Jim Kwik
Appearances
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
Today, knowledge is not only power, knowledge is profit, and the faster you can learn, the faster you can earn. It's not how smart you are, it's how are you smart. You know, in school, they taught you what to learn, like math and history or science, but there are no classes on how to learn. And I think if there's one skill for all of us to get better at, it's our ability to learn rapidly.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
Your note-taking also organizes information, which will help you remember it. You're creating a structured external memory that you can revisit. And so it also supports a long-term retention that especially if you review so many people take notes, but that's the end of the story. They never look at that notebook again from that event, which is better than not taking notes.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
Yes. Especially if you do like spaced repetition, where if you could review it like an hour later, a day later, a week later, it helps to consolidate your short to long-term memory.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
And teaching somebody else, you know, learning this information, looking at your notes and sharing some ideas with somebody else. You take advantage of something called the explanation effect. That's why coaches are so great because they get to learn the information and coach it so that you learn it even, even better. Right.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
I think it's one of the most honorable things people could do is to be able to grow so they have more to give. Yeah.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
Yeah, of course. So I believe two of the most costly words sometimes in our life are I forgot. Think about your career, your life. When you say to yourself, I forgot to bring it. I forgot to do it. I forgot to go to that appointment. I forgot what I was going to say. I forgot what that Person said to me, I forgot that person's name. I forgot what I just read. It just goes on and on. It was time.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
We can make errors. We can hurt a relationship. But on the other side, memory is a magnifier. It can make you more money or create more meaning when you can easily remember client information or product information. Give a TEDx talk from memory when you can remember facts and figures. I mean, we live in this expert economy where everyone listening is
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
It's not like thousands of years ago where we're paid for our brute strength. It takes our brain strength. It's no longer our muscle power. It takes our mind power. There's three keys to a better memory. You can remember MOM, M-O-M. I'll make an acronym because it's easier to remember. Let's say you want to remember something like names. important.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
Let's say you have a coaching business and you want to be able to create relationships. It's hard to show someone you're going to care for their life or their finances, whatever coach you are or parent or teacher professional you are, if you don't care about that person. And what's the message we send to somebody when we forget their name, right?
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
So people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care, as the saying goes. So let's say someone has trouble remembering names, but we had a suitcase filled with money. And it was theirs if they just remembered the name of the next stranger they met. Who's going to remember that person's name? Everybody.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
And so as a coach, as a brain coach, I have to call people as coaches do on their BS, you know, their belief systems. So it's not true. You can't remember names. The first M stands for motivation. And so we don't remember all names, but we don't forget all names either.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
We tend to remember names of people who could be good for our work, people we might be attracted to, or there's some kind of emotion that's there. And that's one of the keys to a better memory. Information by itself is forgettable, but information when it's combined with that emotion becomes unforgettable.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
I'm sure a lot of people listening, they could hear a song that could take them back to when they were teenagers. or maybe a food or a fragrance would bring back a memory of when you're a child. So the information by itself is forgettable, but adding emotion makes it unforgettable. And so how do you tap into that motivation? You know, I think it's important. We have a podcast.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
We've had Simon Sinek on it three times, and he has a great book called Start With Why. And so just ask yourself why. You're meeting somebody, ask them, why do I remember this person's name? Maybe it's to show the person some respect or get a referral from my coaching business. Maybe it's to practice these things I learned on the podcast.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
Thank you so much. And thank you everyone who's joining. My inspiration really was my desperation. I think a lot of people could relate to the idea where through struggles, you find some kind of strength or some kind of challenge, you have some change. And I turned my mess into my message.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
And the thing is, you can't come up with a reason you won't remember name because reasons reap results. I believe the success formula for all of us is H cubed. Three H's has to go from your head to your heart to your hands. You could have goals in your head, right? A vision of your life or your career.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
But if you're not acting consistently with your hands, you're doing the work, check in with the second H, which is our heart, right? Which is a symbol of emotions. And so reasons reap those rewards that we're looking for. And so just ask yourself, why? You know, what are all the benefits that come from applying what I just read in this book or listening on this podcast or whatever?
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
Why should I remember this person's name?
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
Yeah. The Owen Mom is observation. A lot of people, when they forget something, they blame their retention. And it's not your retention as much as it is your attention. The art of memory is the art of attention. And yet, how do we maintain our attention in a world full of rings and pings and dings and app notifications, social media alerts, every like, share, comment?
