Episode 585: Jim Kwik: Build These Brain Skills Before AI Makes Them Weaker

>> Hi, guys, it's Tony Robbins, you're listening to Habits and Hospital.

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>> Welcome to Habits and Hospital where I sit down at the world's biggest thinkers, entrepreneurs

athletes and experts to uncover the habit, strategies, and mindsets that actually move the needle in your health, happiness, and success. And today, I'm sitting down with Jim Quick, a brain performance expert, bestselling author and leading voice on memory, focus, learning, and human intelligence. We talk about AI and whether it's weakening or thinking, why human intelligence is becoming

a key advantage, how your morning shapes your focus, and how to build confidence through action. We also cover dopamine, multitasking, self-talk, memory, and how to train your brain instead of outsourcing it to technology. This conversation is packed with practical ways to stay mentally sharp, make better decisions, learn faster, and become more intentional about where you put your time and energy.

Jim gives you simple strategies you can start using right away to perform better, adapt faster, and stay deeply human in a world that keeps getting more automated. So now, let's dive in. >> All right, you guys, welcome to another episode of Habits and Hospital, and this one I got a good one for you today. This one you're going to really like because not only is this

gas just, he is a plethora of information, but he gives you actionable things that you can apply to your life. That can help you optimize your human performance, your human intelligence, and all the things. So this is a treat. We have Jim Quick today on the podcast. So thank you, Jim. >> Jim, this is, I've been looking forward to this conversation. >> Oh, me too. Listen, Jim is, I have to say, Jim has been here before, and that episode

that we did back a few years back, and very well, people loved it. >> Yeah, yeah. >> So like I said, this is a big treat to have you back for round two. >> Congratulations on the show. >> Thank you.

>> You had some amazing guests. >> Thank you. You're one of them. You're one of them.

First of all, I was saying to you off before we even started to even the basically role. Like, what do you call yourself? You're not like, you're not, you're a brain coach,

“but you're also a human performance title. >> Do you have one?”

>> Do you have one? >> No, I don't. That's a good question. People started calling me a brain coach or brain performance coach. But I guess, I don't know, I'm a entrepreneur in, you know, >> In the brain pain. >> Has been a father and all of that, but I'm, I mean, I write books, and I help people with their brain.

I think I think for an entrepreneur or any individual, your number one, while filling out a set is, is your brain, and I like to help people optimize that, because everything comes from your relationships, your business, your bank account, the impact that you have is all there, but you know,

none of people are talking about practically how to use it.

>> Exactly, then that's like the name of the game in my world, practical. Like, how do we actually truly optimize? There's a lot of words out there, there's a lot of noise and things. But how do we actually get our brain to be better, working for us? And how do we really optimize it?

“And that's what I love about what you talk about.”

By the way, Jim has a new book out called Limitless Daily. 3606 keys to train your brain master your mind and win every day. So just so you guys know, he wrote that book called Limitless that crushed. And so now, like, there's all these iterations that kind of keep on kind of with the times, which is why I really, what I really wanted to talk to you today about.

And I'm sure this is on a lot of people's mind is of course AI and memory, right? I think this is the big one because I'm using myself even as an example. We all just turn to AI to do everything for us. It write her emails or we're kind of like training our brain actually to be weak because we're not using it anymore, I feel.

>> Yeah. >> What do you say about all this stuff? >> Yeah, it's called Coctin of offloading. I wrote about that and even Limitless six years ago when it came out. Where technology is wonderful, but if we're dependent on it and rely on it,

like one of the things he's talk about, the four horsemen, the mental apocalypse, the things that are making us not as intelligent and not as effective.

“In our life is relying on technology and not doing some of the work ourselves,”

meaning like a digital dementia, for example, is where we use technology and remember things for us. Like our iPhones, remember your to-do's and your schedules and facts, and your notes and the phone numbers, right? I mean, how many phone numbers do we know growing up?

>> That's a perfect example, actually, because that was even before AI. That's now even with just like your cell phone, you don't even remember. I don't remember anybody's number. >> Yeah, and then put growing up, you did. >> Of course, yeah.

>> You have to get it right. And so I don't want to memorize the thousand phone numbers. I don't think anyone wants to do that, but it should be very concerning. We've lost the ability to remember one phone number.

Her pin number or something we just read.

Or something we just heard, or somewhere we need to go, or someone's name, right?

And so your brain is like, it's an organ, obviously, but it acts like a muscle, but it's user-lose it. >> Yeah. >> So if you put your arm in a cast for a year, and when you're stronger, and when it stays the same, it would be an extra fee.

