Discover Your Brain’s Power: Tools for Better Focus, Sleep + Productivity | EP 70

Today, knowledge is not only power, knowledge is profit.

And the faster you can learn, the faster you can earn. It's not how smart you are, it's how are you smart.
You know, in school, they taught you what to learn, like math and history or science, but there are no classes on how to learn. And I think if there's one skill for all of us to get better at is our ability to learn rapidly.
I believe the success formula for all of us is H cubed, three H's. It has to go from your head to your heart to your hands.
You could have goals in your head, a vision of your life or your career. But if you're not acting consistently with your hands, you're doing the work, check in with the second H, which is our heart, which is a symbol of emotions.
Burnout often stems from decision fatigue or constant overstimulation. Everybody has a to-do list.
I still think it's important for everyone to have a not to-do list. Part of being limitless is putting borders and boundaries, protecting the things that are important to you, like your time, your focus, your energy.
You don't have focus. There's a process for focusing.
You don't have a memory. There's a three-stage process for memorizing something.
You don't even have energy. There's a process for generating energy.
You either have it or don't have it, then you're kind of stuck. But if it's a process, you just do it or don't do it.
So next time you feel stalled and you're procrastinating, ask yourself this question. Welcome back to the Healing and Human Potential podcast, where today we're going to dive into giving you practical tips on how to supercharge your brain and make learning more effortless for different types of learning styles.
You'll learn what yours is and then how to improve it. You'll also be able to improve your memory and focus.
So even if you have a lot of distractions, you can set yourself up to be able to focus and retain information, really play at the top of your game with brain health and function. Because today's guest, Jim Quick, is a speaker, he's an author,

