10+ Hacks to Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Faster and Become Limitless with Jim Kwik
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Hello and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks, a show about upgrading your life, money, and travel. I'm your host, Chris Hutchins, and today we're going to cover a topic that I'm pretty sure every single one of you will want to learn, and that's how to unlock your brain's potential. And to do that, I'm talking with bestselling author of Limitless, Jim Quick.

who is a world-renowned expert in memory improvement and accelerated learning, and who has been a brain enhancement and performance coach to everyone from Bill Gates to Tom Brady to Oprah Winfrey. There are so many hacks in this episode. We're going to cover improving retention, brain foods, ways to exercise your brain, how to find limitless motivation, and so much more. I am so excited for this episode, so let's jump in right after this.

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If you want to do more and spend less like Uber, 8x8, and Databricks Mosaic, take a free test drive of OCI at allthehacks.com slash oracle. That's allthehacks.com slash oracle. Allthehacks.com slash oracle. Jim, thanks for being here. It's so good to be here, Chris. Thanks for having me. So many people I've talked to think they have a bad memory and you've publicly challenged that notion. Does that mean that anyone can have a great memory?

For the most part, absolutely, yes. I know we met at an event that we were both speaking at and sometimes all these demonstrations, if there's time, and pull a bunch of people on stage or memorize like 50 people's names. And I always tell people I don't do this to impress you. I really just express to you what's possible because the truth is every single one of your listeners could do that and a lot more.

regardless of their age or background or financial situation, gender history, IQ. We just weren't taught. I always thought it was interesting in school they teach you what to learn, like math and history and science.

There are not any classes on how to learn those subjects, like classes on focus and concentration or problem solving or speed reading, memory certainly. And so I know it's possible because, you know, as you know, I had a traumatic brain injury when I was a child, five years old, kindergarten class. I took a very bad fall, head first into a radiator and rushed to the emergency room. Where it really showed up was my brain. I had these migraines every single day as a kid. I thought it was just normal.

not a fun time. I had these processing issues where teachers would repeat themselves over and over again. And then I would pretend to understand, but I didn't really understand. Poor focus, memory. It took me three years longer to learn how to read. And that was a big challenge. So I had a lot of confidence issues, self-esteem issues. I felt like I had these disabilities. When I was nine, I was slowing down in class and I was being teased for it. And a teacher came to my defense and she pointed to me in front of the whole class and said,

leave that kid alone. That's the boy with the broken brain. That label became my limit. And so for the past three decades, I've dedicated myself to help people with the challenges I had. I think we're best suited to help the person we once were. And for me, having challenges with my memory and my focus, my learning, my brain health, I just want to help build better, brighter brains. No brain left behind.

The memory is not fixed like our shoe size. It can be improved with the proper training for sure. And having seen a lot of your content, actually been in the audience when you've done some of these exercises, I'll just make sure everyone knows it's not just for people who are starting behind. It could be for anyone, right? People that think maybe I have a decent memory. I imagine the limit is, as you've said in your book, limitless. So what does a training regimen look like? I think a lot of people are like, I know what to do to go to the gym and run and lift, but

But I imagine most people are sitting here going, okay, what is brain training?

Yeah. As a brain performance coach or a memory improvement coach, just like a personal trainer, a personal trainer at that gym that you're talking about will help you get your body in shape, right? Help you be faster, help you be stronger, more flexible, more agile, more energized, hopefully. I want your brain, your mental muscles to be stronger, your memory to be sharper, your thinking to be more flexible and pliable and quicker, and your focus to be stronger, your mental endurance.

People struggle with mental fatigue and I want people to be able to overcome that. We have two different approaches that we combine to really help people have a limitless brain so they can learn faster. And I think learning faster is an incredible edge in your career, in school and in life. So the processes we teach are straightforward.

strategies on how to read faster, how to improve your memory. Remember client information or product information, give speeches without notes, facts and figures and data, focus tools. But then also you have to take care of that. That's a software. You have to take care of the hardware.

which is that incredible supercomputer that we're all born with between our ears, that three-pound matter called our brain. It doesn't come with an orders manual and it's not user-friendly. So we go through lifestyle enhancements to be able to take care of your brain because I believe we are the pilot of our brain. We don't have to be the passenger. A lot of people feel like they're at the effect.

of this information overload or all the distraction that's going on and the forgetfulness. And we could actually, we're in the pilot scene. There's a number of things we can do from our diet to managing stress, to optimizing our sleep, to supplements that help support a stronger, sharper brain.

I want to jump into a few of those, but before, is it helpful? Are we kind of all the same or certain people have different starting points or different styles of learning and training that it might be worth doing an evaluation or an assessment before we think about improvement? We have the largest academy in the world on brain optimization, accelerated learning. So we always start with assessments. We are known for tripling people's reading speed with better comprehension.

So we measure their existing starting base rate in terms of how fast they're reading. We measure their comprehension. Same thing with memory. In our courses, we show people names and faces, give them random lists of words, give them numbers and all the things that we need to be able to memorize and then test them before and after trainings also as well. But I think same thing with going to the gym. Everybody comes in with a different level of strength depending on their age and their level of activity, their genetics.

So they'll do like a BMI kind of test in the gym or they'll do some kind of base strength VO2 max kind of test. Same thing with mental training. So we definitely want to get some kind of baseline so we could see, I think that old phrase is true. In order to be able to manage something, you have to be able to measure it.

And the good thing about what we do is you can measure focus, you can measure memory, you can measure reading speed, comprehension, and so much more. I like to think I am motivational and maybe inspirational in ways. People come to us though because they want pragmatic, practical ways

to boost their learning and their brain power. I know you've talked in the past about different cognitive types. Are those relevant to how one might approach improving comprehension or other skills? Very much so. In Limitless Expanded, one of the new updates we put in there is a whole chapter on cognitive types. It's something for the very first time that we released is what we use with our coaching clients, also internal team as well.

I realized that it's not how smart you are, it's how are you smart. It's not how smart your kids are, how smart your team is, it's how are they smart, that everybody has certain strengths and traits. We put them into four different buckets based on their brain type. And we created a very simple four-minute free assessment online where people could see, just like love languages, if people are familiar with that framework,

Where some people, they express love and they feel love, maybe through words of affirmation or acts of kindness or the time you spend or gifting, whatever their kind of convincer strategy is, we tend to show love the way we want to feel love. Well, with brain types, I realized that there are four main brain types and I use the acronym, I use a lot of acronyms as a shortcut to memorize things, code C-O-D-E.

Personalized medicine is all the thing right now. It's not just prescribing a lifestyle or a drug one size fits all. It's based on their genetics or their DNA. Same thing with personalized nutrition, how it's based on a test, like a microbiome test or a nutrient profile test. Well, this test serves everyone.

