When was the last time you ‘learned to read’? For most of us, it was in the early years of primary school, and you probably haven’t given much thought to that skill set since. But what if you could read smarter, faster and accelerate your capacity for learning – at any age? This week’s guest is here to show you how.
Jim Kwik grew up thinking of himself as the ‘boy with the broken brain’. A traumatic brain injury at the age of five meant Jim struggled at school, taking three years to learn to read. He was teased and bullied; his potential overlooked by teachers. Today, he’s a globally renowned brain coach who’s helped everyone from university students to CEOs and celebrities to improve their productivity, cognition and focus. He does so through his talks, coaching courses, podcasts, and online content – as well as his bestselling book, Limitless. 
In this conversation, he’s keen to impart his many tips, tactics, and techniques to us. We discuss why so many of us feel like we’re lacking in focus, are too old to learn, or worry that our memories are already failing. We talk about technology as a tool not a distraction, and how to structure your day with intention. And Jim explains how the 3Ms of Mindset, Motivation and Method can keep you stuck in limiting beliefs – as well as liberate you from them.
We then move on to Jim’s accelerated learning and reading techniques, and he has some fascinating and super-useful advice on how to ‘flex your focus muscle’ and become a purposeful, prolific reader who remembers and uses what they’ve read. He also shares some amazing hacks for reading 25 to 50% faster and taking in more, not less, as you do it – it’s not about skim reading or skipping words.
I can’t emphasise enough what an ideas-packed episode this is, and I know you’ll want to take action from the moment you finish listening. I hope you enjoy this motivating and inspiring conversation.  
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If you fight for your limitations, you get to keep them.

If you fight for your limits, they're yours.

Limitless is about advancing and progressing beyond what you currently believe is possible for yourself.

When your mindset, your motivation, and the methods, when your head, your heart, and your hands are all aligned, then you're living a limitless life.

There's a version of yourself that's patiently waiting.

And the goal is you show up every single day until you're introduced.

My name is Dr Rangan Chatterjee and this is my podcast, Feel Better, Live More.

So this episode is going to be the last 1 in the current series of my podcast.

If you are a long-time listener of this show, you will know that every summer we stop the podcast for about 6 weeks.

Now there are many reasons for this, but the main 1 is because the summer is the time of year where as a family, we try to prioritize undistracted time together.

My wife is the producer of this podcast and so very involved like me with the weekly production of each show.

So for us, it's very important to have some time each year when we stop.

And because we have 2 young children who have long school holidays, the summer is the perfect time.

Now, I'm well aware that many of you really look forward to each week's episode and that This podcast has earned a place in your weekly schedule.

Don't forget there are over 300 episodes in the back catalog.

Most of them are just as relevant today as they were when they were first released.

So perhaps this summer, you could take our little break as an excuse to delve into the back catalog and listen to some of the episodes you may have missed first time round, or perhaps revisit some of your favorites.

Our plan, as always, is to relaunch the next season at the start of September.

Now before we get into this week's episode, just a quick announcement.

We are now actively looking to find a new team member to help with this podcast.

We're looking for someone to work closely alongside my wife to edit, produce and curate each week's episodes.

We're looking for someone who ideally is familiar with my work, has a keen eye for detail and someone who is self-sufficient and able to manage and organise their own time and workloads.

Video and audio editing skills would be helpful, although they really are not essential.

And living in the North West of England would be preferable, but again, absolutely not essential.

This is a really important role for my podcast.

So if you love the show and want to join the team and feel as if you have the necessary skills, please do send an email to info at DrChatterjee.com with the words podcast producer in the subject line and of course if you have a friend who may be interested do let them know.

Now on to the topic of this week's episode, how can we all proactively upgrade our brains?

When was the last time you learnt to read?

For most of us, it was probably in the early years of primary school.

And you probably haven't given much thought to that skill set since.

But what if you could read smarter, faster, and accelerate your capacity for learning at any age?

Well, today's guest is here to show you how.

Jim Quick grew up thinking of himself as the boy with the broken brain.

A traumatic brain injury at the age of 5 meant that Jim struggled at school, taking 3 years to learn to read.

He was teased and bullied, his potential overlooked by teachers.

And today he's a globally renowned brain coach who tells everyone, university students, global CEOs, elite athletes and celebrities to improve their productivity, cognition and focus.

He shares his important message through his online talks, coaching courses and podcasts, as well as his best-selling book, Limitless.

In our conversation, Jim shares his most effective tips, tactics, and techniques.

We start off discussing why so many of us feel like we're lacking in focus, or are too old to learn or worry that our memories are already failing.