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
We're just driven to distraction, right? And so let's take it back to remembering names. You have this incredible gift, this most amazing supercomputer, advanced supercomputer on the planet. Between your ears, 86 billion brain cells, neurons with upwards of 10,000 synaptic connections. If you extrapolate that, it's more connections than there are in the known universe, stars in the universe.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
We can remember a name, right? One or two words. A lot of times we're just not present.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
right we're looking over people's shoulders we're thinking about how we're going to respond and and even if you simple thing to do to be more observant just think about the word listen you can write in your notes or imagine the word listen and just as a brain teaser move the letters around scramble them and it spells another word perfectly it spells the word silent
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
And so many people could remember things better if they were just present with the person. Years ago, I went to a fundraiser. It was like a ballroom for 2,000 people. I go to my roundtable and I was the first one there. And then Forrest Whitaker sits next to me. And then Richard Branson sits next to him. And then Ashton Kutcher sits down with his twin brother.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
And then President Clinton sits right next to me. And he addressed me by name and I was like, wow. And then I thought like, oh, of course he knew who he was sitting with, of course. And then he picks up a conversation that we had a few years earlier and it was a brief conversation and nobody was privy to that conversation. And I was like, wow, you know, I believe genius leaves clues.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
When people see me at events, I train them on how to improve their memory, their focus, their learning abilities, and optimize their brain power. But it wasn't always like that for me. I grew up with very, as you mentioned, a quote, unquote, a broken brain. I had learning difficulties, poor focus, poor memory. It came from I had a traumatic brain injury when I was five.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
When somebody does something extraordinary, there's a method behind what looks like magic. And I'm so curious. And that's like my biggest passion is kind of uncovering that genius and showing other people how to duplicate it, right? And I was like... you know, memory coach, I need to know how you're remembering all this information.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
And he tells me this story and this is abbreviated, but basically his grandfather, he's telling his story about his grandfather in Arkansas in the living room telling stories. But afterwards to the children, he did something different. He quizzed each child to see if they were really paying attention. Right. And when he's
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
telling me this story, I got this feeling, have you ever been with somebody and you felt like you're the only one in the room? Like they're so present with you. And so they're much more important people in that room than me, certainly at that table than I am. And yet I feel like I'm the only one there. And I think that politics aside, right?
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
Most people would say Clinton, high charisma, great connector, great communicator. And he's got this incredible memory. And he's got this powerful presence, but I think his incredible memory and his powerful presence comes from being powerfully present. His incredible memory and his powerful presence with people comes from being powerfully present with people. And who's that reserved for?
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
I mean, who has access to that? We all do. Right. And so I feel like it. Your attention is a muscle. It grows stronger with use and just being present with your kids or practicing being present when you're reading.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
Or you meditate as an exercise, not to get enlightened, but when your mind wanders, which inevitably does, you pull it back to your breath, you pull it back to a mantra, and you exercise your power of presence and concentration.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
Thank you for sharing that. So it serves as a reminder to improve your memory. Just tap into the motivation. Why do you want to remember this thing or this person? The O is observation, just a reminder just to be present and listen. And then the last M in MOM are the methods, you know, which are podcasts and are books.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
And of course, it's just full of like memory, how to learn languages, how to remember speech, how to remember names. But it's just I still believe half of success is that mindset, right? And I feel like that observation, that motivation kind of falls under that, just caring about the person as you would normally do.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
Yeah, so I would say, and I posted this on social media, that I feel like burnout sometimes is not because we're doing too much. Sometimes we're burnt out because we're doing too little of the things that make us come alive or that nurture our souls and our bodies. You know, self-care could fall into that category. But mental exhaustion...
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
So I had an unfortunate accident, or some people would say fortunate accident. I was in kindergarten class. I took a really bad fall. I rushed to the emergency room, I knocked unconscious, lost all this blood, and just... Bedouin really showed up us in school. I had poor focus, poor memory. I just didn't learn. I had processing issues.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
you know, is just very commonplace, right, for anyone that's trying to achieve or do anything or just to live, you know, on the daily. And the good news is not just as we train for physical endurance, we can train our brains to recover, to be able to recharge. And so a few things I would think about for everybody, protect your mental energy.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
You know, burnout often stems from decision fatigue or constant overstimulation. And so what can you do? Action steps, like a couple of quick tips. Everybody has a to-do list. I've been talking about this for like 20 years. I still think it's important for everyone to have a not to-do list. Yeah. And then your non-negotiables, things you just will not do.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
I believe the success formula for all of us is H cubed, three H's. It has to go from your head to your heart to your hands. You could have goals in your head, a vision of your life or your career. But if you're not acting consistently with your hands, you're doing the work, check in with the second H, which is our heart, which is a symbol of emotions.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
Sometimes when we say yes to somebody, we're saying no to ourself, right? And part of being limitless is putting borders and boundaries, protecting the things that are important to you, like your time, your focus, your energy. So on your not-to-do list, decide what tasks or commitments, distractions you'll eliminate. Yeah. And this frees up all this cognitive bandwidth for what truly matters.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
So it's not so much like time management. It's really more about priority management or mind management. I think the most important thing is to keep the most important thing, the most important thing, right? You want to get really good at the things that matter and then put everything else on your not to-do list. And sometimes when we subtract, we multiply, right?