and been a brain coach for over 25 years. And he's giving us practical tips on things that we can do to upgrade our cognitive functioning.
And we can apply that to parenting, to business, to sales, to coaching, to all the different areas of our life. So we can really tap into our full potential.
You are going to want to take notes for this one. I'm so happy you're here.
And you have such an inspiring story from being the boy with a broken brain to being this world-renowned brain expert, helping people really step into their full potential, which is so beautiful. Talk to us a little bit about your journey.
What got you here? Thank you so much. And thank you, everyone who's joining.
My inspiration really was my desperation. I think a lot of people could relate to the idea where through struggles, you find some kind of strength or some kind of challenge, you have some change.
And I turned my mess into my message. When people see me at events, I train them on how to improve their memory, their focus, their learning abilities, and, you know, optimize their brain power.
But it wasn't always like that for me. I grew up with very, as you mentioned, a quote unquote, a broken brain.
I had learning difficulties, poor focus, poor memory. It came from I had a traumatic brain injury when I was five.
So I had an unfortunate accident, or some people would say fortunate accident. I was in kindergarten class.
I took a really bad fall, rushed to the emergency room, knocked unconscious, lost all this blood and just, but we're really showed up as in school. I had poor focus or memory.
I just didn't learn. I had processing issues.
Teachers would have to repeat themselves over and over again. And then I would eventually learn to pretend to understand, but I didn't really understand.
It took me three years just to learn how to read like the other kids. That was very embarrassing.
A lot of,-esteem issues, as you can imagine, a lot of self-doubt, belief in myself. When I was nine years old, I was slowing down a class and being pretty teased a lot.
A teacher came to my defense. She pointed to me from the whole class and said, leave that kid alone.
That's the boy with the broken brain. And that's where that moniker came in.
I know she had great intentions, I'm sure. But all I took from it was, wow, I didn't know I was broken.
And that became my belief system, my inner dialogue. So every time I did badly in school, I would always say, oh, because I have the broken brain.
And that became my reality. So that label became my limit.
I struggled all through school, middle school, junior high, high school, barely able to pass. But eventually I found a mentor when I was 18.
And it really opened up my mind to the power that we had between our ears. I started studying brain science, adult learning theory, ancient mnemonics wanted to find out, like, how did people remember things thousands of years ago when there weren't printing presses and the internet? And yeah, a light switch flipped on.
And I just, after 60 days, you know, my grades improved and just my life improved after that. And I couldn't help but help other people.
So I'm in my early 50s. I've been been doing this for over three decades and it's just my mission to build better, brighter brains.
No, no brain left behind. Yeah.
I love that you took something that you struggled with to not only improve your own life, but then to share and serve others with it. I had a learning disability in reading comprehension.
So I had a similar thing with learning slowly. I didn't have a brain injury, but I just didn't learn the same way.
And it's surprising to me that we don't learn how our brains learn unless we figured out on our own. That should have been something.
I went to college. I finally figured out how my brain works and learned.
And I was like, why wouldn't we learn this in grade school? Why didn't we learn this in the beginning? That would have saved us a lot of time. And it leads me just to get curious.
I know we have different learning styles and different types of brains. Are there unique styles of learning that we can understand? How do I learn and how can I personalize my learning strategies to support that unique style? That's a wonderful question.
I realized as a coach in this space that it's not how smart you are, it's how are you smart. And it's a very subtle difference.
It's not how smart you are, it's how are you smart. And that we all have genius and intelligence that expresses itself in different ways.
You know, in school, you're right, they taught you what to learn, like math and history or science, but there are no classes on how to learn. And I think if there's one skill for all of us to get better at, to make our lives easier, to be more productive, to raise our level of success is our ability to learn rapidly.
Today, knowledge is not only power, knowledge is profit. And the faster you can learn, the faster you can earn.
But everyone learns a little bit differently. With the updated version of my book, Limitless, we talk about personalized learning styles.
And it's more than just some people like to learn visually or auditorily, like hearing, listening to podcasts or audio books, or some people like to read, or some people like to roll up their sleeves and do it. We've identified four brain types.
So just like, you know, in wellness, there's like personalized nutrition based on an assessment, maybe a microbiome test or a- Or your blood type. Yeah.
Right. Or a nutrient profile test.
And there's personalized medicine based on like maybe a DNA test. We created a simple four minute assessment that determines your dominant brain type.
And based on that brain type would inform, just like any assessment would medical assessment, health assessment, your future behaviors, like how to learn better and how to perform better based on your brain type. So I could go through them really quick for everybody.
Yeah, I would love to hear them. I don't get to talk about this a lot, but this thing I'm most excited about is personalized learning performance.
So we made it the four animals. It's kind of like the assessments people take is like, which Game of Thrones character or Harry Potter, and people could take it at mybrainanimal.com.
It's free. It takes four minutes, multiple choice.
And think about your brain code, C O D E. And I made it an acronym for the animals.
So the C are your cheetahs. And if people are why happen to be watching this on your video, uh, I'm just showing a picture of a cheetah, the cheetah, their dominant brain type, their trait is action, right? Cheetahs are very fast.
They're very, fast. They go by their intuition.
They don't have to think about things because they just, they act and that's their dominant trait. The O in code are your owls and your owls, their dominant trait is logic.
They love to reason. They love to really use critical thinking.
So the idea here is they love facts and they love formulas. They love figures.
They love data. Your D in code are your dolphins and dolphins.
Their dominant trait is creativity. You know, they love the power of the imagination.
They're really good pattern recognizers. They have a vision of their life or maybe their business or their mission.
Maybe other people can't see it yet, but they have a lot of passion behind that vision. And then finally, your E, the E in code are your elephants and their dominant trait is empathy.
And these are people who are great collaborators. They're great community builders.
They have high levels of compassion. They want people to feel seen and heard.
So the idea here is once you understand what brain animal you are, then we show people, because it's just like wellness. Some things just don't move the needle or they're benign, right? You give people strategies and some people, this diet really works for them or this exercise routine works for them.
And sometimes it doesn't. This is personalized every every almost every area of your life.
So as an example, and just to make it more vivid who these animals are, if you take a show like Friends, right? The TV sitcom, Ross would be your owl. He's your scientist.
He's your professor, right? Loves the facts. Joey would be your cheetah.
Doesn't think, just acts, right? On impulse. High intuitionist just does it.
Phoebe was the one that plays a lot of music and the artists. She's your dolphin.
Monica loves the host. Everything has to be at her apartment and she brings everyone together and she would be your elephant.
And essentially, we had recently our team take this assessment. And it's funny, 100% of our customer service, our customer support team, turned out to be, what animal would you guess? The Rachels, the collaborators.
What was that one? Exactly, your elephants. The elephants, yeah.
Perfect. And we didn't hire for that.
Yeah. But we realized that we've been used working with a lot of companies and they're using this model to hire for various positions.
Like for example, our CEO is an owl. Like he needs to see the numbers every single day.
My business partner, our CEO, she's a dolphin, very strong dolphin has this is very vision driven. And so it's, how that plays out.
Our creative team are also a lot of dolphins. And it's interesting, you could parent that way.
You can give your kids take it. Because think about it, cheetah would read, they would be more skimming, doing these short study sprints where creatives like dolphins are going to visualize more of what they read as an example.
Would a cheetah be more kinesthetic learner as well, more experiential because of the action? Would that also correlate? It would layer over cheetahs and also your, your elephants who are very attuned also with, you know, feelings and their, and their body, they're in their, their kinesthetic. So, so it's interesting, like even with sales, you could apply this not only for learning, but for sales.
If you're selling to an owl, you want to make sure you have all the facts and all the research, all the evidence that shows this is possible. If you're selling to a dolphin, you would be able to hear their vision of their life and see how your product or service, you know, fits in into that.
If you're selling to an elephant, great facts and great vision, but, but they need to, the relationship itself is more important than, you know, in terms of, of trust and making them feel seen and heard. And so, um, I love this.
I love this because it's like, we're not only self-aware, but then you can also apply it in all these different ways. I teach sales around the Enneagram as well as attachment styles, because you're a hundred percent right.
The more you understand how people are driven, you can connect with them, create safety and speak to them in their same language. But what I love about your, the code, your four types is, is also really kid-friendly, right? So've got these cute, you know, animals and you could also work with them to teach them in the school systems, which I hope you're doing, or somebody on your team runs with, because I would have loved to have had that.
It would have saved me a lot of my self-esteem issues of understanding that I just learned differently than the way that the public school system taught, because my, my learning disability is in reading comprehension. And so I don't learn through reading, but I later learned how I learned and it helped me develop more of my intuitive gifts, which then supported me in being a psychotherapist and a coach.
And so it's great. It's like disability, or is that an ability that got further developed? And so I love your perspective around that.
And since everything comes back to the brain, it's, it's how even not only how you learn, it's how you communicate, right? Cheetahs, because they get straight to the point, right? Their speech is more concise, more focused, action oriented. They dislike beating around the bush, right? Because that would waste, that would waste time, you know, as opposed to an owl, they prefer details.
They communicate in a logical sequence. They present facts and figures and data.
Dolphins, though, they speak about the bigger picture, about future plans, about innovative ideas, whereas elephants are really keen on understanding and validating the feelings and perspectives of others. So it's, uh, it's interesting how it, how it plays out in, you know, day to day.
I love it. I love it.
I can't help. I focus so much on the Enneagram, so I can't help but see parallels as well.
And I love how distilled this is because yeah, just normalizes also how we make decisions, you know, like what do we need so that it's not, if you're working with somebody on a team or you're parenting, it doesn't mean anything about them. It's just like, oh, they need more time to find the data before they feel comfortable moving forward.
Right. Or in sales conversations.
So I think the more aware we are, the better, which I love this. And I'm curious about note-taking and the power or the significance on comprehension with note-taking.
Is there any correlation with that? Yes. So when people are learning, even when they're listening to this, there's a learning curve, but there's definitely a forgetting curve also as well.
When you hear something on a podcast or you read it in a book, upwards of 80% of it is lost within 48 hours. That can be a challenge, right? And one of the ways to mitigate that, obviously, is taking notes.

