Book Summary: Limitless By Jim Kwik
I’ve been a follower of Jim Kwik for years. His story is fascinating. As a very young child he slipped and hit his head on a radiator causing a traumatic brain injury that greatly impacted his ability to learn. He struggled with concentration, reading, memorization, and more. It wasn’t until the father of a friend encouraged him to read one book a week that he was able to figure out that his brain wasn’t broken, but that the process of learning that schools traditionally use didn’t work for him.
QUICK SUMMARY
This is a book about how to learn faster so that you can unlock your limitless brain. Something wonderful about this book is that Kwik starts with explaining some of the foundational truths about how we learn and retain information and then he uses those throughout the book to help the reader learn and retain information. It’s very meta. Specifically he instructs readers to consume the book in 15-25 minute increments, he uses mnemonic devices to help you improve recall, and provides activities so you can apply what you’re learning right away. I’m using one of his recommended strategies right now; teaching others is one of the best ways to lock in learning.
IDEAS THAT RESONATED
Your brain is not like a filing cabinet, it’s like a muscle.
This idea runs throughout the book and is so important. There is a limiting belief out there that we can only hold a certain amount of information in our brain. It’s a filing cabinet that fills up. But the reality is that it’s like a muscle; the more you use it, the stronger it gets. Kwik notes that with the advancement of technology, we often don’t have to remember things because it’s all Googleable. This book encourages you to work to remember things anyway and gives you brain workouts to improve your memory.
The power of physical note taking. [Page 204-206]
Kwik reinforces my long-held views on physical note taking. When you make notes by hand, you can only write 10-12 words per minute. This means you have to process the information you are getting and determine what it means and what is important so you an write only that. When you take notes by laptop, you end up basically transcribing without processing the information. Physical notes are a must for both cognition and retention.
Being bright, the ability to focus. [Page 184]
Kwik makes an analogy between the magnifying glass when used to focus creates a bright spot and that we call people that we think are intelligent 'bright' - maybe being bright is just the ability to focus. Humans have a crazy amount of information available to them through the power of the internet. We have to take measures to help ourselves focus our attention.
WHAT TO DO NEXT
Listen to the Kwik Brain Podcast
Many of the ideas from this book are delivered in bite-size pieces in Kwik’s podcast, Kwik Brain. Kwik also interviews interesting guests on a variety of related topics.
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