Jim Kwik (Kwik Learning) presents his morning routine to 'jumpstart the brain' and boost focus, memory, and productivity. He lists ten habits including dream recall, making the bed, heavy morning hydration, brushing teeth with the non-dominant hand, deep breathing, drinking a "brain tea" (herbal/nootropic ingredients), journaling with gratitude and goals, a short high-intensity exercise bout, a Brain Power smoothie, and daily focused reading. The talk mixes practical steps, physiological claims (e.g., hydration and oxygen support brain function), and examples linking journaling and lifelong learning to longevity and cognitive performance.
Questions this video answers
80% water.
Brain is "only 2% of your body weight" and consumes "20% of the nutrients and the oxygen."
About four to six books a month.
About one or two books a year.
Gotu kola, ginkgo biloba, lion's mane, plus essential fatty acids.
Chapters
Hello, Mindvalley community. My name is Jim Kwik with Kwik Learning, and I'm here, as always, to help you to learn quickly. One of the questions in the community that we get is, Jim, what do you do every single morning to jumpstart your brain for greater success, greater levels of focus, greater levels of productivity? So I'm going to walk you through my morning routine. The first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is I have a process to remember my dreams. Now you're like, jim, why do you want to remember your dreams? There's a the reason why is often as you spend your day learning and working to solve problems. Solve problems in your work, in your life, and everything else. When you sleep, your mind doesn't stop. Your unconscious mind is still working on those problems, and you come up with incredible insights and solution. The challenge is in the morning. Most people don't remember their dreams, so we teach a process on how to do that. The second thing I do after I wake up is I get out of bed and I make my bed. You're like, jim, why is that good for your brain? You two reasons. Number one, clean environment is important for you. Like, you know, when you clean off your desktop, you clean up your office, your bedroom, you have a clearer mind. The second reason why is I want to start my day with success. Because how you do anything is how you do everything. You start with excellence, take two minutes, make your bed, and it's really great because when you come home at the end of the day, you come back full circle back to success. The third thing I do is I drink a lot of water. Your brain is mostly water, 80% water. And a lot of people dehydrated, use so much water. And it's so important for your brain to be hydrated. The challenge is you lose a lot of water when you're sleeping. So I super hydrate first thing in the morning, then what do I do? I brush my teeth. You're like, jim, why do you brush your teeth? How is that good for your brain? What you do is you brush your teeth with your opposite hand. It's been shown that by using your opposite hand to eat or to brush your teeth, as your body moves, your brain grooves. As you brush your teeth with your opposite hand actually creates more neural connections inside your brain. So the next thing I do is I do a deep breathing exercise. The other thing besides hydration that's good for your brain is oxygen. A lot of people get tired and they have brain fog. And what do they do? With their mental fatigue. And I would say the number one thing is get oxygen in your body. And here's the thing, your brain is only 2% of your body weight on average, but it consumes 20% of the nutrients and the oxygen. So it's so important to do deep breathing exercises. We talk about that in our programs also as well. What's the next thing I do in my morning routine? I make myself some tea. I make what I call a brain tea. It has gotu kola, ginkgo biloba, it has lion's mane. It has some essential fatty acids that are there really good ingredients that boost my focus and my memory. Now as I'm drinking the tea, what am I doing? I'm actually journaling. Because if you want to boost your brain power, it's important to take notes. And I do a whole process where I teach you the best ways of taking notes and making notes to be able to plan out your day and also to be able to write the things that you're most grateful for. So I go through this gratitude process in my journal because I feel like your brain really thrives on gratitude, because if you can't appreciate the things that you already have, you're not going to be given the things that you really want. So why do I focus on gratitude first thing in the morning? Well, I have my vision board and then my goals, everything that I want. But I also have a gratitude board, the things that I'm most grateful for in my life. And if you want to feel instant gratitude, just count all the things in your life that you have that money can't buy. Gratitude is also good for your brain. There's a cover story on the COVID of Time magazine on these supernuns who are living 80, 90 above. And I want to find what's their longevity coming from. Half of it had to do with their gratitude, emotional faith. The other half had to do with their lifelong learners. So those two things combined are very, very powerful. After that, I'm drinking my tea, I'm writing in my journal because a lot of geniuses write in journals, right? Leonardo da Vinci, Einstein, Marie Curie, all these journals and they want to do these studies. Are geniuses writing in journals because they're geniuses, or is it the opposite? It's because they're writing in journals that they become these incredible geniuses of their field. When I'm done drinking my brain tea and writing my journal, the next thing I do is I do some just morning exercises. This is not my exercises for the day. But three or four minutes of high intensity workout to kind of get your heartbeat going. Because here's the thing, whatever's good for your heart, usually good for your head. Because when I'm getting my heartbeat going, what's happening is I'm getting more blood flow to my brain and more oxygen. And that's very, very important. So what do I do next? I make my Brain Power smoothie. And you're like, jim, what's a Brain Power smoothie? There are certain foods are really great for your brain. And I teach people how to memorize these foods. And what we do is I just put them all in a blender. So certain foods like blueberries, right? I call them brain berries. There's things like avocado, very good for the brain also as well, obviously hydration. We're going to talk about all those ingredients in another video. So as I'm drinking my Brain Power Smoothie, what am I doing? I'm reading, right? 20, 30 minutes a day of dedicated reading. Because leaders are readers and you're like, jim, I can't read a book a week because the average person reads only about one or two books a year. But the CEO reads about four to six books a month, right? So you want to get to about a book a week. So remember, first you make your habits and then your habits make you design the first hour a day to be brain friendly and you'll win the rest of the day.
