PDF Summary:Limitless, by Jim Kwik

Limitless by Jim Kwik is a self-help book that discusses meta-learning—that is, learning how to learn. In this book, Kwik teaches us how to quickly and effectively learn about any topic and then how to use that new knowledge to its maximum potential.

Kwik is a teacher, life coach, and motivational speaker. He credits his success to his ongoing studies of meta-learning, and he hopes to share what he’s learned through Limitless.

In this guide, we’ll compare and contrast Kwik’s lessons with other popular self-help authors like Tony Robbins (Awaken the Giant Within) and Robin Sharma (The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari). We’ll also examine the origins of some of the key ideas in Limitless.

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According to Kwik, knowing what motivates you is a matter of identifying four things:

1. Your purpose: What you do. In other words, what are your goals in life, and how will you work toward them?

In The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, Robin Sharma suggests finding your purpose by keeping a Dream Book:

• Write down goals from all different areas of your life (health goals, relationship goals, career goals, and so on). Keep the goals separated by category.

• Also include pictures that represent your goals, or pictures of people who have reached those goals. For example, if your goal is to lose weight, perhaps include a picture of an athlete or model.

• Periodically look through your Dream Book. Ask yourself which types of goals you're excited to work toward, and which seem to come easily to you. Finding goals that you’re naturally inclined to work toward is a big step toward finding your purpose in life.

2. Your passion: Why you do what you do. In other words, what gets you excited? What makes you want to work?

• Purpose and passion are closely linked. Knowing what you’re passionate about will help you to find your purpose in life; having a clear purpose will allow you to live and work passionately.

Counterpoint: Design Your Passion

Designing Your Life argues that passion isn’t something you find; it’s something you create by carefully planning and building the kind of life you want to live. Doing so requires a major shift in thinking—going from a mindframe of “find your passion and everything will work out” to a mindframe of:

• Curiosity: Asking who you want to be, and what kind of life you want to live.

• Experimentation: Trying new things, seeing what resonates with you and what doesn’t.

• Reframing: Rethinking old, harmful beliefs—these could be anything from thinking that there’s a “perfect” life waiting for you to find it, to thinking that you can sum up your identity with a simple label (“business owner,” “artist,” “parent,” and so on).

• Focusing on the process: Taking your experiences as they come; focusing on what you’re doing at the moment, rather than on some far-off goal that you hope to reach someday.

• Teamwork: Recognizing that you can’t design or build a life on your own; seeking help and support when you need it.

Designing Your Life asserts that passion is the result of a fulfilling life, rather than the cause of it.

3. Your reasons: Your reasons are like your passions, but much more specific. Your reasons are what get you up and working at any given moment, especially when you’d rather be doing something else. For example, someone might become a veterinarian because she’s passionate about animals; however, the reason that gets her to work each day might be that she’ll have a chance to save someone’s beloved pet.

Our Reasons Come From Pleasure and Pain

In Awaken the Giant Within, Robbins says that all of our motivations—which is to say, our reasons for what we do—boil down to two things: seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. According to Robbins, all of our more complex motivations (like the vet who goes to work each day to save people’s pets) come from pleasurable or painful associations that our minds create.

For example, perhaps the vet feels a thrill or a sense of great satisfaction when she’s able to save an animal’s life. Those are pleasant sensations that she associates with her job, so she continues doing her job in order to experience those sensations.

Furthermore, Robbins says that if you want to do something but are having trouble finding the motivation to do it, you probably have conflicting associations. To continue with the vet example, if she has trouble getting going in the morning, it may be that the pleasure of helping pets is conflicting with the pain of another tiring day dealing with demanding human customers.

4. Your values: Values are about who you are as a person. In other words, what’s truly important to you? Also, Kwik notes that you must recognize whether each value is a means value or an end value—in other words, is your value just a step toward something else, or is it an end in itself? For example, “popularity” is a means value; it doesn’t achieve anything on its own. The end value it’s working toward might be “acceptance,” “belonging,” or “confidence.”

Find Your Values

It seems like understanding your own values should be easy, but that’s not always the case. Sometimes we value things without realizing it—especially if those values are selfish, like valuing popularity or control. We often hide such unconstructive values from ourselves in order to protect our self-image.