Note-taking is one of the most powerful tools for learning and for memory,

and it doesn't just help you just capture information.

It could help you to deepen your understanding and your retention of the material.

Now, some people prefer digital note-taking.

Some people prefer handwriting notes.

When people are tested, university students, for comprehension and retention, handwriting notes outscores digital note-taking. I'm kinesthetic.
And I'm thinking about these digital note-takers. That's not going to be helpful unless they just keep rereading it.
For me, actually, the kinesthetic writing it out is what I can see helps deepen my knowing of the material. Yes.
So digital, you know, it's very convenient in terms of storing your notes or sharing your notes with, with other people. But in terms of actual learning, understanding, consolidation, handwriting notes outperforms.
I like a very simple way of taking notes. I take a piece of paper and I put a line down the page and on the left side, I capture on the right side, I create.
So it's very subtle difference, like capturing the, how do you remember names? How do you read faster? And how do you learn a language? You're capturing that information. But if your attention is going to wander, I rather wander on the right side of the page and you're going to create, you're going to write your impressions of what you're capturing.
So it could be, how can I use this? How does this relate to what I already know? What questions do I have that I want to post on social media to ask about, you know, what I'm learning about now? When will I use this, you know, scheduling and so on. So on the left side, you're capturing or you're note taking on the right side, you're creating or note making.
So note taking, note making, it's just a more of a whole brain way of taking notes, you know, kind of using the logical and the imagination, but anything that when your note, I mean, it can be mind mapping. There's so many different ways of taking notes.
You know, if you could activate multiple senses, especially if you're writing, there's hand physical movement, there's visual engagement, there's cognitive processing, which in first is your memory. And when you're taking notes, you have to be an active listener, right? It requires you to focus, to think about the information, maybe summarize things, your own words to filter what's important.
Your note-taking also organizes information, which will help you remember it. You're creating a structured, you know, external memory that you could revisit.
And so it also supports long-term retention, especially if you review. So many people take notes, but that's the end of the story.
They never look at that notebook again from that event. Which is better than not taking notes.
It's better to take the notes, even if you don't review, but then if you review it, it even solidifies it further, right? Yes. Especially if you do like spaced repetition, where if you could review it like an hour later, a day later, a week later, it helps to consolidate your short to long-term memory.
Oh, that's good to know. Yeah, I'm just thinking about, because I do a lot of audio books, but if I use this note-taking in the left and right brain where I'm writing down some of the bullet points, but also how I'm going to apply it, that will help focus my attention so that it does go in.
But what I also hear is to layer on that is to just look at it the next day or repeat looking at it. So it solidifies in long-term memory.
And teaching somebody else, you know, learning this information, looking at your notes and sharing some ideas with somebody else. You take advantage of something called the explanation effect.
That's why coaches are so great because they get to learn the information and coach it so that you learn it even better. Right.
I'm like, this is the best profession in the world because we get to enhance our lives and then serve others in doing the same. There's nothing else I would rather do with my time.
I think it's one of the most honorable things people could do is to be able to grow so they have more to give. 100%.
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Okay. So that's retention.
What about memory? If there are powerful techniques that you didn't share or habits around memory specific, because I know there's lots that you teach. Is there another one that you can share with us? Yeah, of course.
So I believe two of the most costly words sometimes in our life are I forgot. Think about your career, your life.
When you say to yourself, I forgot to bring it, I forgot to do it, I forgot to go to that appointment, I forgot what I was going to say, I forgot what that person said to me, I forgot that person's name, I forgot what I just read, it just goes on and on. We lose time, we can make errors.
We can hurt a relationship. But on the other side, memory is a magnifier.
It can make you more money or create more meaning. When you can easily remember client information or product information, give a TEDx talk from memory, when you can remember facts and figures.
I mean, we live in this expert economy where everyone listening, it's not like thousands of years ago where we're paid for our brute strength. Today's our brain strength.
It's no longer our muscle power. Today's our mind power.
There's three keys to a better memory. You can remember MOM, M-O-M.
I'll make an acronym because it's easier to remember. Let's say you want to remember something like names.
Important. Let's say you have a coaching business and you want to be able to create relationships.
It's hard to show someone you're going to care for their life or their finances, whatever coach you are or a parent or teacher or professional you are, if you don't care about that person. And what's the message we send to somebody when we forget their name, right? So people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care, as the saying goes.
So let's say someone has trouble remembering names, but we had a suitcase filled with money. And it was theirs.
If they just remembered the name of the next stranger they met, who's going to remember that person's name? Everybody. And so as a coach, as a brain coach, I have to call people, as coaches do, on their BS, their belief systems.
So it's not true you can't remember names. The first M stands for motivation.
And so we don't remember all names, but we don't forget all names either. We tend to remember names of people who could be good for our work, people we might be attracted to, or there's some kind of emotion that's there.
And that's one of the keys to a better memory. Information by itself is forgettable, but information when it's combined with that emotion becomes unforgettable.
I'm sure a lot of people listening, they could hear a song that could take them back to when they were a teenager or maybe a food or a fragrance. It would bring back a memory of when you were a child.
So the information by itself is forgettable, but adding emotion makes it unforgettable. And so how do you tap into that motivation? You know, I think it's important.
We have a podcast. We've had Simon Sinek on it three times.
And he has a great book called Start With Why. And so just ask yourself why.
You're meeting somebody, ask yourself, why do I want to remember this person's name? Maybe it's to show the person some respect or get a referral from my coaching business. Maybe it's to practice these things.
I learned on the podcast. And the thing is, you can't come up with a reason you won't remember a name because reasons reap results.
I believe the success formula for all of us is H cubed, three H's. It has to go from your head to your heart, to your hands.
You could have goals in your head, right? A vision of your life or your career. But if you're not acting consistently with your hands, you're doing the work, check in with the second H, which is our heart, right? Which is a symbol of, of emotions.
And so reasons reap those rewards that we're looking for. And so just just ask yourself why you know what are the benefits that come from applying what i just read in this book or listening on this podcast or why should i remember this person's name how can i use it yeah the o in mom is observation a lot of people when they forget something they blame their retention and it's not your retention