>> Right. >> That's the challenge, is that the high dependence. And then I wrote about digital deduction, which is the high reliance, not just a memory, but the think for you, technology thinking. I mean, even think about GPS, right?

Before we had to remember, remember, look at it now. How to remember, where when to turn, how people give you directions. And if you can't write, you had to be able to store it, but now we don't. And while it's easier, it's easier for certainly if technology is telling you where and when to turn,

“but then we don't have to develop our visual spatial intelligence, right?”

>> Absolutely. >> I mean, you know what it is, it's kind of like, let's find this in the beautiful gym here and everything. It's like, if I had to go 10 blocks to go to the bank, if I'd get into a Uber, right, that's former technology, very convenient, then it can be crippling up on the mechanism of steps.

And if someone's office or a parliament was on the fifth floor, and elevators form a technology, simple form of technology, but it's convenient, but then you don't get the workout, right? And so I feel that while AI is, to just remember this, like, people think AI is no longer competitive advantage, right?

If I know you have a lot of entrepreneurs aspiring or established entrepreneurs, they're using it for leverage, it's no longer competitive advantage, because we all have it, right? We all have access to it. Just like we have access to all the information.

So what gives us an advantage is what I talk about human intelligence. You know, and people know me for doing the memory, the focus, the speed reading, training, all the accelerated learning, the brain optimization, but that's all to build our human intelligence in an AI world, meaning that AI, let me think about how you use AI.

“It could scale, it could amplify, but it only scales and amplifies what you bring to it, right?”

>> With prompts. >> All of that, but that you're thinking, like, somebody could use exactly the NAI to create a social media post, right?

But somebody could use it to build a billion dollar venture, right?

And so it's the intelligence that they're bringing to that, that allows them to get that scale. It's like I work with a lot of athletes, a lot of race car drivers. I mean, think about a F1 car, right? It's multi-million dollar piece of technology, like AI.

But ultimately, that trained intelligence, the drivers, what's going to get the performance, as opposed to the average person that's not, does it have that same kind of intelligence? >> Right. So if we talk about this whole idea of, like, you don't use it or lose it. But people are, it is doing a majority of, like, the basic work for us.

Is it our job as the human to learn and how to work in tandem with it? >> Not really. What's the game here, then? >> So, my channel, okay, so for me, it's more augmented intelligence. It's there to augment and you partner as a creative partner, right?

If you're able to call you a GAS2 questions, is it to reveal your blind spots or cognitive biases, you know, in the limitless even years ago, I put a whole chapter on how to use AI to enhance your HI, your human intelligence. You know, because we could take all the principles that I teach in the limitless for accelerated learning and feed it into AI and have it quiz you, have it test you,

have summarized things for you, mind map things for you, create memory policies for you, do teach you in your preferred learning channel, you know, based on like how you preferred to take an information. So it's a wonderful way to use AI to enhance your HI. What I would say though is just like with the physical stuff like the technology, like the car and the stairs and everything else that we're talking about earlier,

is I just don't want to stop using our critical thinking.

Like imagine like all the contents may be very derivative if it's just people are aren't improving their own intelligence to keep pace of like what's going on of the AI. So AI could process and pute immensely, but ultimately humans have to use human intelligence to what's important. What does this data mean? What are we going to do with this data? Right? All of that is discernment. It's critical thinking.

It's a level of judgment, but if we're not exercising that on a regular, then imagine a whole society in the country or even globally, people who just don't think anymore. So you're right. So this is why for people laughing me all the time, because I refuse to use those app, like you know, like Uber eats, postmates, all those.

“I refuse to use any of those because I think it's just another way of becoming lazy, right?”

Go to the store, get your food. Like it's technologies making people just overall, more lazy and useless. And throughout human history, technologies changed the way we are cognition, meaning when the printing press was invented, it changed the way people remember things. When GPS was invented, it changes how people navigate the streets in the world, right?

And when you think about the industrial age, right?

Machines magnified muscle, right?

All the machines in assembly lines, everything, the body, the computers magnified, you know, information. And so what I believe has to happen is while AI and we'll get the tactical stuff, because this is a very important.

“I think we're leaning into the one of the most important conversations of our time.”

Like how do you remain deeply human in a world in an H of AI? Well, 100%. Do we even need a good memory anymore with AI? So, if you don't exercise your memory, I'm all for using AI to automate things, for lesser necessity, lesser important things like to do,

because that we've always used technology to do that, right?

