16-05-2021-043351Limitless-Jim -Kwik

going to offer a number of suggestions in this area over the course of this book.

KWIK START

What is your favorite thing to do to cope with stress? When was the last time you did it?

10. SLEEP

If you want better focus, you need to get good sleep. If you want to be a clearer thinker, you need to get good sleep. If you want to make better decisions or have a better memory, you need to get good sleep. According to the National Institutes of Health:

Quality sleep—and getting enough of it at the right times—is as essential to survival as food and water. Without sleep you can’t form or maintain the pathways in your brain that let you learn and create new memories, and it’s harder to concentrate and respond quickly. Sleep is important to a number of brain functions, including how nerve cells (neurons) communicate with each other. In fact, your brain and body stay remarkably active while you sleep. Recent findings suggest that sleep plays a housekeeping role that removes toxins in your brain that build

up while you are awake.10

The takeaway: getting enough sleep—and getting enough quality sleep—is essential if you’re going to make the most of your brain.

Sleep Is Not a Choice

I know there are lots of people out there who say they don’t need a lot of sleep, or that they don’t have time for sleep, or even consider it a point of pride that their lives are so full of activity that they “have no

choice” but to sacrifice sleep. That’s a mistake, and, if you’re one of these people, it’s something I want you to reconsider right now.

“Sleep is crucial to overall health and daily functioning,” writes Dr. Jean Kim, a psychiatrist and a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at George Washington University. “Increasing evidence has tied lack of sleep to a host of mental and physical disorders, including increased depression, irritability, impulsivity, cardiovascular disease, and more. One study noted that sleep actually functions as a sort of laundry cycle for the brain, where during sleep, blood vessels (and lymphatic channels) in the brain hyperperfuse and flush out metabolic buildup from the day and remove neurotoxins and

distribute components that enhance cellular repair.”11

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.

“When the brain is awake and is at its most busy, it puts off clearing away the waste from the spaces between its cells until later, and then, when it goes to sleep and doesn’t have to be as busy, it shifts into a kind of cleaning mode to clear away the waste from the spaces between its cells, the waste that’s accumulated throughout

the day.”12

A little later in the talk, Iliff warns against doing something that so many of us do: sacrificing sleep until we get a chance to catch up. “Like our housework, it’s a dirty and a thankless job, but it’s also important. In your house, if you stop cleaning your kitchen for a month, your home will become completely unlivable very quickly. But in the brain, the consequences of falling behind may be much greater than the embarrassment of dirty countertops, because when it comes to cleaning the brain, it is the very health and function of the mind and the body that’s at stake, which is why understanding these very basic housekeeping functions of the brain today may be critical

for preventing and treating diseases of the mind tomorrow.”13

So, if you’re one of the many people who have convinced themselves that there’s a level of nobility in getting by with minimal sleep, it’s time to revise your thinking. There’s simply too much to gain from a good night’s sleep (including what you can learn from your dreams).

Getting through the Night

It’s one thing to say you’re going to get a good night’s sleep. It’s another thing entirely to accomplish it. About a quarter of all

Americans experience some level of insomnia every year.14

There is, however, very strong evidence connecting exercise to sleep, even among chronic insomnia sufferers. A study performed by Dr. Kathryn J. Reid and others found that aerobic exercise had strong positive results on a group of participants who’d previously regularly encountered sleep problems. “Results from this study indicate that a sixteen-week program of moderate intensity aerobic physical activity plus sleep hygiene education is effective in improving self-reported sleep quality, mood, and quality of life in older adults with chronic insomnia,” the authors wrote. “These results highlight the potential of structured physical activity programs to improve the effectiveness of standard behavioral approaches for the treatment of insomnia, particularly in a sedentary older adult

population.”15

A group at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine built upon this study by drilling down on the data gleaned and then studying the interconnection between exercise and sleep. What they found is important to consider: exercise is not a magic pill. If you’re having trouble sleeping, you can’t solve the problem with one session at the gym. They found that, even after two months, the effects of exercise on sleep were minimal. But by the end of the 16week study, the results were considerable, with participants getting

as much as an hour-and-a-quarter extra sleep per night.16

So, there’s a clear connection between exercise and sleep, but you’re going to need to give it time. But, given the overall benefits of exercise on your health, committing to an exercise routine is always

a good idea, even if you won’t feel the benefits on your sleep right away.

There are varying ideas about how much exercise is necessary to affect sleep, but a commonly stated amount is 2.5 hours a week of aerobic exercise, coupled with some resistance work. “Brisk walking, light biking, elliptical machine, anything that increases your heart rate so that you can still talk while exercising but have to catch your breath every few sentences or so, is considered moderate exercise,” recommends Dr. Christopher E. Kline of the University of

Pittsburgh.17

Giving Your Mind a Break

One of the many reasons why people have trouble sleeping, is not being able to get your mind to turn off. We’ve all been there: You have a huge meeting coming up, or something disruptive (either positive or negative) happened during the day, or you got a phone call just before bedtime that got you riled up. Your head hits the pillow, but you might as well be running laps around your house because your mind is busy with this inciting event. You wind up lying there for hours, and sleep seems as unapproachable as Everest.

Fortunately, you have a tool available to you at all times that can help you deal with this: meditation. The benefits of meditation are numerous (and there are many, many books out there that detail them), including everything from boosting immune function to decreasing anxiety to actually increasing your gray matter. One of those many benefits is helping with insomnia.

