October 15, 2019 • 30 mins
He is one of world's top memory experts, Jim Kwik, founder of “Kwik Learning” and host of “The Kwik Brain Podcast,” is a celebrity brain coach to notables that include Elon Musk, Will smith, even the cast of The X-Men.
In this interview, Jim shows everyone the “kwik” and simple ways they can boost their brain power and increase their memory.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
One of the challenges people suffer from right now, there's
these digital like supervillains, if you will, where previous generations
they didn't have this and it really holds us back.
One of them is digital overload. Too much information, too
little time. I mean, I think everyone could relate to
having books on your shelf you haven't read yet are
getting you know, how many emails do we get nowadays?
And so we're drowning in information. And one of the
(00:21):
reasons why is we weren't really taught how to swim properly.
We weren't taught how to surf, we weren't todd how
to snorkel. If you will, Hi, I'm Dr Oz and
(00:47):
this is the Doctor Oz podcast. My guests today is
one of the world's top memory experts. Jim Quick that's
is really an actually founder of quick Learning. What a
convenient name. By the way, I thought Oz was a
good day. He's also host of the quick Brain podcast.
He's celebrity brain coach, and notables that include Elon Musk,
Will Smith, even the cast of The X Men. To day,
(01:08):
Jim is here to show everyone the quick and simple
ways they can boost their brain power and increase their memory.
By the end of this podcast. Now here's the thing
that there's always amazed me. Most folks listening probably are
like me. I can't memorize a I can memorize the tune,
but not the lyrics of a song. Uh, but I'm
really good at medical stuff. I was always good at anatomy,
at these obscure Latin names. But I run this one
(01:29):
a cocktail party, completely missed. And then I read your story.
Yet me jealous until I find out that at age
nine you were also told you had a memory that
was like mine. Meanwhile, my wife, without even trying, remembers
everything I've ever done wrong, And much more so, how
does this all work at How did you what happened
at age nine that changed your life when I was
We we've met each other at various conferences. When I
(01:51):
speak at these events, I do these demonstrations, or I'll
have a hundred people stand up and introduce themselves and
I'll remember all their names, or they're give me hundred
numbers or hundred words, intimidating, And 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 the right now could
do that and a lot more. We just weren't taught.
(02:12):
If anything, we were taught a lie that's of how
our memory, our potential or intelligence is somehow fixed like
our shoe siyes. But we absolutely know that's not true.
And UM. One of the reasons why is UM. I
know this is because at the age of five, had
an accident in school, the very the traumatic brain injury,
and I was put in special classes. I had very
poor focus. I didn't understand things. Teachers would repeat themselves
(02:35):
four or five times. I would pretend to understand, but
I didn't really understand. I had a very poor memory.
It took me an extra almost four years and longer
to learn how to read because because of my injury.
At the age of nine, a teacher I remember it
was a defining moment, pointed to me in front the
whole class and said, that's the boy with the broken brain.
And uh, it's really it's it's it's sort of really
(02:57):
changed my whole perception, you know who I was. And Uh.
But at the A J A. T. And I was
able to break through. I learned ways of compensating UM
and UH and now my passion really is to build better,
brighter brains. Where did you learn these things? Because there
are a lot of people listening probably who are struggling,
especially in school or at work with memorization. Where did
(03:19):
they even turn? Where did you turn? Yeah, it's gets
kind of interesting because at first I was thinking about
going to school and learning it. But school, I've found
out it's a great place to learn what to learn.
They teach you what to learn and what to think
and what to remember, but they don't necessarily teach you
how to learn and how to think and how to
remember those things. I always thought it should have been
the fourth are back in school? They teach you three
(03:40):
rs right, reading, writing, arithmetic, But what about remembering? What
about recall? About retention? Socrates says there is no learning
without remembering. And so I knew I wasn't going to
learn it from school. So I I started studying. UM.
I wanted to solve this riddle of how does my
brain work? So I work my brain, like how does
memory work? So I could work my memory better? And um,
(04:01):
and so I started studying brain science, adult learning theory,
multiple intelligence theory, um mnemonics like what did the ancient
Greeks do back before we had smart devices and printing presses. Um,
how would people pass on information? And um? After I
started studying this, about sixty days into it, a light
switch flipped on and all of a sudden, I started
(04:21):
to understand things. I started have better focus, I started
to remember things, and my grades shot up in school,
and along with it, so did my self esteem. And
because of that I couldn't help but help other people.
You know, when I was kind of upset because I
was thinking, how how much easier life would have been,
you know, through all the struggles I had for about
a decade and a half. How I learned this back earlier,
(04:43):
and so I started helping people. And one of my
very first students I was tutoring. She was a freshman.
She read thirty books and thirty days. Can you imagine that?
Not skim or scan, but actually read thirty books in
thirty days. I wanted to find out, not um, not
how I know how she did it. I wanted to
know why she at it. And I found out that
her mother was dying of terminal cancer, was only given
(05:04):
two months, uh sixty days to live, and the book
she was reading, We're books to be to save her
mom's life, and um, I wished her luck, you know,
said prayers. Six months goes by, I don't hear from
her until this phone call comes in and she's crying
and crying and crying, and I find out when she
stopped their tears of joy that her mother not only survived,
but it's really getting better. Doctors don't know how or why.
(05:27):
They called it a miracle, but her mother attributed a
hundred percent of the great advice she got from her daughter,
who learned from all these books. And at that moment,
I realized that have knowledge is power than learning is
our superpower, and it's a superpower we all have inside
of us. So it's on rap as little because that's
an unbelievable story, and I think symblomatic of how you
you share your wisdom. We shared the stage that just
(05:48):
the milking conference, remember bringing you the hallway afterwards, and
you just had mostly to inform me, demonstrating a few
things that I was stupefying. So I want to forget you.
Mention you want to know why that young woman was
reading those thirty books. But I do understand how she
was able to read read books and reading is a
good examples. I've read some of your work and you
(06:08):
share with me in the past that it's it's not
that you're smaller than anybody else. But if you're distracted
while you're reading, or you're literally saying the words to
yourself to force yourself to hear that, that's a pretty
slow process, it is. And if you can, I think
the metaphor used. You know, if you're driving your car
through a neighborhood and tipping a coffee and glancing around it,
you may not remember everything. This is true, like um,
(06:29):
but I think one of the challenges people suffer from
right now there's these digital like supervillains, if you will,
where previous generations they didn't have this, and it really
holds us back. One of them is digital overload. Too
much information, too little time. I mean, I think everyone
could relate to having books on your shelf you haven't
read yet, or getting you know, how many emails do
we get nowadays? And so we're drowning in information. And
(06:51):
one of the reasons why is we weren't really taught
how to swim properly, we weren't taught how to serve,
we weren't taught how to snarkle if you will, and
so to be able to read faster, for example, it's
something that everybody could do. Anyone could double triple their
reading speed with better comprehension. It's just their number of
things factors the obstacles to effective reading. For example, Number
one is lack of education. Like reading is a skill,
(07:14):
it's not something we're born with. We learned it. But
when's the last time we took a class called reading?
How old were we? Like six or seven years old?
