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Tom Bilyeu
You're listening to the Impact Theory podcast, your source of empowering ideas and actionable techniques from the world's highest achievers. Join host Tom Bilyeu, serial entrepreneur and co founder of the billion dollar brand Quest Nutrition, on a journey to unlock your potential and realize your vision of success. Welcome to Impact Theory.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
We are with none other than. Jim Quick is in the house. If you guys haven't seen his episode of Impact Theory yet, watch it, watch it, watch it. It was amazing. And for those of you that have seen the Inside Quest episode that Jim and I did together, this one was radically different. It was amazing. I was so grateful. You want to talk about being grateful for stuff? I was very sick on the day that we recorded our episode and you came in and saved my ass and absolutely crushed it. I think I. I only had to ask like two or three questions. It was amazing, man. And I really, really am very grateful people knew that. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, I talked about it for sure.
Jim Kwik
So. Okay, cool. Cool.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
Really, really incredible. And it gave such a totally different interview than we had done the first time, which is always my thing. Like, doing a second interview is actually surprisingly hard. Like, the first one is easy, but then the second one, you want to tread new water. And so you showed up and played to win. Yeah, I was very grateful.
Jim Kwik
Congratulations to you and the entire team. It's always. It blows me away. And. And Lisa, oh, my God, the podcast. That's so awesome.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
Cherokee podcast lit the world on fire their very first day. They went to number one in the health category. It was nuts. So yeah, we're all pretty jazzed up around here, so very exciting. All right, I want to invite Mr. Agent Smith himself, Jared, to join us. And we're going to be doing. Yay. We're going to be doing a little bit of brain training and. Yeah. So here we are.
Tom Bilyeu
Let's do this.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
Welcome.
Tom Bilyeu
Thank you.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
So for those of you that are meeting Jim for the first time, I think it needs to be said that Jim is an expert in learning, like the actual fundamental building blocks of what it takes to learn. His story is incredible. And if you want to see more about the story, we definitely cover that in the episode. So be sure to watch the Full Impact Theory episode that launched last Tuesday. Really, really fantastic. You'll get to hear all about his early brain trauma, how he overcame it. It's an absolutely miraculous story. I never get tired of hearing about it. And because of that, he's developed all kinds of amazing techniques that he's turned into his company, Quick Learning. And with that, Mr. Quick Learning himself. What are. What are some tips that you have that you can show us in real time here with Jared so we can
Jim Kwik
figure out how this learning hot seat.
Tom Bilyeu
I don't know what's going to happen here. We did not prepare in advance.
Jim Kwik
I didn't. I seen like three chairs up here, so this is very cool. Yeah, yeah.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
New to us as well.
Jim Kwik
Okay. So I think a lot of people who are watching this want to. What they'll say is they want to improve their memory, you know, and they're looking for some quick brain hacks, something they could do, apply towards their studies, something they could apply towards work or just every day kind of thing. And I mentioned it briefly and in one of our episodes, this one of this. This 2,500-year-old technique, which I know you're familiar with, it's this. This loci memory, basically saying that we tend to store information in our location. And that's. And because the reason why is because when we were hunter gatherers, we didn't need to memorize maybe numbers and definitions, stuff like that. Well, we needed to remember where. Where things were for our own survival. Right. And so it's like we need to know where the clean water was, where the good food is, the soil, enemy tribes and that. And so we learn to store information in our environment. In fact, when you forget someone's name, what's the first question you ask yourself? You're like, where do I know this person? Or where do I meet this person? Because the context gives you a lot of the Content. And I really do believe that if content is king, then context is the kingdom. And so the place really gives you the information. And so we learn to be able to store information around us in places. And so the idea behind this is take a place that you're very familiar with and store information that you need to remember as a file filing system around your environment. Probably the one that most people are most familiar with is like their home, right? Because they could imagine themselves in the kitchen, they could see all this stuff. And then what you're doing is you're creating landmarks, saying, okay, the microwave is the first place, the stove is the second place, the refrigerator is the third place, the dishwasher is the fourth place, and maybe the sink is the fifth place. But what the trick is, though, is turning the information you want to learn into a picture. Because we tend to think in pictures because we're very visual, right? Even when you're traveling, it doesn't. No longer. And I know you've been on the road for the past couple of weeks, right? It doesn't say, on the airplane, fasten your seatbelt or no smoking. What do you see? You see, like, icons, right? Those icons, right? Because we think in icons, we think in symbols, we think in pictures, because a picture is worth a thousand words, no matter what language people are in. And so sometimes we talk more quickly when we're in that visual mode because you have to keep up with all the pictures. And you could tell us how fast someone thinks by how fast they're speaking also as well. Anyway, so you're taking the information you need to learn, and you're putting the first bit in the first place, the second bit in the second place, the third bit in the third place. And if you've ever found yourself saying that, like you're arguing with someone, saying in the first place this, in the second place that, and the third place that languaging came from, that technique. That technique is 2,500 years old, but the languaging is still here, right? Because that's how people used to remember large bits of information. And so what we're going to do is just for practice for people at home is we'll take another place that we're all familiar with because we all live in different homes. Is your body, right? You can create your body, use it as a location, and we could store information we want to remember on our body. And I had a student. This is great. I love working with children because children, if they can learn how to learn earlier, learn how to think Learn how to focus, Learn how to read faster, Learn how to remember more. They have such an advantage. And so this child, he was struggling in. In school, and he would work, work, work. And I was helping his parents out with something, and they asked me to come in during dinner time, and I just showed him a few things on this exact technique. And the next exam he took, he took. He got an A on it, which is extraordinary. And his parents are like, how'd you do it? This is amazing. And he was like, I cheated. He was like, I did what? Jim said I cheated. And I was like, whoa, wait, I didn't say anything about cheating on your test. And it's a little boy. And he's like, yeah, I had all my notes with me. And I'm like, whoa. I'm like, explain to your parents how you had to. Your notes. He was like, no, it's not in the outside. Notes were on the inside.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
Wow.
Jim Kwik
And he was storing the things that he needed to remember on his body and in his home, in his bedroom. And so a simple example we could do is take 10 places on our body. And these are the 10 places that I like to use because I think we have this kinesthetic intelligence. And so we could do it together, just wearing name 10 places. And I encourage people who are watching at home to do this with me. This is something you could use to memorize a speech without notes. When you're public speaking, sometimes you don't need to remember things verbatim with actors. They need to remember things like word for word for word. But sometimes you just need to know, oh, what are the six points I need to go through? But what's important is the order of it, because sometimes as a speaker, you know this. Somebody interrupts you and asks a question, and then you get sidetracked and you're like, oh, where'd I leave off? And you try to remember where that is. So the seek syntax is very important. So what we're going to do is 10 places in our body. The first place is the top of our head. So number one is top. So just kind of touch the top of your head. This is going to be kind of number. One is top. You got it. Number two is nose.
Tom Bilyeu
Nose.
Jim Kwik
Three is your mouth. Mouth. And four are your ears.
Tom Bilyeu
Ears.
Jim Kwik
There you go. Five is your larynx, like your throat area. So that's one through five. Six is your shoulders.
Tom Bilyeu
Okay, Shoulders.
Jim Kwik
Seven is your collar.
Tom Bilyeu
Collar.
Jim Kwik
Eight are your fingers. Nine is your belly.
Tom Bilyeu
Belly.
Jim Kwik
And ten is your seat, like your rear end. Right. So we're going to go through it really fast one more time. One is your top.
Tom Bilyeu
Top.
Jim Kwik
Two is your nose.
Tom Bilyeu
Nose.
Jim Kwik
Three is your mouth.
Tom Bilyeu
Mouth.
Jim Kwik
And four are your ears.
Tom Bilyeu
Ears.
Jim Kwik
Good. Five is your larynx.
Tom Bilyeu
Larynx.
Jim Kwik
Six is shoulders.
Tom Bilyeu
Shoulders.
Jim Kwik
Seven is your collar. Eight are your fingers. Nine is your belly. And then 10 is your seat. So we have 10 places on your body. So here's a trick, right? This is the brain hack. Since we tend to remember things in different locations, these become filing systems. It's just like if you were, you're going to a party and there's like these hooks or these pegs. Outside of the, outside of the living room, you hang up your coat. You know, when you leave where your coat is, you just go to where the filing system is, right? So these are filing systems on your body. So let's say we need to memorize something very simple. Let's say we're going to do impact theory barbecue. It's going to be awesome. It's going to be a big meetup with fans and guests. And Tom calls you up, say, hey, can you stop by the grocery store and pick up these 10 things? And maybe you're in a place where you can't write them down. Maybe you're driving or you're in the shower. And I don't know why you would answer the phone in the shower. But he's like, rattles off these things. So what you're going to do with these ten things instead of. Now, most people in our traditional school system, it's rote memory, right? It's repetition. And that's how people memorize things. There, there was no creativity. There was no imagination. It was just hard. Push it into your head, oh, I got to get avocados. And just repeat it 50 times.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
And do you know the difference in the, in what's going on in the brain between a loci form and just brute force memorization?
Jim Kwik
We do, because, okay, so a lot of the way we could accelerate learning, whether it's reading faster or remembering something, 20% of the time, we do this thing where we teach students how to memorize 10 words a day in 10 minutes a day. Literally 300 new words a month. I mean, it's pretty extraordinary. State capitals, the periodic table. And literally, it's almost, not an exaggeration, seconds, because it's possible for them. Especially because the problem with rote learning is it's very left brain. Left brain is logical. It's words. It sounds even. When we talked about, you and I, we talked about speed reading. Like, how do you read something faster when you want to read faster? And one of the big obstacles is sub vocalization, which is that inner talk. And the reason why it's an obstacle to effective reading is because if you have to say all the words inside your mind, you know that voice you hear inside when you're reading to yourself? Hopefully it's your own voice. It's not like somebody else's voice.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
I use Jared sometimes just because it's better.
Jim Kwik
There are like two or three voices in there. You actually hear like Agent Smith. Like what?
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
Exactly.