We talk about technology as a tool, not a distraction, and how to stretch your day with intention using the 3 M's of mindset, motivation, and methods.

We also talk about Jim's accelerated learning and reading techniques, how we can improve our own ability to focus and how specifically we can start reading up to 50% faster and taking in more, not less as we do it.

I can't emphasize enough what an ideas packed episode this is.

And I know there will be plenty that you will want to take action on the moment you finish listening.

I absolutely loved having this conversation with Jim.

Many people these days are complaining that they can't focus.

They just can't pay attention in a way that they used to.

Yeah, I mean, the world has changed, certainly.

Technology and I'm pretty pro technology, it also, it maybe hasn't caused it, but it certainly has amplified some of that distraction, that digital distraction.

I mean, we live in an age of rings and pings and dings and app notifications, social media alerts.

And I feel like in a way that we're driven to be distracted.

And how do you maintain your concentration, which is so important nowadays?

You know, we live in the attention economy and you know, But we're rewiring our brains to react and to be able to focus every little thing that's in our purview.

And how are you going to get things done?

You know in the book in my book Limitless I talk about 4 digital It's like the 4 horsemen if you will the mental apocalypse and I tend to alliterate so I made them all D's The first 1 actually is digital distraction.

You know, with the rise of technology and everybody like and share and comment in cat video, and then we get those dopamine hits, we're kind of rewired to be distracted.

Another 1 that we're facing that people I think are struggling with right now is this thing called digital deluge.

It's feel like there's too much information, but not enough time to go through it all.

It's feels some people describe it as taking a sip of water out of a fire hose maybe, or they're drowning in information and How do you catch up and keep up and get ahead?

And some of the things we could talk about here is I talk about accelerated learning, which I think is 1 of the most important skills to be able to master in the 21st century, to be able to catch up and really thrive.

Accelerated learning could also be speed reading.

You have so much to read, you know this in your field, and the amount and the half-life information is getting shorter and shorter, but the amount of information is coming at dizzying speed.

But how we read it or learn it, that growing gap creates information anxiety, higher blood pressure, compression of leisure time or sleeplessness.

So it could be a big, big challenge for people.

And then there's 1 that I termed digital deduction.

So you have digital distraction and digital deluge.

Digital deduction is this phenomenon where we, it seems like this generation is not having the same ability to think or to rationalize, you applied logic, critical thinking.

And it could be because of technology, with algorithms, a lot of technology is doing the thinking for us, right?

It's telling us, giving us our recommendation, it's telling us how to get from here to there.

If you think about way back before GPS, we would have to build visual spatial intelligence in order for you to be able to get from here to there.

But now we rely on our devices, So we don't have to think through outsourcing that.

We're so reliant on technology to also be like our external memory drive.

I mean, think about how many phone numbers, your audience, you and I used to know growing up.

And how many do we know today, current numbers?

Probably you could count on 1 hand, maybe 1, 2 or 3.

Not that I wanna memorize 500 phone numbers, but it should be concerning that a lot of people complain about not being able to memorize 1, you know, a phone number or a pin number or a passcode or a seed phrase or what they ate that day or conversation they just had.

I believe 2 of the most costly words sometimes in our life, certainly in our work, are I forgot.

You know, every single time we have those lapses, we could lose time and credibility.

It's interesting because it's clearly something that is increasing in society.

People in their 30s now are saying, you know, I just can't remember that.

You see people walking around a lot with their car alarms, like GPS, trying to figure out where to park their car.

So I want to sort of explore what's going on here.

And of course they all start with digital.

And you also mentioned that you're pro-technology, right?

So it's not necessarily technology that's doing it, maybe it's the way we're using that technology sometimes that's problematic.

So, you know, let's go through this 1 by 1.

I know you've outlined that, but digital distraction.

I think we all kind of get that, that we can't focus because we're just drawn to our smartphone and we're just, before we know it, we should be doing a work project, but somehow we've ended up down a Twitter rabbit hole or we've been on Instagram for 10 minutes without even realizing it.

Yeah, I mean, for me, technology is not necessarily good or bad.

Like fire is a form of technology and fire could cook our food or it could burn down our home.

Technology is a tool for us to use, but if technology is using us, then who becomes the tool?

And so, you know, having agency, I think is very important, the way of starting this conversation in terms of that we're not a victim, that we always are the pilot of our lives instead of the passenger.

You know, my challenge is when people pick up the phone out of boredom, right?

I mean, you know, in terms of how many times people open up social media or touching their phone or if it's at the table during a meal, you know, it creates that kind of unconscious anxiety that's there.