And most of us are still reading to the same
degree of skill and so, But the other one, as
you mentioned, is this lack of focus. You know, you
read a page in a book, you get to the
end and just forget what you just read, and you
go back and you reread it and you still know
(07:34):
what you read, and so your mind wanders. It's you
start to lose concentration. You wonder why that is UM,
and I think a lot of it is driven by
digital distraction, which is another supervillain, besides digital overload, all
the app notifications, social media alerts. It's um it's a
real challenge nowadays. But when it comes to your reading,
as you mentioned, when you're driving a car. If you
(07:55):
if you were to read, most people feed this incredible
supercomputer of a brain one word at uh time. Metaphorically,
we're starving our mind. And if you don't give your
brain the stimulus it needs, it'll seek entertainment elsewhere in
the form of distraction. And much like driving that car,
if you're in your neighborhood just going slow, um, and
(08:16):
you're observing the speed limit, you could be you're not
focused on the active driving. You're I think you're drinking
your coffee. You're texting even though you know you should,
and you're thinking about the dry cleaning, you're singing along
with you're having a conversation. You could be doing five
different things going slow. But if you're racing cars and
you're taking straight aways a two hundred miles an hour,
do you have more or less focus? You have much
(08:36):
more focus, your focus on the active driving and your
focus on what's in front of you. And similar to
reading and UM and so, actually there's a myth out
there that if you read faster, your comprehension would go down.
Everyone thinks that, but we have students in well over
a hundred fifty close to over a hundred eighty countries
online and we have a lot of data, and we
find that the fastest readers actually have a better comprehension
(09:00):
because they have better focus, like that fast driver. And
one of the reasons that, as you mentioned, we read
slowly is because we subvocalize. Sub vocalize. Have you ever
noticed when you're reading something, you hear that inner voice
inside your head reading along with you, hopefully your own
voice like somebody else's voice. You're not worthy exactly if
you're saying the words in order to understand them, then
(09:21):
you can only read as fast as you could speak.
That means you're reading speed is limited to your talking speed,
but not your thinking speed. That's why you can listen
to this podcast at one point five or two x
or audio books faster, because you can understand that, but
you can't speak that fast. And the key is a
lot of people are announcing the words, but you don't
have to pronounce a word like new York City to
understand what New York City is. And we find the
(09:43):
fastest readers actually reduce their subvocalization, and there's a there's
also a process for that. Interesting because when you start
to read, you sound out every letter and then when
you see a word, you don't do that. But we
haven't done that with the whole with reading. We've only
done it at the word level. We've never taken it
to the whole paragraph exactly. So it's a similar where
(10:05):
you look at a page and you don't see the
actual letters. You see, you know, individual words, and train
readers actually see groups of words together, so they have
less um what they call fixations. When you're reading across
the page, it's in like an eye stop. And obviously
if you're taking less stops, just like driving a carrier,
and get through it faster and less interrupted. So when
you read, you go straight down the page, you don't
(10:25):
go side to side, so I actually go side to
side on a traditional speed reading courses actually aren't it's
a misnomer. They're not actually reading. They're actually skimming or scanning,
skipping words where you get the gist of things. And
as you mentioned, our our students they run companies, they're
they're their doctors, they are at turning. You don't want
your doctor get the gist of what she's reading, right,
(10:46):
so you want to be able to So if you
go just down the page, you miss everything on the
left side and the right side. And so even if
a simple brain hack, if you will quick tip, part
of the fund is if you underline the words with
a visual pace or like a pen, highlight or mouse
on a computer and your finger, you will actually boost
your reading speed and focus, and which is tremendous just
(11:10):
underlining because and this is why, this is because human
means we want to know the reasons why things work
the way they do. Um First of all, I would say,
tested you know, if you read read for sixty seconds,
count the number of lines you read normally, and then
pick up where you left off for sixty seconds just
underlying the words, that second number will be about increase immediately.
And so you don't people have to take my word
(11:31):
for it. They can see from their own personal experience.
But the reason why is first of all, children will
always use their finger to help them focus until we
train them not to do so. A second of all,
adults do it too. And someone listening to say, I
don't use my finger when I read, But when I
asked you to count the number of lines you just
read in sixty seconds, a hundred percent of people will
use their finger as a visual pacer, poor pointer. The
(11:51):
third reason is your eyes. Your eyes are attracted motion.
As a hunter gatherer, you need to be able to
see what's in your in your surroundings because if you're hunting,
you're in a bush hunting, you know, lunch, rabbit or carrot,
whatever your diet is. If the bush next to you moves,
you have to look at that bush because number one,
it could be lunch or number two you could be lunch.
(12:11):
And so your eyes are attracted motions. So when your
finger is underlining the words, your attention is being pulled
through as opposed to apart. And then finally the last reason,
just to really um put it over the edge. You
try it using your finger while you read, because it's
how your neurology is set up. Certain senses work very
closely together. Like it's wonderful because this time of year,
don't you love going having like a fresh piece of
(12:34):
fruit and like right from the right from the vine,
right from the farmer's market, not something that's been sprayed
and wax sitting in a grocery store for six months.
Have you ever tasted a great tasting peach before? In actuality,
we're not tasting the peach, we're actually smelling the peach,
and but our sense of smell and taste are so
closely linked our mind can't perceive the difference. It proceeds
a difference. We're sick, if we're congested, food tastes different. Right,
(12:57):
As our sense of smell and taste are so close links,
so is our sense of site and our sense of touch.
That literally, people using their finger while they read, they'll
they'll say they feel more in touch with their reading, right,
and and the other. It's kind of interesting when we
lose your sense of site. Like if you go to
a child actually like a toddler, and with your keys,
and you shake your keys and say, look at my keys,
(13:18):
Look at my keys. What's that tyler going to do.
It's going to reach out and touch them. Because sense
its to look at, means the touch. And so when
you're using your finger while you're read, even if someone's
lost their sense of site, how do they read? They
read with brail right with their sense of touch. So
I would challenge people to use their finger and not
only will have help with your speed, but will help
with their focus. And if your focus is better, so
(13:39):
is your understanding. Well, when I see people reading a
digital device versus a book that some will complain if
their book readers. My son is one, he much tried
to read a book and he's you know, he's a
smart student, does well, so i'd pay attention to that insight.
He's nineteen years old. I you wouldn't able to cry.
(14:00):
I could not digital device if I moved my head over. Yeah,
we're not, we're not. We're not actually touching the screen,
just like even if you're using whether you're using a
physical like a print book or a digital device, we're
not touching the object because you know, as you're increasing speed,
obviously there's something called you know, friction, and I've I've
I've burned up a lot of books that way. But
(14:21):
but yeah, right above the words, so you're not actually
making contact. And even online reading, some people will actually
use a mouse, the visual pacer. It's it's a it's
a wonderful, easy, simple to use technique that just makes
your reading easier. There's lots more. When we come back.
(14:46):
You can just shift gears into names, which are reading
books is vitally important. Remember getting people's names right. That's
a career Craig crisis. If you can't do it correctly.
And I've seen you memorize thousands of hundreds of names.