as much as your attention the art of memory is the art of attention and yet how do we maintain our attention in a world full of rings and pings and dings and app notifications social media alerts every like share comment we're just driven to distraction right and so let's take it back to remembering names. You have this incredible gift, this most amazing supercomputer, advanced supercomputer on the planet.
Between your ears, 86 billion brain cells, neurons, with upwards of 10,000 synaptic connections. If you extrapolate that, it's more connections than there are in the known stars in the universe.
We can remember a name, right? One or two words. A lot of times we're just not, we're not present, right? We're looking over people's shoulders.
We're thinking about how we're going to respond. And even if you, simple thing to do to be more observant, just think about the word, listen, you can write in your notes or imagine the word, listen, and just as a brain teaser, move the letters around, scramble them.
And it spells another word perfectly. It spells the word silent.
Wow. Yeah.
And so many people could remember things better if they were just present with the person. Years ago, I went to a fundraiser.
It was like a ballroom for 2,000 people. I go to my roundtable, and I was the first one there.
And then Forrest Whitaker sits next to me. And then Richard Branson sits next to him.
And then Ashton Kutcher sits down with his twin brother. And then President Clinton sits right next to me.
And he addressed me by name. And I was like, wow.
And then I thought, like, oh, of course he knew who he was sitting with, of course. And then he picks up a conversation that we had a few years earlier, and it was a brief conversation and nobody was privy to that conversation.
And I was like, wow, you know, I believe genius leaves clues. When somebody does something extraordinary, there's a method behind what looks like magic.
And I'm so curious. And that's like, my biggest passion is kind of uncovering that genius and showing other people, uh, how to, how to duplicate it.
Right. And, uh, I was like, you know, I'm a memory coach.
I need to know how you're remembering all this information. Um, and he tells me this story and this is abbreviated, but basically his grandfather telling his story about his grandfather in Arkansas in the the living room, telling stories.
But afterwards to the children, he did something different. He quizzed each child to see if they were really paying attention.
And when he's telling me this story, I got this feeling, have you ever been with somebody and you felt like you're the only one in the room? They're so present with you. And so they're much more important people in that room than me, certainly at that table than I am.
And yet I feel like I'm the only one there. And I think that politics aside, right? Most people would say Clinton, high charisma, great connector, great communicator.
And he's got this incredible memory and he's got this powerful presence, but I think his incredible memory and his powerful presence comes from being powerfully present. His incredible memory and his powerful presence with people comes from being powerfully present with people.
And who's that reserved for? I mean, who has access to that? We all do, right? And so I feel like your attention is a muscle. It grows stronger with use and just being present with your kids or practicing being present when you're reading or you meditate as an exercise, not to get enlightened, but when your mind wanders, which inevitably does, you pull it back to your breath, you pull it back to a mantra and you exercise your power of presence and concentration.
The greatest gifts we can give each other is our presence. And we have more dopamine and serotonin when we're doing one task at a time.
It's been proven. And so not only is you're more productive, but you're also happier.
And then it's such a gift to ourselves and to others to drop in in that level of of presence. What a beautiful story.
Yeah. So it's just, it serves as a reminder to improve your memory.
Just tap into the motivation. Why do you want to remember this thing or this person? The O is observation, just a reminder, just to be present and they'll listen.
And then the last M in mom are the methods, you know, which are books. And of course, it's just full of memory, how to learn languages, how to remember a speech, how to remember names.
But I still believe half of success is that mindset. And I feel like that observation, that motivation kind of falls under that, just caring about the person as you would normally do.
Yeah. And I know that you work with a lot of people that are at the top of their game, celebrities, CEOs, like high performers, and yet burnout happens.
So what do you recommend for people to recharge and really stay at their best? Yeah. So I would say, and I posted this on on social media that I feel like burnout sometimes is not because we're doing too much.
Sometimes we're burnt out because we're doing too little of the things that make us come alive or that nurture our souls and our bodies, you know, self-care could fall into that category, but mental exhaustion, you know, is just very commonplace, right. For, for anyone that's trying to achieve or do anything or just to live on the daily.
And the good news is not just as we train for physical endurance, we can train our brains to recover, to be able to recharge. And so a few things I would think about for everybody, protect your mental energy.
Burnout often stems from decision fatigue or constant overstimulation. And so what can you do? Action steps, a couple of quick tips.
Everybody has a to-do list. I've been talking about this for 20 years.
I still think it's important for everyone to have a not to-do list. You're non-negotiable.
It's things you just will not do. Sometimes when we say yes to somebody, we were saying no to ourself, right? And part of being limitless is putting borders and boundaries, protecting the things that are important to you, like your time, your focus, your energy.
So on your not to-do list, decide what tasks or commitments, distractions you'll eliminate. And this frees up all this cognitive bandwidth for what, what truly matters.
So it's not so much like time management. It's really more about priority management or mind management.
I think the most important thing is to keep the most important thing, the most important thing, right? You want to get really good at the things that matter and then put everything else on your not to-do list. And sometimes when we subtract, we multiply.
I'm sure people have relationships where a loss was really a gain, right? And you subtract, so you actually multiply it in the long run. And then part of that is you can practice things like the 80, 20 rule, which a lot of people are familiar with the, you know, Pareto principle, the 20% that gives you 80% of the, um, of the results and rewards, you know, part of burnout, getting more resilience is, is taking care of your body.
You know, most people aren't prioritizing their sleep and they know sleep is a superpower that it isn't a luxury. It's essential, especially for your brain, memory consolidation, decision-making, emotional resilience.
But most people haven't sat down and really created a sleep ritual. How's your sleep in general? I was just going to say, I have the best sleep ritual because I know that if I'm working, if I'm in a busy season and I'm working until sleep, my brain's still going to be working while I'm sleeping and the quality of sleep is going to be affected.
I've measured it with HRV. So some of the things that I do to, I know I love morning rituals.
I think that's great, but I'm more about the night ritual because of the quality of recovery and sleep. So I have a humidifier because it's loud.
So my kids don't wake me up, but it's also more moist in the air. I have an eye mask, so there's no black.
I take a cortisol manager, sometimes a little, very little bit of melatonin if I really need it, but I don't work a few hours before going to bed. And in meditation, I do a yoga nidra, which helps drop the mind into the body, into the present moment.
And I do find that meditation, if I'm really busy, if I take 10 to 15 minutes to meditate, it feels like it slows down the day. I make better decisions.
I'm also using an energy source that's not just my own personal reserve. I'm tapped into a bigger source of energy that's unlimited, and it moves through my body.
So I'm not just depleting myself, and I find that to be really helpful. I love that.
Yeah, since I've integrated yoga Nidra into my evening routine, it made a big difference. A couple other things for me is getting daylight first thing in the morning has been a marked difference because I measure everything also as well.
So even if it's hazy or foggy and you go outside, get 10 minutes, your eyes are the only part of your brain that's outside of your skull. It helps to reset your circadian rhythm.
So I sleep better when I do that, that evening, when I do it that morning, I'm very sensitive to caffeine, so I can't do caffeine past 12 o'clock. Oh, I can't even do it.
Some people can't digest. I took 23 and me and it said that I don't even digest caffeine.
So I don't have it because I'm, I have more energy without it. Wow.
That's, that's amazing. Yeah.
So you could stay in your system. I mean, half, it's like, you know, 10 hours.
So I try to not do any much caffeine. I do tea, but I'm kind of jealous of the people who could do like expressos at night.
Two of the biggest needle modes for me though, at night, like we would know thousands of years ago, it'd be time to go to sleep. Cause the environment would tell you there'd be, it would decrease in two environmental factors, temperature and light.
And so generally, I try to keep it as cold as I can without bothering my wife. Yeah, what's the temperature? What do you set it at? We keep it at about 66 per night, and it's very good for us.
You could also do a hot shower, a sauna, a bath,