Jim Kwik
That's awesome. The reason why it's an obstacle to effective reading is you have to say all the words inside your mind. You can only read as fast as you could speak. That means your reading speed is limited to your talking speed and not your thinking speed. That's why a lot of us, when we're listening to podcasts or audio, the audible or something, we're listening at one point, five or two point because we could think a lot faster. And that's a trick also for speed reading. Not to go off on a tangent, but people think if they read faster, they would not understand as much as they read. But in actuality, you actually understand more if it's done properly. Because when you read too slow, you're starving your brain for the stimulus, so it starts distracting. You know, when people read, they'll read a page in a book and get to the end, just forget what they just read. Because your mind is not there. It's because it's like driving slow. You know, you're doing like five different things when you're driving slow. But if you're racing cars, all your focus is on what's in front of you. Same thing with reading, but going back to the sub vocalization. When you're saying the words, you don't have to pronounce the words to actually understand what those words are. And so I would say when people read, mostly it's a left brain process, much like rote learning. It's just, you know, the sounds, which is like on the left side. Now, it's a lot more complicated than that because it's more metaphoric, because it's more than just left and right brain, obviously. But if you were to, if you were hooked up to a brain sensing device when people are reading a lot of your left side up, when people are going through repetition, learning, basically, you know this because it's neuroplasticity every time you learn a fact. It's kind of like a Little thread between two brain cells. And when you repeat it, it becomes, you know, a little bit thicker, A little bit thicker. After 50 times, your brain registers, okay, this must be important. And then it. The only problem with it though is through repetition is it takes time. And that's the thing. And it's mind dulling for a lot of people just to sit there and not know relevancy, not have context. But meanwhile, your creative side, your imaginative side, your experiential side, is not getting entertained. So it tends to go out there and think about other things that are going on. And so I would always think there's actually three factors. Even when you're working out your body or even when you're talking about marketing. I mean, I'm thinking about frequency, duration and intensity. So frequency is like you're going to the gym, you want to build your body, you go more frequently, right? Or duration is like you spend more time on the treadmill, right? More time holding that pose. Duration. And then there's intensity, which could shortcut it because you could get some pretty magnificent fitness achievements by making. Because if you go to, then you do frequency and duration, but you're not using any intensity, you're not going to get the result also. So the goal here is I focus on when it comes to your memory and learning, fully immersive, fully intense, meaning using as much of your brain and as much of your senses and this thing called synesthesia where there's this overlapping of senses together and then it becomes more emotional, more creative and you're more likely to remember it. So that's intense. As opposed to frequency and duration. Because the problem with frequency duration is they both take time, whether it's building your body or building a business. Marketing too, right? Marketing could be frequency. See the ad alive, right? Or duration. It could be like a really long ad or infomercial. But intensity is like something that grabs your attention. It goes viral right away because it's just so intense and get shared and all that good stuff. So going back to the difference between rote memory and using more of a whole brain method, just like whole brain note taking, a lot of people take Larry Lepbrain notes, which is outline one little, a Roman numeral, stuff like that. And you could have something more important on page six than it's on page one. But, but the way it's set up, you don't really see that. As opposed to whole brain note taking, something like mind mapping or some kind of visual mapping where you have the main idea in the center, like the center of a tree, and then the branches are coming out that show you how things are related. So all of a sudden you could have this thing called health in between the main trunk and then have something like a branch coming out, say nutrition, branch coming out, saying exercise and so on. But then nutrition, you could break down into what kind of nutrition. Okay, I get nutrition through. Here's my diet. Another branch coming off of that branch, another branch coming off nutrition called supplement. And then all of a sudden you could go down to some rare wild salmon. That leads to this, leads to this, to fish, to protein, to your diet, to nutrition, back to health. And it's embedded together and go to exercise. You could do the same thing. But that would be a whole brain way of taking notes, using colors and images that not only is it going to help people remember it better, but it is also it'll help you make notes where a lot of people, you know, I know you're very prolific, right, with all your ideas and such. And so you could actually use this way of not only just capturing information, but making new connections that you haven't seen before. And that's more right brain. And so just like with speed reading, for example, left brain is more words and everything. But what I like to get people to is not say the words, but just really experience the words. It's kind of like I remember seeing one of our students, he's on our online speed reading course. And he was like, jim, I saw him on the street. He was like, jim, I have a funny story for you. I recently reread a book that I haven't read since your course. And it was totally different the second time. I was like, what do you mean? I was like, what book was it? He was like, it was the Old man in the Sea. And I was like, well, how is it different? I don't think Hemingway updated the book recently. He was like, the second time, though, after training the reading, I felt like I was in the book. I could hear the ocean waves. I could feel the sand beneath my toes. He said, the one thing I didn't like was the smell of the fish. But that's like a whole right brain experience rather than. Or more whole brain experience than just just hearing the words, right? And so everything that I'm talking about even like showing. Going through this grocery list, right? So people are just joining us. I'm going to give a tip on how to. How to remember facts and give a speech without notes, maybe even a grocery list. And so what we did was, it's using your creative side. And so we put 10 places on our body. And for people just tuning in really fast, number one is your top of your head. Number two is your nose. Numbers going down the body. Three is your mouth. Four is your ears. Five is your larynx, like your throat. Six are your shoulders. Seven is your collar. Eight is your fingers. Nine is your belly. And then 10 is your seat. So we have 10 places on your body. And this is a 2,500-year-old memory technique. It's so cool. It gets me so excited. When I started studying this. It's attributed to Simonides. And Simonides is a Greek orator and he was giving a poetry reading. And after he was done, something really tragic happened. The building collapsed and killed everyone there. And he, being the sole survivor, had the respons coming back and helping family members identify their loved ones. But back then, it wasn't made out of sheetrock and wood. Buildings were like stone. Right. And so he was able to remember who everyone was based on where they were sitting. And you could do that too. I think everyone at home can remember last time they went out for dinner or conference. They remember who's sitting around their table. Because again, we store information in our environment, which is really interesting. One tangent. I would just love to test this on you if you. And people could do this if they're not like driving or operating heavy machinery. I know a lot of people listen to your show when they're. While operating heavy machinery or they're on a treadmill or something like this.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
Put that backhoe down for a second.
Jim Kwik
So if you take a deep breath and just exhale and Agent Smith, you could do this with me. I want you to think about some and everyone at home who can do this. Do this.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
Eyes closed.
Jim Kwik
Eyes closed. Ideally because it helps you focus. Ideally, I want you to imagine. Imagine somebody that you really like. Just imagine if their presence was here. Just point in that direction. There's no right or wrong. But if. Depending on what kind of rhythm that you're in right now in terms of your brain, if you could get a sense of somebody that you care about, just point in that direction. Just any direction. There's no right or wrong. Just point in direction of somebody that you have. Generally, if you get a sense of where they are, just point in that direction. Good. Now I want you to think about somebody. Now take a deep. Another breath. And now exhale. And just think about someone you necessarily don't really like very much. Not that we hate anybody, but just like somebody that we do, Jim. Somebody we maybe don't have a really have positive feelings about. Get a sense of where that person is and point in that direction. Wow. Interesting. And so what I would say is like, okay, open your eyes. Just breathe. Isn't it interesting that I ask you to imagine somebody that you like and you point in one direction and then ask you somebody who you don't like, you point in a different direction? Because we store. This is like our coding system, we store information in our environment. And it also is like a shortcut to teach us how to feel about things. Just one more time, just humor me. This. Take a deep breath, exhale. And people do this at home. Point in the direction of something that's. Point in direction to something that's in your past. Just point in the direction. Where does the past feel like for you when you think about past memories? Point in that direction. Interesting. And now erase that. Now I want you to think about something that's going to happen in the future. It's going to happen in the future at some point. It's a memory, it's a future, future memory, if you will. You know, it's going to happen. You're going to brush your teeth tonight or there's a birthday party, whatever it is. Future memory, point in that direction. Interesting. So open your eyes. Isn't it interesting that you, that you point in two separate directions? Like some people, when I ask what's in your past, they point to the left. And what's in your future, they point to the right. And I ask you what's point. Or some people point behind them like the two of you did. And I said, what's, you know, what's your future look like? And it's somewhere else. And that's how we, that's our timeline. That's our imaginary timeline that we have. So there's this thing like this timeline therapy where if you connect, connected the dots between where your past is, where your future is, you could actually, you know, when we talk about, imagine your goals, envision your goals. What if you actually put those right in your timeline? You know what I mean? And when you're looking to make changes in what happened in the past, what if you actually go in the past and use not to forget about what happened in the past, but just take the angst out of it. Right. And you could kind of change your associations to that. So my point in bringing this up is we store emotions and feelings and sensations and people all around us, our memories. So that was more of an experiential thing. So now we have our 10 places in our body, and what we're going to do is. So Simonides realized that he could remember things based on where things were. So he came up with this technique of memorizing speeches, like the 10 points to a speech, like the 10 places in his living room. And he would put all that stuff. Or when you're giving a presentation, which I know you do a lot in these keynotes, and I know you're amazing with your Q and A's, by the way, the fact that you stay until every single question is answered, that's grit. I mean, it's passion, too. For me, I'm more of an introvert, so it's amazing. I was just blown away because I have so many people tell me recently that they saw you over the. Anyway, wow. Thank you. Big, big props. But if you need to give a presentation, you store the information in those 10 places, and those are your key points for your speech. So let's say you get a call saying, okay, we're going to have an impact theory meetup, and everyone's going to get together, please pick up these 10 things at the grocery store. Now what you're going to do instead of writing down or putting in your phone. You know, we talked about digital dementia and how we're outsourcing our smart. You know, our smarts to our devices, our memory, and we're losing that potential to memorize things ourselves. Like, just put the first thing in the first place, I think. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to give you my 10 favorite brain foods. These are the staple for my diet. Because, you know, there's some foods out there that really wreck your brain, right? That make you more hyperactive, that make you distracted. It's not good for your memory, that really drain your energy. So these are my top 10 favorite. They're not the most powerful brain foods, but they're up there and they taste great, Right? All right, so what we're going to do is I'm going to name all 10. The first thing you're going to put in the first place, the second thing you're going to put in the second place. And so.
Tom Bilyeu
Okay.
Jim Kwik
All right, you ready? Yeah. Hang on. I'll test you afterwards.
Tom Bilyeu
Let's do it.
Jim Kwik
That's it. All right, so. And here's the glue. What you're going to do is you're going to put it there, but you want to use exaggeration. You want to make it funny, you want to make it Humorous, because what glues it is, here's the key to memory. Information combined with emotion becomes a long term memory. Information alone is not memorable because it's ordinary. And that's just. There's so much stimulus. And you know this, there's billions of stimulus coming into our senses right now. And primarily our nervous system is there to delete information because if it wasn't, we would just go, go start crazy, right? And so the goal is like there's any, all this stimulus out there. And so where do we focus in on? What we're going to focus is on is we're going to make it extraordinary. So what makes it extraordinary for me is emotion. So you want to make it humorous, you make, you make it violent or whatever. But the thing is, what do I see and what do I feel? Because you're already hearing it. So you already have the auditory component. But if you want to hit all three learning styles, you want to make sure, like what do I see and how does that make me feel? All right, so the first one on the. What's your first place? Face.
Tom Bilyeu
Top.
Jim Kwik
The top. And I want you to imagine avocados.
Tom Bilyeu
Avocados.
Jim Kwik
Avocados on the top of your head. All right, so what are you doing? Just like pretend you're like 8 years old.
Tom Bilyeu
I would just imagine that my head is a giant avocado.
Jim Kwik
There you go, perfect.
Tom Bilyeu
Top of the head. Avocado.
Jim Kwik
Or maybe somebody's coming. Maybe Tom's making some like guacamole on, on your, on your head. Yeah, yeah, whatever. So like, whatever and that, like what would an 8 year old do? And that all of a sudden it's more memorable as opposed to just repeating. Okay, Avocados, Avocados. All right, the second place, what's the second place on your body? It's your nose. And I want you to remember blueberries, right? Blueberries. Good for the brain. Blueberries, I call them brain berries. So I just want you to imagine blueberries coming out of your nose, right? You're sneezing blueberries everywhere. It's really gross.
Tom Bilyeu
Blueberries stuck in your nose.
Jim Kwik
There you go.
Tom Bilyeu
That's what I, that's what I think.
Jim Kwik
And here's the thing. That's the goal. For things to be unforgettable. Because if that ever happened, would you ever forget that?
Tom Bilyeu
No.
Jim Kwik
Would you have to repeat it 100 times to memorize it? No. It happens once. If someone actually made guacamole in your head, you'd be remember that 50 years from now you'd be telling you Know your grandchildren all about that, right? Okay, so that's what. That's what it's about. Make it intense. But that's the difference between frequency, int, you know, frequency, duration and intensity. Right? You don't have to study five hours, you know, for it to be there. The third place is what?
Tom Bilyeu
Mouth.
Jim Kwik
Your mouth. I want you to imagine broccoli.
Tom Bilyeu
Broccoli.
Jim Kwik
Let me hear some broccoli in your teeth. But here's the thing. If you make it too ordinary, you're not going to remember it because we forget the ordinary, right? We remember the extraordinary. So how do you make it? See, that's the thing with memory. It's a representation. It's a representation inside your mind. So you can make it however you want. Right? And so broccoli.
Tom Bilyeu
Broccoli is just. There's just a giant bowl of broccoli in my mouth. That's all I can think about.
Jim Kwik
And you could taste it, too, right?
Tom Bilyeu
I know how broccoli tastes. It's not the best.
Jim Kwik
But the fourth place is what? Ears is your ears is the fourth place on your body. And I want you to remember coconut oil.
Tom Bilyeu
Coconut oil.