And it informs, based on your brain type, how you can enhance your reading speed or your memory based on your particular brain type. So instead of just giving general, and general ones generally work, right, like anything, but more specifically based on our strengths. So the code COD, really fast, people can write this down and even take the test. You can do it at mybrainanimal.com.

It's multiple choice. It's kind of like taking a, which Harry Potter school are you in? Or, you know, what Game of Thrones character are you? Kind of fun thing. And so I associated animals. So the C is the cheetah. If you're watching this on video, I'm showing a picture of it. Hey, I generated cheetah. The C in code is cheetah. And the primary trait of a cheetah is action. They implement very fast. They have very strong intuition. They adapt very quickly. They thrive in fast-paced environments.

The O are your owls. And I'm showing a picture of an owl. And the owl are very logical. And so where a cheetah is dominant in its action and owls is they lean into logic. So they love data. They love facts and they love figures and maybe some formulas. They make decisions rationally, right? They do their research. The D are your dolphins. Their primary trait is very creative.

They're very strong pattern recognizers. They tend to see things like maybe if they're an entrepreneur, they could see a vision for where their brand and their business is going, where maybe other people can't yet see it. They think in pictures often. They're very creative. And then finally, the E are your elephants. And your elephant's primary trait is empathy. These are your team builders. These are your community builders.

They are very compassionate. They're very collaborative. They like to learn socially. Also, they'll join book clubs and they'll have study groups and things like that. And you see these, it's interesting. We had our whole team take this assessment, again, at mybrainanimal.com. And what happens is

We found that without even realizing how we hire for, that people naturally gravitate towards their strengths. Sir Ken Robinson, who's a famed educator, called it their element. And so like our customer service team, we're 100% right now elephants because they are very supportive. They're very compassionate. There are community builders. They're very service oriented. They want to understand what our students are feeling and what they're going through so they could best serve them.

Our CFO, our financial officer, is a very strong owl.

Loves the numbers, loves the data. My business partner, our CEO, she's a dolphin. She's this creative visionary. She has this vision and this mission that she's building for us. So it's interesting. Even in pop culture, you can see this just as a memory nugget. Take a popular show like Friends. You look at it and Ross, right, the professor scientist is the owl. You look at someone like Joey, who really just acts without even thinking, he would be the cheetah.

You have someone like Phoebe, who's the artist. She sings songs, a musician. She's the dolphin, creative dolphin. Monica always wanted to host everything at her apartment, be the center and bring everyone together. For me, I would imagine she would test as an elephant. But the benefit of understanding your brain type is when people go through the assessment, they'll get a prescription on how to read and remember names based on their brain type. But now

But not only that, when they share that with their family, it really explains a lot of how their kids perform based on their brain type. Or if you work in a team like most of us do, you know, which roles and responsibilities and how they could come together to complement each other and synergize pretty and extremely well. And are you just one? As you described them, I feel like I could see myself in one or two of them. And I was like, I don't know if I'm just one. Is it like a spectrum of each or do you really identify with one as your primary?

Yeah. So you have a primary, you have secondary. If you are one animal, it doesn't mean you don't use the traits of the other animals. Just like if you're right-handed, it doesn't mean you don't use your left hand. Like if I asked everyone to do an exercise right now, we could turn this into like a little masterclass. But if people had to write their first and last name with their dominant hand and then switch the patterns...

pen to their opposite hand and right below it, their first and last name. That second time they do it with their non-dominant hand, it'll take longer probably. The quality probably wouldn't be as good. It would feel a little bit weird. And sometimes when we're learning something, even if we're interested in the subject, sometimes your learning style is different than the teacher's teaching style or their dominant brain type. And we miss each other. It's like two ships in the night. Then we pass each other and there's no connection. And I

I realized that sometimes we're trying to learn something with the opposite hand. So it takes longer and it feels a little weird and the quality might not be as good. So when you understand your brain type, it actually informs also how you could communicate with other people, how you could sell, how you could hire, how you could train and manage that person based on their brain type. Even if you look at something like sales, like an owl, if you're selling to an owl, they're going to respect and respond to research and

and facts and features. If you're talking to, you're trying to sell and influence a dolphin, this is where you use stories and you build a future for them that they desire and connect it to your product or service. If you're selling maybe to an elephant, empathy, the relationship is paramount, right? They want to feel rapport. They want to feel a connection. They want to feel a level of trust.

So it's interesting when you understand your brain type. And again, the menu is not the meal. The map is not the territory. It's kind of a framework that gives you more distinctions and more power in any social situation. Okay. And so you gave a couple examples of ways to sell things and whatnot, but are there ways that you would train differently or learn a skill? And just as an example, like if you were learning names, is one person going to learn them in a different way?

Absolutely. And people could try this, right? So, for example, let's say you are a dolphin and you tend to visualize things and you want to remember names.

Maybe a technique that would be supportive of you since you naturally are more creative and you use your imagination and you visualize is taking somebody's name and turning it into a picture. So if you meet somebody named Mark, you imagine for a split second putting a check mark on their forehead, right? And it sounds so silly and childish. I just want to remind everyone that children are such fast learners.

And it's not that you share this information with Mark, right? It's in the privacy of your own mind. But when you say goodbye to Mark 30 minutes later, you're like, oh, what I do with this guy? You know, I put a check mark on his forehead. What's the person's name? It's Mark. It's to help overcome what I call the six second syndrome. When somebody tells you their name, you have six seconds to do something with it. Otherwise, it's just gone in the ether somewhere.

So it allows you to plan accordingly. Let's say reading. Cheetos are very good because they're fast at having a specific goal in terms of starting here and ending here. They're very good at scanning and skimming because speed is everything for them of implementation. A reader for an owl is looking for the details and they're looking to compare what they're reading to what they really understand.

A dolphin would benefit from visualizing because a picture is worth a thousand words, right? And that would help them go through it. Say an elephant naturally when they read something because they have higher levels of empathy, want to go deeper into the author's point of view or seeing things from different perspectives.

Focus is one of the keys to a better memory. Focus, it'll allow you to get to your to-do list. It's hard to really learn better if you read something and forget what you just read because your mind is easily distracted. But Cheetah, when it comes to focus, they love short bursts of focus. So we teach them something like the Pomodoro technique, which is focusing on something for about 25, 30 minutes, because then there's a dip in focus. So, you know, scheduling like little five-minute brain breaks and coming back

refreshed for focus. I mentioned with cheetahs, it's very important to have very clear outcomes because they like to sprint and have a clear target. But an owl is different. An owl will focus by organizing things like organizing their workspace, minimizing clutter, having a structured plan that's very logical for their tasks. Owls benefit from even breaking down tasks because they're so detail-oriented into smaller manageable parts that help them to maintain focused

and prevent the big overwhelm that a lot of people feel as well.