especially with some kind of salts because magnesium,

you're absorbing that transdermally, and that could help you relax.

But when you get out of that hot bath or shower or sauna or whatever,

your core body temperature drops, and that's a signal to produce the melatonin,

which is the hormone to help you to relax.

Light is a big deal.

Because the thing about it, like that was years ago. We couldn't control this stuff.
But now in modern conveniences, the temperature could be the same all the time and the, you know, lighting everywhere. But the culprit really is the screens.
You know, I saw a video on my Facebook reminders, like 10 years, Simon Sinek and I talking, it has 38 million views. It just, for me, I just say, don't touch your phone the first 30 minutes a day, last 30 minutes a day.
You know, they talk about the blue light and the screens and trolling your mind and thinking it's still daylight. And so you don't produce melatonin.
It's not just that. It's not just the light.
It's the context and the stimulation from the scrolling, right? Like you would never invite a hundred people into your bedroom when you're going to sleep, but it's like you're scrolling and you're hearing from like all these strangers. And for me, habit design is a very important part of what we do because we want to make speed reading a habit, memory a habit, focus a habit.
And one of the rules for habit design is you want to make the things that are good for you easier. And you want to make things that are not good for you more difficult, right? If you have those snacks in the kitchen, you're just going to eat them more often.
If you have your phone by your nightstand, it's just going to be easier to grab it. Just like if you don't want to do gluten and bread and you're at the restaurant and the waitstop brings you bread in the beginning of the meal, it's easier to say no once and let them take it away.
Otherwise you're sitting there

having to say no to yourself 50 times and exercise your willpower, which we know,

you know, doesn't last over. It's not sustainable.
So yeah, I put my phone in our bathroom and it

makes it really easy so I can't even touch it. And so there's no angst.
There's been studies

that have shown that even having their phone, you know, at the dining table, even if it's down

facing down, it's still, there's a higher level of anxiety just because it's there, right? The

Thank you. There's been studies that have shown that even having their phone at the dining table, even if it's down facing down, there's a higher level of anxiety just because it's there, the anticipation of having to check it and distracts our focus from our family or from whatever happens to be important.
And are these some of the environmental things that you recommend for people for better mental clarity and focus? Because I know you talk about how certain environments are helpful and others are hurtful. Is this some of what you mean by that? Yes, I would say that your external world is a reflection of your internal world, right? So especially even a messy environment.
Some say it could help stimulate creativity because there's stimulus that's there. But it does take an immense amount of cognitive energy to just keep track of everything.
And I think everyone's had the experience of cleaning off your desk or organizing it, or maybe on their computer screen, everything is in the right file folder. It gives you clarity of mind also as well.
So I feel like your environment is a wonderful way to really master, master more of your mind, you know, even simple things like reserving your bed for bedtime activities, right. As opposed to working in it or in change, then you associate that everything becomes state dependent and you kind of go in that mode.
I even recommend if people can do it, let's say they watch Netflix, just don't do it on your work computer because you'll start having that same kind of association to, to that. So all learning is state dependent.
And so very important to control your state. So declutter your space.
You know, for me, clutter competes with your attention and creates mental noise. So taking time to do that, optimize your lighting, uh, which is a totally different conversation, but poor lighting could strain your eyes and affect your mood, your energy levels.
And it's interesting, you know, like they've been shown certain fluorescent lights could have certain, you know, negative effects on, on, on mice and everything. But it's funny, like they'll use the cheapest because it's cheap.