Jim Kwik
This has been in the news a little bit.
Tom Bilyeu
Okay.
Jim Kwik
This could be a little controversial, but coconut oil coming out of your ears.
Tom Bilyeu
Coming out of my ears?
Jim Kwik
I don't know, coconut something. Or maybe you're cleaning your ears with
Tom Bilyeu
coconut oil spewing out of my ears.
Jim Kwik
Taste it. Smell. It's kind of crazy, right?
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah.
Jim Kwik
Okay, the fifth place is your what? It's your larynx. All right? And the fifth place I want you to remember. Eggs. So just eggs, okay. If that happens to be someone's diet, the eggs could be good for you, for your brain. Eggs.
Tom Bilyeu
What's the movie where he swallow. He eats all the eggs. Was it Cool Hand Luke?
Jim Kwik
Oh, really?
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
Yeah.
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, that's what I'm gonna think.
Jim Kwik
It's like an egg stuck there. Yeah, perfect. So, by the way, now let's just test this. See, we're halfway there. This is five. What was the first?
Tom Bilyeu
First.
Jim Kwik
What was the first place?
Tom Bilyeu
So avocado.
Jim Kwik
Avocado. Second place.
Tom Bilyeu
Second place is. Blueberries in my nose.
Jim Kwik
You're really good. Three is what?
Tom Bilyeu
That's gonna be Broccoli.
Jim Kwik
And then what's four?
Tom Bilyeu
Coconut oil.
Jim Kwik
Very cool. And number five.
Tom Bilyeu
That's gonna be the eggs.
Jim Kwik
Very nice. We're halfway there. So six is your what?
Tom Bilyeu
Shoulders.
Jim Kwik
Your shoulders. And I want you just to imagine green leafy vegetables. Green leafy vegetables. Spinach.
Tom Bilyeu
Okay. I'm thinking about the jolly green Giant for some reason.
Jim Kwik
Okay. Just because he's.
Tom Bilyeu
Isn't he in like a vegetable sh.
Jim Kwik
He's like hanging out on your shoulders. Yeah. You have like a good one. Like a saint one and like a devil wine.
Tom Bilyeu
I think that's what he's.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
You would describe it like that. It's 100% accurate, by the way.
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
But nobody else's vegetable shroud.
Tom Bilyeu
That's right.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
It's good.
Jim Kwik
There's green leafy vegetables. Green leafy vegetables. Okay. Seventh place is what color? And I want you to remember salmon.
Tom Bilyeu
Okay.
Jim Kwik
Right. Certain fish is really.
Tom Bilyeu
That's easy because the collar of a fish is like their neck, essentially.
Jim Kwik
There you go.
Tom Bilyeu
Right now.
Jim Kwik
Really tasty. Here's the thing. Don't make it. Make sure you don't make it too logical. So make sure. What do you see? What can you see? Because that's what you're going to remember.
Tom Bilyeu
So we're just a necklace of salmon collars.
Jim Kwik
Oh, nice.
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah.
Jim Kwik
So it'd be salmon also good. Or, you know, small fish, like sardines and all that stuff. Because you have your fish oils and everything.
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah.
Jim Kwik
All right, so that's seven. Eight is your what?
Tom Bilyeu
Fingers.
Jim Kwik
Your fingers. Superfood that I've started incorporating in my diet is turmeric. Turmeric. Because same reason I do a lot. Some cold therapy and stuff like that to lower inflammation. So, so turmeric, you know, what do you do?
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
Like, I don't know what turmeric is, what it looks like, tastes like nothing.
Jim Kwik
Okay.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
So like really simple.
Jim Kwik
You go to grocery store and they actually sell turmeric powder. So it's a seasoning.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
Okay.
Jim Kwik
And so it's like this golden yellow orange.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
Advice, though, like, do you suggest to use a mnemonic? Like, let's say I was hearing the word turmeric for the first time. So now I have to remember two things. One, that it's my fingers.
Jim Kwik
Actually.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
Three, it's position. Eight, it's my fingers.
Jim Kwik
Good.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
It's called turmeric.
Jim Kwik
Yeah.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
Which is turmeric. Right. And then I have to remember that it's like a seasoning. So how do I. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Hold all of that.
Jim Kwik
Let's. Let's unpack that. So if somebody is watching this and they don't know what turmeric is. Right. And so we learn best. Everyone's a little bit different. I know you're very auditory because you like to have discussions and you like to listen to things. Everyone is different for more than. Most people are more visual because if they See it, they tend to remember it a little bit better also. It's only because the way your brain is, more space is being taken up by the visual cortex and such. There's a Chinese proverb that goes, what I hear, I forget what I see. I remember what I do, I understand. Like, like, it's like people with names.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
That's really good, by the way.
Jim Kwik
Yeah, it's like with like, names and faces, right? People always remember the face. They don't remember the name, right? You go to someone and say, hey, I. I remember your face, but I forgot you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You never go to someone to say the opposite.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
You never go say, hey, Timmy, I don't recognize your face at all.
Jim Kwik
I remember your name totally. Yeah. So never thought about that. I mean, think about it. It's like, so the Chinese proverbs, like, what I hear, I forget what I see, I remember what I do, I understand what I hear, I forget I heard the name, I forgot the. The name, but I see, I remember, I saw the face, I remember the face and what I do. Going back to practice, you know, because I feel like people don't really understand something unless they could do it, right? It's like intellectually they might get it, but now if they're not doing it, I don't feel like they really understand it. So for the. For example, here my goal with something. Something turmeric. Now your. Your auditory memory will. Your true memory will know it because it could remember so much information. You just need a prompt to help remind you a lot of the times. And a lot of stuff we teach with quick learning is like a shortcut to over. What I call the six second syndrome. It's like somebody gives you their name, you better do something with that name because you have six seconds. Because what happens after six seconds, it's like gone. The ether of the. Of the universe, right? You break. You break the handshake and it just falls right to the ground and you can't remember it. So you want something to capture in your working memory. And so lots of times what I'll ask people to do, because we knew we've had this conversation before about observation skills and attention taken, like with like President Clinton and all that being powerfully present is we're putting your attention to the person's name and trying to turn. Take that thing and turn it into a picture, right? Because if you could turn into a picture, you're more likely to remember. Because we think in pictures, we dream in pictures, right? I don't think anybody has dreams and sees closed caption on the bottom, like scrolling down and stuff. Like in words, right? But we think in pictures. We dream in pictures and images in the kind of video screen. So I would say one of the things that I would ask people to do just because they already heard it through auditory is I would ask them to picture it. And it's like playing Pictionary. Like, you remember that game, your play picked this period where you have like a. Like a. Like a whiteboard or something like that. And you had to get people to, to say, okay, this is like, you know, movie. You know, it has this many words like breakfast at Tiffany's. And you would actually draw like breakfast eggs and bacon and stuff like that. Like Tiffany's, like a little blue Tiffany's, you know, jewelry box and stuff like that. And people would know. But if you don't know what something is, you would draw like a little ear. Because ear means what sounds like. Sounds like, right? So if you don't know what turmeric is, then you. And you're right, you would come up that one of those methods would be coming up with a word or a picture that sounds like it. And people inherently do this because when people forget people's names, right? And what do they do? They. Sometimes they go through the Alphabet. Does it start with an A? Does it start with a? B? Does it start with C? And nobody's ever learned that. Everybody organically comes up with the idea because. Oh, D. David, it reminds you because that little thing. Because your true memory, it's stored there, there. You just need to retrieve it out. But there's three parts to your memory. There's three stages. It encodes it stores, and then retrieval. A lot of times people, it's in there, but you can't get it out because the way you encoded it. If you can encode it with more senses, right? Imagination, you see it, feel it, taste it, then it's going to store a lot better. So when you need to pull it out, you have more connections to it.
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Tom Bilyeu (Host)
really fast. I'm going to Interrupt you? Are you doing what I'm doing? Are you, like, cycling through to make sure you don't forget?
Tom Bilyeu
No, but.
Jim Kwik
Really? Yeah.
Tom Bilyeu
I mean, but I am thinking about how we're now going far away from the list, and then it's gonna get harder.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
I can't tell if he's doing it to fuck with us or like, you know, like he just wants to see how far can I go.
Tom Bilyeu
But I have my Jim Rick picture already.
Jim Kwik
And the point is, yes, I am, because I like to practice under real conditions. Because one of the things that messes with people's memories, you know, this is this distortion. We tend to generalize and delete and distort and there's always distractions going on, right? So we might as well learn under ideal situations. Just like if you're practicing anything in real life, in business or in martial arts or fighting, like, you want to practice under real Goliath conditions, like when we practice speed reading and stuff like that, I want people doing it in the real world because when is it ever completely quiet and no distractions? And that's where you build muscle. So. So turmeric, right? All we would do here is. So turmeric is yellow. Orangey powder turns everything yellow. So just imagine turmeric on your fingers, like finger painting, by the way, I use it to make it. And this is going to be one cool, really cool impact theory barbecue with the turmeric and everything. But actually for people. I just did a podcast on my morning routines, and turmeric tea is really good for you. You mix turmeric. So turmeric helps to lower inflammation in your body, which could lead to a lot of challenges, even inflammation in different parts of your system, your organs and stuff. But turmeric. And then put a little pepper in there because it helps you absorb it. And it's just delicious, delicious. You can put some almond milk. Great. They called it, like a golden milk. It's turmeric all over your fingers, Right? And finally, nine and ten, the ninth thing, ninth place is what?
Tom Bilyeu
The belly.
Jim Kwik
Your belly. And I want you to remember walnuts. Just imagine walnuts on, I don't know, walnuts coming out of your belly button, right? Like, it takes. The reason why intensity works is you don't have to repeat it. You could just see it once or feel it and you're like, done. Yeah. Right. And so walnuts. And notice how walnuts look like the brain. There's this thing, like the signature of foods. Like literally a sign, signature, sign. The sign of nature. And so like, you know when you cut into a carrot and you see like, you know, the side of it, you see the inside, you see, it looks like an eye. Cause it looks like, like the organ that it's serving, right? Same thing with, with walnuts, because it looks like the brain. Avocado is good for like female reproductive. All. All this. There's this whole thing, right. It's kind of interesting how food kind of could look like what the place is helping. So imagine walnuts coming out of your bel. And finally the 10th place is your. What?
Tom Bilyeu
Seat.
Jim Kwik
Your seat. And dark chocolate, I don't even need. I don't even know. I don't even wanna know what image you're picturing and stuff. But.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
Well, that makes that easy.
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, okay.
Jim Kwik
Dark chocolate could be sugar free, whatever. But it's good for you, it's good for your brain, right? Just endorphins put you in a good mood, which is, which is great also as well. So that's the 10. So now check this out. We haven't even gone through it. I distract you because I went on this whole tangent for 15 minutes.
Tom Bilyeu
You put a lot of distractions in there.
Jim Kwik
Yes. So now, now you're at the grocery store, right? And we have this impact theory meetup. Are you doing meetups?
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
Yeah, we just did one in London, sub London. And we did one here in la, which sadly I wasn't here for, but that's awesome.
Jim Kwik
So now you have the 10 things you need to buy for the party.
Tom Bilyeu
All right, don't buy.
Jim Kwik
And so now you're at the grocery store. Now as you're walking down the aisles, you're just looking up and down your body saying, what do I need to buy? Cause you know, have you ever gone to the grocery store or gone to the store, you had one thing to buy and you literally went to the mall for one thing, or the bookstore, one thing. Target sauce, tartar sauce. And you come back with like a bag full of stuff or two bags of stuff with everything but the one thing that you need to buy, right? So now. And some people write it on a list and they forget their list or it's on their phone, their phone dies or whatever. So now you don't need your grocery list and triplicates, right? You have it with you. What's the first thing you need to buy?
Tom Bilyeu
Avocados.
Jim Kwik
Avocados.
Tom Bilyeu
Top of my head.