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
I'm sure people have relationships where a loss was really a gain, right? And then you subtract, so you actually multiply it in the long run. And then part of that is you could practice things like the 80-20 rule, which a lot of people are familiar with, the Pareto principle, the 20% that gives you 80% of the results and rewards. Part of
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
burnout, getting more resilience is taking care of your body. Most people aren't prioritizing their sleep, and they know sleep is a superpower, that it isn't a luxury. It's essential, especially for your brain. Memory consolidation, decision making, emotional resilience. But most people haven't sat down and really created a sleep ritual. How's your sleep in general?
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
Teachers would have to repeat themselves over and over again, and then I would eventually learn to pretend to understand, but I didn't really understand. Took me three years just to learn how to read like the other kids. That was very embarrassing. A lot of self-esteem issues, as you can imagine, a lot of self-doubt, belief in myself.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
I love that. Yeah. Since I've integrated yoga nidra into my evening routine, it made a big difference. A couple of other things for me is getting daylight first thing in the morning has been a marked difference because I measure everything also as well. So even if it's hazy or foggy and you go outside, get 10 minutes, your eyes are the only part of your brain that's outside of your skull.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
It helps to reset your circadian rhythm. So I sleep better when I do that that evening, when I do it that morning. I'm very sensitive to caffeine, so I can't do caffeine past 12 o'clock.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
Wow. That's, that's amazing. Yeah. So, so you could stay in your system. I mean, half, it's like, you know, 10 hours. So I try to not do any much caffeine. I do tea, but I'm kind of jealous of the people could do like expressos at night. Two of the biggest needle modes for me though, at night, like we would know thousands of years ago, it'd be time to go to sleep.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
Because the environment would tell you. It would decrease in two environmental factors, temperature and light. And so generally, you know, I try to keep it as cold as I can without bothering my wife.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
We keep it at about 66 Fahrenheit, and it's very good for us. You could also do a hot shower, a sauna, a bath, especially with some kind of salts, because magnesium, you're absorbing that transdermally, and that could help you relax.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
But when you get out of that hot bath or shower or sauna or whatever, your core body temperature drops, and that's a signal to produce the melatonin, which is the hormone to help you to relax. light is a big deal because the thing about it, like that was a thousand years ago, we couldn't control this stuff.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
And now in modern conveniences, the temperature could be the same all the time and the, you know, lighting everywhere. But the culprit really is the screens. You know, I saw a video on my Facebook reminders, like 10 years, Simon Sinek and I talking, it has 38 million views. It just, for me, I just say, don't touch your phone. The first 30 minutes a day, the last 30 minutes a day.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
They talk about the blue light and the screens and trolling your mind and thinking it's still daylight and so you don't produce melatonin. It's not just that. It's not just the light. It's the context and the stimulation from the scrolling. You would never invite 100 people into your bedroom when you're going to sleep, but it's like you're scrolling and you're hearing from all these strangers.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
And for me, habit design is a very important part of what we do because we want to make speed reading a habit, memory a habit, focus a habit. And one of the rules for habit design is you want to make the things that are good for you easier, and you want to make things that are not good for you more difficult, right? If you have those snacks in the kitchen, you're just going to eat them more often.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
When I was nine years old, I was slowing down in class and being pretty teased a lot. Teacher came to my defense. She pointed to me from the whole class and said, leave that kid alone. That's the boy with the broken brain. That's where that moniker came in. She had great intentions, I'm sure. But all I took from it was, wow, I didn't know I was broken.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
If you have your phone by your nightstand, it's just going to be easier to grab it. Just like if you don't want to do gluten and bread and you're at the restaurant and the waitstaff brings you bread in the beginning of the meal, it's easier to say no once and let them take it away. Otherwise, you're sitting there having to say no to yourself 50 times and exercise your willpower, which we know
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
You know, it doesn't last over. It's not sustainable. So, yeah, I put my phone in our bathroom and it makes it really easy. So I can't even touch it. And so there's no angst.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
There have been studies that have shown that even having their phone, you know, at the dining table, even if it's down, facing down, it's still, there's a higher level, of course, a higher level of anxiety just because it's there, right? The anticipation of having to check it and distracts our focus from our family or from, you know, whatever happens to be important.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
Yes, I would say that your external world is a reflection of your internal world. right? So especially even, even a messy environment, some say it could help stimulate creativity because there's stimulus that that's there, but it does take an immense amount of cognitive energy to just keep track of everything. And I think everyone's had the