I mentioned a little bit of how you do it,
but but you're very humble about the fact that we
can all do at least better than we're doing and
maybe something more approachable to you. Uh. It walked me
(15:08):
through that, and you know you have this m O
m acordym. But the specifics of it or what kept me, Yeah,
they're they're really really quickly. I think, um, one of
the most important business etiquette and networking just people's skills
is just to remember someone's name. I mean, we all
know the message we send to somebody when you meet
somebody in the handshake brakes and all of a sudden
the name just disappears. Or if it's not a short
term issue, it's a long term issue where somebody taps
(15:29):
you on your shoulder. You turn around, and maybe you're
at the gym or you're at the grocery store. You
turn you see someone you recognize, but for life of you,
you don't know. And the two of you, yeah, and
it's a family, well good right, and the two of
you meet so many people, and so it could be overwhelming.
So a couple of tricks for everybody listening to be
able to remember names better. Because, as they say, a
name is the sweetest sound to a person's ears. Um,
(15:51):
as you mentioned mom m o m very quickly, most
people will say they are horrible rumor names. The population
will admit. But let's say there was a suitcase here
of a million dollars cash for you your favorite charity
tax free. If you just remember the name in the
next stranger you meet, who's gonna remember that person's name? Everybody, right,
And so everybody has a great memory all of a sudden.
(16:14):
And so notice that as your brain coach, you know what,
coach also challenges you, you know, to get through what's
not what's not true. So when we say we're horrible
memory names, that's actually not true. We were good at
remembering the names we want to remember. And so tapping
in your motivation, a quick brain hack is just when
you meet somebody for the first time, ask yourself, why
(16:35):
don't want to remember this person's name? Maybe the show respect,
Maybe to make a new friend. Maybe it's to practice
these things I learned from this show. Because if you
can't come with one reason, you're not going to remember
I always help people reasons reap results, So tap into
the reason. The second the oh in mom is stands
for observation, and a lot of people they blame their retention.
(16:55):
And it's not your retention, it's your attention. Most people
are not paying attention. And that truth is when when
people are meeting people at a business event or at
a wedding, a lot of times they're not They're distracted.
They're looking over your shoulder and seeing who else is here,
who's more important here, Or if they're not visually distracted,
they're they're internally distracted. They're they're not even listening. They're
(17:16):
waiting for their turn to speak, or they're thinking about
how they're going to respond, and you can't listen to
that conversation with yourself and somebody else. And that's why
people are forgetting the name. And I would say that
I remember the second time I got to meet President
Bill Clinton, and it was at a charity event, and
the first time was very, very brief, But the second time,
a couple years later, we were sitting at the same
(17:36):
table and you remember my name, and I was just like, okay,
he was told who was sitting you know, I know,
and then he remembered the last conversation we had and okay,
so nobody nobody told him that. And I was noticing
when he was talking to me that. I was like,
you know, on the memory, guy, I need to know
how you're doing this. And he tells me a story
about his grandfather in Arkansas getting the kids together, telling
(17:58):
them stories. But after that he would quiz each one
separately to find out if they're really paying attention and
all this great idea, all these great ideas. But anyway,
when he's telling me this, there's a lot of more
important people in that room, and I felt like I
was the only one. And I think his you know,
people say, you know, he's got great charisma, great connector,
great communicator, it's got a powerful presence. But I think
(18:20):
his incredible memory and his powerful presence comes from being
powerfully present. And that's something we all could do, and
that's really what people want. That's the greatest gift. It's
it's the presence that we have, you know, which is
another word happens to being the word for the for
the word gift, but being present with somebody And just notice,
when we're talking about motivation, observation we're just talking about.
Motivation is just caring because people don't care how much
(18:43):
you know until they know how much you care and
start to show so many hearing to care for their health,
their family, their future, their finances. If you don't care enough,
just remember their name and then they O is just
observing or being present with them. So it's just caring
and being present. But finally, the M stands for the mechanics.
And these are the tips of the tricks, the techniques
that we teach you know on our podcast. But one
really fast one that anyone could do is just if
(19:05):
you want to remember names and faces, like walk into
a room and meet twenty strangers and leave saying goodbye
to every single one of them by name. Remember this
be swave, just always be swave. And again I use
acronyms because they're simple mnemonic device. Like we learned back
in school, um about the you know, homes being like
the Great Lakes and so on, when you're looking in
the mirror before homes, Yeah it was a yeah, Michigan
(19:31):
Erie and Superior or Roy g Bib are all these
little so these um, the acronyms are very useful. So
remember be swave. So next time you're at an event
and look in the mirror, you can check your makeup,
your clothing, but say I'm gonna be swap. The B
stands for believe, because if you believe you can and
believe you can't, either way, you're right. Henry Ford said that.
And the reason why is I say that is just
get rid of the negative self talk. A lot of
(19:51):
people say I'm horrible I remember names. But here's what
you want to remember. Your brain is like a supercomputer,
and yourself talk as a program that will run. So
if you tell yourself you're not good at rememoring names,
you will not remember the name of the next person
you meet, because you program your supercomputer not to And
I always talk people like and I would say I
have the broken brain. I have a horrible memory. People
say these all the time, and I say, if you
(20:12):
fight for your limitations, you get to keep them. If
you argue for your limits, they're they're yours. And here's
the thing. Even if you're not saying out loud internally
yourself talk, your mind is always eaves dropping on yourself talk.
So you want if you want to keep it positive,
or if you say to yourself, I I don't have
a great memory, just add a little word like yet
at that the end, people truly knew how powerful their
(20:33):
mind was. They wouldn't say or think anything they didn't
want to be true. And it's not to say you
you have one negative thought and ruins your life forever,
just like eating that one donuts going to But it's
the consistency is to have it. So the B is believed.
The E and B swab stands for exercise. And I
don't mean physical exercise, although we know people who are
more physically active will do better on mental acuity, have
(20:53):
better focus memory. But I mean practice because practice makes
practice makes progress. Right, and so the bad news is
it takes effort. The good news and not as men,
not as long as you think like I'm very good
at memory names. But after thirty or sixty days, once
you know how to drive a car and learn how
to type, it's something that you just do right because
it becomes the habits. So you want to practice this.
And finally the suave the S is you say the name,
(21:15):
and it's very very simple. You meet somebody and then
you just repeat their name, right you ted, it's nice
to meet you. And the reason why you also say
it it makes you sure you observed it correctly. A
lot of times you're in an event and there's distractions,
there's noise. You don't want to have a twenty minute
conversation with Ted and say goodbye, Ed, right, and so
you want to be correct and so you say the
name the you and swab stands for use it, and
(21:36):
use it three or four times in the context of
the conversation. But you don't want to abuse it. Lisa,
it's great to see you again, Lesta. Do you want
to grab lunch? Lisa? What do you want to talk?
That would be an abuse, right, But you say one
or two or three or four times in the context
of the conversation, so that see you. The A is
uh is ask And this is a great technique for
people who have you meet them and their name is
(21:57):
a name you haven't heard before, right, exactly what can
you ask about someone's name? How do you spell it,
where is it from? Who are you named after? What
does it mean? I remember I was doing a training
at the country's largest life insurance company, about a hundred
people in the room. Training director's name was Nanquita, and
I was like, that's a beautiful name. Where is it from?
(22:17):
How do you spell it? What does it mean? And
she paused. I was like what does it mean? And
she looked at her coworkers and says, it means graceful
falling waters. And I was like wow. And based on
the audience reaction, I was like, how long have you
worked here? Just like over four years? Many good friends here, Yes,
the other and my my wedding, And I was like,
raise your hand if you knew that's what Nikita's name met.