Jim Kwik
Yeah. And I want people like, it'd be cool if they could. People that could post like their answers down on the, on the chat and stuff. Like that people are watching.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
Yeah. I want to see if they remember. I'm trying to, like, in my head, silently, see if I can get it to. Before you say it.
Jim Kwik
The second is what?
Tom Bilyeu
The second is my nose. And those are going to be blueberries.
Jim Kwik
Blueberries. Those are our blueberries or brain berries. Number three is. What else do you need to buy?
Tom Bilyeu
The mouth. And I need to get broccoli.
Jim Kwik
Broccoli, Very good.
Tom Bilyeu
Next fourth is the ears. And that's going to be coconut oil.
Jim Kwik
Dude, Agent Smith's, like, crushing this. Number five is what?
Tom Bilyeu
The larynx. And that's eggs.
Jim Kwik
Eggs. Very good. Six.
Tom Bilyeu
Six is. Is that shoulders?
Jim Kwik
Yeah.
Tom Bilyeu
Okay, so leafy greens.
Jim Kwik
Yeah, you're leafy greens. Perfect. Number seven.
Tom Bilyeu
Seven is going to be the collar. That's salmon sal.
Jim Kwik
Eight.
Tom Bilyeu
Eight is turmeric.
Jim Kwik
Turmeric on your fingers. Nine is.
Tom Bilyeu
Nine is walnuts on the belly and then chocolate.
Jim Kwik
Let's just give him a hand. That's just like.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
That was good. That was good.
Jim Kwik
Respect. Now it takes so much more time to explain it. Right. You know, than actually to do it. Because then actually when you did it, it just takes like a couple of seconds. Right. But it's kind of nice also because your memory gets better because you're also training your focus.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
How often do you use this in real life? Yeah, that's what I want to know.
Jim Kwik
No kids kidding. Daily.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
Really? What's something you did today, then?
Jim Kwik
So here's the thing.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
And do you use those ten things? Always.
Jim Kwik
Okay, so this is great because I love rolling up my sleeves and doing, like, getting into the micro of this. So I have to answer your question. I have multiple lists, and this is just something.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
This is just based on different physical things. So one's the body, one's the kitchen,
Jim Kwik
that kind of stuff. This is also. I use it when it's practical. Right. I mean, I'm still not. I mean, I don't want to memorize, like, you know, people see me memorize, like, numbers and forwards and PI, you know, all that stuff. And they use the same methods. It's just different. It's tweaked towards whatever the outcome is. But I use it to the degree for two things. I use it for convenience because it's there. Right. But number two, I do it also for training because I also feel like you do things for two reasons. I think mental intelligence is good to be able to know stuff and know facts and figures and foreign languages, formulas and all that stuff. But I'm even more interested in besides mental intelligence and Intelligence, you can define many different ways, but just say, like, you know a lot of stuff, right? You are in jeopardy. You're crushing it. Um, but equal to mental intelligence and mental fitness, you know what I mean? Like, I. I just want, like a youthful mind, you know, I want one that. That's sharp, that's focused, that has its imagination intact. Sometimes when people go through life, sometimes they. They dumb it down a little bit because they're not challenging themselves in new ways. This is my, like, my practice, and this is just one of the practice. And I find that when I'm remembering someone's name, like, I use the method every single time when I meet people's names really now, now after a while, when you get really good at it, you start doing it and you start remembering names because that's just who you are. We talked about in our episode, these levels, logical levels of change everywhere from identity to environment. You started seeing yourself as somebody who's capable, that's smart, and so on. But even when I need to remember 50 people's names at an event, I'll actually use the same method that we teach in these kind of conversations that we're having, because it focuses my attention, it gets me present with somebody, it gets me focused on these.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
Have you read Moonwalking with Einstein?
Jim Kwik
I do.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
Okay, so do you. So for anybody watching, the book is about a guy who starts cold and decides to become a memory champion and actually does. And he learns all these techniques using mnemonic devices, the, like, crazy intense imagery like we just did with blueberries flying out of our nose, etc, And I wonder, do you like. So in that they'll. They'll assign like, numbers, like, it's always like, 13 is always a clown.
Jim Kwik
Right.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
And so. And it got me thinking when you said you've. How much. How many digits of PI have you memorized?
Jim Kwik
Well, I mean, I like, train a lot more people on how to do this kind of stuff because a lot of people who, like. So I was there, I was invited to go to many times to go to these championships.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
Right, right.
Jim Kwik
And the judge and that kind of stuff. And I was actually with Josh that day when he was.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
What's his full name? Josh.
Jim Kwik
Josh Forer. So Josh Forer wrote this book and he was basically a journalist. And he was so interested in this that he learned the stuff, came back a year later, Room one. Exactly what you said. And so he and I have a picture of us having lunch the day he, you know, he did a morning session competition. We had lunch together just the two of us. And then he won it that afternoon. It was one day in New York City. Really, really great. But they all use some kind of these methods, 100% of them. And I've spent a lot of time and you know, most, a lot of them are my students and such and they buy our programs. And I could tell you that 100% of them, and I like 99% of them will all say if you ask them that they weren't born with this ability to memorize like, you know, like that, like hundreds of digits of like binary numbers or, or you know, faces or anything else like that.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
But do you, do you personally like predetermined numbers or names as things?
Jim Kwik
Yeah. So I have a. So for, for. For pictures. Yes. So one of the methods.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
Pictures.
Jim Kwik
So sorry, Sorry. So for, for certain things I turn to pictures always. So names and numbers, 100% because they're like pre established.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
So every time you meet A Tom, it's 100% something. That's awesome.
Jim Kwik
And some of those came very early in my career because here's the thing, like a lot of people forget people's names because it's abstract. Like a name is abstract just like a number. Like what does 1792 even? What is, how is that any different than 1787? Like people like, well, let's say it's a PIN number for your, for your ATM machine or anything that you need to. Or maybe it's your hotel room or all the things that we need to memorize all the time. The problem is with numbers and names, they're abstract and so it's not tangible for us to be able to remember. So the idea here is that the only ultimate TIP tip is turn into picture. Because if you can imagine it, you could remember it, right? And so for example, when you're meeting someone for the first time, you would pick a point on their body, right? So I teach this thing called pie P, I, E. And I say learning names or remember is just as easy as PI, right? So the P stands for place. Remember, you need a place to store the information. The I is you imagine the information and then the E is you entwine the information together. Together. So really simple. So that's exactly what we did here, right? You picked a place on the top of your head, you imagine the avocado and then you entwine the two together. And then all of a sudden memorable. And I promise you, like five days from now I'll be like, do you remember that list?
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
And it's gonna, I'M actually really curious to see if that's true.
Jim Kwik
I would. I would love that.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
I'm one of those dumbasses that you talk about that say over and over. They have a bad memory. And so they have a bad memory because they keep saying they have a bad memory. So I'm really curious to see.
Tom Bilyeu
We'll have to test it out. We'll go live real quick on Friday.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
We should.
Jim Kwik
We should totally do that.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
Let's do that.
Jim Kwik
All right.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
I really want to see it from the grocery store. Practice.
Jim Kwik
No, no, no.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
So don't practice. Is that what we're testing?
Jim Kwik
I'm saying you don't even have to. You won't have to review it. That's the whole thing with frequency, you know, duration, intensity.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
So you really believe. If I believe and I'll flip a switch. I'm going to remember these. So I'm going without needing to rehearse it.
Jim Kwik
Yeah, if. If you. If you encoded it right? Like, if you know those 10 right
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
now, I could give them to you right now.
Jim Kwik
Yeah. I think 80 it. You'll have 80% fidelity as opposed to the forgetting curve. And this is just research based. Within 48 hours, 80% is gone. So most people, when they go to learn something, we know there's a learning curve. Right. And so my work is about cutting that learning curve. There's also a forgetting curve that you could learn something and study it, and then within two days, 80% of it could be gone.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
So I feel about most of my college career.
Jim Kwik
Right, exactly. So people don't study. They cram all night. They take the test. And what happens if they take the test? The test, it's like gone. Right. Because there's a difference between studying to remember and really cramming to forget. Right. And so I would say, yeah, without reviewing it, if you have the intention to remember it. Because here's the thing. I could use this list every single day. And you'll find that you can too. You can even give yourself another list tomorrow. But if you don't need to. If you don't have a need to remember the list, just like some of the things you don't need to remember in your life, you'll feel you're prone to it out. You know what I mean? It'll. Because your intention is important. There's no motivation to keep it, no relevancy. Then it would just.
Tom Bilyeu
But it's intense. Superfoods, so. But now you want to have that sword in my body.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
All right. So really fast, I'm Gonna interrupt us? Do we have questions coming in. All right, how. What's our plan to get those? All right, boom. Let's open those up. I want to hear what people think.
Jim Kwik
This is.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
This is fun. Well, so I'm.
Jim Kwik
How are you expecting?
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
Dude, you and me both. So I never, for anybody that's ever watched, watched Impact Theory, you will notice. I never, ever, ever do, like. And now walk me through your skill.
Jim Kwik
Right, right. Never.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
And so I've had you on twice. I've never asked you. Of all the things I ask, I never ask about what the actual techniques are. I don't want that to be the show. I feel like other people do that. Like, my fascination is more with this sort of architectural belief system.
Jim Kwik
And I love that.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
Thank you.
Jim Kwik
That's why your show is so unique.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
Thank you. Thank you. But this is really fun. Like, I'm so curious to see, like, if people are typing. All right, motherfuckers, we get it. Like, move on. Or if they're like, oh, my God, this is revolutionary. I'm super curious because that was really interesting for me.
Jim Kwik
Yeah. And it only takes a little bit more time because we're expounding on it. We're having this, you know, we're going into having this conversation and going with a little bit of depth and everything.
Tom Bilyeu
Well, here's a question from Robbie d'. Angelo. He says, how do you maintain a balance between learning the new versus retaining the old old.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
That's fair.
Jim Kwik
That is a fair question. And so I would love, especially if
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
you're using locations, like, at some point you sort of run out of locations.
Jim Kwik
And so here's the thing. Like, the goal with these techniques, even as they were developed, it was more to be able to shortcut this, working, this loss. Because you can't have long term memory if you don't at least have short term memory, right? Like, you can't remember. No one can remember anything long term if they can't even remember it for the next 10 minutes or the next, you know, 10, 10, 10 hours, 10 days and such. And. And so I would say that the point of these techniques, and these aren't the breadth of the toolbox, right? But the point of these techniques is to get it into your short term so you can move it into your long term memory. But it also still has to. Just like in the Matrix, right? It still has to abide by certain rules. And so this is a way of getting it there. And so if you're not interested, like, if some people, if somebody doesn't Have. I think intent matters. Just in like our life, intent matters, motivation matters. So if people don't see the relevancy. I think a lot of times in school people don't remember things long term, like the old. Because the sine, cosine, tangent X, what's the point really, for 99% of the population? So I feel like that gets lost because your memory is. You're not going to keep that information readily available because number one, you're not using it on a regular basis and number two, you don't see the relevance around it. So I would say, to answer your question, I would say that it helps to have different places remember it's a shortcut because your real memory knows the difference. Because here's the thing. After I meet somebody and their name is Tom and I see a tomcat sitting on their head or whatever it is, that's first. Now, now it's funny, when I sit at a conference, I literally see all this stuff, right? Mary's holding like lambs underneath her, under her arm, like David. I use a slingshot because David and Goliath, right? And I just do it. And I don't. This is in the privacy of my own mind. I'm not telling David what I'm doing to him or putting like a mark, a check mark on his forehead. And it sounds third grade. But you know, children, I mean they, that's how they, how many.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
What was the check mark?
Jim Kwik
Right, like a check for mark.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
Someone named Mark.
Jim Kwik
Yeah, so, so the idea here is like for Bob, I use bobbing for apples. What do you use for Jared? Yeah, so, so here's the thing, right? Well, I mean some, well, what do you think some people would use for Jared?