It's just the impulse to be able to pick it up.

And so part of it is obviously controlling the environmental aspect of it and knowing that we always have a choice, right?

There's a quote in Limitless from a French philosopher.

And he says, life is the letter C between the letters B and D.

We always have that choice every single day.

Our lives in effect is the sum total of all the choices we made up to this point.

And I'm also thinking that when it comes to choices or in the decisions that we make, I believe that even at a meta level that these difficult times, they could distract us.

It could diminish us or these difficult times can actually develop us.

We always decide because we always have choice.

Every day we wake up with a chance because we have choice.

And to take responsibility of it as opposed to putting it out there like something, I always use this metaphor that it's important for all of us to identify more with a thermostat than we do a thermometer.

Meaning a thermometer, let's say a thermometer is in your room.

It just reacts to the environment, whatever the environment gives it, it reacts.

And as human beings, we are sometimes like that.

We can react to the weather, we can react to the economy, all these different things.

But ultimately, you know this, you write about happiness, the people that are most fulfilled, happy, successful, they tend to not react as much, right?

They tend to maintain more of their agency.

A thermostat doesn't react to its environment.

A thermostat, it knows the temperature, it gauges, it has awareness and though it sets a temperature and what happens to the environment, the environment reacts to it.

And you know, when I've watched your videos online or listened to your podcast, I see a lot of shared philosophy.

I see a lot of things between us that we both like to talk about.

And I know first thing in the morning is a very important time for you as it is for me.

I really do passionately believe that the way we start the day determines so much of what happens later on in that day.

You know, if you start off consuming news, don't be surprised that you feel anxious, a bit frazzled, a bit negative about the world later on, because the way we feel is often downstream from what we're consuming.

And I know you're big on morning routines, you're big on not looking at your phone for a period of time in the morning.

And if we use the analogy of the thermostat, I guess we get a chance every morning to set the thermostat on our life, depending on what we do, right?

So you're a brain coach, you're a world renowned brain coach.

So to you, what does an ideal morning look like if we're thinking about the health of our brains?

And specifically towards things like focus, you have better focus throughout the day.

And when I go through some of the things I talk about in my morning routine, I'm not suggesting it's for everybody.

I don't think necessarily everything is for everybody or everybody's for everything.

I think ultimately we are our best coach and it's nice to have mentors and others and get their feedback, but to test it on themselves.

And then, everyone's situation is a little bit different.

Some people work at night, they're night workers, they have lots of kids and such.

For me, when I wake up, my goal is, while I do some of the biohacking people see on social media, the cryotherapy and the saunas and all that, Most of that I like to get nowadays from nature because it's free.

I feel like it's very natural, it's very duplicatable, you know, for all of us.

Is that when you spoke about recently, you'd like to get the 4 elements

You know, when I was researching another book, I was reading about the elements and how, you know, ancient cultures like from Babylon and Babylonian times, they used to believe in ancient Greeks, they used to believe everything was made up of these 4 elements, air, fire, water, and earth.

And I thought, wow, that's very beautiful.

It sounds very natural and organic for me.

And so for me, I like to infuse my day with those elements.

Maybe first thing in the morning, you can, you could do it by going out and getting grounded.

You know, I love taking off my shoes and, you know, being barefoot.

You're barefoot now in the studio as I am.

And walking around your beautiful yard and it's very peaceful, you get grounded.

And, you know, some people use biohacking like PMF mats at certain frequencies.

But I feel like all of those are meant to imitate nature, like the infrared, the red lights imitate the sun and so on.

So I'm going out there, I'm getting the direct sunlight, which is very important.

You know, we know many people talk about getting a direct sunlight first thing in the morning to reset your circadian rhythm, to help you sleep better at night.

And I have the earth, I hydrate, because we could lose a good amount of water when we sleep, through respiration and perspiration.

And just staying hydrated could boost your reaction time, your thinking speed upwards of 30%.

I mean, it's a huge, not a small boost, but a huge lift.

I always go by how I feel and also that's dictated by the night before, just like getting good night's sleep is dictated by how you start the day also as well.

That really works well for me, the salts and the minerals, you know, a nice tall glass works for me, usually room temperature, it just kind of like, that's my personal thing.

And then the last 1 is air, and that's just doing some breathing exercises.

You know, Sometimes people feel sedated or when they're reading they fall asleep or they feel like they have that mental fatigue.

And I feel like a lot of times it's just because we're not getting enough air.