They'll use it in schools.

They'll use, you know,

not the best quality of lighting in office buildings.

Your environment, noise reduction,

whatever background noise can break your focus and make it harder to concentrate.

So some people use whatever kind of ways,

earplugs or something like that,

or certain music that puts them in a state of learning.

You can leverage in your environment, color psychology. For those that are interested in that, because color can influence mood and energy levels.
What are some examples of that? Where blue and everyone's a little bio-individual, just like they are with food, right? Blue generally promotes calmness and focus. Red is more, simulates energy.
You know, if you want to use calming colors like blue or green, your workspace enhance your focus, reduce your stress. You could add pops of energizing colors, yellow, orange for creativity and motivation.
You could keep your space, you know, visually simple to avoid overstimulation. And then a couple of more things for environment ergonomic setup, like physical discomfort from poor posture from an ill-designed workspace can definitely drain your physical energy and your mental energy.
A lot of times people are tired because not because they need calories, but often because their posture and you know, if their diaphragm has collapsed. And then it strains their eyes.
Like my eyes went down. Uh, I have contacts for the first time in my life because of COVID because it was on the screen so much.
And I was, I was leaning over. I forgot that I could get a bigger monitor or I could zoom in.
It's almost like this. There was so much strain on my body that now I wear contacts.
Yeah. Good, good, good eye health is so important.
We deal with that with, with, with, with reading, you know, in certain exercises like palming to kind of just kind of reduce eye strain or looking off in the distance. Yeah, they say 20, 20, 20 for every 20 minutes, look 20 feet away for 20 seconds.
Oh, I like that. Yeah.
I think chat told me that. I like that.
Like the talk about the thought on the posture. sometimes we're tired because our posture, we're bent over,

and the lower one-third of our lungs can absorb upwards of two-thirds of the oxygen.

And your brain is only 2% of your body mass,

but it requires 20% of nutrients, 20% of the oxygen.

And sometimes we're fatigued just because we're not getting the oxygen flow.

And so your setup could be important. You also want to just, I was even talking about air quality, everything from fragrances, candles, new carpeting or furniture, the off-gassing, these neurotoxins, mold could also affect your brain, obviously.
And so that's part of your environment. You can manage digital clutter, which is everywhere.
You can add some nature into your environment that has a calming effect on your brain to help you improve your concentration, your creativity. Some people like the snake plants.
I got them all here in the podcast. I wanted an enchanted forest.
It feels calming to have. Very much so.
And you can use essential oils. Rosemary has been shown to improve memory.
Eucalyptus, peppermint for some kind of refreshing boost. And olfactory is the fastest way to memory, right? Something when I'll do like a kind of a brain hack with people need to study a subject.
They'll say an actor wants to memorize a script. They could put on a certain essential oil while they're studying it.
And then when they need to perform it, wear that same essential oil lip balm or cologne or whatever to help boost that as long as it's unique, right? Because the environment will get linked to the information. I heard that they're trying to digitize scent and that they're making good progress on it.
I'm like, how are you going to do that? Because the same way you would do with music, you're like, how would you take that and digitize it? But they're trying to do that with scent, which is going to be really helpful. I'm very optimistic.
I feel like it's one of the best ways to anchor a lot of, because all learning is state dependent, you know, and nothing gets to an emotion faster than sense of smell, probably for survival, right? You need to know when something is bad to eat it or not eat it. So everything in your environment, temperature, if it's too hot or too cold, obviously it's difficult to focus, you know, in our environment, my environment, my office here, I have my visual goals there.
And that helps me to stay on track on the most important things. I mentioned I have zones for different activities, you know, a desk for my office work, home for each chair for my reading, you know, a kind of relaxation corner where I do my meditation.
So it's kind of anchored there. And I imagine that also supports with productivity because as you're setting these things up, it'll help you get into that state and get into that zone.
I know a lot of people, at least that I speak with, struggle with procrastination, which my own thought process around procrastination is that they have an internalized parent or a parental voice that's telling them that they should do something. And this is their way of rebelling to be like, you know, sometimes it's a, it's really a procrastination is just a rebellious act inside of them to take their autonomy and freedom back.
But I imagine some of these things are helping with productivity as well, right? Yeah. For procrastination, I have a simple formula for everyone for limitless motivation.
And for me, motivation is not something you have, it's something you do. So a first principle of the work that we do in our courses and books and everything is taking nouns in our lives and turning them into verbs.
Because I feel like the nature of our work, you and I and a lot of your community is about transcending. I mean, think about the word transcend, you're ending the trance, you know, we're helping people break the hypnosis through marketing media, our families, whatever, our inner dialogue that somehow we're not enough.
Somehow we, you know, we're fixed in a certain way or are broken, or I may say fix, it's kind of like stuck in a certain way. And so you don't have focus.
You do it like having is a noun. You don't have focus.
There's a process for focusing. You don't have a memory.
There's a three-stage process for memorizing something, right? You encode it, you store it, you retrieve it. You don't even have energy.
There's a process for generating energy. And so the benefit of doing that, because if you either have it or don't have it, then you're kind of stuck.
But if it's a process, you just do it or don't do it. And so my goal is to bring people those processes, the methods behind the magic.
And so I found through my experience, 33 years of coaching as a brain coach, I realized that some people know what to do, but they don't do what they know because common sense is not common practice. And there are two things that have to come before the methods.
And I outlined the limitless model, it's whole Venn diagram. It's their mindset, which is, do you believe it's possible? Do you believe you deserve it? Do you believe you're capable of it? You know, cause you could have a great method for making money, but if your mindset is money is the root of all evil, you have to hurt people to make money.
You're still going to be stuck. Right.
Or if like, you know, often at events, people pull me aside and say, Jim, so glad you're here as a memory coach. You know, and they'll say, I have a horrible memory.
I'm just getting too old. I'm not, I've never been that smart.
And I always say, same thing. I say, stop.
If you fight for your limitations, you get to keep them. If you fight for your limits, they're yours.
You know, me, I was saying for, for years, I have the broken brain and it just, that power of belief, right? And it's not even that Jill, you know, the one of my mentors, you know, Wayne Dyer, many people know, she said, like, it's not that someone should believe it when you see it. It's the opposite.
You'll start seeing it when you start believing it because all behavior is belief driven. Your brain is this incredible supercomputer and your self-talk is a program that will run.
So if you tell yourself, I'm not good at remembering names, you won't remember the name of the next person you meet. You program your supercomputer not to? But the second M that has to be addressed also besides your mindset is motivation.
So if you self-sabotage, that's a mindset issue. If you procrastinate, that's a motivation issue.
And there's a three-part strategy or formula for limitless motivation, to motivate yourself to do the things you know you should do, or to motivate somebody else, to motivate someone to buy your product, to motivate somebody to clean their, your kids to clean their room. And here it is very quick.
The letter P times the letter E times S3, P times E times S3. And I'm hydrating a lot also because your brain is mostly water.
And I just want to remind everybody to, you know,