And I have a hundred people, How many people raise
(22:38):
their hand? Not one person? And I remember her name
is the sweetest sound of person's ears. And so you
could ask about a person's name. And then finally the
V and the E. The V stands for visualize the
person's name, meaning I bet your most people are better
with faces than they are with names. You go to
somebody's and you say, I remember your face, but I
forgot your name. You never go to somebody say the opposite.
(23:00):
You never go to someone say I remember your name,
but I forgot your face. Right, remember hearts, I know
what your heart looks like. Oh yeah, that's true. Um.
So as a so of your dad. But that's kind
of interesting. We want to have that conversation maybe on
on my podcast of the cardiac Surgeon. To be able
to recognize things, but visually we remember what we see
because our visual cortex. There's a Chinese proverb that goes,
(23:22):
what I hear, I forget what I see. I remember
what I do. I understand what I hear. I forget
I heard the name, I forgot it. When I see
I remember, I saw the face. I remember the face
and what I do going back to exercise, I understand.
So if you tend to remember what you see, try
seeing what you remember. So you meet somebody named David,
and I just imagine a slingshot, just like hitting them
on the nose. For David and Goliath. The person name
(23:42):
is Bob, I imagine them bobbing. For Apple. Person's names Mary,
imagine they're getting married, right. And for his name is
Carol singing Christmas. Carol's perst name is John. You fill
in the blanks right. When you meet thirty people, though,
you're going to have some repetition of names, yes, and
you don't have enough time to ask them what their
name means. And you're doing this all in this you
know how an hour, so you can't do all that,
(24:02):
So the app So the best thing about this is
when we're talking about these seven things, it doesn't have
to be all seven, even if it's just two or
three things. And the goal is not to be perfect.
You know, I'm not perfect. I don't have a photographic memory.
The goal is definitely progress and so um taking a
split second, and you're right. If somebody has the same
name to people have the name Bob, I'll use apples
for both. And it's a mnemonic device, and it's you
(24:25):
know what it is. It's to overcome what I call
the six second syndrome. When somebody tells you anything a
conversation of a phone number, of pin number, of a name,
you have six seconds to do something with that information.
Otherwise it's just gone in the ether. And what this
allows you to do is put your awareness both on
the name and on the person. So even when it
doesn't work, it kind of still works because it puts
(24:46):
your attention on the information you need to remember. And
it's and once you know the person's name, then the
picture disappears. It's just a it's like a bridge that
to temporary hold if you will, until the true information
gets encoded from your short term to your long term memory.
And then finally, the I and suave stands for end.
And what does that mean. It means exactly what I
talked about, to be able to end the conversation saying
(25:07):
their name, because if you can walk into a room
of strangers and leave saying goodbye using their name, they're
all going to remember you. And that's the standard skill.
More questions after the break. You mentioned a photographic memory.
(25:30):
I've always been fascinated by the phenomenon. I don't know
how real it is, but I've read stories of Russian
experiments where they visualize themselves walking down these long bookstacks
basically on their memory, taking the second left, and then
on the right there's a car, and there's a license
plate of the car. And it's like looking at the
phone book and looking at the answer. If you, I'm
(25:51):
sure you have looked into it, can you explain to
us what makes them special? What what what allows their
brains to do that? And what what allows you to
approximate that from the external world. It's not quite this.
That's a that's a great question. So um so an
idetic memory there's a phenomenon called idetic memorydetic and so
(26:11):
when people say that they people have like a photographing memory.
I don't think it's possible to the average. Is me
my experience of years of teaching this, I haven't be
able to duplicate that with with anybody. I feel like
that's sure. Genetics and biology plays a role. And the
good news is, you know the scientists haying is about
(26:31):
one third of our memories predetermined by genetics and biology,
but two thirds is in our control. The things you
talk about on your show, A good brain diet, getting
rid of negative thoughts, UM, you know, movement and exercise,
UM nutrients, brain nutrients, a positive peer groups good for
your brain, and clean environments great for your brain. Sleep
very important for your brain. Brain protection. A lot of people,
(26:52):
you know, concussions, traumatic brain and wear a helmet. New
learnings in order foster neurogenesis, nerroplasticy, new brains, curations in
your hippocampus, new new connections. It requires two things, novelty
and nutrition. Stress management, and we know chronic stress shrinks
the brain. Right, you know, if you're always cords all adrenalines,
it's great fight or flight, but not great if you
(27:13):
need to take a test or remember someone's name. So
you know, there's hardware and then there's software. Um so
that all those ten things are like the hardware of
your your your brain, and the anatomy, the software, the
things that we teach. And the big takeaway from this
conversation I hope everyone walks away from is this you
want to take nouns and tournament the verbs. Meaning that
(27:34):
a lot of people say I don't have a great memory,
have implies it to now and it's something you have,
right I don't. I don't have focus today, I don't
have motivation. I don't have creativity to write on my blog.
Those aren't things you have. Those are things you do.
And so because when you make it a have, you're
at the you're at the effect, you're reacting. You just
hope that today I have, you know, some magical power
(27:57):
as opposed to a recipe, because when you turn something
into verse, it gives you agency again where you have
the power. It's a difference between a thermometer and a thermostat.
If you look at a thermometer on the wall, it's
only functions to react to the environment and as human
beings worth a thermometer. Occasionally we react to the economy,
react to someone, how someone treats us. But when we
(28:18):
really want to take our lives to next level, spending
more time identifying with the thermostat. Because thermostat doesn't react
to the environment. It sets the environment, right, That's what
leaders do it had it had it sets a goal,
it sets a vision, The environment raises and arises to
be able to meet that um. When it comes to
a photographic memory, I believe there's something called h SAM
highly superior autobiographical memory, and about a dozen people have
(28:41):
been shown to have this where they could you say
on May twenty one, what as them? Right? I get
them a little bit because you and you mentioned in
your mom uh technique for for people's names, you put
it some emotional hook to it, because the key to
long term memory is information by itself is forgettable. We
we haven't. We're drowning information right now. The only thing
(29:02):
that we remember things that touch us emotionally because information
times emotion becomes becomes a long term memory and we forget. Like,
think about what was the primary motion we felt back
in school? The primary motion like like most people feel,
probably right it's either most people are either cured and
scared and confused, or their board right and boordom on
(29:25):
a scale of zero to tend emotionally, boredom is zero.
But if I just if we talk about information times,
emotion is a long term memory is boredom is zero.
Anything time zero is zero. So you wonder why you
forgot the periodic table? You know, are all the things
that we learned back back in school. And I would
say that there's no such thing as a good or
bad memory. There's just a trained memory in an untrained memory.
(29:46):
It's never going to be perfect, nor would we want
it to be perfect. It's useful sometimes to forget, but
we have this greatness inside of us. I always tell
people that your life is like an egg. That if
an egg is broken by an outside force, life ends.
