Limitless - Jim Kwik Page 0,101

world which was 90 percent underwater’ or ‘What if we could no longer touch things with our hands to interact.’ This helps conceptualize a WHOLE different array of things we may never have thought of otherwise and allows us to imagine what we would need to survive in a future world, which could be a very different place.”15

In our example, if you’ve realized the underlying problem is that the prevailing notions in your community have forced you into filling your daily lives with activities that take far too much of your time, you might ask yourselves, “What if we didn’t care what everyone else thought?” Or maybe you’d ask, “What if there were only 18 hours in the day instead of 24?” Or you might even ask, “What if we lived somewhere else?”

Step 3: Read about It

As you already know, I am an extremely strong advocate for reading as much as you possibly can. Reading liberates your brain more than virtually any other activity. Reading is especially important when it comes to exponential thinking. You can’t make huge cognitive leaps if you don’t have a well-rounded view of a subject.

So, now that you’ve gone through the what-if exercise, read up on alternatives. Maybe your spouse reads a number of books about the connection between corporate success and happiness. Maybe your daughter connects with bloggers and influencers on both the odds of becoming an elite athlete and the lives of elite athletes. Maybe your son reads a number of studies that look at graduation from ultra-competitive universities and occupational and emotional success afterward. Maybe you read books about the causes you’re championing via your nonprofits and reconsider how important these causes are to you.

Step 4: Extrapolate

You’ve now identified the underlying problem, posed questions that allow you to imagine a world without the problem, and done your research. Now, it’s time to try out a scenario. Let’s play one out here: You’re convinced that you’ve filled your lives with activities because you need these to maintain your status in your community. You’ve asked the question, “What if we lived somewhere else?” and found that everyone in your family is intrigued by this notion. You’ve done your reading and discovered that you could be happier and more satisfied if your job/sports/school/philanthropic goals were revised and reconceived.

So, what would happen if you moved a hundred miles away, across the country, or even to a different country? You know that doing something this dramatic might not immediately seem like progress. You’ve seen the straight line and the curved line, and you realize that it might even seem you’ve taken a huge step backward because of all the adjustments you’d need to make. But say the four of you play out the scenarios and decide that making a move is the right thing to do. Two years later, the family is thriving —and you have dinner together nearly every night.

BEFORE WE MOVE ON

This is the last of the method chapters, and I’m sure you’re itching to put everything you’ve learned in this book to use. Before we end, I’m going to give you a vision of how this might work for you and a 10-day plan to jump-start applying what you’ve learned to your life. But before we get to that, let’s try a few things:

Review Howard Gardner’s eight forms of intelligence starting on HOW ARE YOU SMART?. Which forms on this list align most closely with your own intelligence?

Now that you know what your learning style is, what can you do to incorporate the other styles into your thinking?

Try on all six thinking hats during a test case. Give yourself a relatively simple task, and approach it using Edward de Bono’s method.

AFTERWORD

RETURN OF THE POSSIBLE

If you’re anything like the overwhelming majority of people in the world, when you started reading this book you were being governed—either consciously, unconsciously, or both—by a suite of limitations you’d either imposed on yourself or others had imposed on you.

Maybe you wanted to learn a new ability, but you were sure that you didn’t have the capacity to do it. Maybe you wanted to throw your hat in the ring for a big work promotion, but your inner voice kept telling you that you really didn’t have the competence for it. Maybe you were convinced that you were always going to leave the house without your phone, or you were never going to remember all the names of the people at your next social gathering, or you were forever going