Dolphins can help them focus, as an example. And we talk about in Limitless the power of mind mapping, which is a whole brain note-taking technique. So before starting a task to help a dolphin focus, they could benefit from mapping their thoughts and ideas visually. So they could see how everything is connected. They could also think about taking creative breaks, since they love creativity so much. Creative breaks to keep their mind fresh, prevent burnout. But

But an elephant, they would focus best in social environments. Working with a team or a group can help elephants stay on task, right? To help them stay focused. And they draw energy from social interaction. Having structured routines could help them. Elephants could benefit tremendously with a mindfulness practice. If you think about meditation or yoga, it could help elephants clear their thoughts and any lingering, ruminating emotions.

to enhance their ability to concentrate. It's interesting. You can go into parenting, you can go into hiring. Again, you can go into sales negotiation for externally, but certainly you can go internal as well.

I'm a big fan of the Matrix, and I'm sure a lot of your listeners have seen the Matrix. But as a refresher, when Neo went to see the Oracle, you know, the Oracle knows everything for the very first time. He goes into her kitchen and there's a phrase right above the door. I don't think most people caught, but it says, know thyself. And I think a big part of becoming limitless is having the curiosity to know yourself. And then obviously having the courage to be that person is the other part of it.

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Before we go much further, is there anything someone should be doing as they're listening to make sure they can comprehend everything we talk about and remember it? Absolutely. There are two things that everyone can be doing. Number one, if you're not multitasking and you're working out and driving.

Take notes. Everyone knows a learning curve, but there's also a forgetting curve. When you hear something once within 48 hours, research shows that you lose 80% of it. And one of the ways you can mitigate that is by taking notes. And if you want a great episode on our show,

Jim Quick, search Jim Quick, how to take notes. And we show you a whole brain note taking a method to retain more. The second thing, when you listen to this episode and every future episodes of this show, learn it as if you're going to teach it to somebody else.

You take advantage of something they call the explanation effect. The explanation effect states that when you learn something with the intention of explaining to somebody else, you're going to learn it so much better. You're going to pay better attention. You're going to have this original information. You're going to make it your own. And so I think those are two ways to dramatically increase your understanding and your retention of this valuable information.

For the sake of not recording four episodes for each code type, if we step back for a second and talk about some of the things you can do just to kind of improve your overall training, whether that's diet and nutrition and maybe exercise, you've touched a little things on sleep and meditation. Are there a handful of best practices for things people should be doing to kind of upgrade or train their brain?

Yeah, that would be universal. Absolutely. So going from the hardware part first, the supercomputer, taking care of it. I mean, the way I look at it is that people are watching this on video. I'm wearing, I always wear a brain on my shirt, you know, when we were together for the event and taking pictures for the producers. I was always pointing to my brain because I feel like what you see, you take care of.

Right? You see your car. And so you can see the imperfections if it gets dented or it needs a tune up or you see your clothes, you see your skin, your hair, because it's your constant awareness, but we don't see the thing that takes care of us. So I had this dominant question where I always ask myself,

Is this good for my brain or is this bad for my brain? A simple filter like that. It's a little brain hack, a mental hack, but it's like what I'm eating right now, is this good for my brain or is this bad for my brain? What I'm watching right now, is this good for my brain or bad for my brain? Who I'm spending time with right now, is this good for my brain or is this bad for my brain? And not that you get so rigid, but it's just, it's a way to keep you nurturing because whatever you nourish flourishes over time.

Our book is heavily endorsed by a lot of doctors and the number one Alzheimer's researcher at Harvard University to the founding director of the Cleveland Clinic Center for Brain Health. And we know when I lecture at these institutions,

That approximately one third of your brain is predetermined by genetics and biology, but two thirds is in our control. So I'm really focused on that two thirds. There's a quote in Limitless that says life is the letter C between B and D. Life is C between B and D where B stands for birth.

D stands for death. Life C, choice. That we are the sum total of all the choices we've made up to this point, right? I don't think anyone would debate that. Thinking about that out loud, saying it out loud, I believe these difficult times, they could distract us, which it often does. These difficult times, they could diminish us. Or these difficult times, they could develop us. But we decide because we always have choices. Because every day we have a chance because we could make a new choice.

And so 10 choices that I focus on that affects the two thirds very quickly, I'll go through them. And what I would love, because I know you want people to get this in their nervous system is make it a little...

Interactive. What I would love is as I say these 10 things and they're common sense, but they're not often common practice. In the past seven days, how much energy, attention, effort have you or time have you put into these 10 things, right? 10 being the most. The first one is a good brain diet. What you eat matters, especially for your gray matter. There's a whole chapter in the book called Neuro Nutrition. It's a whole science that your brain is part of your body, but it also requires different nutrients and you have to feed it. Some

Some of my favorite brain foods and to make it interactive, we can do this. It's a 2,500-year-old memory technique. We'll do it right now where you take places that you're very, very familiar with and you attach the information you want to memorize in a conversation or maybe you have to give a speech and you peg it in the places that you're familiar with, like your home or your office or your school or the mall. In this case, we could easily use our body. So imagine everybody listening, if you're not...

working out or driving or kind of multitasking, touch the top of your head and everyone say top. The first brain food are avocados.

All right. So just imagine avocados all over the top of your head. Maybe you're using guacamole as a scalp conditioner. And then the idea here is when you could see it, hear it and feel it, you're more likely to remember it. And that just kind of makes common sense, right? You just hear it. You're probably going to forget it. But if you could hear it, see it and feel it, kind of make it emotional or humorous, you're more likely to remember it. So just imagine. Even if you can't imagine it, imagine you can imagine it. All right. Avocados, avocados.

on your scalp or your hair. And then going down, the second place is our nose. So everyone touch their nose and say nose for verbal memory. Nose. And then out there, you're going to have blueberries. So imagine blueberries. I like to call them brain berries.

The avocados are full of monounsaturated fat and your brain is mostly fat, so it's very nourishing. Blueberries are incredibly neuroprotective. And so imagine blueberries coming out of your nose, like smell it, feel it in your nose. What does that feel like? What does it smell like? What would that look like, right? Third place is your mouth. So everyone say mouth.

and then broccoli. So just imagine you have broccoli stuck in your teeth. But if you exaggerate it, you're more likely to remember it. So make it a big stalk of broccoli and it's a little awkward and you're in a social situation and you're a little embarrassed, right? So,

Fourth place are your ears. Everyone touch their ears. And then the fourth brain food, olive oil. So olive oil is, you know, we've all heard the benefits of a Mediterranean diet. A big part of that happens to be olive oil with almost everything. Imagine cleaning your ears with olive oil or you have olive earrings. They're limitless examples, right? Just pick one that works for you. And number five, you touch your throat. And instead of an Adam's apple, you have the fifth brain food, a

which are eggs. If your diet allows, the choline in eggs is a precursor for acetylcholine, which is very important for cognitive performance, cognitive health. So just imagine a hard-boiled egg on your throat. Six, really quickly, we're halfway there, are your shoulders and green leafy vegetables like kale and spinach, high in vitamin K. Imagine shoulder pads made out of vegetables like kale and spinach. And then number seven is your collar. So touch your collarbone.

and salmon. So we hear a lot about omega-3s and DHA from a good source.