what you drink matters, especially to your brain matter.

So P times E times S3.

So let's break it down.

Let's say you want to motivate yourself to exercise.

Exercise is great for the brain.

And I don't just mean doing Pilates or yoga three times a week or CrossFit.

I mean how much you're moving throughout the day, right? As your body moves, your brain grooves.

And they say sitting is the new smoking. And we're sitting behind screens all the time, especially during the pandemic.
And we're not moving our bodies as much. When you move your body, you know this, you create a BDNF, brain-derived neurotropic factors.
What is it? It's like fertilizer for neuroplasticity. When you move and exercise, you create dopamine, serotonin, endorphins, all very important for cognitive health and wellness.
You get airflow, you get all these benefits, resistance training, so many benefits. But if you're not doing it, maybe going back to the example for motivation, the P stands for purpose.
So remember when remembering names, reasons, reap results, a lot of people, they know they should do it, but they don't feel.

An example in the wellness space, years ago, I was out and I saw someone I kind of recognized,

but I didn't know who it was, which is most embarrassing thing because, you know, if you see me live at events, if there's time, I'll memorize a hundred people's names and an audience

and do all these things. I didn't recognize him.
And, but when he opened his mouth and he said, hello to me, he knew who I was. I recognized his voice and then I knew exactly who he was, but he looked completely different, you know? And the backstory is, as I've known this person, this person is like picture of being unhealthy and was almost proud to pride in it.
Right. But now that I see him, he's like, stop smoking.
He lost all his

weight. He's looks, he has this glow.
He looks so much younger. And I said, you know, my, my, I believe everyone has something to teach me.
And I was like, you know, genius leaves clues. Like you look great.
What are you doing? And he tells me all the list of things he's doing. And I'm, and I said to him, I told you all that stuff for years and you didn't do any of it.
and he's like, yeah, but, um, you know, I got back from, I went on a business trip. I came back and I came home to my daughter crying hysterically.
She's never cried like this before. And when she stops, I find out that she had a dream, a nightmare that I died and, uh, wasn't there for, you know, so on.
And it went from his head to his heart,

right. And instantly he made the change.
And so the P P times E times this three for motivation, purpose, always start with a purpose. And he can't be here.
It has to be here, meaning your heart, you have to feel it. And then the E, let's say you want to work out the E is energy.
You need energy because exhaustion will make anyone a procrastinator, right? Like how, how motivated are you? Like we have, we have a newborn and a two-year-old and, uh, we're not just not getting a lot of sleep in the household. Right.
And so how motivated when you're exhausted, are you to read, to do presentations, to work out? Right. And so I realized again, with energy, you don't have energy now and you do it.
There's a process for generating energy, which involves certain brain foods, certain movements, certain breathing, certain sleep, stress management, a positive peer group, and all these very important things. And so you need the energy.
If you get a big big processed meal, you're not going to be very in a food coma and you want to motivate yourself to read. Like people see pictures of me with Oprah or Elon or whoever, and invariably people ask, well, how did we meet? How did we bond? And I'll tell you, we bonded over books, right? You read to succeed.
If somebody has decades of experience and they put into a book and you can sit down a few days and read that book, you can download decades into days. That's the biggest advantage that there is.
Plus people ask all the time, what's the best brain exercise you could do? It's reading by far. Reading is your mind, what exercises to your body.
And for somebody like me who has a reading disability, I'll do audio and sometimes I'll also buy the book so that I have both to keep my attention and really focus. I love that.
And sometimes you read audio, you maybe listen to audio a little faster, depending on that also as well. Absolutely.
And so just consuming that information and every new idea is making your brain. When I mentioned neuroplasticity, I know most people know it's that phenomenon that your brain can grow older, but you can make new connections as you age and how those connections happen through two things, novelty and nutrition.
Just like if you want to build your physical muscles, what do you do? You work it out. You give it novelty, some kind of stimulus and exercise, and then you give it nutrition.
So, you know, give it the amino acids, the proteins to be able to grow. Same thing with your mental muscles.
You want to have neuroplasticity, novelty, and nutrition. And the more you remember, the bigger your memory grows.
It's not the opposite, right? Because when I was a kid, I was like, oh, it's going to hit its limit. And I don't know if people still think that.
No, it's absolutely true. It's not like your cup is full and you have to empty it to put new information in and your brain doesn't grow that way.
It's just like somebody at the gym who's incredibly fit. The more exercise they do, the stronger they get, the more they can do.
The challenge is if you go to the gym, you see somebody deadlifting or bench pressing a huge amount of weight, you say, oh, that's easy for them because they're strong. It's like, no, they're strong because that's what they're doing every single day.