But if it's broken by an inside force, life began
and all great things begin on the inside, and everyone
listening as greatness and genius inside. We just weren't taught
how to unlock it. So I could have said goodbye
(30:08):
to Quick saying he's a wonderful memory expert, but it
said he's really a philosopher. Peep. Wisdom makes you incredibly
popular for folks who knew what popular should be, who
graduated all the success to get a Fantasti podcasts were
superbably well check it out Quick Brain does k W
I K. Thanks you for being here. Thank you both
One of the challenges people suffer from right now, there's
these digital like supervillains, if you will, where previous generations
they didn't have this and it really holds us back.
One of them is digital overload. Too much information, too
little time. I mean, I think everyone could relate to
having books on your shelf you haven't read yet are
getting you know, how many emails do we get nowadays?
And so we're drowning in information. And one of the
(00:21):
reasons why is we weren't really taught how to swim properly.
We weren't taught how to surf, we weren't todd how
to snorkel. If you will, Hi, I'm Dr Oz and
(00:47):
this is the Doctor Oz podcast. My guests today is
one of the world's top memory experts. Jim Quick that's
is really an actually founder of quick Learning. What a
convenient name. By the way, I thought Oz was a
good day. He's also host of the quick Brain podcast.
He's celebrity brain coach, and notables that include Elon Musk,
Will Smith, even the cast of The X Men. To day,
(01:08):
Jim is here to show everyone the quick and simple
ways they can boost their brain power and increase their memory.
By the end of this podcast. Now here's the thing
that there's always amazed me. Most folks listening probably are
like me. I can't memorize a I can memorize the tune,
but not the lyrics of a song. Uh, but I'm
really good at medical stuff. I was always good at anatomy,
at these obscure Latin names. But I run this one
(01:29):
a cocktail party, completely missed. And then I read your story.
Yet me jealous until I find out that at age
nine you were also told you had a memory that
was like mine. Meanwhile, my wife, without even trying, remembers
everything I've ever done wrong, And much more so, how
does this all work at How did you what happened
at age nine that changed your life when I was
We we've met each other at various conferences. When I
(01:51):
speak at these events, I do these demonstrations, or I'll
have a hundred people stand up and introduce themselves and
I'll remember all their names, or they're give me hundred
numbers or hundred words, intimidating, And 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 the right now could
do that and a lot more. We just weren't taught.
(02:12):
If anything, we were taught a lie that's of how
our memory, our potential or intelligence is somehow fixed like
our shoe siyes. But we absolutely know that's not true.
And UM. One of the reasons why is UM. I
know this is because at the age of five, had
an accident in school, the very the traumatic brain injury,
and I was put in special classes. I had very
poor focus. I didn't understand things. Teachers would repeat themselves
(02:35):
four or five times. I would pretend to understand, but
I didn't really understand. I had a very poor memory.
It took me an extra almost four years and longer
to learn how to read because because of my injury.
At the age of nine, a teacher I remember it
was a defining moment, pointed to me in front the
whole class and said, that's the boy with the broken brain.
And uh, it's really it's it's it's sort of really
(02:57):
changed my whole perception, you know who I was. And Uh.
But at the A J A. T. And I was
able to break through. I learned ways of compensating UM
and UH and now my passion really is to build better,
brighter brains. Where did you learn these things? Because there
are a lot of people listening probably who are struggling,
especially in school or at work with memorization. Where did
(03:19):
they even turn? Where did you turn? Yeah, it's gets
kind of interesting because at first I was thinking about
going to school and learning it. But school, I've found
out it's a great place to learn what to learn.
They teach you what to learn and what to think
and what to remember, but they don't necessarily teach you
how to learn and how to think and how to
remember those things. I always thought it should have been
the fourth are back in school? They teach you three
(03:40):
rs right, reading, writing, arithmetic, But what about remembering? What
about recall? About retention? Socrates says there is no learning
without remembering. And so I knew I wasn't going to
learn it from school. So I I started studying. UM.
I wanted to solve this riddle of how does my
brain work? So I work my brain, like how does
memory work? So I could work my memory better? And um,
(04:01):
and so I started studying brain science, adult learning theory,
multiple intelligence theory, um mnemonics like what did the ancient
Greeks do back before we had smart devices and printing presses. Um,
how would people pass on information? And um? After I
started studying this, about sixty days into it, a light
switch flipped on and all of a sudden, I started
(04:21):
to understand things. I started have better focus, I started
to remember things, and my grades shot up in school,
and along with it, so did my self esteem. And
because of that I couldn't help but help other people.
You know, when I was kind of upset because I
was thinking, how how much easier life would have been,
you know, through all the struggles I had for about
a decade and a half. How I learned this back earlier,
(04:43):
and so I started helping people. And one of my
very first students I was tutoring. She was a freshman.
She read thirty books and thirty days. Can you imagine that?
Not skim or scan, but actually read thirty books in
thirty days. I wanted to find out, not um, not
how I know how she did it. I wanted to
know why she at it. And I found out that
her mother was dying of terminal cancer, was only given
(05:04):
two months, uh sixty days to live, and the book
she was reading, We're books to be to save her
mom's life, and um, I wished her luck, you know,
said prayers. Six months goes by, I don't hear from
her until this phone call comes in and she's crying
and crying and crying, and I find out when she
stopped their tears of joy that her mother not only survived,
but it's really getting better. Doctors don't know how or why.
(05:27):
They called it a miracle, but her mother attributed a
hundred percent of the great advice she got from her daughter,
who learned from all these books. And at that moment,
I realized that have knowledge is power than learning is
our superpower, and it's a superpower we all have inside
of us. So it's on rap as little because that's
an unbelievable story, and I think symblomatic of how you
you share your wisdom. We shared the stage that just
(05:48):
the milking conference, remember bringing you the hallway afterwards, and
you just had mostly to inform me, demonstrating a few
things that I was stupefying. So I want to forget you.
Mention you want to know why that young woman was
reading those thirty books. But I do understand how she
was able to read read books and reading is a
good examples. I've read some of your work and you
(06:08):
share with me in the past that it's it's not
that you're smaller than anybody else. But if you're distracted
while you're reading, or you're literally saying the words to
yourself to force yourself to hear that, that's a pretty
slow process, it is. And if you can, I think
the metaphor used. You know, if you're driving your car
through a neighborhood and tipping a coffee and glancing around it,
you may not remember everything. This is true, like um,
(06:29):
but I think one of the challenges people suffer from
right now there's these digital like supervillains, if you will,
where previous generations they didn't have this, and it really
holds us back. One of them is digital overload. Too
much information, too little time. I mean, I think everyone
could relate to having books on your shelf you haven't
read yet, or getting you know, how many emails do
we get nowadays? And so we're drowning in information. And
(06:51):
one of the reasons why is we weren't really taught
how to swim properly, we weren't taught how to serve,
we weren't taught how to snarkle if you will, and
so to be able to read faster, for example, it's
something that everybody could do. Anyone could double triple their
reading speed with better comprehension. It's just their number of
things factors the obstacles to effective reading. For example, Number
one is lack of education. Like reading is a skill,
(07:14):
it's not something we're born with. We learned it. But
when's the last time we took a class called reading?
How old were we? Like six or seven years old?