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
I literally have no idea. Subway.
Tom Bilyeu
Diamonds.
Jim Kwik
Yeah. Okay, Jared.
Tom Bilyeu
Subway, Jared. Diamonds.
Jim Kwik
Yeah, yeah. And so, so, so here's the thing. So people can't come up with like. So a lot of people would, I think they would think subway and. Or have different associations, whatever. Or diamonds is a really good one. Or if they don't have a direct association for it, you come up with something that sounds like it. Just like that letter reminds you of the whole word. Imagine if something just spelled out like part of that word. And the whole idea here, though my point in this is once you know the person's name is Tom or Jared or Lisa, then the pictures disappear. All it is is shortcuts. A means to an end. The end is to know the person's his name, right? Is to get to that point. And so this allows you a bridge to kind of get there. And then once you get there, the bridge disappears.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
So you're saying the. Because what his original question was, how do you balance the new and the old? And you're saying that the old sort of gets solidified into that long term memory where you don't have to think about it anymore. You're not using it to find part
Jim Kwik
of what they call your schema. Your schema is like your knowledge base, your background, right? And that's part of all learning. Because a lot of what learning is, especially when it comes to memory, is you're associating something on the outside, outside to something that's on the inside. You're like connecting something you don't know to something that you already know. That's why people learn so well, even with film. And they use metaphors, right? Because metaphor allows you to connect to something you already know. Because you can't connect two things on the outside that you don't know both of them because they're not connecting here, right? So one of the ways that would help, like for example, if somebody's here and they're explaining like some kind of, of like social marketing or something that I might not understand, I was like, dude, that's awesome. And how do you compare that to like, you know, this pineapple here, you know what I mean? Or that spider in the corner there. And then all of a sudden they'll make associations, they'll learn something too. And that's one of the things for like a little, for me, for creativity, like I'll try to see something through the lens of different people and then I'll be able to pay attention to things that I wouldn't normally pay attention to too, if that makes sense. So a lot of the things that we're talking about is so for example, you could have multiple lists. So you can have your body list that's there and you could reuse it. But you'd also have your home list, right? You have different rooms of your home and you could go from your kitchen to your bedroom to xyz. And again, people don't have to do this all the time. I'm just saying where just like with speed reading, you don't have to speed read everything all the time. It's what your outcome is always going back to, like what your goal, your outcome is. Like sometimes it helps to read something fast because your goal is to get very critical information. You know what you're looking for, you go and you get it and that's it. So other People want to read something because they want the nuance of the sound and they want that whole experience, then that's fine for them to do. Same thing with learning these techniques, I find though my experience. So this is my 25th year of teaching, my experience with doing this with people is by doing this, it exercises their focus, their level of attention, as opposed to where most of our attention is being pulled apart everywhere. Right. When you're learning something for the first time, it helps to be able to focus. Take the name, turn it into a picture. Because at the very least what I'm doing, when I see the tom and I see the person, I'm paying attention to the name, I'm paying attention to the person, which is that alone, that awareness alone is going to help me. Even if I don't remember the picture, it just forces my attention. It creates a focal point for me. Like, I really think focus is the big thing that people want. Like people ask, yeah, motivation is important and create all that stuff, but focus on the different areas of your life, everything. It's kind of the metaphor I use is like, it's a sunny day out, right? If you put a magnifying glass out there, what happens? It creates this really bright point that you could put burn leaves and stuff like that. And bright is the word. It's kind of interesting. Like bright is how we. That's what we. That's the word we use to explain people are really smart, right. That person's really bright. But maybe they're not smarter. Maybe they're just focused. Right. And that, that would be the goal. And so what I'm saying, even with these techniques for remembering names or remembering grocery lists or whatever, it gets you to focus on what you need to learn. And that's a good exercise and good practice. Whereas I think a lot of us, and we've talked this on the episode about people checking their phone first thing in the morning and training themselves, rewiring their br for distraction. This is an exercise you could do to harness your concentration. Just like a meditation.
Tom Bilyeu
Well, here's a real world need from Steve Kane in the comments. He says, I'm currently training for a new job and have tons to memorize. How could I apply this to my training when it's not in a list format?
Jim Kwik
Yeah. So I would say this to Steve. I would say all. So for example, I would still come up with location. So location is what helps a lot of people store information anywhere. So it's the most, I would say, out of everything that is out there, you Know, in terms of memory training, that has the. The E. The least fixed cost. Like, so, for example, I have pictures for numbers also and decks of cards and all that stuff. And it's just. And the great thing about these.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
I don't know what decks of cards are.
Jim Kwik
I mean, like. Like pick, like, different 52 cards in a deck and stuff. Like, there's pictures, decks of cards. Like when you memorize decks of cards, like, memorizing like. Like multiple decks of cards and stuff. But for example, for names, it's great because if you could come up with a picture for just.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
Just.
Jim Kwik
You go to the U.S. census Bureau for people in the United States here, see the top hundred names. You could just do 10 a day. Come up with a picture for each of those. Picture for John, a picture for Mike, a picture for. I mean, do it.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
Can I really fuck with you for a second? Let's make this really hard, because I think if you can answer the hard question, you've really got something. So I'm going to guess he's got, like. I don't know what he needs to memorize, but the example of something that I heard that I thought, how the hell would you do that? Is. Do you know Sam Soundgarden?
Jim Kwik
Soundgarden.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
Soundgarden, the band, yeah. Okay. So recently, Chris Cornell passed away. Was one of my favorite artists growing up. I'm absolutely mortified. But the story is the drummer for Soundgarden, actually now is the drummer for Pearl Jam. Who would have guessed? And he had to learn in, like, two weeks. He had to learn something, like 87 songs. It was just something ridiculous to be able to go on tour with Pearl Jam. And I thought, how? Like that. Sometimes the opening beat alone would be shades of another song. Right. So it wouldn't be, like, radically different. But how do you memorize, like, something that complex? So if he had come to you and, you know his job, let's say he's a musician and he's gotta memorize 87 songs, which are so abstract. Like, is there a tool for that?
Jim Kwik
Yeah. I mean, so there's no. Okay, so my answer would be that there's no magic pill. Like, there's no magic, literally, ginkgo biloba pill that's gonna fix anything. There's no one technique that's gonna be so perfect for that.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
So what would Jim Kwik do if you had.
Jim Kwik
Okay, so. And I do this a lot with. Not so much in music, but it usually comes up with actors a lot on a literally weekly basis where people need to Memorize lines. Or they'll be in a situation where an actress came to me recently that you know who it is. Say they memorize all these lines for a TV show.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
Can we just say, have you ever checked out this guy's Instagram feed? Fucking knows everybody. Like even internally. And we all know you. We're like, how the fuck is he hanging out with this person? Like, what is going on? It's Jim, the number of people that you hang out with at a high level is ridiculous. But sorry, your story.
Jim Kwik
So I would say like an actress recently came up to me and she's in a prominent TV show and she had memorized these lines to pre over form and the writers change it up all off of it, of course. And then the next day she was like, how do I forget all this and how I relearn all these pages in like, you know, a couple hours kind of thing. And so there's, there's, there is no easy like necessarily. And music's definitely not one of my, my superpowers. But I would say there are certain things that person do to accelerate that process. Right. And so pulling back macro into. Into micro. The actual techniques. So I would always focus on the 10 things that we've talked about in the past. And so part of how having part of it is taking care of the hardware. Right. And so.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
But what did you tell her to do? Can't leave me on a cliffhanger.
Jim Kwik
You come back to the next Facebook Live while we'll talk about that also. No, no, but here, let me go through the ten things real fast. So that's. So I would always focus on a healthy, quick brain, like superhero brain, lifestyle. Right. And so there's certain things that would just always enhance no matter what you're tackling. And I'll get to the actual technique in a moment. Moment. I would always focus on the hardware first. So make sure you give your brain what it needs. Right. So the 10 things really fast. And I actually.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
These are the 10 things your brain needs to be optimized for.
Jim Kwik
Yeah. Because here's the thing. When people talking about their memory, one third of your memory is predetermined by genetics and biology. According to research, 2/3 is in your control, which is nice because when people are saying, I'm getting too old or this runs in my family or whatever, it's like, hey, let's contextualize this. About one third of it's going to come through your genetics and your body biology. But 2/3, let's, let's make, let's focus on the 2/3 that can make a difference right now, according to science, some people believe that they could affect their epigenetics and everything else with certain things. I mean, who knows what's possible, right? But that's the stuff that I want to geek out about in terms of what the future could look like in terms of power of the mind to affect longevity and health. I mean, you know, you had me at hello. But you know, like, when people. Multiple personalities, right? When they switch personalities. Some of them, their eyes colors. A switch.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
I'm calling really. I would have to see that. 100.
Jim Kwik
I want to see that too. Like, I've only. I've only read it. But have you heard about like. But okay, so I don't even know like. Like when people. Like one personality is allergic to bees and another one's.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
Not that. That I could actually buy because. So the eye color thing, like, I don't understand the pigmentation, where it's coming from well enough to. To believe that it can be changed
Jim Kwik
like that shades of color.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
But like with your immune system, you can, like, you can hypnotize people and give them welts and all kinds of. That's just like mobilizing.
Jim Kwik
And I love which when you talk about, like, the power of the subconscious mind because that. That's really. That's where a lot of learning is happening. When you don't even realize you're learning in music also. Right? Like, think about how many people watching this. How many lyrics to songs people know? Like a lot. Like a lot. Like a lot, a lot. And how many people at home actually studied those actual lyrics, like, actually formally. Exactly. So I think a lot of learning. I mean, going back to songs. A lot of it happens when we don't even realize we're learning. Because if we were. If we were regulated just to learn everything we just learned in school. Because that's actually when people feel like their learning is. And that that's a travesty. Right? When people feel like that's when they graduate school, they're done with learning or whatever that whole ideology is. So I would say that there are 10 keys and you could put it on your. I actually walk people through my office. Really.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
I. I've got to ask. And. And I'm like, creative by myself here. But do you ever, like, I've seen you be so absurd and go down like these, like, tangents on tangents on t. Tangents. And then you just come back like you never left. And how the hell do you do that?
Jim Kwik
Okay. So I don't. I don't do it. I. I think also, by the way, I have to commend you, the past couple years, since we've been friends and we spent a good amount of time here, and I. I watch all your stuff. Like, Like, I don't. I don't get to listen to a lot of podcasts and, and, and you know, for music, we're both busy. Right, Right. But your stuff, besides, like, the production of what you're doing and your team is doing you, the way you integrate knowledge is something profound.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
Wow.
Jim Kwik
No, but you feel it, right? Like, even, like, what the difference between our conversation now and, like, it, like, was like a year ago and such. Like, you're like. You're like the Borg. You're like, totally. You're, like assimilating this stuff Matrix style. Well, thank you. And so I would say part of it is. Part of this is this dialogue. I do believe also, you know, when we're talking about things all the time, that we integrate it even more, that we learn a lot when we're. When we're talking and we can see nested loops. For me, I could. I just follow tracks. It's similar to. To the chess players, maybe, that play multiple games and they can kind of see open loops.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
Because I know, like, about chunking and all that stuff. Like, walk me through. Because so of all the things I really want to get good at. And then I practice every interview I do, and it's totally invisible. And people don't realize I'm doing it right in front of their face. Like I'm practicing how far can I go? And I feel a bit like a free diver, right? Where it's like, if you go too far, you fucking die. And it's happened a couple times where I've gone a little too far down on tangent. Oh, it's all gone.
Jim Kwik
And then the rabbit hole. And you can't get exactly.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
I can't get back. I can't remember where I started.
Jim Kwik
Do you have a technique that I would say, okay, and I know we
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
need to get back to the 10 things, but I have no doubt you will remember that.