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
of cleaning off your desk or organizing it or maybe on their computer screen, everything is in the right file folder. It kind of gives you clarity of mind also as well. So I feel like your environment is a wonderful way to really master more of your mind. You know, even simple things like reserving your bed for bedtime activities, right, as opposed to working in it.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
Because then you associate that everything becomes state-dependent and you kind of go in that mode. I even recommend if people can do it, let's say they watch Netflix, just don't do it on your work computer because you'll start having that same kind of association to that. So all learning is state-dependent. And so very important to control your state. So declutter your space.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
You know, for me, clutter competes with your attention and creates mental noise. So taking time to do that. Optimize your lighting, which is a totally different conversation. But poor lighting could strain your eyes and affect your mood, your energy levels.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
And it's interesting, you know, like they've been shown certain fluorescent lights could have certain, you know, negative effects on mice and everything. But It's funny. They'll use it because it's cheap. They'll use it in schools. They'll use not the best quality of lighting in office buildings.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
Your environment noise reduction, whatever background noise can break your focus and make it harder to concentrate. So some people use whatever kind of ways, earplugs or something like that, or certain music that puts them in a state of learning. You can leverage in your environment color psychology for those who are interested in that because color can influence mood and energy levels.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
Where blue, and everyone's a little bio-individual, just like they are with food, right? Blue generally promotes calmness and focus. Red is more, simulates energy. You know, if you want to use calming colors like blue or green, your workspace will enhance your focus, reduce your stress. You could add pops of energizing colors, yellow, orange, for creativity and motivation.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
And that became my belief system, my inner dialogue. So every time I did badly in school, I would always say, oh, because I have the broken brain. And that became my reality. So that label became my limit. I struggled all through school, middle school, junior high, high school, barely able to pass.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
You could keep your space, you know, visually simple to avoid stress. overstimulation. And then a couple of more things for environment ergonomic setup, like physical discomfort from poor posture from an ill-designed workspace can definitely drain your physical energy and your mental energy. A lot of times people are tired because not because they need calories, but often because their posture
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
And, you know, if their diaphragm is collapsed.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
Yeah, good eye health is so important. We deal with that with reading, you know, and certain exercises like palming to kind of just kind of reduce eye strain or looking off in the distance.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
Oh, I like that.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
I like that. But talking about putting the thought on the posture, sometimes we're tired because our posture, we're bent over and the lower one third of our lungs can absorb upwards of two thirds of the oxygen. And your brain is only 2% of your body mass, but it requires 20% of nutrients, 20% of the oxygen. And sometimes we're fatigued just because we're not getting the oxygen flow.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
And so your setup could be important. You also want to just, I was even when I'm talking about air quality, everything from fragrances, candles, new, new carpeting or furniture, the off-gassing, these neurotoxins, mold could also affect your, your brain, obviously. And so that's part of your environment. You can manage digital clutter, which is everywhere.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
You can add some nature into your environment if that has kind of a calming effect on your brain to help you improve your concentration, your creativity. Some people like the snake plants. I got them all here and the podcast set up.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
Very much so. And you can use essential oils. Rosemary has been shown to improve memory. Eucalyptus, peppermint for some kind of refreshing boost. And olfactory is the fastest way to memory, right? Something when I'll do like a kind of a brain hack with people need to study a subject. They'll say an actor wants to memorize a script.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
They could put on a certain essential oil while they're studying it, and then when they need to perform it, wear that same essential oil lip balm or cologne or whatever to help boost that, as long as it's unique, right? Because the environment will get linked to the information.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
I'm very optimistic. I feel like it's one of the best ways to anchor a lot of, because all learning is state dependent, you know, and nothing gets to an emotion faster than sense of smell, probably for survival, right? You need to know when something is bad to eat it or not eat it or So everything in your environment, temperature, if it's too hot or too cold, obviously it's difficult to focus.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
But eventually I found a mentor when I was 18, and it really opened up my mind to the power that we had between our ears. I started studying brain science, adult learning theory, ancient mnemonics. I wanted to find out Like, how did people remember things thousands of years ago when there weren't printing presses and the internet?