And most of us are still reading to the same
degree of skill and so, But the other one, as
you mentioned, is this lack of focus. You know, you
read a page in a book, you get to the
end and just forget what you just read, and you
go back and you reread it and you still know
(07:34):
what you read, and so your mind wanders. It's you
start to lose concentration. You wonder why that is UM,
and I think a lot of it is driven by
digital distraction, which is another supervillain, besides digital overload, all
the app notifications, social media alerts. It's um it's a
real challenge nowadays. But when it comes to your reading,
as you mentioned, when you're driving a car. If you
(07:55):
if you were to read, most people feed this incredible
supercomputer of a brain one word at uh time. Metaphorically,
we're starving our mind. And if you don't give your
brain the stimulus it needs, it'll seek entertainment elsewhere in
the form of distraction. And much like driving that car,
if you're in your neighborhood just going slow, um, and
(08:16):
you're observing the speed limit, you could be you're not
focused on the active driving. You're I think you're drinking
your coffee. You're texting even though you know you should,
and you're thinking about the dry cleaning, you're singing along
with you're having a conversation. You could be doing five
different things going slow. But if you're racing cars and
you're taking straight aways a two hundred miles an hour,
do you have more or less focus? You have much
(08:36):
more focus, your focus on the active driving and your
focus on what's in front of you. And similar to
reading and UM and so, actually there's a myth out
there that if you read faster, your comprehension would go down.
Everyone thinks that, but we have students in well over
a hundred fifty close to over a hundred eighty countries
online and we have a lot of data, and we
find that the fastest readers actually have a better comprehension
(09:00):
because they have better focus, like that fast driver. And
one of the reasons that, as you mentioned, we read
slowly is because we subvocalize. Sub vocalize. Have you ever
noticed when you're reading something, you hear that inner voice
inside your head reading along with you, hopefully your own
voice like somebody else's voice. You're not worthy exactly if
you're saying the words in order to understand them, then
(09:21):
you can only read as fast as you could speak.
That means you're reading speed is limited to your talking speed,
but not your thinking speed. That's why you can listen
to this podcast at one point five or two x
or audio books faster, because you can understand that, but
you can't speak that fast. And the key is a
lot of people are announcing the words, but you don't
have to pronounce a word like new York City to
understand what New York City is. And we find the
(09:43):
fastest readers actually reduce their subvocalization, and there's a there's
also a process for that. Interesting because when you start
to read, you sound out every letter and then when
you see a word, you don't do that. But we
haven't done that with the whole with reading. We've only
done it at the word level. We've never taken it
to the whole paragraph exactly. So it's a similar where
(10:05):
you look at a page and you don't see the
actual letters. You see, you know, individual words, and train
readers actually see groups of words together, so they have
less um what they call fixations. When you're reading across
the page, it's in like an eye stop. And obviously
if you're taking less stops, just like driving a carrier,
and get through it faster and less interrupted. So when
you read, you go straight down the page, you don't
(10:25):
go side to side, so I actually go side to
side on a traditional speed reading courses actually aren't it's
a misnomer. They're not actually reading. They're actually skimming or scanning,
skipping words where you get the gist of things. And
as you mentioned, our our students they run companies, they're
they're their doctors, they are at turning. You don't want
your doctor get the gist of what she's reading, right,
(10:46):
so you want to be able to So if you
go just down the page, you miss everything on the
left side and the right side. And so even if
a simple brain hack, if you will quick tip, part
of the fund is if you underline the words with
a visual pace or like a pen, highlight or mouse
on a computer and your finger, you will actually boost
your reading speed and focus, and which is tremendous just
(11:10):
underlining because and this is why, this is because human
means we want to know the reasons why things work
the way they do. Um First of all, I would say,
tested you know, if you read read for sixty seconds,
count the number of lines you read normally, and then
pick up where you left off for sixty seconds just
underlying the words, that second number will be about increase immediately.
And so you don't people have to take my word
(11:31):
for it. They can see from their own personal experience.
But the reason why is first of all, children will
always use their finger to help them focus until we
train them not to do so. A second of all,
adults do it too. And someone listening to say, I
don't use my finger when I read, But when I
asked you to count the number of lines you just
read in sixty seconds, a hundred percent of people will
use their finger as a visual pacer, poor pointer. The
(11:51):
third reason is your eyes. Your eyes are attracted motion.
As a hunter gatherer, you need to be able to
see what's in your in your surroundings because if you're hunting,
you're in a bush hunting, you know, lunch, rabbit or carrot,
whatever your diet is. If the bush next to you moves,
you have to look at that bush because number one,
it could be lunch or number two you could be lunch.
(12:11):
And so your eyes are attracted motions. So when your
finger is underlining the words, your attention is being pulled
through as opposed to apart. And then finally the last reason,
just to really um put it over the edge. You
try it using your finger while you read, because it's
how your neurology is set up. Certain senses work very
closely together. Like it's wonderful because this time of year,
don't you love going having like a fresh piece of
(12:34):
fruit and like right from the right from the vine,
right from the farmer's market, not something that's been sprayed
and wax sitting in a grocery store for six months.
Have you ever tasted a great tasting peach before? In actuality,
we're not tasting the peach, we're actually smelling the peach,
and but our sense of smell and taste are so
closely linked our mind can't perceive the difference. It proceeds
a difference. We're sick, if we're congested, food tastes different. Right,
(12:57):
As our sense of smell and taste are so close links,
so is our sense of site and our sense of touch.
That literally, people using their finger while they read, they'll
they'll say they feel more in touch with their reading, right,
and and the other. It's kind of interesting when we
lose your sense of site. Like if you go to
a child actually like a toddler, and with your keys,
and you shake your keys and say, look at my keys,
(13:18):
Look at my keys. What's that tyler going to do.
It's going to reach out and touch them. Because sense
its to look at, means the touch. And so when
you're using your finger while you're read, even if someone's
lost their sense of site, how do they read? They
read with brail right with their sense of touch. So
I would challenge people to use their finger and not
only will have help with your speed, but will help
with their focus. And if your focus is better, so
(13:39):
is your understanding. Well, when I see people reading a
digital device versus a book that some will complain if
their book readers. My son is one, he much tried
to read a book and he's you know, he's a
smart student, does well, so i'd pay attention to that insight.
He's nineteen years old. I you wouldn't able to cry.
(14:00):
I could not digital device if I moved my head over. Yeah,
we're not, we're not. We're not actually touching the screen,
just like even if you're using whether you're using a
physical like a print book or a digital device, we're
not touching the object because you know, as you're increasing speed,
obviously there's something called you know, friction, and I've I've
I've burned up a lot of books that way. But
(14:21):
but yeah, right above the words, so you're not actually
making contact. And even online reading, some people will actually
use a mouse, the visual pacer. It's it's a it's
a wonderful, easy, simple to use technique that just makes
your reading easier. There's lots more. When we come back.
(14:46):
You can just shift gears into names, which are reading
books is vitally important. Remember getting people's names right. That's
a career Craig crisis. If you can't do it correctly.
And I've seen you memorize thousands of hundreds of names.
I mentioned a little bit of how you do it,
but but you're very humble about the fact that we
can all do at least better than we're doing and
maybe something more approachable to you. Uh. It walked me
(15:08):
through that, and you know you have this m O
m acordym. But the specifics of it or what kept me, Yeah,
they're they're really really quickly. I think, um, one of
the most important business etiquette and networking just people's skills
is just to remember someone's name. I mean, we all
know the message we send to somebody when you meet
somebody in the handshake brakes and all of a sudden
the name just disappears. Or if it's not a short
term issue, it's a long term issue where somebody taps
(15:29):
you on your shoulder. You turn around, and maybe you're
at the gym or you're at the grocery store. You
turn you see someone you recognize, but for life of you,
you don't know. And the two of you, yeah, and
it's a family, well good right, and the two of
you meet so many people, and so it could be overwhelming.