Jim Kwik
I think. Okay, so I think you could. I think you go further and further the more you practice doing it. So I believe that there's something called the Zeigarna effect. And the Zeigarnic effect is Zeigonic. Is Dr. Zeigonic. She's. She's a psychiatrist in Europe. And she was monitor. She was noticing when she was going out for coffee at the local cafe that the wait staff would remember everyone's order that was there. And you wonder how they could do that, right?
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
I still wonder.
Jim Kwik
Yeah. And but here's. So she called the. It's actually termed the Zeigarnik effect. Because what happens is when you interview the wave wait staff, they'll remember every single person's order until they deliver it and then it's gone. And what they found is this thing with open loops that the mind loves closure and they actually use this memory phenomenon to help to overcome procrastination. Because the idea here is if you can't get yourself to do something, one of the ways of actually overcoming procrastination is to break things down into tiny little bits and start somewhere, anywhere in the process. Because the idea. Idea here is if you start somewhere, you're more. It increases your probability of finishing much more than if you don't start anything at all. Because your mind needs that kind of closure. It's equivalent. Sometimes I'll take a coin, I'll be like, which hand is it in? And I'll do. And like half the class will be like, they'll see me move micro movements here and unconsciously they'll say it's my right hand. And actually I did slight hand and no hands. But they make an investment in something and there's this open loop and they need, there's this pulse, this response potential where they need to kind of get that kiss good night or whatever gives them closure. Right. And so I think it could be exercised. I'd love to have a conversation about that, you know, and do some research because I, you know, because just like with you, I get to a certain level of understanding where it just kind of reached the limits. But I know you and I like to play at that level. Like, you know, where we're literally, we're. We're at where we're dancing on the edge of like our. On those limits of what we know. We don't know whether it's a birthday trip, a family reunion, or just a fun getaway. Booking a VRBO vacation rental means no worrying about surprises. VRBoCare and 247 Life Support have your back if something's off. The Loved by Guest filter helps you find top rated homes. And verified reviews mean real feedback from real VRBO guests. So you know exactly what you're booking.
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Tom Bilyeu (Host)
But are you just good at nested loops? I've never. So I'll just state it really emphatically. I've never met anyone as good at getting back to where they started as you.
Jim Kwik
Okay.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
Do you use a technique that you can teach me or are you just fucking good at it?
Jim Kwik
Okay. So I would say that my, my, my general belief is that there's always a method behind the magic. For this one particularly, I would think that a lot of it's unconscious and it came through training because my goal is I've never had an ounce, not one minute of public speaking experience or media training or anything. Right. Like, I, I, I came about this totally different. Like, I never even wanted this to be a business. Right. I'm like, I feel like I'm an artist or a teacher that got involved in business to help maybe scale the art a little bit.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
What, you consider yourself an artist?
Jim Kwik
No, in a way that, like a transform. No, sorry. In a way that a, like a, like a transformation artist. Where I'm looking to, where, where there's a science part to it. Right. That's structured. But I also, when I'm on stage and I'm doing my thing, I'm not rote or I don't have anything predetermined to talk about and I'm looking at subjects. Yeah. Like, I actually, I thrive in this kind of environment. Similar to you. No, like you are with Q and A's. How, how Gary V is like this. Like, let's, you know, he doesn't, he wants to teach. But let's, let's get to some questions. I look at it because I got over. Like, I still have a little bit of a fear of public speaking because that's more my nature. Sure. Right. Because it's just, I'm just kind of, you know, shy and introverted. Anyway, I don't like the attention on myself. But how I get over it is I look at people and I, and I, I focus on them and it gets me over my selflessness, you know, my selfishness and Stuff, but I, I look at it more as, hey, this is an art. And like I'm painting on the canvas of someone's mind and I want to be able to move someone from here to here. And I'm listening for it, but because I haven't had the training in there, I'm looking at it from a learning perspective. And so storytelling as you know even better than I do. I mean, that's why I moved to Los Angeles, to understand more of storytelling and how people communicate and educate and empower people through the use of stories. Which that's why I'm so excited about what you're doing and what's to come. Because I just feel like, yeah, you'd totally be in that Disney. You know what I mean? And it's just like, anyway, so I guess I don't know what I'm consciously doing as much and I'd be curious. I'm gonna deep dive in this so we can have a conversation about this, you and I, or in a future episode.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
Man, if you could help me with that, that'd be insane.
Jim Kwik
But I also am interested in opening loops purposely for people so that they stick around to get it closed. And I know by doing that people are more likely to tune in, not tune in to next show or next podcast. They're tuning and paying paying attention.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
All right, so I need my kiss Goodnight on the 10 things.
Jim Kwik
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
What are the 10 things?
Jim Kwik
So the 10 things really fast. And these are. So if I'm working with a client, I just make sure these 10 things are aligned because if any one of them is not out of place, that they're going to be working on a deficit. That's all. When it comes to memorizing something. So good diet, we just cover the 10 things, right? Because you are what you eat. Number two, just, just, just to monitor their self talk. And I, you know, I understand that. I'm not saying people have to be positive all the time. In fact, I'm, I'm, I'm totally cool. People who are skeptical, they say they're skeptical about something because that all that just means they want to know the truth. A lot of people say, well, hide behind being skeptical and they're just really, nothing works. They're just negative. No possibility. So. But I like to, I think it's important to not talk your way out of things. So monitor self talk. Three is exercise. Because we know if people are going to study, like even music and they exercise beforehand, they're going to have a huge lift like A sizable lift by doing movement. Like, you know, when people do. They get on their treadmill, they go in the gym and everything, and they start. They study right after it that they're going to get better performance across the board. Right. Anything good for your heart is going to be good for your head. So that's just a brain hack. Right. People exercise before they study. Simple to do after that. Brain nutrients, you know, supplementing and stuff that they. Their diet might not have. Because you could have not be able to remember this like this performer, whether it's Savage Heart or whatever or if. If they're just deficient in vitamin B's, right. Or Omegas. 3. You know what? I think it's important. Number five, clean environment. Because your external world is reflection, your
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
internal world clean, like tidy.
Jim Kwik
Like six is like. Sorry. So five, I would actually accidentally backdrop five, I would say is positive, positive peer group. So I think that who you spend time with, like, I love our, like our relationship off camera. Right. Like, and just because exactly as it is on camera, like we literally could be at a. At a, you know, a burger place, Shake Shack. This is exactly what we're like doing Facebook Live. We'd be having the same exact conversation. And it's the same exact thing. And so I think a positive peer group is really important for people, for their brain and just health in general. Six is a clean environment. And so this is, you know, when people clean their office or they clean their desktop, they have a little bit more focus and clarity because things are organized.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
They seem mentally ill to me.
Jim Kwik
Yeah.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
And if it weren't for my wife, this place would be a mess.
Jim Kwik
And here's the thing. But here's the thing. Like creative people, it's the exact opposite. So in terms of having be like clearer thinking or be able to remember things, when it's organized in chunks, it tends to be there. But some people, same thing with nested loops. They could be in a complete mess, but it's organized chaos.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
Yes.
Jim Kwik
Like, I went to the Fox Fox studios, right. And I was looking at where they make all the sounds, you know, because they have this whole room with all this random stuff. Because whenever they have a movie and somebody's running in the grass, they need to be able to duplicate those sounds. Everything and us. Yes, exactly.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
They're crazy. They look like junkyards.
Jim Kwik
Exactly. But they know where every single thing is because it's organized in a way. Like if you move something, they would know exactly where it is. But for me, it doesn't have a trained Irish, like, I just. Like, this place is freaking mess. But here's a. Here's a caveat, though. So it'd help with thinking, clarity of thought, because your external world and so on. But for creating creatives, creatives actually flourish with lots of stimulus in their environment. So it'd be almost the exact opposite, because if they, like Einstein's was definitely not clean, definitely not super organized, but he had a lot of stimulus around which fostered his creativity and stuff like that. That's number six is monitor your environment conducive to whatever your outcome is. Seven is sleep. And that's a big personal issue for a lot of people. And so I would maximize your sleep because it doesn't matter if you cram and cram and cram. If you're not getting asleep, you're not conscious, you're not learning and everything else. 9 is brain. 9 is. 8 is. 8 is brain protection because I've had a lot of head trauma. So protect your brain. 9 is New learnings always growing. And then stress management, which is a big deal because we tend to overlook stress management because we tend to be busy. And we wear the badge of honor that we're busy because we're important, that we design our whole life to be busy. And you wonder why? Because we're reinforcing being busy. But I also feel like we're under an immense amount of stress from whatever, whatever the stress is emotional, financial, whatever. And I feel that's inhibiting a lot of people's memories. And they don't even realize it because they're living, because fish don't realize that water is there and everything else like that. That being said, I just did a podcast on this, on study hacks. And for anyone learning anything, it doesn't matter what it is, I'll tell you what people are doing right and what they're doing wrong. First of all, if they're looking to do a lot of, like, whether it's memorizing lines or music or anything. Like, I'm not an expert at the content, but I'm expert at that process, right? That meta level. And I'm saying a lot of people make the mistake. First of all, they studied for too long a period of time without taking a break. And I'm just saying, going right into like hacks is that the problem with that is when you're studying for long periods of time. We know that after 25, 30 minutes, people's attentions take. They take a dive, right? Because a lot of people can't sustain it. There's this time management technique called the pomodoro technique, right? You set an alarm for 25, 30 minutes or whatever, and then that's your focus time and you're studying it. And, and then after that, 2, 3, 4, 5 minute break, stretch, hydrate, breathe, whatever you need to do. And then you go back to whatever you need to do. The other reason why that's powerful also is because not only there's memory phenomenon called primacy and recency where it says you'll tend to remember. Primacy is prime first, right? You tend to remember stuff in the beginning. Recency says you tend to remember stuff at the end. Meaning if you go to a party and you meet 30 strangers, you probably remember the first people you met when you got to the party and the last people you meet. Unless there's things that spike, spike it up. Like things are unique and different, outstanding or emotional or self serving, then it'll spike up. But the problem is that let's say you're staying for five hours. Primacy says you remember stuff at the beginning, recency at the end. And then there's this dive here and you lose all that information. So the reason why you take breaks every 30, 45 minutes or every hour is because by doing that you create more beginnings and ends. And so it allows you to pick up a whole chunk of information that we normally would lose. And so, so I'm saying that cramming doesn't work. Take breaks methodically, right? Because number one, because you can't focus past 30 or 40 minutes effectively because we get fatigued and everything else like that, and you create more primacy and recency. The other thing is a lot of people, when they're trying to learn something, they multitask, right? And we know, and so we talked about that in the previous conversation, multitasking doesn't work. And so a lot of people, even if they're not directly multitasking, their mind is still on other things that's going on in their life. And, and you can't study the music or the sheet music or what, or the script or whatever. If part of your brain's being occupied, it's like closing down. Like you're on your laptop, you're like minimizing different sites and everything else. It's still taking up space and attention and such like that. So I would be very mindful of that also as well. When it comes to scripts, actually what we'll do, this is a total brain hack. And I'm not saying that this works in every Occasion, but we definitely see a lift is what do you think is the strongest sense in terms of tie to your memory?
Tom Bilyeu
Smell.
Jim Kwik
Smell, right. And so you know this. So there's certain brain hacks that will say that when you're studying anything, whether it's music or words or anything for your meetings or anything that people need to at home is to introduce a new scent there. Because when you introduce that scent and actually need to recall it, have that same scent. Because there's all these studies where the environment unconscious consciously gets linked to the information. And they've proven this in multiple times. Or even the example I use in past conversation where they submerge them underwater, give them words to memorize, take them out of the water, see how they memorize if we recall, put them back under the water, see how much they recall. In what environment do they remember more in the water? Because it got unconsciously linked. And so in a perfect world, people would be studying the music or studying the script or whatever where they need to put perform it, right? Or like let's say they're studying for a test, studying the lecture center was not being used because they don't consciously get anchored there. But that's not practical for the most part. So then you bring the environment in with it. So you chew a gum with unique flavor, essential oil, a cologne, perfume or whatever it is that's unique because that's like. Does Pavlov ring a bell? Oh, of course, of course.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
Does he ring a bell?
