Mes highlights
Limitless teaches us the five key methods to achieve whatever we want: Focus, Study, Memory Enhancement, Speed Reading, and Critical Thinking
Learning how to learn is the ultimate superpower, the one that makes every other skill and ability possible, and teaching this to you is this book’s goal.
Often when you put a label on someone or something, you create a limit—the label becomes the limitation
“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”
with the right mindset, motivation, and methods, there are no limitations.
Limitless Mindset, Limitless Motivation, and Limitless Methods
He argues that short-term memory pathways will start to deteriorate from underuse if we overuse technology.
Half of the students were allowed to keep their laptops open, while the other half (randomly assigned) had to close their laptops. Students in the closed laptop condition recalled significantly more material in a surprise quiz after class than did students in the open laptop
You get to decide what kind of environment your superpower lives in: one that supports your mission in life, or one that distracts you from your greatest dreams.
How do you install new software into your brain? One of my favorite ways is what you’re doing right now. It’s called reading.
forgetting curve.” It is the mathematical formula that describes the rate at which information is forgotten after it is initially learned. Research suggests humans forget approximately 50 percent of what they learn within an hour, and an average of 70 percent within 24 hours.
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.
If you sit down to read a book over the course of two hours without taking any breaks, you might remember the first 20 minutes of what you read, then maybe you’ll experience a dip around the 30-minute mark, and then you’re likely to remember the end of what you read
when your mind inevitably wanders into something else—and that something else is important but not urgent—don’t try to not think of it. What you resist persists. Instead, keep a notebook close by to capture that thought or idea by writing it down.
reduce the effects of the forgetting curve is to actively recall what you learned with spaced repetition. You are better able to retain information by reviewing in multiple spread-out sessions. Going over the material at intervals increases our brain’s ability to remember it.
Being limitless is a choice, and that choice is entirely yours, regardless of your circumstances
How can I use this? Why must I use this? When will I use this?
The inner critic isn’t harmless. It inhibits you, limits you, and stops you from pursuing the life you truly want to live. It robs you of peace of mind and emotional well-being and, if left unchecked long enough, it can even lead to serious mental health problems like depression or anxiety.”3
Dynamo genius: Those who express their genius through creativity and ideas.
Blaze geniuses tend to be master communicators
Tempo geniuses tend to understand the long view in ways that most of those around them cannot.
Steel geniuses love getting all the information they can get and have a vision for doing something with that information that most others miss.
as long as you believe that your inner critic is the voice of the true you, the wisest you, it’s always going to guide you.
Mock it for its rigid dedication to negativity. Roll your eyes when it pops into your head. The better you become at distinguishing this voice from the real you, the better you’ll be at preventing limiting beliefs from getting in your way.
when you are experiencing positive emotions like joy, contentment, and love, you will see more possibilities in your life
This is something I’m not good at yet.” This shift in language can be applied to anything you want to improve.
Most of us fear the opinions of other people when we simply think about trying something new
Motivation is not something you have; it’s something you do. And it’s entirely sustainable
If, Sinek explains, you can articulate the belief that is driving you (your why), people will want what you are offering
Do you know why it was important to memorize the periodic table or historic dates? If you don’t, you probably don’t remember them
we will naturally have many passions over the course of our lives. Because you will change, the medium through which you express your passions will change, too. He believes that if you define yourself by one very specific passion and your life changes in a way that doesn’t allow you to pursue that passion any longer, you might feel lost. The key is finding the underlying meaning in your passions to find a new way of channeling your expression.
participants whose survey included personally identifying statements like “voter” were 13 percent more likely to vote than those who were simply asked about the likelihood that they would vote.
Values need to be prioritized. My values are love, growth, contribution, and adventure, in that order. Each value builds on and contributes to the next
It’s likely that there’s a good reason behind every task you need to accomplish, even the unpleasant ones.
Having reasons has helped me become crystal clear when it comes to commitments
eighth lie is that you have motivation —that you wake up and feel motivated every day. The reality is that you do motivation. Ultimately, motivation is a set of habits and routines, guided by your values and your identity, that you carry out every day.
Refined sugar, for example, contributes to impaired brain function, leads to inflammation, and can even cause depression (something you might want to consider the next time you reach for a tub of ice cream to contend with a tough day).
regular aerobic exercise, the kind that gets your heart and your sweat glands pumping, appears to boost the size of the hippocampus, the brain area involved in verbal memory and learning
ANTs are “automatic negative thoughts”
Feeling bad about your lack of progress is likely to make it more difficult for you to stop procrastinating. So, give yourself a break
The habits you repeat (or don’t repeat) every day largely determine your health, wealth, and happiness. Knowing how to change your habits means knowing how to confidently own and manage your days, focus on the behaviors that have the highest impact, and reverse-engineer the life you want.”
And the best part is that he now believes he is a lifelong learner.
strongly believe that if you jump-start your day by jump-starting your brain with a series of simple activities, you have a huge advantage.
But if your goal in reading this book is upgrading your brain, then some variation on a morning routine of this type is an integral part of the process
If you make the commitment to practice concentration an hour or so a day, it will soon become second nature.
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?
Spaced repetition is simple but highly effective because it deliberately hacks the way your brain works,
identifies a connection between music and mood and the subsequent connection between mood and learning, suggesting that music can put us in conditions that improve our ability to learn.7
“the human brain has the capacity to digest as much as 400 words per minute of information. But even a speaker from New York City talks at around 125 words per minute. That means three-quarters of your brain could very well be doing something else while someone is speaking to you.”11
First off, be sure that you understand the purpose for taking these notes
There’s no such thing as a good memory or a bad memory; there is only a trained memory and an untrained memory.
There were 5 Exabytes of information created between the dawn of civilization through 2003, but that much information is now created every 2 days.
You don’t need to pronounce those words, just as you don’t need to pronounce filler words like because, this, or the. You know them by sight, not by sound.
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
The incremental mindset focuses on making something better, while the exponential mindset is focused on making something different,