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
In my environment, in my office here, I have my visual goals there, and that helps me to stay on track on the most important things. I mentioned I have zones for different activities, a desk for my office work, a comfy chair for my reading, a kind of relaxation corner where I do my meditation. So it's kind of anchored there.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
Yeah. For procrastination, I have a simple formula for everyone for limitless motivation. And for me, motivation is not something you have, it's something you do. So a first principle, the work that we do in our courses and and books and everything is taking nouns in our lives and turning them into verbs.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
Because I feel like the nature of our work, you and I and a lot of your community is about transcending. I mean, think about the word transcend. You're ending the trance. You know, we're helping people break the hypnosis through marketing media, our families, whatever, our inner dialogue that somehow we're not enough. Somehow we, you know, we're fixed in a certain way or are broken.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
Or when you say fixed, it's kind of like stuck in a certain way. And so... You don't have focus, you do it. Having is a noun. You don't have focus, there's a process for focusing. You don't have a memory, there's a three-stage process for memorizing something. You encode it, you store it, you retrieve it. You don't even have energy, there's a process for generating energy.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
The benefit of doing that, because if you either have it or don't have it, then you're kind of stuck. But if it's a process, you just do it or don't do it. And so my goal is to bring people those processes, the methods behind the magic.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
And so I found through my experience, 33 years of coaching as a brain coach, I realized that some people know what to do, but they don't do what they know because common sense is not common practice. And there are two things that have to come before the methods. And I outlined the limitless model, it's a whole Venn diagram. It's our mindset, which is, do you believe it's possible?
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
Do you believe you deserve it? Do you believe you're capable of it? Because you could have a great method for making money, but if your mindset is money is the root of all evil, you have to hurt people to make money, you're still going to be stuck. Right. Or like, you know, often at events, people pull me aside and say, Jim, so glad you're here as a memory coach.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
You know, they'll say, I have a horrible memory. I'm just getting too old. I'm not, I've never been that smart. And I always say same thing. I say, stop. If you fight for your limitations, you get to keep them. If you fight for your limits, they're yours. You know, me, I was saying for years, I have the broken brain. And it just, that power of belief, right?
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
And, uh, yeah, a light switch flipped on and I just, after 60 days, you know, my, my grades improved and just my life improved after that. And I couldn't help, but help other people. So I'm in my early fifties. I've been doing this for over three decades and it's just my mission to build better, brighter brains. No, no brain left behind.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
And it's not even that, Joel, you know, one of my mentors, Wayne Dyer, many people know, he said, like, it's not that so much that you'll believe it when you see it. It's the opposite. You'll start seeing it when you start believing it. Because all behavior is belief-driven. Your brain is this incredible supercomputer and your self-talk is a program that will run.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
So if you tell yourself, I'm not good at remembering names, you won't remember the name of the next person you meet. You program your supercomputer not to. But the second M that has to be addressed also besides your mindset is motivation. So if you self-sabotage, that's a mindset issue. If you procrastinate, that's a motivation issue.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
And there's a three-part strategy or formula for limitless motivation to motivate yourself to do the things you know you should do or to motivate somebody else, to motivate someone to buy your product, to motivate somebody to clean their, your kids to clean their room. And here it is very quick. The letter P times the letter E times S3, P times E times S3.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
And I'm hydrating a lot also because your brain is mostly water. And I just want to remind everybody to, you know, what you drink matters, especially to your brain matter. So P times E times S3. So let's break it down. Let's say you want to motivate yourself to exercise. Exercise is great for the brain. And I don't just mean doing Pilates or yoga three times a week or CrossFit.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
I mean how much you're moving throughout the day, right? As your body moves, your brain grooves. And they say sitting is the new smoking. And we're sitting behind screens all the time, especially during the pandemic, and we're not moving our bodies as much. When you move your body, you know this, you create a BDNF, brain-derived neurotrophic factors. What is it?
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
It's like fertilizer for neuroplasticity. When you move and exercise, you create dopamine, serotonin, endorphins, all very important for cognitive health and wellness. You get airflow, you get all these benefits, resistance training, so many benefits. But if you're not doing it, maybe going back to the example for motivation, the P stands for purpose.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
So remember when remembering names, reasons, reap results? A lot of people, they know they should do it, but they don't feel.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
An example in the wellness space, years ago I was out and I saw someone I kind of recognized, but I didn't know who it was, which is the most embarrassing thing because if you see me live at events, if there's time, I'll memorize 100 people's names in an audience and do all these things. I didn't recognize him. And, but when he opened his mouth and he said hello to me, he knew who I was.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
I recognized his voice and then I knew exactly who he was, but he looked completely different, you know? And the backstory is, as I've known this person, this person is like picture of being unhealthy and was almost proud to pride in it. Right. But now that I see him, he's like stopped smoking. He lost all his weight. He's looks, he has this glow. He looks so much younger.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
And I said, you know, my, my I believe everyone has something to teach me. And I was like, you know, genius leaves clues. Like, you look great. What are you doing? And he tells me all the list of things he's doing. And I said to him, I told you all that stuff for years and you didn't do any of it. And he's like, yeah, but, you know, I got back from, I went on a business trip.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
I came back and I came home to my daughter crying hysterically. She's never cried like this before. And when she stops, I find out. that she had a dream, a nightmare, that I died and wasn't there for her, you know, and so on. And it went from his head to his heart, right? And instantly he made the change. And so the P, P times E times S3 for motivation, purpose. Always start with a purpose.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
And it can't be here. It has to be here, meaning your heart. You have to feel it. And then the E, let's say you want to work out. The E is energy. You need energy because exhaustion will make – anyone a procrastinator, right? Like how motivated are you? Like we have a newborn and a two-year-old and we're just not getting a lot of sleep in the household, right?
