Limitless Quotes

“In his TED talk about sleep, Dr. Jeff Iliff of Oregon Health and Science University takes the “laundry cycle” metaphor even further. He notes that, while we’re awake, the brain is so busy doing other things that it doesn’t have the capacity to clean itself of waste. The buildup of this waste, amyloid-beta, is now being linked to the development of Alzheimer’s disease.”
― Jim Kwik, Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life

“Scientists have learned that animals that experience prolonged stress have less activity in the parts of their brain that handle higher-order tasks—for example, the prefrontal cortex—and more activity in the primitive parts of their brain that are focused on survival, such as the amygdala.”
― Jim Kwik, Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life

“Pain can be your teacher, if you use it and not let it use you. Use pain to drive you to make things happen.”
― Jim Kwik, Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life

“How can I use this? Why must I use this? When will I use this?”
― Jim Kwik, Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life

“Motivation comes from purpose, fully feeling and associating with the consequences of our actions (or inactions).”
― Jim Kwik, Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life

“The important distinction here is that family is a means value—a means to an end. The end value is actually love or belonging. When we look at our values, we can determine whether the value we’ve stated is an end or whether it evokes something else.”
― Jim Kwik, Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life

“Do you remember what it was like when you were approaching your teens and you first started formulating thoughts and opinions independent of your parents? My guess is that this experience was extremely liberating for you and that it might have even been the first time in your life when you truly felt like your own person. What had happened to you, of course, was that your critical faculties had become refined enough to allow you to regularly employ reason to navigate through life.”
― Jim Kwik, Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life

“People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it, so it follows that if you don’t know why you do what you do, how will anyone else?”
― Jim Kwik, Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life

“The purpose supersedes the discomfort.”
― Jim Kwik, Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life

“knowledge is important, but it is “the performing of some action” that is required to make it powerful.”
― Jim Kwik, Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life

“Life is the c between b and d”
― Jim Kwik, Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life

“If at all feasible, allow yourself to do whatever you’re doing to the exclusion of everything else. If you’re on the phone, don’t scroll through social media at the same time. If you’re making breakfast, don’t also work on your to-do list for the day. By doing one thing at a time, your concentration “muscle” will become incredibly”
― Jim Kwik, Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life

“Whenever possible, try to do one thing at a time.”
― Jim Kwik, Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life

“I suggest you use the Pomodoro technique, a productivity method developed by Francesco Cirillo based on the idea that the optimal time for a task is 25 minutes, followed by a 5-minute break.2 Each 25-minute chunk is called a “Pomodoro.” As you read this book, I suggest that you read for one Pomodoro and then take a 5-minute brain break before continuing.”
― Jim Kwik, Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life

“by taking breaks, you create more beginnings and endings, and you retain far more of what you’re learning.”
― Jim Kwik, Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life

“Your time is one of your greatest assets. It’s the one thing you can’t get back.”
― Jim Kwik, Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life

“Consider your passion, your desired identity, and your values: How can they create the basis for your reasons?”
― Jim Kwik, Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life

“Perfectionism reduces creativity and innovation,” writes Hara Estroff Marano, editor at large and the former editor in chief of Psychology Today. “It is a steady source of negative emotions; rather than reaching toward something positive, those in its grip are focused on the very thing they most want to avoid—negative evaluation. Perfectionism, then, is an endless report card; it keeps people completely self-absorbed, engaged in perpetual self-evaluation—reaping relentless frustration and doomed to anxiety and depression.”
― Jim Kwik, Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life

“Knowledge × Action = Power”
― Jim Kwik, Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life

“The purpose of my life had always been to free people from concern. . . . How will you serve the world? What do they need that your talent can provide? That’s all you have to figure out. . . . The effect you have on others is the most valuable currency there is. Everything you gain in life will rot and fall apart, and all that will be left of you is what was in your heart.”
― Jim Kwik, Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life

“Do you remember what it was like when you were approaching your teens and you first started formulating thoughts and opinions independent of your parents? My guess is that this experience was extremely liberating for you and that it might have even been the first time in your life when you truly felt like your own person. What had happened to you, of course, was that your critical faculties had become refined enough to allow you to regularly employ reason to navigate through life. Why, then, would you want to turn this liberating skill over to a device? Think about it: How do you feel when someone tries to impose their thinking on you?”
― Jim Kwik, Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life

“He held up a finger, saying, “Don’t let school interfere with your education.” I later learned he was paraphrasing a quote often attributed to Mark Twain.”
― Jim Kwik, Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life

“The healthy 70-year-old doesn’t go to the gym at 4:35 A.M. because he likes it—he goes because maintaining his health so he can continue to be with his family is motivation enough to him, even though he would much rather sleep in. The good student doesn’t pick up her textbook because she’s in a good mood. She does it because she wants to ace that test so she has the best chances of landing the internship that will lead to her dream job.”
― Jim Kwik, Limitless Expanded Edition: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life

“Knowledge is power: You hear it all the time but knowledge is not power. It's only potential power. It only becomes power when we apply it and use it.

Somebody who reads a book and doesn't apply it, they're at no advantage over someone who's illiterate.

None of it works unless YOU work. We have to do our part. If knowing is half the battle, action is the second half of the battle.”
― Jim Kwik, Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life

“read faster, simply by training yourself to read faster.”
― Jim Kwik, Limitless Expanded Edition: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life

“The illiterate of the
21st century will
not be those who
cannot read and write,
but those who
cannot learn, unlearn,
and relearn.”
― Jim Kwik, Limitless Expanded Edition: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life

“Albert Einstein postula: «No podemos resolver problemas utilizando el mismo tipo de pensamiento que usamos cuando los creamos».”
― Jim Kwik, Sin límites

“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. According to Powell, anything less than 40 percent and you’re just guessing. Anything more than 70 percent and you’re stalling over making the decision.”
― Jim Kwik, Limitless Expanded Edition: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life

“Dr. Edward de Bono devised the concept of the “six thinking hats” as a tool for getting out of whatever rut of thinking one might be mired in.1 Regularly used to help groups problem-solve in a more productive way, it is easily adaptable by any individuals hoping to keep their thinking fresh. The core notion is to separate thinking into six distinctly defined functions by progressively donning a series of metaphorical hats:”
― Jim Kwik, Limitless Expanded Edition: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life

“An observation usually attributed to Albert Einstein posits, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” And”
― Jim Kwik, Limitless Expanded Edition: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life