Sardines are also good for the brain. But imagine a necklace made out of salmon sushi. Just imagine it's like a week old. So it really makes it memorable. If you had to wear that, you would never forget it. And you'll remember it 10 years from now, right? You don't have to repeat it like often people with their memory. They just go into rote repetition and that's kind of mind numbing. But use your imagination. Imagine necklace made out of sushi. Eight are your fingers. So wiggle your fingers. And eighth brain food is turmeric.

So that golden powder, imagine you can't get it off your fingers. The active ingredient in turmeric is called curcumin.

and it's very anti-inflammatory and so there are a lot of brain benefits there then finally number nine and ten nine is your belly so everyone touched their belly and i want you to remember walnuts walnuts are high in vitamin e which is good for your brain imagine eating walnuts out of your belly button like if you ever were at the mall or at school or whatever and somebody was eating walnuts out of their belly button you would again remember that for years

And then finally, 10 is your bottom. Everyone touch your bottom. And the 10th brain food is probably the best one that people enjoy is dark chocolate. And we won't have to go into specifics of what people imagine, but dark chocolate, not milk chocolate, but dark chocolate, high in antioxidants. Generally, what's good for your mood is going to be good for your mind. So just imagine dark chocolate.

So, you know, and people don't have to do this now, but they could test themselves a little bit later about the brain foods. Like maybe you and I, Chris, we say, hey, we're gonna have a limitless brain party. And just while you're out, we call somebody and say, hey, can you pick up these things? You're like, I can't write it down when I'm driving or I'm in the shower. And I don't know why you pick up the phone when you're in the shower, but you just put it on your body, you know, or put it in your kitchen. Imagine your kitchen or your living room or your bedroom and just put these things around and you're walking down the aisles.

Finally, when you get to the food store, the first thing on top of your head, you see the first brain food, which are what? Avocados. Avocados. And then coming out of your nose, you have these blueberries stuck in your teeth. Broccoli. Broccoli. And then so on.

So on a scale of zero to 10, 10 being the best, how much are you incorporating these foods? Because on the opposite side, which gets you a lower score, highly processed foods, not so good for the brain. High sugar with those glucose spikes, not good for the brain. I think it's kind of intuitive, but that's the first one. Second thing you do for a more limitless brain is killing ants. Ants, and that's an acronym for automatic negative thoughts. We realize that

Our mindset makes a difference in terms of how our brain performs. Even if you think about the placebo effect, where you could take a sugar pill and you could get certain benefits, what, like 30% of the time, just believing that this is something. It's been my experience. And people at events, even the one we had recently, they come to me always because they know I'm a memory guy and they'll pull me aside quietly and they'll say like, oh man, I'm

I'm just too old. I have a horrible memory. And I always say, stop. If you fight for your limitations, you get to keep them. If you fight for your limits, they're yours, right? So our brains are these incredible supercomputers and our self-talk, it's like the program that will run. So we tell yourself, I'm not good at remembering people's names. You all remember the name of the next person you meet because you program your supercomputer not to, right? So our thoughts become things. So on a scale of zero to 10,

10 being how encouraging and empowering are your thoughts, right? And here's the thing. If you find yourself saying something like, I don't have a great memory, just awareness is key. And then just edit it. I don't have a great memory. Catch yourself. I don't have a great memory yet. All right. Because it just feels different. It opens up the possibility. So on a scale of 0 to 10, you can rate yourself there.

And do the thoughts have to be, they don't necessarily have to be about memory. It could just be in general. Like if someone says, you know, how are you doing today? And your default is like to think of all the bad things that are going on versus the great things. I assume it's broader.

It is. The two most powerful words they say in the English language are the shortest, I am, right? Very short, for a short couple letters. Because whatever you put after that really determines a lot of your life because it's how you identify yourself, right? So if you think I am a procrastinator, right? Or I am stupid, right?

Right. You're probably not going to be utilizing a lot of these things because you just have this fixed mindset where it's just not possible. Right. Or I'm just going to procrastinate anyway. So I think it's very important to edit your thoughts. And that's a great place to start is just being aware that we're having these

We have about 60,000 thoughts a day, according to research. The challenge is 95% of those thoughts are the same thoughts we had yesterday and the day before that. So if you want to create a new result in your life, which I think everybody, if they're healthy, they do, you have to do a new behavior. But in order to do that new behavior, it helps to have a belief that says that behavior is possible because all behavior is belief-driven.

That was that Henry Ford quote, if you believe you can or believe you can't, either way, you're right. The reason I did this, I opened with food and give everyone listening just a two minute demonstration of the foods because most people, they wouldn't believe they can remember 10 foods. And most people could do it forwards and backwards. And if not perfect, like nine of them or eight of them, right? And then I think the best way of changing a limiting belief is doing something you never thought you could do. And then you start thinking like, wow, what else can I do? And

And it's not to say that you have one negative thought and it ruins your life any more than eating a donut will ruin your life. But if you eat that donut 20 times a day, every single day, there will be consequences. It's really hard to create a positive life with a negative mind. That's been my experience. It seems like with every business, you get to a certain size and the cracks start to emerge. Things that you used to do in a day are taking a week and you have too many manual processes and there's no one source of truth.

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I just want to thank you quick for listening to and supporting the show. Your support is what keeps this show going to get all of the URLs, codes, deals, and discounts from our partners. You can go to all the hacks.com slash deals. So please consider supporting those who support us. Number three, and this is a big one and you mentioned it exercise. And I don't mean just working out three times a week. You know, strength training is amazing.

You create dopamine, serotonin, endorphins, and these neurotransmitters that are very important for your brain. But also when you exercise, you create something called a brain-derived neurotropic factors, BDNF, which is like fertilizer for neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity is this phenomenon that our brain can make new connections when it's given novelty.

and proper nutrition just like building a muscle if you go to the gym you give it novelty you stress it right and you give it some kind of workout and then you feed it and you nourish it with protein or what creatine or whatever right same thing with your mental muscles you have to give it novelty and nutrition and so when your body moves your brain grooves

Even if people are listening to your show and they're doing something rhythmic, like they're on an elliptical or going for a walk, they're likely to comprehend and retain more of that information, you know, because their body is moving. But I don't mean just doing CrossFit three times a week or Pilates. I mean throughout the day. And they say sitting is a new smoking. I don't know about you, but I find myself sitting all the time behind a screen, like almost all the time sitting.