Jim Kwik
Knows what's happening, happening though. It's like the dog, they bring in the meat, salivates, salivates, ring the bells, right? Bring in the meat, salivate, salivates, ring the bell and so on. Take out the meat. All of a sudden, dog's not really hungry, ring the bell, it'll produce this exact amount of saliva, right. With the stimulus out because it got associated to the bell. And the whole idea here is you could. That's a learning as new association, right? Where they took the meat out of the equation. And I'm saying that that smell could be that stimulus list that brings back that state and the information that's attached to that state. And also there's certain smells, by the way, essential oils that just help boost memory and focus, like peppermint, like rosemary. There's certain things that actually stimulate the parts of your brain to help you pay better attention. And people actually do better on mental acuity tests and such. So I would say do people like what do you do? Just all of it. And I don't think there's one thing that does it and I know we spend. We're. We're going. We could spend our hour on this.
Tom Bilyeu
We have a lot. We have a lot of questions in the comments so I want to get to a few more speed round. This one's for Tom and Jim from Sarah at the Singer Academy. My question is how do we retrain our brains from everything the education systems have have taught us? So many people live in fear of not pursuing their dreams because. Because schools teach us to follow along with status quo. How do we break that mold?
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
Well, I'll just give you a really fast answer on my side. I Everything in your life should be goal oriented. So if your goals allow you to stay in that same like rote memorization, be a good student, stay in line, all that, then do it. My gut instinct is that it won't and therefore you need to break out of it. And that's one of those things. We could do a whole show on it. People either get it or they don't like it. Should all be determined by your goals. Your goals mandate your behavior, in my opinion.
Jim Kwik
Yeah, that's such a good answer. I don't even know if I could top that. Sarah's very active on social, so we definitely appreciate her tuning into that. So in terms of just the quick of it, I think that a lot of what we need to do is take personal responsibility too. That education, the whole idea is sometimes we feel like we're going to school and it's happening to us. It's nice if we play our role and responsibility because a lot of actually our work is helping people unlearn bad habits, you know what I mean? And seeing going from a goal approach, saying this is my outcome. Does this process step into a common sense corner of your brain and reevaluate. Be able to say from that perspective, saying, does this still make sense? And in my life, does this still serve me? But I think it takes a lot of self awareness too. Because I think what impressed me was people who achieve a lot, whether yourself or Gary Vee or some of the people talk about superpowers and self awareness to really know yourself. I think people got to get really curious about who they are and I think that curiosity, I think success for me, I was thinking about this the other day, I was thinking, thinking like for success is I think it's like to be curious enough to know yourself and then be. Be courageous enough to be able to be yourself. Like once you know a little bit more about who you are.
Tom Bilyeu
Here's a Question from David Bruno about habits. It's. What is the best way to replace bad habits with good habits? Maybe we can get tactical here.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
Yeah, you want to take it?
Jim Kwik
You want. First.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
So to replace bad habits with good habits. To me, start. Starts with. I mean, depending on what it is, I. Almost everything for me starts with identity. So I'm going to say, okay, I'm the type of person that this. So let's say that you. Let's just write to the hardest one on the face of the planet, food. So people eat bad food. They know it's bad, they feel bad, they look bad. It's just horrific. But it's a drug, and so it's very difficult for them. So what you have to start doing is saying, I'm the type of person that. Right? So I'm the type of person that only eats things that are good for me six days a week, and I leave one sheet day. Okay, great. So six days a week, I'm going to tell anybody and everybody who will listen. And then the reason that I do that is I want to be the person that I say that I am. And the incongruity of telling people that you're one way and then secretly acting another is going to make them feel really uncomfortable. Unless they're a sociopath, in which case I can't help them. But if you're not a sociopath, you feel like a liar when you're like, hey, I do this. And then. But for real, you. You don't. And then certainly with eating, there's such a physiological response, like you can see over a month. Let's say if you really switch your eating habits dramatically, there would be a physical result. You'd be able to see it. So people are just going to know that you're BSing. So start with identity, and then start acting in accordance with that identity. So that. That, to me, is the biggest thing that you could do with food. I'll give you one more thing. You need to learn how to reward and punish yourself. So the times where you make the right decision, you need to reward your. Like, there needs to be some, like, gratification in and of yourself. You don't need it externally. Just like, hey, I said I was going to do it, I did it. I love that. And then also finding a way to deal with the suffering, because the reason they're not doing in the first place is it creates some sort of psychic suffering. And I mean psychic. And like, I need a better word for this because during the interview today with Vanessa Van Edwards, she actually thought I meant psychic. Like, I can read your mind. Just like mental energy, people need to, to figure out their tool and tactic for dealing with the suffering. So what I do, particularly with food, is I welcome it as an old friend, and I remind myself that the suffering that I'm going through now, not eating, like right now, I'm starving. At this very second, I'm starving. And I just remind myself, welcome, old friend. Thank you so much for coming. I know that you're oxidizing my fat. I'm very grateful for that. And in doing that, I actually get comfortable and I begin to reassess. Associate the pain as pleasure. And I'll stop there.
Jim Kwik
That's amazing. I mean, identity. I, I, I think you hit it on the head. Like, if somebody thinks they're a smoker, it's just really hard to change that behavior. But in, in the episode, I would refer back to the episode that we just did about the logical levels of change there, there's identity and beliefs and values and your, your, your habits and your cap, your, your behaviors and your, your environment. Um, I just did two episodes on habit change, so it's kind of fresh for me. I would say that there's this guy named BJ Fogg out of Stanford University, a researcher, and actually that's where Instagram came from. One of his students. And think about habits and addictions, right? And they want to make it so habitual, right? Where you pick. I think somebody said 54 times. You open up an Instagram 54 times a day.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
I'd be surprised if it wasn't more for me.
Jim Kwik
So here's the thing. That's the thing. I would reply, man, no, I know, I know. You're like. Because there's some people that only open it once or twice. There must be people that are opening it a hundred times or whatever. And so he has a form formula called B equals mat. And so the behavior you want to change equals motivation, ability and trigger. And I'm not. Don't break it down. Yeah. So bmat behavior, which is the habit, equals motivation. Right? Ability and trigger. Meaning that according to him over at Stanford, that these three ingredients is what? So, for example, if somebody wants to, to stop, stop eating a certain food, right? The motivation, you, you need to figure out ways to lower that motivation. Because if that motivation is really high, then it's, it's, it's going to be very difficult because that's, it's emotionally charged. Right? The ability that's, there is somebody like, for example, I Like to teach people new habits like reading and stuff. But they need to have that ability to recompensate. And the trigger is actually the one of usual, the biggest one overlooked. Because usually what is if you want to break a habit, you have to look at the trigger that's forcing that habit. And so in memory that, that's my whole work is based on triggers. It's like something is reminding you of something else. In fact, even if I'm not teaching you that consciously, a lot of people right now with their memory, they forget somebody or name or whatever it is. But then something, you know, half a day later, later that day triggers it and they remember it. All of a sudden, oh, that's what the actor's name is. Or I got to go to the. Whatever triggers them.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
Right.
Jim Kwik
And so I think a big part of breaking habits is looking at. I'll just mention that trigger point is what's triggering you to want to do that. And I would say like from a good habit standpoint, for example, I have triggers that just set me up. Like every time I get into an elevator and if I'm alone I'll do squats. It's so silly. But I've trained myself to do that because I just figure like, hey, I'm not getting the movement I used to because I'm always writing and you know, doing all this stuff that I'll trigger that. You know, certain triggers could be also setting up the triggers in the environment. Like a lot of people, I tell people like in the last episode, don't touch your phone the first hour, the day. Right. You know that that's a trigger. Having the phone in the room is your trigger. So remove, change the environment, you move the trigger, you remove the behavior. Right. So ideally kind of be able to set it up. But there, there's so many different ways. The other thing also I. I don't know how accurate I, I was. I was reading an article about self compassion, like the research on self compassion. And they're saying that actually yes, you want to reward good behavior and punish behavior, but when it comes to identity issue, you don't. If you, if you fail to eat right or meditate that day or whatever. Studies in self compassion actually suggest not to be super, super hard on yourself and just. And also. But, but because our, a lot of us, we want to plow through it, saying to, to be kind with yourself is more likely that you're going to follow through on that behavior rather than beat yourself up about it.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
And really fast. For those of you Just joining us, we're here with Jim Kwik, learning expert. Quickly learning and really want to bring attention to what I think is a fantastic episode of Impact Theory, which was the one that just went live last Tuesday. So be sure to check it out. Jim. Absolutely crushed. It was a lot of fun. And for those of you that saw the first interview that we did a year ish ago, year and a half ago, whatever it was, this is all new ground. So be sure to check it out.
Jim Kwik
All right, questions.
Tom Bilyeu
We have a comment from Kate Carpenter. She says, amazing. My 10 year old son who struggles with learning just did the list that we were doing earlier.
Jim Kwik
That's awesome.
Tom Bilyeu
He was so excited that he was able to remember the 10 items. He's actually excited to try to learn other things using this method.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
Dude, that's.
Tom Bilyeu
I'll definitely look into Jim and his methods to help my kids with school.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
That is so cool. I love that. That is amazing. I live for stuff like that. Lisa and I were just talking about this on our trip. Like when you get a comment where somebody was legitimately impacted by what you're putting out in the world, that is so rad, dude.
Jim Kwik
So I love that the title all your show. Thank you. Make an impact because what else is it? What else is it for?
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
Exactly.
Tom Bilyeu
Cool. All right, here's a quick question. What books do you recommend?
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
Well, it's easy for me. I don't know that the question's aimed at me though. So why don't you give us some learning books on learning and memory?
Jim Kwik
Yeah, I'll pretty much just list all the people that have been on your show the past this season. So far, I think we're talking about getting into focus and everything else. I think flow. I think Stealing Fire is a great book. Did you read Stephen Kahler's book? Yeah. Stephen Kotler and Jamie Wheal. I think that's a personal favorite. I know you had our friend Peter Dimandis here and I'm not plugging just I think you should watch all the interviews because honestly, I love reading books and I read a lot of books, but I think a really good conversation like over a meal or something like that could be as valuable, if not more valuable than reading. Reading the book. But Stephen, Peter Diamandis, bold. I know you're super involved in explosives and everything.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
I don't know any books on memory,
Jim Kwik
specifically Moonwalking with Einstein is the kind of the seminal book. I don't know how much practical information is in there. Not much because it's more intriguing. But that's the book that ever. I don't think anyone could ever quote another book. There's a good book on thinking styles. I. I like historical figures like Leonardo da Vinci. So how to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci by Michael Gelb is a great book. Talks about different ways that Leonardo thought about things, how he took notes, how he used his body in different ways. Because he's not only just an artist, but also an incredible inventor. He's a juggler. He used to look all these languages.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
He was a juggler.
Jim Kwik
Yeah. What? It's kind of crazy. Yeah. You do deep dive into some of the. In some of these individuals. He uses body in certain ways, very kinesthetic.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
He was the one that used to get cadavers.
Jim Kwik
Right.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
And dissect them to figure out how the muscles were.
Jim Kwik
I thought that was impressive.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
I thought, okay, that's when you take your drawing seriously, when you're like, I need to know what's under the skin.
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah.
Jim Kwik
I'm very interested right now. Like, I'm writing a lot. Yeah.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
When does your book come out?
Jim Kwik
I'm hoping to submit it the end of this summer, so it'll be over this next year. But this is the book I wish I had when I was labeled a boy with broken brain. But I'm excited about it, but I'm basically putting everything in there that I wish.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
If it's the anything like your podcast, it will become the seminal book on memory. Your podcast is wicked.