In The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Mark Manson suggests finding your values by starting from your emotions:

• Identify your emotions. When something sparks a strong emotional response in you, observe that reaction. What are you feeling at that moment?

• Determine why you feel them. Ask yourself why you feel the way that you do. You may find it helpful, or even necessary, to keep asking “why” about each response that you come up with—eventually you’ll reach a point where you can’t answer the “why,” or your answer will be something along the lines of “just because.” That will be the core reason for the emotions you felt.

• Identify the underlying values. Once you know the reason for the emotional response, you can determine what values you were using to gauge the situation. For example, if you lost a game against your child and felt angry or frustrated about it, that might be because you were valuing “winning.” If you felt proud and satisfied, it might be because you were valuing your child’s accomplishments.

Manson believes that our thoughts and feelings are ultimately rooted in our values. Therefore, by working backward from our feelings, we can determine what our values actually are, and change them if necessary.

Set SMART Goals

Kwik believes that, by setting good goals for yourself, you’ll naturally create your own motivation to reach them. To help guide your goal-setting process, he suggests following the practice of many businesses and using the acronym SMART:

• Specific: Make sure your goal is clear and well-defined.
• Measurable: Make sure you have a way to track your progress, and to know when you’ve reached your goal. Measurable may overlap with specific.
• Actionable: Make sure there are clear and specific steps you can follow to reach your goal.
• Realistic: Your goals should be challenging, but not impossible. Don’t pick something that you’ll get discouraged with.
• Time-based: Giving yourself a timeframe for your goals serves two purposes: It spurs you to work toward those goals, and it gives you a heads up if you’re not on track to reach them.

Even if your goals meet all of Kwik’s criteria, you might still find yourself struggling if external forces have too much influence on them. In Awaken the Giant Within, Tony Robbins adds a couple of other qualities that good goals should have:

• Controllable. Make sure that your goals don’t rely on other people or outside forces doing what you want them to. For example, “becoming popular” wouldn’t be a good goal, because it relies upon other people deciding that they like you.

• Flexible. Robbins says that you should always be ready to adjust your goals, as well as your plans to achieve them.

Robbins also echoes Kwik’s point that having meaningful, challenging goals is an effective way to create motivation for yourself.

The Third Component: Techniques

So far we’ve discussed getting yourself into the proper mindframe to learn and work, and getting yourself motivated to do so. However, Kwik insists, those two things won’t get you very far without the third learning component: Technique.

You could think of it this way:

• Mindframe is the what: “What am I capable of?”
• Drive is the why: “Why do I want to do these things?”
• Technique is the how: “How can I actually accomplish this?”

Learn How to Study

The first strategy Kwik presents is a series of steps that prepare you to learn and maximize your retention.

There are six steps to Kwik’s strategy:

1. Clear your mind. There are three things you must let go of in order to fully focus on the topic at hand: What you think you know about that topic, anything unrelated to what you’re studying—including upcoming obligations or concerns that might distract you—and your own perceived limitations.

(Shortform note: Kwik’s advice to clear your mind strongly resembles the old Zen proverb of the empty cup: Just as you can’t add tea to a cup that’s already full, you can’t add new information to a mind that’s already full of old ideas. Therefore, forgetting what you think you know is a learning tip that’s well over a thousand years old.)

2. Involve yourself. Learning is an active process, so figure out how you can become more involved in your own learning. Perhaps you could take notes, discuss the material with your teacher, or work through some exercises on your own time.

(Shortform note: We’ll discuss active learning in greater detail in the section “Train Your Memory.”)

3. Choose to be interested. Get yourself into the right mental and emotional state to learn; consciously choose a state of joy, curiosity, and interest. One easy way to practice State is to trick your body into thinking that you’re excited—lean forward in your seat, change your breathing, or make the face you’d make if you were completely enthralled.

(Shortform note: You can use all sorts of physical cues to trick yourself into the mental state you want at any given time. For example, studies show that a fake smile can put you into a genuinely better mood.)