And it's important to take a brain break. So I mentioned the Pomodoro technique where you work for 25, 30 minutes, maybe 60 minutes max. And there's a sharp drop in your focus and your mental energy. So taking a five minute brain break to do three things. Number one, hydrate. You'll notice that I'm drinking this water. Your brain is sedentary.

75% plus water and just being dehydrated 2%. We had an episode on our podcast with Dr. Lisa Moscone and she is a professor, she's a neuroscientist and also a nutritionist. And she said just a 2% dip in hydration could affect your cognitive health and your cognitive performance.

you know, and just staying hydrated on the other side could boost your reaction time, your thinking speed upwards of 30%. So take a five-minute brain break to hydrate. I also think it's important to use that time to breathe. Sometimes when we're on a computer or we're reading and we're falling asleep, sometimes it's not because we're tired. Sometimes it's our posture. When our diaphragm is collapsed, the lower one-third of our lungs absorbs two-thirds of the oxygen.

And so use that time to do some deep breathing or some rhythmic breathing, alpha breathing, box breathing, Wim Hof breathing. It kind of helps clear the mental cobwebs. And the third thing besides hydration and oxygen is movement. If you get some movement, get some steps in, go outside, it's all very helpful. So on a scale of zero to 10, again,

How much have you moved throughout the day over the past seven days? Because everybody wants to know what the magic pill is, but there's no pill, but there is a process. And what I think is that processes are these 10 things that we have control over. Number four are brain nutrients, which are separate from food. I would always prefer people get it from food.

But if they're not eating the wild salmon and getting the omega-3s, maybe they need a supplement with omega-3s. If they're not eating eggs, they're not getting that choline, maybe they need a supplement with choline, right? So supplementation, it's exactly that. It supplements your diet. We have in the book a brand new chapter on nootropics. Things like Bacopa helps with energy and focus. Things like, let's say, Kinko Biloba helps with blood flow. And blood flow is always a good thing for the brain.

creatine. Most people associate that with working out as a workout supplement, but so many human studies showing creatine could actually help you with mental energy for your brain's mitochondria and ADP energy production. So there are all these kinds of supplements that you could take. Something I'm really excited about, a coffee fruit extract that has no caffeine, but helps with mental energy and vitality. We actually have a

report. If people go to brainnutrition.com, it's nothing to buy, but they'll get like my current favorite brands and recommendations. Everything is human studies based on human research. Number five is a positive peer group. And I think that's obvious, but I just want to point it out.

is who we spend time with is who we become. Even when we met the evening before, connecting with you was one of the highlights at that cocktail party because we are social creatures and we have these things called mirror neurons if we're gonna get really geeky and mirror neurons in our nervous system

is what drives us to imitate people around us almost unconsciously. So it's like we start mirroring the words, the actions, the thoughts, the character, the habits of the people around us. Whether or not a listener smokes or not has less to do with their biological networks or their neurological networks and more with their social networks. If your friends smoke, you're more likely to smoke. If your friends are always reading or...

listen to podcasts or exercising you're more likely to do that also they say if you're around nine broke people be careful because you're probably gonna be number 10 because who we spend time with is who become because they say we're the average of the five people we spend the most time with but the mirror neurons is a big driver for that and so on a scale zero to 10 how positive encouraging are the people around you because we can spend time with somebody maybe a family member even people closest to us they could steal your dreams they're energy vampires right they

They may be still your drive. And then that's not to say like, get rid of these people. You still love them, but choose your peer group, right? The people that could elevate you. It's funny. I think about my grandparents. My grandmother on this side passed away a lot earlier and he lived by himself, not as social and probably deteriorated more mentally. And then I look at the other side and my grandparents on the other side moved into a retirement community at like 55 and

and had a thriving social life and were as sharp as you could imagine until 95. And so, you know, you talked about peer groups where your peers are doing things that push you, inspire you and don't bring you down. But how important is it to just have people around you for your brain versus being kind of more isolated?

Extremely. You know, we did an episode on the largest longevity study and happiness study at Harvard University and they found it wasn't diet and it wasn't exercise that was the key to their happiness and their long life. It was the deep relationships that they had.

And so even when you look at blue zones and it's debatable about diet and everything, there are a lot of family gatherings, you know, and meals that are shared also together. So I'm a big believer because on the other side of it, loneliness is an epidemic, right? If you want to talk about mental health issues and how they're escalating, especially during the pandemic, people are isolated and they're missing that human connection. Right.

we all need somebody to encourage us, to believe in us, to cheerlead for us. And if you haven't found that person yet or people yet, be that person, be that person for somebody else.

Especially be that person for yourself, right? So yeah, social networks are important as important as your neurological and biological networks. Number six is a clean environment. And that's kind of self-explanatory, but your external world is a reflection of your internal world. Even if you're just your mind clutter, you know, when you clean off your desk or I don't know, put everything on your computer in the right file, you have clarity of thought.

but also clean environment, meaning we did an episode on our podcast on the neurotoxins that are coming off of off-gassing from new carpet or new furniture.

So the quality of the air, the quality of the water, even the quality of the light. They've been showing like fluorescent lights have been shown for mice that they go crazed. And unfortunately, a lot of these lights are in offices, they're in schools because they're really cheap, right? As opposed to like full spectrum light that mirrors like nature, like the sun. But clean environment is very important. So make sure you recondo your mind. So zero to 10, how clean is your environment?

Number seven, this is probably the biggest one that people struggle with, sleep. If you're scoring one or two or three on your sleep, or you sleep really well, how's your brain the next day? How's it performing? How's your focus? How's your mental energy? How's your ability to remember, study, or solve problems?

There's a whole section of the book on optimizing your sleep. But it's important for your brain for three reasons that I want to make separate from the body. Number one, it's where you consolidate short to long-term memory. So if anyone listening here has real serious long-term memory issues, maybe it's worth it to see a doctor and do a sleep study. You can do it overnight in a sleep clinic or they could send you one to do at home. Number two, it's where you clean out the beta amyloid plaque. When you sleep, the sewage system in your brain kicks on.

It has time to detoxify because not doing that could lead to brain aging challenges. And this is something I'm very passionate about because when I had my brain injury at five, I also lost my grandmother at seven at an early age, like you mentioned, to Alzheimer's. So we donated the proceeds to Limitless Expanded to Alzheimer's Research because it's just something we're really passionate about. And a third reason is when you sleep, you dream.