Jim Kwik
Thank you.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
So I'm way into that. Super bite size, super actionable. Really, really great.
Jim Kwik
Yeah. We had Stephen Kotler actually in the last episode.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
Nice.
Jim Kwik
He spoke at our event, and we put the hottest. The four points on getting into flow. And it's really, really. It's really getting in the zone.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
Nice.
Jim Kwik
Good stuff.
Tom Bilyeu
All right, here's a question from Matthew Barry. I read that both exercise. Yeah, I read that both exercise and meditation can stimulate memory. In one case, the brain is firing, and in the other case, the brain is essentially turned off. Are both cases true and which is more efficient?
Jim Kwik
Okay, Matthew. So I live on. I live in both extremes. So I meditate once or twice a day religiously. Part of it is because of the sleep apnea I talked about in the last episode. I don't necessarily agree that. I mean, somebody. They cite these studies how, you know, 20 minutes of meditation is equal four hours of sleep. I don't quite think that would be like, you know, but you could. If you Google that, it's like, it's pretty prolific out there. But I don't feel that. In my experience, that's because you're not crazy. But meditation definitely does help me with that because for me, it's when I get to go into parasympathetic mode and I get to read the rejuvenation effects of that. Float tanks are something that do it, do it for me. Also, it's pretty extreme. It's not easily accessible for everybody. But in most major cities, they have these kind of float centers. So I like to slow down, to speed up. I feel like that's when I'm in those places. That's where I'm integrating what I know also as well. That being said, I live in a place where me and neuroplasticity, I just need that new learnings all the time. I need those firing, those neurons to be firing at the same time so they get wired together. So I get to, you know, I never want to put my head down on the pillow, you know, being the same person as I was, you know, at least everything that I know. And so I'm. It's. It's kind of. It's an easy answer, but I would say they're equally important because I stretch, I stabilize, I stretch, I stabilize. And I don't want to live on either extreme. I don't want to be just so frantic, just firing all the time, because that's a lot of learning challenges. But I also don't want it to be completely turned turned off either. That's my example.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
Nice.
Tom Bilyeu
We'll do one or two more, I think. So here's one from Carol. From a learning and strategy point of view, other than trauma, specialized psychological care, what can you recommend for people struggling with PTSD and also for partners and family members supporting those with ptsd?
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
Well, I'm going to take this one aggressively. So you're carving out probably the only thing that matters, like, if it is legitimate ptsd, understand that this is a neurological wiring problem, and you're going to have to unwire that. And it's very difficult. And because, like, so this is becoming a thing, you guys are going to hear me start talking about this a lot. I'm thinking about content around this. Like, the more content that. That I put out, the more people that write to me saying I'm contemplating suicide, this episode stopped me from committing suicide. Like it's. It. Like, I take that so seriously. I can. Can't say that enough. And the reason at one point during what was going on in Afghanistan and Iraq, there were more people dying, more vets dying of suicide than were dying of in combat is because of ptsd. So the, the just absolute domino effect that happens when somebody has ptsd. Like immediately, immediately, immediately you want to see, seek professional help if you want to know one area. Like I'm totally afraid, afraid of psychedelics. If I had PTSD that day, I would go and try it. Like the, the number of studies coming out that say that psychedelics help that are utterly transformative for ptsd. It's so crazy. Like I would do whatever I had to do if I had to go to a foreign country to get it. If I had to like climb the mountains in Peru to go chill with the shaman, like whatever the it took if I had ptsd a pro. Promise you I'm captain psychedelic until I no longer believe that that would be like useful. So immediately do that. Everything else is the world's slowest boat to China. And PTSD is so high risk from the perspective of getting lost in deep depression, just not being able to function in life and possibly then it being the lead domino that leads to suicide. You, you have have to be ultra aggressive with this one. So yeah, I would say don't pass go, don't collect $200. Go straight to Cutting Edge Research where they're having 60 to 80% success rates. Like whatever that is. Find that. I can't say that aggressively enough.
Tom Bilyeu
All right, all right, one more here. This is about brain supplements. Are there any that you would suggest for first time users?
Jim Kwik
Would you like to go?
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
I have another aggressive stance, so. And I think you and I are different. So it'll be good for them to hear from both of us. I don't supplement and I don't think supplements are necessary. I think supplements are what happens when you're not eating the right diet or exercising or getting your hands dirty or whatever. So I've made every mistake you can ever make, both from a diet perspective, from like I'm going hard in the microbiome to learn about that now. And because for those of you that have heard, my wife struggles with the microbiome in a way that is, it is almost unimaginable for somebody who hasn't gone through it. So my life was on hold for an entire year because we couldn't even go out to eat. She had. You're going to think I'm kidding. Roughly four flecks of pepper. Okay, so think about you shake pepper in your hand. Imagine there are four little flecks. Maybe there was six. Certainly wasn't more than eight flax of pepper. And I Almost had to take my wife to the emergency room. It was insanity. That whole year was just insanity. And it wasn't until we began to learn about the microbiome and realized. Realized that was her problem. Years of taking antibiotics just wreaked havoc on her microbiome. So now I'm going hard in the microbiome. Things like don't sanitize your hands, don't wash your hands too much. Actually get your hands dirty. Like the amount of things eating fermented foods like yogurt, by the way, from. And I am at the beginning of a very long journey, so please know that I will continually update my belief system on this. But yogurt probably isn't as effective as most people think. Oddly enough, I guess, kid alert. This is mildly weird. The bacteria in yogurt is better for your vagina than it is for your gut. And so if you're having an imbalance there, it may be better to apply topically than to eat it. It's probably not doing much else for you, but there's a whole list. I just read a book called the Human Superorganism. It goes into detail on all the much more effective fermented foods. So that's interesting. So, yeah, I would say, like, hey, how much sun are you getting? Instead of supplementing with vitamin D, you should actually be out in the sun. How much exercise are you doing? Are you getting enough fat in your diet? Undamaged fats. So avoiding damage, damaged fats. Are you fasting? Which is like practically sacrilege. And people get so weird when I bring up fasting. But you should probably be fasting occasionally. So there are all these things like your diet should be cyclical. You shouldn't be eating the same thing all the time, which I'm horrible at because it's so easy. But yeah, that's. That is a huge topic. The moral of it is I don't with supplements.
Jim Kwik
So I've. I've never actually talk publicly about nootropics or anything. So I. That's not something that I've, at this point of where I'm at, babe, feel.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
Because you do them like a fiend. But you don't want to talk about them or what?
Jim Kwik
No, I don't. I don't. I don't actually supplement for that way. I mean, I always. I would always rather go food based. So that's why, you know, I don't have any podcast episodes on, you know, nootropics.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
People must hit you up every day. You could make so much money if you just said, I don't care about
Jim Kwik
people anymore, I'm going to lie every day. Day I get product. Every literal, every single day do I get samples from. And you know, because it'd be nice to do a memory demonstration and be like, yes, let's take this pill. I don't think there's a magic pill. I think that there's processes that we have to do the work for.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
I give you mad respect right now because you, there is so much money in nootropics. You're like the poster child for this. You could get 2% of like 10 to 15 different companies right now.
Jim Kwik
So Jim Quick endorsed. So I haven't publicly ever talked about this stuff. So that's just my stance right now. I know we all evolve in everything. I'm not saying there's not things that help people's focus and their retention on stuff, pharmaceutical and otherwise. I rather get it from food. Always for me. I take blood tests and I want to know what food sensitivities I have because I think a lot of challenges could be coming from our diet in certain ways for me. And again, not an expert. I'm not a nutritionist, so I don't. That's, that's why I'm hesitant to weigh in on this kind of stuff. But I, I, you know, I want to know nutrient density, what I'm lacking, you know, and I always want to be able to get it through, through food. I agree, Al. And also food sensitivity, right? The, you know, like the, the green, yellow, red kind of the foods to stay away from the foods that I could eat healthfully because God forbid you're feeding, you know, your, your kids foods that might be not good for them that are the best ever. Um, I do second the, the, the microbiome. Like I'm, I'm really big about the gut being the second brain and taking care of that because you have the second constant most concentration of, of nerve cells, like, you know, like in terms of, you know, neurons and stuff like that in that area. And when people like, trust take care of your gut because without that, that's, you don't have anything. And so I, I would, I would weigh in on that. Cool word.
Tom Bilyeu
I think that's it.
Jim Kwik
Yeah. Q and A.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
All right, guys, thank you so much for joining me.
Jim Kwik
Us.
Tom Bilyeu (Host)
This was way more. I knew this is going to be fun. I didn't know I was going to enjoy it this much, so this was awesome. Special episode with Jim Quick. If you haven't already watched his impact theory episode. Go check that out. It is amazing and he goes through a lot of really cool stuff that I have not heard him talk about a lot other places. It was awesome. He was truly in a flow state. So be sure to check out that episode and if you're not already, by the way, subscribe to his podcast Quick Brain. It's awesome, it's short, it's punchy, it is really useful information that you'll be able to take away and apply immediately to your life. And I will just say this, of all the people that I've interviewed, I'm gonna say you're off camera, the person I've gotten the closest to. So I can just vouch for the fact he's a good dude. So check him out. Subscribe. I'm supposed to be talking to this camera. Hey, don't ask me how I got convinced that that was the one, since this is always the one. Hi. And I will work on my memory since that would have been good. So yeah, guys, I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time my friends, be legendary. Take care everybody. Thank you so much for listening and if this content is delivering value to you, please go to itunes, go to Stitcher Rate and review us. That helps us build this community and that is what we are all about right now. Building this community as big as we can to help as many people as can we. We can deliver as much value as possible and you guys rating and reviewing really helps with that. Alright guys, thank you again so much and until next time my friends, be legendary.
Tom Bilyeu
Take care.
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Date: April 18, 2024
Host: Tom Bilyeu
Guest: Jim Kwik (Memory & Learning Expert)
This special replay of Impact Theory features renowned memory expert Jim Kwik, diving deep into the mechanics of learning, memorization, and brain optimization. Tom and Jim explore ancient and modern memory techniques, actionable brain hacks, and the science behind why we forget or retain information. It’s a hands-on episode with demonstrations, Q&A, and practical tools that challenge the status quo of traditional education and learning.
[01:26-02:07]
[03:01-07:54]
[07:54-10:39 & 23:09-37:35]
| Place | Food | |------------------|----------------| | Top of head | Avocado | | Nose | Blueberries | | Mouth | Broccoli | | Ears | Coconut oil | | Larynx | Eggs | | Shoulders | Leafy greens | | Collar | Salmon | | Fingers | Turmeric | | Belly | Walnuts | | Seat | Dark chocolate |
[10:39-18:49]
[18:52-22:59]
[37:49-41:46]
[45:48-52:13]
[52:13-56:34, 60:00-61:46]
[66:30-71:35]
[71:35-75:45]
[75:45-97:45]
On learning with context:
“If content is king, then context is the kingdom.”
– Jim Kwik [03:41]
On intensity of learning:
“You don’t have to repeat it 100 times to memorize it. It happens once.”
– Jim Kwik [24:55]
On forgetting the ordinary:
“We forget the ordinary, we remember the extraordinary.”
– Jim Kwik [25:21]
On self-image and learning:
“If somebody thinks they're a smoker, it's just really hard to change that behavior.”
– Jim Kwik [80:34]
On identity and habits:
“I'm the type of person that only eats things that are good for me six days a week…”
– Tom Bilyeu [78:04]
This episode is much more than a list of memory tricks: it’s a call to rethink learning as whole-brain, emotion-driven, and identity-centered. Jim and Tom unpack the myths and mechanics behind memory to help listeners build “limitless brains” – not just for party tricks or study hacks, but as tools for self-mastery and lifelong growth.
Recommended: Watch Jim's full Impact Theory episode and check out the Quick Brain podcast for more bite-size, actionable tips.