In a study performed by Dr. David S. Black and others, a group of older adults with sleep problems were introduced to mindfulness meditation through six two-hour sessions. By the end of these sessions, this group showed meaningful improvement with

insomnia.18

If meditation seems foreign to you (and, if that’s the case, you’re in

the vast majority, as less than 15 percent of Americans meditate),19 it’s likely because you’ve heard that meditation is difficult or that it requires you to completely blank your mind. Ariel Garten, creator of Muse, a headband that assists in meditation, clarifies that it isn’t

Put a shopping list together for all the brain foods you don’t currently have in your home. I realize that not all of these foods are going to be compatible with your palate, but really try to include as many as you can. Then take this list with you to the store.

Spend some time identifying your ANTs. What limitations are you placing on yourself? Give yourself a few minutes with this. What are you telling yourself you can’t do? Write this down.

Think about how you’d like to expand your learning. What have you always wanted to master that you haven’t found the time to master? Is it a different language? Computer coding? A new sales or marketing technique? What can you do to fit that into your life right now?

Use one of the tools we talked about here to improve the amount and quality of your sleep. Keep track of this for at least a week.

I made two videos for you on how to easily memorize the top 10 brain foods and my 10 brain energizing recommendations. Go to www.LimitlessBook.com/ resources to watch.

9

What is the smallest simple step I can take now? How do we start good habits or end bad ones?

What daily routine will help me become limitless?

You have a reason or purpose to do something. You have the necessary energy to do it. What is missing?

A small simple step (S3). The tiniest action you can take to get you closer to your goal. One that requires minimal effort or energy. Over time, these become habits. That’s the reason I’ve filled this book with the small simple steps called Kwik Starts.

Back in the 1920s, a Russian psychologist, Bluma Zeigarnik, was sitting in a Viennese restaurant when she noticed that the waiters swirling around her in the busy eatery were highly efficient at remembering customer orders while they were in process but tended to forget who had what as soon as the orders were filled.

Intrigued by this, she ran a study where she had people perform simple tasks while they were sometimes interrupted. Afterward, she queried participants about which tasks they remembered and which they did not, finding that those who’d been interrupted were twice as likely to remember the things they’d been doing when they’d been interrupted than the things they’d been able to complete without interruption. She came to the conclusion—subsequently known as the Zeigarnik effect—that uncompleted tasks created a level of

tension that keeps that task at the front of our minds until it is completed.

In all likelihood, you’re familiar with this tension from your experience with procrastination. When you have something you know you need to do and you keep putting it off, it weighs on you, even making it more difficult to do anything else well as long as this task goes uncompleted. What you need to do seems hard, or it seems like less fun than the other things you could be doing, or it’s going to be uncomfortable, or you’ve simply convinced yourself that you have plenty of time to get to it later. We still struggle to complete tasks when we are clear on our vision for our lives and know who we want to become. Why is it still so hard to act, even when we have sustained motivation?

One of the most significant reasons that people fail to act is that we feel overwhelmed by what we need to do. A project or a chore might seem so big and time-consuming that you can’t imagine how you’re ever going to get it done. We look at the project in its entirety and immediately feel that the task at hand is too big, so we shut down or put it off. “Incomplete tasks and procrastinating often lead to frequent and unhelpful thought patterns,” says psychologist Hadassah Lipszyc. “These thoughts can impact on sleep, trigger anxiety symptoms, and further impact on a person’s mental and

emotional resources.”1

BE KIND TO YOURSELF

If you struggle to get something done with some amount of regularity, there’s a good chance that you feel guilty about this and you beat yourself up over it. It’s likely you give yourself a much harder time about it than is helpful. We already know that unfinished tasks create tension in your brain. If you layer guilt and shame on top of this, you’re making it even harder to get a task done, and you’re making yourself miserable.

“Feeling guilty when you’re away from work, when you aren’t in a position to do anything about it, is not helpful, and can be painful,” writes Dr. Art Markman, a professor of psychology and marketing at University of Texas, Austin. “It will make you feel worse about your

job in general and spoil time that you could be spending with friends, family, or engaging in an enjoyable activity. Shame, though, is a different story. There is evidence that people will explicitly procrastinate to avoid shame. Feeling shame about work you have not completed is likely to make the problem worse, not better,

making it an emotion that is almost never helpful.”2

Feeling bad about your lack of progress is likely to make it more difficult for you to stop procrastinating. So, give yourself a break. Beating yourself up isn’t going to improve anything, and, since you’re reading this book now, you’re already taking steps to avoid procrastinating in the future.

In my experience, the best way to deal with this is to find a way to break the task into bite-size pieces, which lead to habits that lead toward success. Circling back to the Zeigarnik effect, every time you complete one of these smaller tasks, you get to take that weight off your mind. And as each of these subtasks is finished, you’re that much closer to completing the task overall.

TAKE BABY STEPS

Podcast guest Dr. B. J. Fogg, the founder and director of the Behavior Design Lab at Stanford University and the author of Tiny Habits, has been studying human behavior for more than two decades. What he’s learned is that only three things can change a person’s behavior long term. One is to have an epiphany, which very few people can summon on demand. Another is to change your environment, which is possible for nearly everyone, but not necessarily feasible at any given time. The third is to, as Dr. Fogg

puts it, “take baby steps.”3

I like the way this story illustrates the principle of small, simple steps:

A King was watching a great magician perform his act. The crowd was enthralled and so was the King. At the end, the audience roared with approval. And the King said, “What a gift this man has. A God-given talent.”