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
And so how motivated when you're exhausted are you to read, to do presentations, to work out, right? And so I realized, again, with energy, you don't have energy now and you do it.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
There's a process for generating energy, which involves, you know, certain brain foods, certain movements, certain breathing, certain sleep, stress management, you know, positive peer group and all these very important things. And so you need the energy. Like if you get a big processed meal, you're not going to be very in a food coma and you want to motivate yourself to read.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
Like people see pictures of me with Oprah or Elon or whoever. And very few people ask, well, how did we meet? How did we bond? And I'll tell you, we bonded over books, right? You read to succeed. If somebody has decades of experience and they put into a book and you can sit down a few days and read that book, you can download decades into days. That's the biggest advantage that there is.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
Plus people ask all the time, what's the best, you know, brain exercise you could do? It's reading by far. Reading is your mind, what exercises to your body.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
I love that. And sometimes you read, you maybe listen to audio a little faster, depending on that also as well. Absolutely. And so just consuming that information and every new idea is making your brain. When I mentioned neuroplasticity, I know most people know it's that phenomenon that your brain can grow older, but you can make new connections as you age. And how does connections happen?
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
Through two things, novelty and nutrition. Just like if you want to build your physical muscles, what do you do? You work it out, you give it novelty, some kind of stimulus and exercise, and then you give it nutrition. So you give it the amino acids, the proteins to be able to grow, right? Same thing with your mental muscles. You want to have neuroplasticity, novelty, and nutrition.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
No, it's absolutely true. It's not like your cup is full and you have to empty it to put new information in and your brain doesn't grow that way. It's just like somebody at the gym who's incredibly fit. The more exercise they do, the stronger they get, the more they can do, right?
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
The challenge is like, you know, if you go to the gym, you see somebody deadlifting or bench pressing a huge amount of weight, you say, oh, that's easy for them because they're strong. It's like, no, they're strong because that's what they're doing every single day. With the brain, it's a little bit different because you can't see these mental muscles.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
That's why if people watch this on video, they'll see I'm wearing a shirt with a brain. I'm always on social media. It points to my brain. Just as a reminder to everybody, what you see, you take care of because it's your awareness. You see your car, your skin, your hair, your clothes, you know. You know when it's getting out of shape or getting below quality, whatever.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
But you don't see the thing that takes care of us, which is your brain. And I feel like it's the most beautiful gift and responsibility that we have. So that's energy. So again, the key for limitless motivation, tap into purpose, really enhance your energy. Because again, if you ate a processed meal, you're not going to be very motivated to read that day or to do any of the things you need to do.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
And then the S3 are small, simple steps. Because think about why people procrastinate. They either procrastinate because they don't have a reason to do that thing, or at least they don't feel the reason until maybe the day before taxes are due or something and their emotions change. Or they don't have the energy. Or sometimes people procrastinate because that thing is too big.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
It's too intimidating. It's too unknown. It's too confusing. And a confused mind doesn't do anything. And so let's say, going back to working out, maybe that's too big of a jump for somebody that's not their routine. S3 stands for small, simple steps. So maybe it's not working out. Maybe your small, simple step is putting on your running shoes. Maybe on our podcast, we've done over 400 episodes.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
We had recently a biological dentist, and he was talking about how oral health is linked to brain health. And we're talking about what to do beyond brushing, right? Things like oil pulling, things like tongue scraping, all these things. We're talking about flossing. I was thinking about how do you get your kids to floss? And S3 is...
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
Well, maybe flossing all their teeth would be too big of a jump. Flossing one tooth, right? Because nobody's going to stop at one. That's a small, simple step. Let's say you don't want to read 30 minutes a day because that's too big of a jump. Opening up the book is an S3. Or reading one line is an S3. Because the idea here is inch by inch, it's a cinch. Yard by yard, it's just too hard.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
But little by little, a little becomes a lot. And how do you find your S3? So next time you feel stalled, and you're procrastinating, ask yourself this question. What is the tiniest action I could take right now that will give me progress towards this goal where I can't fail? What is the tiniest action you could take right now that will give you progress towards this goal where you can't fail?
