Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life

by Jim Kwik

four levels of competence or learning.

The first, known as “unconscious incompetence,” is when you don’t know what you don’t know.

In the next level, known as “conscious incompetence,” you’re aware of what you don’t know.

The third level is “conscious competence.” What this means is that you’re aware of a skill and have the capacity to perform that skill, but only when you actively put your mind to it. You can do it, but it takes work.

“unconscious competence.” In this case, you know how to perform a skill, and it’s second nature to you.

Active recall is a process through which you review material and then immediately check to determine how much of it you’ve remembered.

To employ active recall, do this: Review the material you are studying. Then close the book, turn off the video or lecture, and write down or recite everything you remember from what you just reviewed. Now, look at the material again. How much did you remember?

“optimal learning occurred when an initial learning session included repeated study and forced-recall testing of all items at least four times in a row.”

Alternatively, if you space out your reviews of the material, focusing more heavily on information that you haven’t retained in the past, you’re using your brain to the best of its abilities.

Spaced repetition seems to work most effectively when you can review the material at similar intervals. This is why it’s important to give yourself enough time.

Perhaps you perform the review once in the morning and again right before dinner for four days in a row, and then move on to other material you need to study at similar intervals. Use this technique in concert with active recall.

“Baroque music, such as that composed by Bach, Handel or Telemann that is 50 to 80 beats per minute creates an atmosphere of focus that leads students into deep concentration in the alpha brain wave state. Learning vocabulary, memorizing facts, or reading to this music is highly effective.”

While you’re taking notes, use a method that I call “capture and create.” On the left side of the paper, you’re capturing, you’re taking notes; on the right side, you’re creating, you’re making notes. You’re writing your impression of what you’re capturing.

To remember any new piece of information, you must associate it with something you already know.

As you are reading, you can greatly increase both your speed and comprehension by visualizing the material.

Practice reading with your finger, this tool alone will significantly increase your speed and comprehension and will revolutionize your learning.

“six thinking hats”

You put on a white hat when you’re in information-gathering mode. At this point, your focus is on collecting details and getting all the facts you’ll need to address whatever issue you’re trying to address.

You switch to a yellow hat to bring optimism to your thinking. Here, you’re trying to identify the positives in any problem or challenge you’re facing, highlighting the value inherently in place.

Next, you’ll wear a black hat to pivot from looking at the good side of the challenge to facing its difficulties and pitfalls. This is where you’ll come face to face with the conseque...

Once you’ve done that, don your red hat to allow emotion to come into play. This is the point where you can let your feelings about the problem come to the surface, and maybe even express fears. This is also where you can all...

Now it’s time for the green hat. When you’re wearing this hat, you’re in creativity mode. You’ve looked at the problem analytically and you’ve looked at it emotionally. Now ask yourself, what new ideas ca...

Finally, wear the blue hat to be in management mode, and make sure you’ve addressed your agenda productively and gone through the process in a way that benefits from all the other hats you’ve worn.

eight distinct forms of intelligence:

Spatial : This is someone who usually thinks from the perspective of the space around them.

Bodily-Kinesthetic: Someone with a dominance of this form of intelligence uses their body as a form of expression or problem-solving.

Musical : This is a person with a strong “sensitivity to rhythm, pitch, meter, tone, melody and timbre.”

Linguistic: Someone with a dominance in linguistic intelligence is particularly attuned to all the implications of words, not just their strict dictionary definition.

Logical-Mathematical: This is a strength in seeing the “logical relations among actions or symbols.”

Interpersonal : Someone with a dominance in interpersonal intelligence has a deep innate ability to connect with other people and a rich understanding of how others might be feeling at any given moment.

Intrapersonal : If you have dominance in intrapersonal intelligence, you have a particularly refined sense of what is going on inside of you.

Naturalistic: This kind of intelligence expresses itself in an ability to see the world of nature in all its complexities.

V is for Visual, meaning that you tend to learn through illustrations, charts, video, and other visual media.

A is for Auditory, meaning that you find yourself most comfortable learning by listening, either to a lecture, a discussion, a podcast, an audiobook, etc.

K is for Kinesthetic, meaning that you prefer to learn via physical interaction. Kinesthetic learners tend to gain more from tak...

Colin Powell, former secretary of state, addresses this with his 40/70 rule.6 His rule is to never make a decision with less than 40 percent of the information you are likely to get, and to gather no more than 70 percent of the information available.