And that REM stage, so it's not just the quantity of sleep, it's the quality of sleep. And so some people measure it with various devices, but your deep sleep is where you're, and I'm oversimplifying this, but your deep sleep numbers are how your body is restoring and replenishing, recovering. And your REM sleep, the slow wave sleep is...

how your mind is recovering. And in that REM sleep, we've learned in school, that's what we're doing primarily most of the dreaming. And dreams are an incredible source of ideas. Like your brain doesn't shut off at night. In some ways, it's even more active and it's really focused on the things that you were dealing with during the day. It's integrating it and it's even solving a lot of inventions. A lot of works of art came from dream states.

Like Paul McCartney came up with the song Yesterday in his dream. Elias Howe created the sewing machine in his dream. Mary Shelley created Frankenstein in her dream. That great episode that we did was How to Remember Your Dreams. And you can search for that to search by name, How to Remember Your Dreams. Because a lot of times you come up with some really good ideas of things that are to solve your own personal problems when you sleep.

but often we forget them when we wake up. That seems like a waste. But on scale of zero to 10, how well you're sleeping, three sleep tips, direct sunlight first thing in the morning. Your eyes are the only part of your brain that's outside of your skull. And if you can get outside for 10 minutes first thing in the morning, it helps it reset what they call your circadian rhythm, which will help you sleep better at night. Not sunlight through a window because that could block out certain spectrum of light.

But even if it's hazy or foggy, you'll still get the benefits. And then the two factors we would know it'd be time to sleep. Think about hundreds of years ago, like we're hunter and gatherers. We would know it'd be time to sleep because the environment would tell you, right? There'd be a decrease in temperature and a decrease in light. So if you create your sleep sanctuary as dark as possible, we'll help you get deeper sleep and also cold. Not where it's so cold where it's keeping you up.

You're like shivering. But it's a signal, both the light, decrease in light and decrease in temperature is a signal for your nervous system to produce melatonin, which is the hormone to help you relax and phase into that parasympathetic rest, sleep. Or even taking like a hot shower or hot bath with some Epsom salt. The Epsom salt, the magnesium will help you relax. You'll absorb it transdermally. But when you get out of that shower or bath, your core body temperature will drop. And that's a signal to...

to produce melatonin. So sleep, how's your sleep been the past seven days? Zero to 10, 10 being the best. And then finally, eight, nine, and 10, eight is brain protection, which is very simply, I had a number of brain injuries before the age of 12. Your brain's very resilient, but it's very fragile. So protect your brain. So how well you're protecting your brain, zero to 10, wear a helmet, avoid extreme sports. And

And then nine is something that we bring back to new learnings. I mentioned the key to neuroplasticity is novelty, but you'll see the two big dips in cognitive performance. Usually when people, they graduate school, because for some, they associate school as like learning and when they're done, they're done learning. And that doesn't make any sense to me, but I think that's a widely held belief. And also when they retire, right?

Often when people retire out of their careers, they retire their mind and they don't keep it as active as when they were working in it eight hours a day. There was a study done with nuns and they were living 80, 90 and above. And researchers wanted to find out what was the key to their longevity. They found out, they discovered half of it was their emotional faith or gratitude, but the other half, they were lifelong learners. They're reading every day, having deep discussions every day. It was just part of

And because of it, it had years to their life and life to their years. It was so historic. They put this study on the cover of Time magazine and the study was called Aging with Grace, which I think is a great name for aging.

And then finally, the 10th thing is stress management. And this is the invisible thing, right? We don't always see it or recognize it because it's like fish in water. They don't know what water is because it's just surrounded by water all the time. They don't know anything else. But a lot of us have undue stress on us, financial stress, relationship, emotional stress, whatever, work, information overload, whatever. And chronic stress has been shown to shrink the human brain. It puts you in fight or flight and it's

It holds you hostage in your survival brain, but it keeps you away from your executive functioning, your problem solving, your creativity. And so zero to 10, 10 being the best, how well are you coping with stress? What activities? Some people get a massage or body work. Some people do yoga. Some people meditate. Some people spend time in nature. But we need opportunities throughout the week, throughout the day to be able to mitigate that stress that builds up in work and in life.

So those are the 10 keys for a limitless brain. And the idea here is you see where you're scoring five or below and start putting some attention and some time into those areas because you could do all of this, have the greatest supplements, the greatest diet and not be sleeping well and you're not going to perform right. Or you could have the best night's sleep and manage your stress, but you're around these energy vampires, right? That are just kind of stealing your drive and energy.

and keeping us not so smart. So again, common sense is not common practice. I don't think anyone would debate any of these 10 things, but just as a coach, bringing it into their awareness again, so that they can make small little shifts can make a big difference because little by little, a little becomes a lot. Yeah. I'm like taking inventory already. So I'm going to punt on explaining where I'm at and what I want to do, but I want to go back to one thing you mentioned donating a lot to Alzheimer's research and

There are a lot of neurogenerative diseases. Is there any connection between improving your brain health and brain function and kind of delaying or preventing them? So the idea here is all the things I mentioned can help mitigate brain aging challenges. Exercise being extremely important. Even getting your steps in when we're older, maybe lose a little bit more mobility, but being physically active. Just think about it. Anything that's going to be good for your heart is generally going to be good for your head.

And so as you're getting that exercise, you're creating BDNF, which is the fertilizer for neuroplasticity. So we could get older, but we could still make new connections as we age. And what helps facilitate that is moving our body. Even if you look at the other spectrum, we have a one-year-old just initially just watching him learn how to crawl. These cross crawls, that's for brain development. The primary reason you have a brain is to control your movement.

So again, as your body moves, your brain grooves. A lot of issues that challenge people, usually sleep is a contributing factor to it. And so optimizing your sleep could help with brain aging as you go, because that's again where the sewage system kicks in that can lead to that beta amyloid plaque buildup that has been associated with Alzheimer's and dementia. Getting proper nutrients that are neuroprotective over time.

like the antioxidants that protect you from oxidative stress that comes from your environment or pollution or the foods that we're eating, the chemicals or relationship, financial stress, you know, all of that. There's certain nutrients that have been shown to be able to stave off brain aging challenges. All of these have a factor. So your brain can grow older, just like our body, because our brain is part of our body, but it doesn't have to...

deteriorate, and if I can use that word, as fast, and you can stave it off by owning your lifestyle. But again, one third of your memory is how your brain performance predetermined by genetics and biology, but two thirds is in your control. And these are the 10 levers that really influence the majority, two thirds.

And there's one thing that I didn't hear in the 10 and maybe it was a sub bullet of one, but how does our interaction with technology on a daily basis play into our brain health from using our phones throughout the day, using our phones to outsource our memory, just, you know, Google everything, or even just waking up and looking at them. How do you think about that?