4. Relay what you’ve learned. Study new information with the intent to teach it to somebody else—actually do teach it to another person, if possible.

(Shortform note: Studies show that teaching others helps you to retain what you’ve learned. In the linked study, students who taught others didn’t do significantly better in the short term than those who only learned the material themselves; however, when tested again a week later, those who had taught the material to other students remembered a great deal more of it.)

5. Schedule your study times. Get a calendar and enter times to study, just like you’d enter important meetings or appointments. This will help you to develop good, regular study habits.

(Shortform note: Self-help experts frequently say that it takes about 21 days to form a healthy new habit. However, in reality, it might take much longer. One study showed that it took an average of 66 days (and, in rare cases, as long as 254 days) for a new behavior to become a habit. Therefore, it’s important not to get discouraged when your new study practices don’t feel habitual after just a few weeks.)

6. Repeat what you’ve learned. Periodically going over your notes—or just thinking about what you’ve learned—will help you to recall that information when you really need it. One simple way to review is to set aside a few minutes before you begin a study session, and use that time to think about what you learned in the previous session.

(Shortform note: Rote learning (also called rote memorization) involves repeating facts until they stick in your mind, which is generally considered to be an ineffective study method. In other words, rote learning uses only this final step, while Kwik’s method uses all of them.)

Take Good Notes

Kwik believes that taking good notes is a crucial part of any attempt to learn. Therefore, he offers these three guidelines for effective note-taking:

• Specify. Before you start any activity where you’ll be taking notes (studying, listening to a presentation, or what have you), consider what you’re hoping to get out of that session. Ask yourself what, specifically, you’re interested in learning from it.
• Filter. Keeping your goal for the session in mind, filter through the information you’re getting and look for what’s relevant to that goal. It’s impossible to write down everything, so filter through the information and pick out what’s important to you.
• Highlight. Review your notes after the session and highlight the most valuable information. Add notes as needed to make that information clearer, or make an outline of the key points—in essence, take notes about your notes.

There are many different theories about how to take effective notes. The Cornell Note Taking Method, for example, offers much more specific advice than Kwik’s general guidelines.

The Cornell Method is based on the so-called “5 R’s of note-taking:”

• Record: Take notes as usual about the lecture, meeting, etc.

• Reduce: As soon as possible after the event, create a separate column and summarize each of your notes in as few words as possible.

• Recite: Using only that new column, repeat what you learned during the lecture or meeting. Put the ideas into your own words. Then use your full notes to verify that what you said was accurate.

• Reflect: Think about what you’ve learned. What are your opinions about this new information? What connections can you draw to things that you already knew?

• Review: Go over your notes once a week to refresh your memory.

Train Your Memory

Kwik notes that many people try to learn new information by rote memorization: repeating something until it sticks. However, rote learning is ineffective because you’re basically trying to bully your brain into accepting the information.

In contrast, in active learning, students actively participate in the learning experience; for example, through in-class discussion or self-chosen projects. Active learning is much more effective (and enjoyable!) than rote memorization.

Counterpoint: Studies have shown that rote learning is extremely effective when studying foundational concepts, such as the alphabet or the Periodic Table.

However, the more advanced and complex a topic is, the more rote learning falls short of active learning (or meaningful learning, as some call it).

Here are a few methods Kwik recommends for taking an active role in your learning:

Visualization

Instead of just reading words on a page, or hearing them spoken, Kwik recommends engaging your visual memory—imagining the picture that those words paint, rather than the words themselves. That picture will be much easier to recall than the series of words that created it.

To illustrate this point, take a moment right now and think of your bedroom. It’s a fairly safe bet that you came up with a mental image, rather than a collection of words like bed, dresser, nightstand, and so on.

How Do You Learn?

Kwik is describing visual learning, a learning style in which students benefit from seeing graphical representations of what they’re studying (pictures, charts, maps, and so on). In essence, he’s suggesting that you harness visual learning by creating those graphics yourself, in your own mind.

Experts now recognize that visual learning is just one of many different learning styles. For example, the VARK model says that there are four major learning styles (Visual, Auditory, Reading/writing, and Kinesthetic). Another model adds Logical, Social, and Solitary learning styles (and replaces Reading/writing with the more general Linguistic learning style).