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
And then you have your S3. So that would be my three suggestions for tapping into motivation, for motivating yourself to do things you know you should do, or motivating somebody else to do what they should do. Like maybe they're not buying your product because they don't feel purposeful. or they don't have the energy or the get me money or whatever, or you're making it too confusing for them.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
How can you break it down into something very small and get consistency, you know, even on a marketing campaign or an opt in pay? How do you make it so super simple? They can't fail.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
Well, I want to thank you. There's different ways. I mentioned a podcast. They could just search my name in their podcast app. We have a major, major big event for thousands of people who are excited about brain health and brain performance in LA, March 6th, 7th, and 8th. Everyone from Dr. Daniel Amen to Dr. Gabby Lyons. It's the most amazing cast of faculty. That's LimitlessLive.com.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
That's a three-day immersion. It'll be the largest brain performance accelerated learning event ever. Limitless, we donated all the proceeds of my book, Limitless, to charity. For girls, we built schools in Ghana, Guatemala, Kenya, in villages that didn't have schools, and also Alzheimer's research.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
We funded Alzheimer's research for women, because women are twice as likely to experience Alzheimer's than men. So we did that in memory of my grandmother, who I lost to Alzheimer's when I was seven. And yeah, I'm on social media. I would love people actually just to take a screenshot of the two of us wherever you're consuming this and post it online and tag us both so we get to see it.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
And going back to if you want to learn something better, teach it. Share one thing you're going to do for a better brain. Maybe you're going to add some blueberries or avocados, or maybe you're going to move a little bit more. Maybe you're going to use that mom thing that we talked about or some of the sleep things that we discussed. or share your brain animal.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
When you go to mybrainanimal.com, we give you a detailed PDF report, how to study, learn, focus, remember, based on your brain type. Parent, cell, there's leader, lead, hire, manage, everything. But we'll give you one of these kind of AI drawings. You can post that. Because I'm curious what the dominant brain type animal is of your community. But if you post it... And tag us both.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
That's a wonderful question. I realized as a coach in this space that it's not how smart you are, it's how are you smart. And it's a very subtle difference. It's not how smart you are, it's how are you smart. And that we all have genius and intelligence that expresses itself in different ways.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
We'll get to see it. And I'll gift out just three signed copies of Limitless at random just as a thank you for having me on the show. So yeah, I really love this conversation.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
Likewise. Thank you so much.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
You know, in school, you're right, they taught you what to learn, like math and history or science, but there are no classes on how to learn. And I think if there's one skill for all of us to get better at, to make our lives easier, you know, to be more productive, to raise our level of success, is our ability to learn rapidly.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
You know, today, knowledge is not only power, knowledge is profit, and the faster you can learn, the faster you can earn. But everyone learns it a little bit differently. With the updated version of my book, Limitless, we talk about personalized learning styles.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
Burnout often stems from decision fatigue or constant overstimulation. Everybody has a to-do list. I still think it's important for everyone to have a not-to-do list. Part of being limitless is... Putting borders and boundaries, protecting the things that are important to you, like your time, your focus, your energy. You don't have focus, there's a process for focusing.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
And it's more than just some people like to learn visually or auditorily, like hearing, listening to podcasts or audio books, or some people like to read, or some people like to roll up their sleeves and do it. We've identified four brain types. So just like in wellness, there's personalized nutrition based on an assessment, maybe a microbiome test or a
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
Or nutrient profile test. And there's personalized medicine based on like maybe a DNA test. We created a simple four minute assessment that determines your dominant brain type and based on that brain type would inform just like any assessment would medical assessment, health assessment, your future behaviors, like how to learn better and how to perform better based on your brain type.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
So I could go through them really quick for everybody.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
I don't get to talk about this a lot, but this thing I'm most excited about is personalized learning performance. So we made it the four animals. It's kind of like the assessments that people take is like which Game of Thrones character or Harry Potter. And people could take it at mybrainanimal.com. It's free. It takes four minutes, multiple choice. And think about your brain code, C-O-D-E.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
And I made it an acronym for the animals. So the C are your cheetahs. And if people happen to be watching this on your video, I'm just showing a picture of a cheetah. The cheetah, their dominant brain type, their trait is action, right? Cheetahs are very fast. They go by their intuition. They don't have to think about things because they just, they act. And that's their dominant trait.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
The O in code are your owls. And your owls, their dominant trait is logic. They love to reason. They love to really use critical thinking. So the idea here is they love facts and they love formulas. They love figures. They love data. Your D in code are your dolphins. And dolphins, their dominant trait is creativity. You know, they love the power of the imagination.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
They're really good pattern recognizers. They have a vision of their life or maybe their business or their mission. Maybe other people can't see it yet, but they have a lot of passion behind that vision. And then finally, your E, the E in code are your elephants, and their dominant trait is empathy. And these are people who are great collaborators. They're great community builders.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
They have high levels of compassion. They want people to feel seen and heard. So the idea here is once you understand what brain animal you are, then we show people because it's just like wellness. Some things just don't move the needle or they're benign, right? You give people strategies and some people this diet really works for them or this exercise routine works for them.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
And sometimes it doesn't. This is personalized almost every area of your life. So as an example, And just to make it more vivid who these animals are, if you take a show like Friends, right, the TV sitcom, Ross would be your owl. He's your scientist. He's your professor, right? Loves the facts. Joey would be your cheetah. Doesn't think, just acts, right?