So I think about it like our brain is a muscle. It's an organ, obviously, but it performs more like a muscle. And the primary understanding of the muscle is you use it or you lose it.

If I put my arm in a sling for a year or two, it wouldn't grow stronger. It wouldn't even stay the same, right? It would atrophy. And that's the idea with our mental muscles. If we're not using it, we're going to lose it. And that's why reading is the number one exercise that you could do for your brain. Reading is to your mind what exercise, frankly, is to your body.

But in the book, Limitless, we talk about the four horsemen of the mental apocalypse, kind of sensationalize it a little bit, just really to dial in the point, the

The first one is digital deluge, which I termed as the information overload. They call it information anxiety, where you're drowning in information. There's more information being produced because how many podcasts are there? How many YouTube videos? How many blogs, books, news, newspapers? So we're drowning information. The amount of information is doubling at dizzying speeds, but how we absorb it, it's the same, right? Or if anything, it's decreasing. That growing gap is digital deluge.

by our devices. Never before have we had access to the world's information in our pocket, right? Symptoms of information anxiety, or they call it information fatigue syndrome, higher blood pressure, and compression of leisure time, more sleeplessness. I mean, the list goes on and on. So there's a real health consequence. That's why we teach people to learn faster and read faster so they can keep up with the deluge, right?

Second one, besides digital deluge, is digital distraction. And this is what you were alluding to before. I mean, how do you maintain your focus and your concentration in a world full of rings and pings and dings and app notifications, social media alerts, likes and shares? We're in this dopamine flood, but it's driving us to distraction.

and we wonder why we can't focus with our kids you know we wonder why we can't focus in a meeting or on zoom or in a conversation our mind wanders because that's all we're doing you know all day is this context switching and we're getting this these dopamine hits and dopamine is a molecule of more right it's motivation you know so it's it's driving you to distraction and

And focus is like a muscle too. But if we're like spending all this time flexing our distraction muscles, we wonder why that's our default when we're going throughout the day. And it affects our learning and affects our life. That's why there's a whole chapter on focus and concentration because it's something that could be taught. It's like going to somebody on your team or your kids and say, can you focus on this? Focus, focus.

That's like going to somebody, say, play the didgeridoo or the ukulele, who's never been taught how to play that instrument. Well, we've never been taught how to focus. The third one is digital. I coined this because I tend to alliterate and they're all Ds. Digital deduction. And this is where technology is doing the thinking for us, right? I mean, even if you think about intelligence, it's not just one form of intelligence. There are multiple forms of intelligence.

You know, I did a podcast episode talking about multiple intelligence theory. It's Howard Gardner's work at a Harvard University. And what we're seeing is that intelligence can be enhanced through proper training and discipline and deep work, but it takes focus. And so, you know, when we're talking about visual spatial intelligence, we used to have that greater when we did have these apps that could tell us how to get from here to there. Right.

Now you go on your phone, you look up GPS, your maps or whatever ways, and it tells you how to get to here or there. So we don't have to think, we don't have to build our visual spatial awareness. So it's like that arm in a cast again, you know, it's not growing stronger, I'm not utilizing it. And I just have to stipulate technology is convenient as heck, right? But it's just like if the bank is eight blocks away and you take your car and

You don't have to physically move and keep in shape, right? If your office or your apartment's on the third floor and you're always taking the elevator, convenient as heck, but we're not getting our steps in, you know, so we're not keeping in shape. Same thing mentally. Because the fourth one really embodies this digital dementia, which is the fourth horseman of the mental apocalypse. Digital dementia is where

Yeah. If you didn't remember them, you know, I guess you could look at the phone book, but...

And there could be somebody, a family member or a friend that you call or text every single day. But if your phone died or you didn't have it, you might not know that phone number. And not that I want to memorize 300 people.

phone numbers, but it should be concerning we've lost the ability to remember one phone number or a pin number or a passcode or something we just read or something we're gonna say or something that was said to us or somebody's name, right? And so digital dementia is the high reliance on our devices to store information for us

where we don't have to exercise our mind. And again, it's very convenient. I'm very pro technology. Technology is what allows this to happen, allows everyone to listen to this conversation. It's just how it's utilized. Like fire is an early form of technology, probably one of the earliest. Fire could cook your food, but fire could burn down your home, right? It's just how it's applied. And so my take on with technology is technology can be an incredible resource and a tool, right?

But technology is a tool for you to use. But if the technology is using us, then we become the tool, right? If we're just picking up our phones because we're at the DMV and we're not using that white space to think and create or to rest or whatever, then we're just doing out of boredom. Then that's probably not the best use of technology.

And so, you know, I use your example of Google Maps. I'm not hearing you say everyone should go buy like, you know, the Rand McNally Atlas and use it to, you know, get around town. But are there any changes that you think the average person could make to kind of reduce the reliance on technology that might improve brain function or health?

yeah just remember that our choices make a difference and little by little little becomes a lot just asking yourself what's your outcome like if technically using technology to binge watch a show on netflix and that's your like entertainment time and your rest or relax time then you know who am i to say like how should people should spend their time and focus but if it's distracting you from the thing that the things that are important right and you're using it as a way to sabotage or procrastinate and it's not getting you the result that you're looking to get then

then I probably recommend people have some borders and boundaries around or some kind of constraints. Like I think people are extremely surprised when they pick up their phone and they look up the usage of certain apps

And how many hours upon hours and hours people spend watching Netflix or YouTube or doing certain things. And again, we have podcasts and I want people to listen to podcasts and watch our YouTube videos and everything else like that that we produce. But it's just reminding people that they have choice and that they shouldn't do it mindlessly. And so what I would say is like for me, the two times to do a digital detox or a dopamine detox is...

maybe on the weekends, carving out like, hey, for two hours, I'm gonna leave the phone at home and I'm gonna just be with my family, right? And just go out in nature. Or the most important times I think is the beginning of the day and the end of the day.

for various reasons. But I think if you want to win the day, you have to win that first hour of the day. And I have a video with me and Simon Sinek on Facebook has like 37 million views. And it's just me saying, don't touch your phone the first 30 minutes of the day. That's it. Because when you wake up in the morning, you're in this relaxed state of awareness. You're extremely suggestible. And the first thing you do is pick up your device. You're wiring your brain for two things that's hurting your productivity and performance. Number one, we already talked about distraction.

Right. Every ring, ping, ding, abnegation, social media, like, share, comment, cat video. It's just driving me to distraction. And you're flexing that first thing in the morning and you wonder why you can't focus at work or with your family. But the second thing it does, it wires your brain not only for distraction, but for reaction. And that's almost as damaging, meaning it puts you on the defense first thing in the morning.