Consider which learning styles you seem to favor, and try to come up with an equivalent to Kwik’s “visualization” technique for those styles. For example, if you’re a kinesthetic learner, you might find it helpful to associate a simple hand movement with a difficult concept—later, when you need to recall the concept, perform that hand movement and it should spring to mind.

Association

Kwik believes that association is the basis of all learning—in order to learn new information, that information has to be connected to something you already know. Therefore, you should always try to link any new information to something that you already know about.

Pavlov’s famous dog experiment demonstrates a very basic form of associative learning: Dogs learned to associate food (something they already understood) with a particular sound (which previously had no meaning to them). Once they formed that association, hearing the sound would make them think of food and begin to salivate.

Kwik is suggesting that you use a similar method to link concepts in your own mind. For example, you may not know what a derivative is in calculus, but you probably know what graphs and slopes are; therefore, you can understand that a derivative is the slope of a graph. Now, hearing the word “derivative” (which previously had no meaning for you) will bring that concept to mind.

Emotion

Information is forgettable; however, Kwik argues, feelings are memorable. If you can add emotions to what you’re learning—make it exciting, adventurous, or poignant—then you’ll be much more likely to remember it. That’s why, for example, people frequently come up with humorous acronyms.

In fact, you’ve probably experienced this phenomenon before. To illustrate the point, think back to a time when you got some extraordinary piece of news (either good or bad). You probably remember where you were and what you were doing at the time, even if it was many years ago.

(Shortform note: Memories linked to extraordinary moments are sometimes called flashbulb memories. Flashbulb memories are the reason why, for example, people say that they’ll never forget where they were when they heard that JFK had been shot—or, to use a more recent example, when Kobe Bryant’s helicopter crashed.)

Limitless Thinking

Finally, Kwik shifts from discussing how to learn to discussing how to think. Now that you’re capable of learning anything, the next step is using all of your new knowledge to its maximum potential.

In other words, in this final section, Kwik teaches you how to move from limitless learning to limitless action.

Think Exponentially

Kwik urges us to stop thinking incrementally (one small step at a time) and start thinking exponentially (each step bigger than the one before it). According to Kwik, exponential thinking leads to world-changing innovations and billion-dollar companies.

Entrepreneur Mark Bonchek first wrote about developing an exponential mindset to complement the exponential growth of technology. The crux of his argument was that many businesses fail because they have incremental mindsets in an exponentially advancing world. Bonchek encourages business leaders to make strategies that grow slowly at first, but lead to ever-accelerating rates of return.

However, Bonchek’s method claims that you can’t predict the future while using an exponential mindset—he likens an exponential growth curve to a bend in the road that you can’t see beyond. In contrast, Kwik’s model is all about predicting and planning for the future, as we’ll see shortly.

Exponential thinking encourages us to look beyond the immediate problem and instead seek the root cause of that problem. Solving the underlying issue will most likely have a much greater impact than just fixing the current problem.

1. Find the underlying problem. The problem you’re trying to tackle might not be the real issue at all, so look for a root cause. For example, if you’re trying to reduce air pollution, you might tackle that problem at the source by addressing “dirty” energy sources like coal and oil.

Kwik urges us to look for root causes, but doesn’t provide much guidance on how to do that. The Design of Everyday Things suggests finding the root cause of a problem by continuously asking “why.”

For example, if the problem you’re trying to solve is that you always buy unhealthy fast food on the way home from work, your “root cause analysis” might go something like this:

Why am I buying fast food?

Because I’m hungry.

Why am I hungry?

Because I haven’t eaten in a while.

Why haven’t I eaten?

Because I was at work.

Why did being at work stop me from eating?

Because I didn’t have food there.

Why didn’t I have food at work?

Because I didn’t bring any.

You could continue with this line of questioning (“why didn’t I bring food to work?”), but the solution to your underlying problem should be clear by now: Bring your own food to work, and you won’t be tempted to buy junk food on the way home.