But I would say with that extra bandwidth that you have or the energy, the focus of the time that AI is allowing you to have, use that to reinvest in something that AI maybe can't do as easily or well. So would you say then as a professional and expert in this world, would you say, if you would have to give people advice, would you tell them to limit

themselves using AI to write an email or to ask a basic thing that they should be able to do on their own? So we don't get too lazy or brain doesn't get too atrophied. And this is what's happening, right? Like everyone heard about that MIT study, you know, a few months back, where they took three groups of students, A, B, and C, and they had a write essays.

And Group A used chat GPT to write the essay, Group B used Google search, and Group C, no technology. And so they also scanned their brains through the process, and they tested them afterwards.

And Group A, who just didn't have to do a whole lot of effort to be able to create that,

they had the least amount of recall for what they, what was written, which makes sense, right? They were just given it, can be as they had to work for it, they didn't earn it, right? And also their parts of their brain was the least engaged also through the process because they didn't have to exert in comfort.

So that sort of reminded everybody that every cognitive advance that we've had is humanity, let's even take back 200,000 years with the human brain, came from friction, it came from struggle, right? We needed to develop memory for star survival. Like where's the enemy tribe, where's clean water, where's soil?

We had to develop a judgment because we had to solve problems of survival. We had to develop creativity because we had constraints of time or temperature or resources, right? So we had to be more creative.

So all this, but what happens when AI removes all the friction?

And you don't have to use any of that, right? And then it's just like putting your arm in a sling, and then we have, you know, these, you know, these futuristic movies where people are not moving in their finest screen and then eating the junk food, and they're obsolete, and like the machine becomes the...

Very much so. And I really feel that AI, I mean, this is like a manifesto, AI is, whether it replaces people, I think it's a, they call it a barbell economy, where it's really threatening people at least the stage when we're recording this is in the middle.

Those middle skill sets. Yeah. So certain AI is going, if it's going to replace or certainly affect certain professions more than others, right? And so in that middle skill set, who's going to affect coders,

copyrighters, visual designers, right? Like there's some set of people, and then, you know, this, this, you know, the barbell, if you're using that kind of metaphor,

“leadership, right, is that's why EQ, interpersonal skill, influence,”

you know, is very important on this side. And customer service might fall in the middle also as well, with all these, you mean, these as advances that's getting with voice and... I was talking to a human being, and some people actually... And some people actually, where it is currently now, some people prefer it,

because it's, because it's, it's gone so advanced. And imagine what it's going to be in the future. But on this side of the barbell, are the ones that, you know, like HFAC, and plumbly certain things that are going to be the replaced, you know, you know, as as easiest, what's in the middle.

So my, my thing here is whether AI replaces you, it will certainly reveal you. Meaning, if an entrepreneur is chaotic and confused, AI is going to magnify that, like money does. Money just makes you more of who you are, right?

Exactly. And if somebody is clear and they're concise and they're curious, it'll magnify that, right? And so, my thing, I'm very pro-technology. It allows this to happen, right?

It allows us to have, you know, the work and the impact and scale. Yeah. I like technology, but it's how it's being used. And my thing is just like with the car or the elevator, or anything else that makes our life more convenient,

that we still can do the work, because we don't want to be weak, right? There's this whole idea of cognitive flexibility. This is what's in the limitless daily. I'm building the skills to help people. Because, you know, even with businesses,

I serve half the fortune 500 companies doing mental training.

“You know, mental fitness, like physical fitness, but that's what it's like.”

So it's um, Facebook, Nike, Google, SpaceX, the US Air Force. I mean, the highest performers, I realized that, and I was thinking about it, you know, it's not the constraint that I see the pattern in terms of their business.

Not it's not often technology or capital.

The constraint or the bottleneck is usually the cognitive capacity of leadership. Because leaders have to decide, there's a lot of information. If anything, AI, there's too much information. Leadership, or every all of us, because we're all leaders in the CEO of UNC, it has to decide, out of this, all this information.

“What's most important? What does this information even mean?”

What are you going to do with it? What are you going to focus on? So if your intelligence is compromised and your focus is compromised and you're suffering from decision fatigue, and you can all the mental models to be able to navigate it, then that person's going to be at a disadvantage, right?