So a couple of tricks for everybody listening to be
able to remember names better. Because, as they say, a
name is the sweetest sound to a person's ears. Um,
(15:51):
as you mentioned mom m o m very quickly, most
people will say they are horrible rumor names. The population
will admit. But let's say there was a suitcase here
of a million dollars cash for you your favorite charity
tax free. If you just remember the name in the
next stranger you meet, who's gonna remember that person's name? Everybody, right,
And so everybody has a great memory all of a sudden.
(16:14):
And so notice that as your brain coach, you know what,
coach also challenges you, you know, to get through what's
not what's not true. So when we say we're horrible
memory names, that's actually not true. We were good at
remembering the names we want to remember. And so tapping
in your motivation, a quick brain hack is just when
you meet somebody for the first time, ask yourself, why
(16:35):
don't want to remember this person's name? Maybe the show respect,
Maybe to make a new friend. Maybe it's to practice
these things I learned from this show. Because if you
can't come with one reason, you're not going to remember
I always help people reasons reap results, So tap into
the reason. The second the oh in mom is stands
for observation, and a lot of people they blame their retention.
(16:55):
And it's not your retention, it's your attention. Most people
are not paying attention. And that truth is when when
people are meeting people at a business event or at
a wedding, a lot of times they're not They're distracted.
They're looking over your shoulder and seeing who else is here,
who's more important here, Or if they're not visually distracted,
they're they're internally distracted. They're they're not even listening. They're
(17:16):
waiting for their turn to speak, or they're thinking about
how they're going to respond, and you can't listen to
that conversation with yourself and somebody else. And that's why
people are forgetting the name. And I would say that
I remember the second time I got to meet President
Bill Clinton, and it was at a charity event, and
the first time was very, very brief, But the second time,
a couple years later, we were sitting at the same
(17:36):
table and you remember my name, and I was just like, okay,
he was told who was sitting you know, I know,
and then he remembered the last conversation we had and okay,
so nobody nobody told him that. And I was noticing
when he was talking to me that. I was like,
you know, on the memory, guy, I need to know
how you're doing this. And he tells me a story
about his grandfather in Arkansas getting the kids together, telling
(17:58):
them stories. But after that he would quiz each one
separately to find out if they're really paying attention and
all this great idea, all these great ideas. But anyway,
when he's telling me this, there's a lot of more
important people in that room, and I felt like I
was the only one. And I think his you know,
people say, you know, he's got great charisma, great connector,
great communicator, it's got a powerful presence. But I think
(18:20):
his incredible memory and his powerful presence comes from being
powerfully present. And that's something we all could do, and
that's really what people want. That's the greatest gift. It's
it's the presence that we have, you know, which is
another word happens to being the word for the for
the word gift, but being present with somebody And just notice,
when we're talking about motivation, observation we're just talking about.
Motivation is just caring because people don't care how much
(18:43):
you know until they know how much you care and
start to show so many hearing to care for their health,
their family, their future, their finances. If you don't care enough,
just remember their name and then they O is just
observing or being present with them. So it's just caring
and being present. But finally, the M stands for the mechanics.
And these are the tips of the tricks, the techniques
that we teach you know on our podcast. But one
really fast one that anyone could do is just if
(19:05):
you want to remember names and faces, like walk into
a room and meet twenty strangers and leave saying goodbye
to every single one of them by name. Remember this
be swave, just always be swave. And again I use
acronyms because they're simple mnemonic device. Like we learned back
in school, um about the you know, homes being like
the Great Lakes and so on, when you're looking in
the mirror before homes, Yeah it was a yeah, Michigan
(19:31):
Erie and Superior or Roy g Bib are all these
little so these um, the acronyms are very useful. So
remember be swave. So next time you're at an event
and look in the mirror, you can check your makeup,
your clothing, but say I'm gonna be swap. The B
stands for believe, because if you believe you can and
believe you can't, either way, you're right. Henry Ford said that.
And the reason why is I say that is just
get rid of the negative self talk. A lot of
(19:51):
people say I'm horrible I remember names. But here's what
you want to remember. Your brain is like a supercomputer,
and yourself talk as a program that will run. So
if you tell yourself you're not good at rememoring names,
you will not remember the name of the next person
you meet, because you program your supercomputer not to And
I always talk people like and I would say I
have the broken brain. I have a horrible memory. People
say these all the time, and I say, if you
(20:12):
fight for your limitations, you get to keep them. If
you argue for your limits, they're they're yours. And here's
the thing. Even if you're not saying out loud internally
yourself talk, your mind is always eaves dropping on yourself talk.
So you want if you want to keep it positive,
or if you say to yourself, I I don't have
a great memory, just add a little word like yet
at that the end, people truly knew how powerful their
(20:33):
mind was. They wouldn't say or think anything they didn't
want to be true. And it's not to say you
you have one negative thought and ruins your life forever,
just like eating that one donuts going to But it's
the consistency is to have it. So the B is believed.
The E and B swab stands for exercise. And I
don't mean physical exercise, although we know people who are
more physically active will do better on mental acuity, have
(20:53):
better focus memory. But I mean practice because practice makes
practice makes progress. Right, and so the bad news is
it takes effort. The good news and not as men,
not as long as you think like I'm very good
at memory names. But after thirty or sixty days, once
you know how to drive a car and learn how
to type, it's something that you just do right because
it becomes the habits. So you want to practice this.
And finally the suave the S is you say the name,
(21:15):
and it's very very simple. You meet somebody and then
you just repeat their name, right you ted, it's nice
to meet you. And the reason why you also say
it it makes you sure you observed it correctly. A
lot of times you're in an event and there's distractions,
there's noise. You don't want to have a twenty minute
conversation with Ted and say goodbye, Ed, right, and so
you want to be correct and so you say the
name the you and swab stands for use it, and
(21:36):
use it three or four times in the context of
the conversation. But you don't want to abuse it. Lisa,
it's great to see you again, Lesta. Do you want
to grab lunch? Lisa? What do you want to talk?
That would be an abuse, right, But you say one
or two or three or four times in the context
of the conversation, so that see you. The A is
uh is ask And this is a great technique for
people who have you meet them and their name is
(21:57):
a name you haven't heard before, right, exactly what can
you ask about someone's name? How do you spell it,
where is it from? Who are you named after? What
does it mean? I remember I was doing a training
at the country's largest life insurance company, about a hundred
people in the room. Training director's name was Nanquita, and
I was like, that's a beautiful name. Where is it from?
(22:17):
How do you spell it? What does it mean? And
she paused. I was like what does it mean? And
she looked at her coworkers and says, it means graceful
falling waters. And I was like wow. And based on
the audience reaction, I was like, how long have you
worked here? Just like over four years? Many good friends here, Yes,
the other and my my wedding, And I was like,
raise your hand if you knew that's what Nikita's name met.