2. Ask “what if.” This isn’t just about asking what might happen if you do one thing or another; try to come up with extreme, and even outlandish questions. These seemingly strange questions will get you thinking along different paths than everyday linear thinking would. For example, instead of looking for cleaner energy sources, what if we could make a society that didn’t need electricity at all?

(Shortform note: An article from Forbes offers one reason why “what if” questions can be effective brainstorming tools: they encourage you to approach the situation with an open mind. When you ask yourself “what if,” you let go of your ideas about what’s possible or feasible, and simply try to answer the question.)

3. Study. Now that you’ve found the root problem and thought about some hypotheticals on your own, it’s time to see what other people have to say about that situation. Try to get a well-rounded view of the issue by studying many different (reliable) sources.

(Shortform note: One of the internet’s major pitfalls is that you can find sources supporting any idea or theory you can imagine, no matter how outlandish. Therefore, it’s important to vet your findings, and to take information only from reliable sources. This article from the University of Georgia offers some pointers; most importantly, checking a site’s credibility and the author’s credentials before taking anything on that site as fact.)

4. Imagine what’s next. By now, you should at least have an idea for a solution to the problem you’re tackling. However, before you implement that solution, you should try to envision both the short-term and long-term consequences of it. Note that the short-term consequences might feel like a step back, rather than progress; however, the long-term results of solving an underlying problem will probably go well beyond the immediate issue you were trying to tackle when you started this process.

Again, Kwik provides a general guideline (imagine the long-term consequences) without offering much concrete advice about how to do it.

One Forbes article suggests a 5-step process for creating and implementing a long-term plan (while this article is specifically about running a small business, the process applies to any kind of plan):

• Write down your mission statement. Whether you’re running a business or planning out your personal life, you have a mission that you want to accomplish or a purpose that you want to fulfill. Determine what that is, and write it down.

• Set goals. Find some concrete objectives or milestones that you’ll meet in the process of fulfilling your mission.

• Come up with broad strategies. The key word here is broad—you’ll have to deal with the specifics as they arise. However, you should come up with some general strategies and rules of thumb for how you can meet your goals and fulfill your mission.

• Track your results. Measure what you’re putting into your mission in terms of time, money, resources, and so on, versus what results you’re getting. Be specific: For example, if you’re devoting a lot of time to building your social media presence and aren’t getting as many new followers as you’d like, it may be time to reevaluate that particular strategy.

• Stay optimistic. Remember that you don’t need to be perfect, and your results don’t need to meet your expectations every step of the way.

Plan Exponentially

Kwik’s previous model was designed to help us tackle specific problems. However, we plan out courses of action all the time, even when we’re not responding to some dire or complex problem. For example, we might plan the most efficient route to run our errands, or a student might need to plan out what courses he or she will take in the upcoming semester.

Therefore, Kwik encourages you to apply exponential thinking to every plan you make—a practice he calls exponential planning.

• Keep asking, “and then what?” In other words, what would be the consequences of this hypothetical decision? How will you respond to those consequences? What are the consequences of that response? How will you respond to those consequences? And so on.
• Think in different time increments. If you pursue the course of action you’re considering, what will be the results in five days? In five months? In five years?
• Compare your options. For each different option you’re considering, do the deep thinking described in the previous two points. Choose the best course of action based on your conclusions.

Exponential planning is significantly more difficult than short-term, incremental planning. However, Kwik argues, exponential planning gives you insights that other people don’t have; therefore, it allows you to plan for the future much more effectively than others. Kwik promises that, while other people’s situations improve incrementally, yours will improve exponentially—getting you ever closer to reaching your limitless potential.

Counterpoint: In Antifragile, Nassim Nicholas Taleb repeatedly says that predicting the future is effectively impossible. Furthermore, predictions become less and less accurate the farther ahead they try to look—there are simply too many variables for any model to get an accurate picture of the future.

Therefore, rather than trying to predict the long-term outcomes of your actions, Taleb urges you to maximize your options and your flexibility, so that you can take advantage of whatever ends up happening.

For example, when a student is applying for college, she shouldn’t just apply to her one favorite school; if that school doesn’t take her, then she’s at a dead end. Instead, she should apply to many different schools—each one that accepts her is another option for the future, and she can then pick her favorite from among those options.