pay it forward. I believe that you learn to earn to return, right? You're learning so you could earn in life and you could return more to others, and that comes in the form of teaching something. And that's really why you learn anything, right? You learn something so you could benefit from it, but you also want to learn something, you know, that same thing, so you could share with other people that you care about so they can benefit from it too. So are you on board with the FAST method? Use it every single time and you're going to get tremendous results. All right, fantastic. What I want you to do here is just review the FAST, teach it to somebody else so you get to learn it better.