And I have a hundred people, How many people raise
(22:38):
their hand? Not one person? And I remember her name
is the sweetest sound of person's ears. And so you
could ask about a person's name. And then finally the
V and the E. The V stands for visualize the
person's name, meaning I bet your most people are better
with faces than they are with names. You go to
somebody's and you say, I remember your face, but I
forgot your name. You never go to somebody say the opposite.
(23:00):
You never go to someone say I remember your name,
but I forgot your face. Right, remember hearts, I know
what your heart looks like. Oh yeah, that's true. Um.
So as a so of your dad. But that's kind
of interesting. We want to have that conversation maybe on
on my podcast of the cardiac Surgeon. To be able
to recognize things, but visually we remember what we see
because our visual cortex. There's a Chinese proverb that goes,
(23:22):
what I hear, I forget what I see. I remember
what I do. I understand what I hear. I forget
I heard the name, I forgot it. When I see
I remember, I saw the face. I remember the face
and what I do going back to exercise, I understand.
So if you tend to remember what you see, try
seeing what you remember. So you meet somebody named David,
and I just imagine a slingshot, just like hitting them
on the nose. For David and Goliath. The person name
(23:42):
is Bob, I imagine them bobbing. For Apple. Person's names Mary,
imagine they're getting married, right. And for his name is
Carol singing Christmas. Carol's perst name is John. You fill
in the blanks right. When you meet thirty people, though,
you're going to have some repetition of names, yes, and
you don't have enough time to ask them what their
name means. And you're doing this all in this you
know how an hour, so you can't do all that,
(24:02):
So the app So the best thing about this is
when we're talking about these seven things, it doesn't have
to be all seven, even if it's just two or
three things. And the goal is not to be perfect.
You know, I'm not perfect. I don't have a photographic memory.
The goal is definitely progress and so um taking a
split second, and you're right. If somebody has the same
name to people have the name Bob, I'll use apples
for both. And it's a mnemonic device, and it's you
(24:25):
know what it is. It's to overcome what I call
the six second syndrome. When somebody tells you anything a
conversation of a phone number, of pin number, of a name,
you have six seconds to do something with that information.
Otherwise it's just gone in the ether. And what this
allows you to do is put your awareness both on
the name and on the person. So even when it
doesn't work, it kind of still works because it puts
(24:46):
your attention on the information you need to remember. And
it's and once you know the person's name, then the
picture disappears. It's just a it's like a bridge that
to temporary hold if you will, until the true information
gets encoded from your short term to your long term memory.
And then finally, the I and suave stands for end.
And what does that mean. It means exactly what I
talked about, to be able to end the conversation saying
(25:07):
their name, because if you can walk into a room
of strangers and leave saying goodbye using their name, they're
all going to remember you. And that's the standard skill.
More questions after the break. You mentioned a photographic memory.
(25:30):
I've always been fascinated by the phenomenon. I don't know
how real it is, but I've read stories of Russian
experiments where they visualize themselves walking down these long bookstacks
basically on their memory, taking the second left, and then
on the right there's a car, and there's a license
plate of the car. And it's like looking at the
phone book and looking at the answer. If you, I'm
(25:51):
sure you have looked into it, can you explain to
us what makes them special? What what what allows their
brains to do that? And what what allows you to
approximate that from the external world. It's not quite this.
That's a that's a great question. So um so an
idetic memory there's a phenomenon called idetic memorydetic and so
(26:11):
when people say that they people have like a photographing memory.
I don't think it's possible to the average. Is me
my experience of years of teaching this, I haven't be
able to duplicate that with with anybody. I feel like
that's sure. Genetics and biology plays a role. And the
good news is, you know the scientists haying is about
(26:31):
one third of our memories predetermined by genetics and biology,
but two thirds is in our control. The things you
talk about on your show, A good brain diet, getting
rid of negative thoughts, UM, you know, movement and exercise,
UM nutrients, brain nutrients, a positive peer groups good for
your brain, and clean environments great for your brain. Sleep
very important for your brain. Brain protection. A lot of people,
(26:52):
you know, concussions, traumatic brain and wear a helmet. New
learnings in order foster neurogenesis, nerroplasticy, new brains, curations in
your hippocampus, new new connections. It requires two things, novelty
and nutrition. Stress management, and we know chronic stress shrinks
the brain. Right, you know, if you're always cords all adrenalines,
it's great fight or flight, but not great if you
(27:13):
need to take a test or remember someone's name. So
you know, there's hardware and then there's software. Um so
that all those ten things are like the hardware of
your your your brain, and the anatomy, the software, the
things that we teach. And the big takeaway from this
conversation I hope everyone walks away from is this you
want to take nouns and tournament the verbs. Meaning that
(27:34):
a lot of people say I don't have a great memory,
have implies it to now and it's something you have,
right I don't. I don't have focus today, I don't
have motivation. I don't have creativity to write on my blog.
Those aren't things you have. Those are things you do.
And so because when you make it a have, you're
at the you're at the effect, you're reacting. You just
hope that today I have, you know, some magical power
(27:57):
as opposed to a recipe, because when you turn something
into verse, it gives you agency again where you have
the power. It's a difference between a thermometer and a thermostat.
If you look at a thermometer on the wall, it's
only functions to react to the environment and as human
beings worth a thermometer. Occasionally we react to the economy,
react to someone, how someone treats us. But when we
(28:18):
really want to take our lives to next level, spending
more time identifying with the thermostat. Because thermostat doesn't react
to the environment. It sets the environment, right, That's what
leaders do it had it had it sets a goal,
it sets a vision, The environment raises and arises to
be able to meet that um. When it comes to
a photographic memory, I believe there's something called h SAM
highly superior autobiographical memory, and about a dozen people have
(28:41):
been shown to have this where they could you say
on May twenty one, what as them? Right? I get
them a little bit because you and you mentioned in
your mom uh technique for for people's names, you put
it some emotional hook to it, because the key to
long term memory is information by itself is forgettable. We
we haven't. We're drowning information right now. The only thing
(29:02):
that we remember things that touch us emotionally because information
times emotion becomes becomes a long term memory and we forget. Like,
think about what was the primary motion we felt back
in school? The primary motion like like most people feel,
probably right it's either most people are either cured and
scared and confused, or their board right and boordom on
(29:25):
a scale of zero to tend emotionally, boredom is zero.
But if I just if we talk about information times,
emotion is a long term memory is boredom is zero.
Anything time zero is zero. So you wonder why you
forgot the periodic table? You know, are all the things
that we learned back back in school. And I would
say that there's no such thing as a good or
bad memory. There's just a trained memory in an untrained memory.
(29:46):
It's never going to be perfect, nor would we want
it to be perfect. It's useful sometimes to forget, but
we have this greatness inside of us. I always tell
people that your life is like an egg. That if
an egg is broken by an outside force, life ends.
But if it's broken by an inside force, life began
and all great things begin on the inside, and everyone
listening as greatness and genius inside. We just weren't taught
how to unlock it. So I could have said goodbye
(30:08):
to Quick saying he's a wonderful memory expert, but it
said he's really a philosopher. Peep. Wisdom makes you incredibly
popular for folks who knew what popular should be, who
graduated all the success to get a Fantasti podcasts were
superbably well check it out Quick Brain does k W
I K. Thanks you for being here. Thank you both
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