With the brain, it's a little bit different because you can't see these mental muscles.

That's why if people watch this on video, they'll see I'm wearing a shirt with a brain.

I'm always on social media, points to my brain.

Just as a reminder to everybody, what you see, you take care of because it's your awareness.

You see your car, your skin, your hair, your clothes. You know, you know, when it's getting out of shape or getting below quality, whatever, but you don't see the thing that takes care of us, you know, which is, which is your brain.
And I feel like it's the most beautiful gift and responsibility that we have. So that's energy.
So again, the key for limitless motivation, tap into purpose, really enhance your energy. Cause again, if you ate a processed meal, you're not going to be very motivated to read that day or to do any of the things you need to do.
And then the S3 are small, simple steps. Because think about why people procrastinate.
They either procrastinate because they don't have a reason to do that thing, or at least they don't feel the reason until maybe the day before taxes are due or something and their emotions change. Right.
Or they don't have the energy. Right.
Or sometimes people procrastinate because that thing is too big. It's too intimidating.
It's too unknown. It's too confusing and a confused mind doesn't do anything.
And so like, let's say we're going back to working out. Maybe that's too big of a jump for somebody that's not their routine.
S3 stands for small, simple steps. So maybe it's not working out.
Maybe your small, simple step is putting on your running shoes. Maybe on our podcast, we've done over 400 episodes.
We had recently a biological dentist, and he was talking about how oral health is linked to brain health. And we're talking about what to do beyond brushing, right?

Things like oil pulling, things like tongue scraping, all these things.

We're talking about flossing.

I was thinking about how do you get your kids to floss?

And S3 is, well, maybe flossing all their teeth would be too big of a jump,

flossing one tooth, right?

Because nobody's going to stop at one.

That's a small, simple step.

Let's say you don't want to read 30 minutes a day because that's too big of a jump. Opening up the book is an S3, you know, or reading one line is an S3.
Because the idea here is inch by inch, it's a cinch. Yard by yard, it's just too hard.
But little by little, a little becomes a lot. And how do you find your S3? So next time you feel stalled and you're procrastinating, ask yourself this question, what is the tiniest action I could take right now that will give me progress towards this goal where I can't fail? What is the tiniest action you could take right now that will give you progress towards this goal where you can't fail? And then you have your S3.
So that would be my three suggestions for tapping into motivation,

for motivating yourself to do things you know you should do,

or motivating somebody else to do what they should do.

Like maybe they're not buying your product because they don't feel purpose,

or they don't have the energy or the money or whatever,

or you're making it too confusing for them.

How can you break it down into something very small and get consistency?

Even on a marketing campaign or an opt-in page, how do you make it so super simple that they can't fail? And I love that you, that all of this work applies to every area of our life. So as people are listening to this, it's like, what's one simple thing you can do from listening to this podcast? So it's not just something you heard, but you action, right? From head to heart to hands, which I loved.
You are such a gift, Jim. I know we could dive into all the different avenues.
And I know my audience is going to want to stay connected. Talk to us about what you're doing and where they stay connected.
Well, I want to thank you. There's different ways.
I mentioned a podcast. They could just search my name in their podcast app.
We have a major, major big event for thousands of people who are excited about brain health and brain performance in LA, March 6th, 7th, and 8th. Everyone from Dr.
Daniel Amen to Dr. Gabby Lyons, just it's like the most amazing cast of faculty.
That's limitlesslive.com. That's a three-day immersion.
It'd be the largest brain performance accelerated learning event ever. Limitless, we donated all the proceeds from my book Limitless to charity.
for girls. We built schools in Ghana, Guatemala, Kenya, and villages that didn't have schools.
And also Alzheimer's research. We funded Alzheimer's research for women, because women are twice as likely to experience Alzheimer's than men.
So we did that in memory of my grandmother, who I lost to Alzheimer's when I was seven. And yeah, on social media, I would love people actually just to take a screenshot of the two of us, wherever you're consuming this and post it online and tag us both so we get to see it.
And going back to, if you want to learn something better, teach it, share one thing you're going to do for a better brain. Maybe you're going to add some blueberries or avocados, or maybe you're going to move a little bit more.
Maybe you're going to use that mom thing that we talked about or some of the sleep things that we discuss. Or share your brain animal.
When you go to mybrainanimal.com, we give you a detailed PDF report, how to study, learn, focus, remember based on your brain type. Parent, cell, there's lead, hire, manage, everything.
But we'll give of these, these kind of AI drawings. You can post that.
Cause I'm curious, like what the dominant brain type animal is of your community. But if you post it and tag us both, we'll get to see it.
And I'll, I'll gift out just three signed copies on the list at random, just as a thank you for having me on the show. So yeah, I really, I really love this conversation.
Me too. And thank you for your generosity and just the way you move through the world.
It's such a breath of fresh air. And I get why our communities are connected now.
I'm grateful to be connected to you. Thank you, Tim.
Likewise. Likewise.
Thank you so much. Thank you so much for doing this work that changes the world, starting with yourself.
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Now you can take a screenshot before hitting submit, and then go to a listen, obliga.com forward slash podcast to upload it and make sure to have your automatic downloads turned on wherever you listen. So you don't miss any of the upcoming episodes.
I have so much magic. I can't wait to share with you.
And you can find all this information in the show notes below. But lastly,

if you're on Instagram, I love connecting and hearing from you. So come on over and say hello.

I'm at Alyssa Nobriga. Thank you again for being here.
I cannot wait to share more with you.