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
You don't have a memory, there's a three-stage process for memorizing something. You don't even have energy, there's a process for generating energy. You either have it or don't have it, then you're kind of stuck. But if it's a process, you just do it or don't do it. So next time you feel stalled and you're procrastinating, ask yourself this question.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
High intuition just does it. Phoebe was the one that plays a lot of music and the artist. She's your dolphin. Monica loves to host. Everything has to be at her apartment and she brings everyone together and she would be your elephant. And essentially, we had recently our team take this assessment. And it's funny, 100% of our customer service, our customer support team,
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
turned out to be, what animal would you guess?
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
Exactly. Your elephants.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
Perfect. And we didn't hire for that, but we realized that we've been working with a lot of companies and they're using this model to hire for various positions. For example, our CEO is an owl. He needs to see the numbers every single day. My business partner, our CEO, she's a dolphin, very strong dolphin, is very vision driven. And so it's interesting how that plays out.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
Like our creative team, you know, are also a lot of dolphins. And it's interesting. You could parent that way. You could have your kids take it. Because think about it. Cheetah would read, they would be more skimming, right? Doing these short study sprints where creatives like dolphins are going to visualize more of what they read as an example.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
It would layer over cheetahs and also your elephants who are very attuned also with feelings and their body and their kinesthetic. So it's interesting. Even with sales, you could apply this not only for learning, but for sales. If you're selling to an owl, you want to make sure you have all the facts and all the research, all the evidence that shows this is possible.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
If you're selling to a dolphin, you would be able to... hear their vision of their life and see how your product or service, you know, fits into that. If you're selling to an elephant, great facts and great vision, but they need to, the relationship itself is more important than, you know, in terms of trust and making them feel seen and heard. And so-
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
And since everything comes back to the brain, it's how even, not only how you learn, it's how you communicate, right? Cheetos, because they get straight to the point, right? Their speech is more concise, more focused, action-oriented. They dislike beating around the bush, right? Because that would waste time. You know, as opposed to an owl, they prefer details.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
They communicate in a logical sequence. They present facts and figures and data. And dolphins, though, they speak about the bigger picture, about future plans, about innovative ideas, whereas elephants are really keen on understanding and validating the feelings and perspectives of others. So it's interesting how it plays out in, you know, day to day.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
Yeah. So when people are learning, even when they're listening to this, there's a learning curve, but there's definitely a forgetting curve also as well. When you hear something on a podcast or you read it in a book, upwards of 80% of it is lost within 48 hours. That can be a challenge, right? And one of the ways to mitigate that obviously is taking notes.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
And I know taking is one of the most powerful tools for learning and for memory, and it doesn't just help you just capture information, it could help you to deepen your understanding and your retention of the material. Now, some people prefer digital note-taking. Some people prefer handwriting notes.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
When people are tested, university students, for comprehension and retention, handwriting notes outscores digital note-taking.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
Yes. So digital, you know, is very convenient in terms of storing your notes or sharing your notes with with other people. But in terms of actual learning, understanding, consolidation, handwriting notes outperforms. I like a very simple way of taking notes. I take a piece of paper and I put a line down the page and on the left side I capture, on the right side I create.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
So it's very subtle difference. Like capturing the how to remember names, how do you read faster, how do you learn a language, you're capturing that information. But if your attention's going to wander, I'd rather wander on the right side of the page and you're going to create. You're going to write your impressions of what you're capturing. So it could be, how can I use this?
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
How does this relate to what I already know? What questions do I have that I want to post on social media to ask about what I'm learning about now? When will I use this? You know, scheduling and so on. So on the left side, you're capturing or you're note-taking. On the right side, you're creating or note-making. So note-taking, note-making.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
It's just more of a whole brain way of taking notes, you know, kind of using the logical and the imagination. But anything that when your note, I mean, it can be mind mapping. There's so many different ways of taking notes.
Healing + Human Potential
Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70
You know, if you could activate multiple senses, especially if you're writing, there's hand physical movement, there's visual engagement, there's cognitive processing, which first is your memory. And when you're taking notes, you have to be an active listener, right? It requires you to focus, to think about the information, maybe summarize things, your own words, to filter what's important.