And we all know, we've had this experience where we wake up and we get a message, like a voicemail message, an email, a social media message, text message, WhatsApp, whatever. And it just hijacks our mood for hours, right? And all of a sudden we're like fighting fires. And if you want to be proactive and have a design life, it's hard to do that if you're just...

waking up and putting yourself on the defense. Like I have a friend, Brendan, who wrote Motivation Manifesto, and he says, your inbox is nothing but a convenient organizational system for other people's agenda for your life. So it just rings true to me. And not that saying email is bad, but it's just like, so what do you do instead, right? For me, I wake up in the morning, I keep my phone specifically in my bathroom. So we have a whole chapter in Limitless on habit design.

And on our podcast, we've interviewed the experts, Dr. BJ Fogg, who wrote Tiny Habits, James Clear, who wrote Atomic Habits. And part of habit design is you want to make what's good for you easy and you want to make what's not good for you more difficult. So, you know, instead of me using willpower, you know, try not to touch the phone, I just keep it in another room. That'll get that urge, right, as much. But

the reason why I say the first 30 minutes for reaction and for distraction, what do I do instead? I'll wake up and I'll just close my eyes. I won't open my eyes and I'll just imagine myself coming back to bed at the end of the day, like that day. And maybe my wife asked me,

How was your day? And I say, wow, today was really awesome. We crushed it today. We're having a positive response. And then I ask myself, what had to happen in order for me to feel that way? And I explicitly come up with three things personally and three things professionally. Because I think it's unrealistic for most of us, including myself, to get through a 200 to-do list. But when it comes to, it's not time management, it's mind management.

And priority management. And, you know, I always tell people the most important thing is to get the most important things, the most important things. And what I focus on are those six things, three things personally, three things professionally. Like on my professional list was this conversation with you. It's like, Hey, we haven't connected in a few months. I'm really looking forward to this conversation because I'm a fan of your work and your

to reconnect with you and share and hopefully have an impact with your audience and your listeners. That was one of my three things, right? And it's sports, you know, when it's time to celebrate and to cheer and open up the champagne, because there's a scoreboard

But I realized in our life, we don't really have that scoreboard. And if you want to win the year, you have goals. But that day is, you know, the year is made up of all these days in that year. And my scoreboard are those three things personally. And they don't have to be huge things, right? It could be taking our dogs out for a walk. Do you write them down and like reflect on them later? Yeah, I just, I write them down. I keep a journal because I think part of creating or achieving the first thing you need to do is you take the invisible and

And you make it visible. And maybe I learned this at an early age, but when I took the things, those dreams or goals, and I started writing them down, it's the first step in taking and seeing something external, like taking action where something is inside my mind and all of a sudden it's out in the world in some form, like words. And then I focus on those three things personally and the three things professionally. And that's kind of my guidepost throughout the day. The last 30 minutes a day, I don't touch my phone because I'm

How I plan my day, and I know not everybody has this luxury. So I'll state that everybody has different careers and kids and everything. For me, I don't want to struggle with a lot of decision fatigue and context switching, which is your brain going from one thing to do one activity, a certain part of your brain is lit up. But to switch and multitask and focus on something else is...

You waste time because it could take five, 10 minutes to regain your focus, right? You waste energy because it needs more brain glucose that we talked about to be able to switch from task to task. And you also make more mistakes when you're trying to multitask. Just think about driving and texting, right? More accidents. So what I do is I focus on three C's throughout the day and it's not always perfect. In fact, it's never perfect.

But I try to chunk my day in the morning. I want to be creative. That's the first thing. I write books, right? And I do all that, you know, and plan out podcasts. I write in the afternoon, I consume. And that's where I read or I do research. I prepare, talk to my team about podcasts, guests and stuff like that. I do my own consuming. Then at night I clear. And really for clearing, it's like I journal to get the things out of my head. I might even plan out the day.

the night before so I don't have to ruminate about all the things I have to focus on the next day. If I do some yoga nidra which is like it's

like five-minute breathing exercise, you can see it on YouTube or whatever, kind of a guided meditation. And that helps me to clear, right? Or I talk to my family about my day and it helps me to clear. And it gets me in that parasympathetic rest and digest place. Because what you don't want to be is on that screen for two reasons. Number one, the screen mirrors the blue light and it fools your mind into thinking it's still daylight, so you don't create that melatonin on our devices.

And then number two, when you're scrolling, you could doom scroll forever, right? It's literally infinite. And it's context switching, which means it's extremely taxing to your mind. And depending on what you're looking at, you know, whether it's news and everything going on in the world, it's very stimulating, which is not the kind of place I want to be right before I go to sleep. So to answer your question for devices, I put my non-negotiable, don't touch my phone the first 30 minutes or the last 30 minutes of the day.

Love it. Okay, we covered so much. I'm going to make sure we link to the episodes you talked about, the diagnostic, the book, anywhere else you want to send people who want to get more.

No, it's just best on social media. I would challenge everybody to take a screenshot of what they're listening, whatever platform they're consuming this right now and take a screenshot and tag us both. And what I would love is, cause I really feel like ideas without implementation is just knowledge is not power. It has the potential to be power, but it doesn't have the power to apply it.

So I would challenge to take a small, simple step, take a screenshot, tag Chris, tag myself on social media, wherever you, and then share one thing you're going to do for a better, brighter brain. You know, maybe it's that diet. Maybe it's, I can do this for my sleep, right? I'm going to take a warm bath or whatever. I'm going to check out these supplements or, you know, I'm going to manage the stress or something that they heard in this conversation. And because you'll tag us, I'll get to see it. And I'll randomly share, you know, some of my favorites and gift out

Two or three copies of Limitless, just as a thank you to your community for having me on your show. Or take a picture of your animal, your brain quiz. If you go to mybrainanimal.com, you'll get the art posted and let us know which animal you are. Because I'm curious what a lot of your community are dominant in. Yeah, I'm actually really curious as well. So definitely do that latter one. Jim, thank you so much for being here. Chris, I appreciate it. Thank you.

I really hope you enjoyed that episode. I know I thought it was amazing, but more importantly, I hope you can remember everything we covered. Fortunately, if not, you can check out the show notes for links to everything we discussed, as well as timestamps for the entire conversation. And if you're enjoying the show, it'd mean a ton to me if you could click the follow or subscribe button in your podcast app, if you haven't already. It really helps us out. And there is no better way to support us beyond that than sharing the show with a friend, colleague, family member, or even someone you meet on the street.

Finally, if you have any feedback or want to get in touch or share a question you have for a future Mailbag episode, you can email us at podcast at allthehacks.com. That's it for this week. I will see you next week.