I mean, sometimes we have to just even check our posture when we're at our desk because sometimes when you collapse your diaphragm, the lower 1 third of your lungs could absorb 2 thirds of the oxygen.

So it's really important to get that blood flow and that oxygen to where it really matters.

But intentionally what I'm thinking about in the morning is I do this and I've done this for the longest time.

I do these thought experiments where I just imagine myself at the end of the day, I could do this in bed or I could do this outside.

I can imagine a family member asking at the end of the day, how was your day?

You know, I crushed it today, something like that.

And then I asked myself, if that's what I say, then what had to happen in order for me to feel that way?

I kind of reverse engineer it, meaning like I think about 3 things personally and 3 things maybe professionally that happened and they don't have to be huge big things, but that's where I kind of put my focus and my intention.

I was like, okay, if I do this, if I have this conversation with you, that's a big check mark for me and I'll make me happy.

If I walk the dogs or play with my son or do specific activities, that's a win.

You mentioned before about being the pilot rather than a passenger.

I really like that practice where you've mentioned the 4 elements, completely get that, can see how that will be a very, well, literally a way to ground at the start of the day, root yourself, give yourself the kind of core ingredients that a healthy human needs each morning, right?

But I really like that exercise where you fast forward to the end of the day and almost visualise saying to yourself, that was a great day.

And so what do I need to do to make that a great day?

And can you give an example maybe, or how does this change things?

Because, you know, does it automatically change the way you approach the day?

Are you thinking about things you have to have done or are you also thinking about things like, you know, when I see my work colleagues, I wanna be calm, I wanna be present, I don't wanna be snapping at anyone.

I want to, you know, What sorts of things are you thinking about?

Yeah, yeah, and I've done both and or created a composite.

I think to-do lists, most people listening have some form of to-do list way of tracking the tasks that they have to check off.

I think it's important to also have a to-be list.

It kind of, maybe it sounds a little corny, but a to-be list, it's the whole idea where we're not human doings, we're human beings.

But when we're faced with a decision or dilemma, often people are like, what do I need to do?

And I think if people took a step back and say, who do I need to be at this moment?

It changes the reference point, meaning that maybe I would like, maybe you're in a spirited debate with someone at work and you just like, who do I wanna be?

And then the behaviors take care of themselves.

I don't have to think about what I need to do if I'm focusing on who I need to be at that moment, right?

So this is really about a proactive approach to life rather than a reactive 1.

Yeah, I very much think like 1 of the syntaxes or strategies of success is the B, do, have, share, that kind of model.

Because a lot of people want to jump to the have.

They want to have lots of money or whatever.

Or even when people win their lottery, right?

And you know, all the stats when people have and what happens over the next X amount of years, they lose all that and more, right?

Those jackpot winners, because they jumped to the, maybe you do have, they jumped to the have point, but they were never being a millionaire.

So they weren't doing the things that, wealthy people would do to have the things that they would have.

So I think all behavior is belief driven, meaning that if at events, when people see me do these demonstrations where I'll memorize a roomful of people's names or whatever, I always tell people, I don't do this to impress you.

I do this more to express to you what's possible because the truth is every single person listening to this, regardless of your age, your background, your career, education level, your financial situation, your gender, your history, your IQ, we could all do this.

So Socrates said learning is remembering.

So part of it is knowing that you could have the skills, the knowledge, the abilities through training, right?

Because school taught us what to learn, but not necessarily how to learn those specific subjects.

But also when we're going from B to have share, people at these events, they'll come to me and like, Jim, so glad you're here.

I have a horrible memory or our senior moments are coming too early or I'm just not smart enough.

And so I really feel like, you know, everything starts at that being level that it's part of success is aligning 3 H's, your head, your heart, and your hands.

Meaning there's an integration and alignment of what you think and believe, what you feel and what you're doing.

Meaning some people could have goals in their head and they have a standard in their head, but they're not acting with their hands consistently.

Maybe they have a goal for health or impact or income, But if they're not doing the actions with their hands, I think it's really important to check in with the second H, which is our heart, right?

Because we are not logical, we are more biological.

When you think about dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, endorphins, we're this neurochemical feeling soup, right?

And when we're coming, even building on that, yes, maybe you wanna have a, instead of just a to-do list, maybe you wanna add 3 things you wanna be, and also 3 things you wanna feel that day.

Because here's the first principle that I teach with accelerated learning is that you don't, it's about taking nouns and turning them into verbs, getting in the habit of taking the nouns in your life and turning them into verbs.

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#380 How To Improve Your Memory, Supercharge Your Focus & Learn Faster with Brain Coach Jim Kwik