Even if they're using AI. And so I feel like AI will reveal people more because of, because it magnifies and makes it more transparent. And I also think that what an opportunity there is. Because actually, I optimistic view,

because everybody knows the dystopian, what, you know, Terminator, it makes it look like, and I'm not an expert on that. But what I am expert on is the cognitive component, you know, and how our brain can change over time. Because again, when when A, B, and C at MIT,

C had the best. One that used no technology had the best recall of what the work was done. They had the most engagement. Just like somebody would have more physical activity required. They get the work, they go through a struggle, they get the strength.

Right? They went through the challenge, they get the change. And so I feel like, who am I to decide, you know, what's the balance, right?

Ultimately, people have to decide just like they do with their physical activity of what to do.

Because again, I use technology. But the challenge is, is technology is tool for us to use, but the technology is using us. Then then we become the tool, right? When that's going to happen.

You have to become tool. And that's often the case. But then from a cognitive capacity, like, you know, all the, the brain rot, the AI slop, you know, everything that we have to kind of go through,

“I think right now those who lead the best of those who could adapt the fastest,”

they're going to learn, they're going to unlearn, they're going to relearn, and they're going to apply faster than other other people. That's going to be the advantage. But that's all human intelligence, right? AI can do a lot of things.

But what makes, what makes us human, the optimistic view that I, that I hope we're headed to, is that AI is going to do all these different things. Like like a, like Star Trek, right? Since the, for the geeks that watch Star Trek, you know,

technology took care of everything. There's no scarcity. There's no disease. There's no, you know, people are living longer. So then they can pursue higher, deeper, more exploration, right?

More connection because because they're basic needs on them, on the on the on the pyramid have been satisfied. So they're not just trying to put shelter or food or, you know, lose kind of things. But I also believe that if AI is here,

for going to this people to survive and also thrive, then we're going to have to lean in to become more human. So you might, my challenge is that is not that, whether or not artificial intelligence, my challenge is that natural intelligence becomes artificial.

You know, I mean, it's because we're so dependent on it, that we're not even using any of this, you know, our natural gifts. And I'm where, and in order to be relevant today, we have to lean into our human intelligence.

So what is that? What falls under human intelligence? I mean, this acronym on the way here, actually, called human. So so the Hs, just for you to send us to people

driving or working out and they're not writing it, but they can remember it with these little acronyms. But for me, it's like hard, like think about it. This is emotional intelligence. Like AI, it could give you a lot of data,

but it has no bedtime manner. It could fake empathy, like it cares about you, but it doesn't do that. Right. In the opinion on how you prompted,

it could be a sickle fan just giving you what you want to hear. Right. And that's the danger also as well with AI. That's a big thing to happen. You have to put like prompts in,

right. But that takes, that takes reflection, that takes real thinking, that takes a certain level of discernment.

I mean, it asks for that in the first place, as opposed me,

and playcated by something, you know, which you want to hear. Right. But emotional intelligence, so very important, because AI, it doesn't know what it feels like to break up, to get divorced, to help a grieving child,

to go through loss, right? No. And I feel like, and it could fame that stuff. But people could tell, right? So I feel like what will make us more human,

and a more effective as a leader also, is so I use the H.S. Heart, emotional intelligence, empathy, all those things. The E, if we're going to, if we're talking about like,

“what is, like, isn't human, if we're still in human, isn't it?”

I've been a lack of a call called called Heart. The U is understanding. So going back to like, like reasons, going back to meaning, right? If we go through and extrapolate all kinds of data and computations,

but ultimately, we decide what things mean, right? We have questions. We want to have a greater level of understanding for things, and I feel like that, like curiosity is very important, because I think it drives us to be able to wonder,

and have all, and ask new questions, which are prompts. Like, people should be prompt experts, because we've been doing it.

We're always asking ourselves questions.

Absolutely, but we're stopping to.

Well, let me just say this because as we're talking about critical thinking,

I'm thinking about kids. If you have kids, if you have someone who's raising kids, how do you apply, like, how do you teach your children

“to use AI without them losing their ability to critically think?”

Yeah, and this generation will be the generation that wouldn't know world without AI. Right. Just like when we're up to. Yeah, like, everything is now, you know, automated and social media and AI.

Yeah, I mean, when I was, like, I'm, you know, I'm thinking about brain also, you know, I'm 53. We have a, we have a toddler and infant. So I got very, you know, in terms of starting new journey. Yeah, new journey.

New journeys here. So I'm very thinking about not only in aging brain, because my brain injury as a child, my learning disability, losing my grandmother to Alzheimer's, all those things that put me on this path, right?

But also now, you know, with children, I've always worked with children. I've always worked with my children. I've always worked with my children.

I've always worked with my children.