Limitless - Jim Kwik Page 0,18

of slumber, the only thing he would recognize today are classrooms, because they have evolved so little. Education hasn’t changed enough to prepare us for the world we live in today. In a era of autonomously driven electric cars and vehicles capable of taking us to Mars, our education system is the equivalent of a horse and carriage.

And then there’s the matter that how we earn our livings is changing profoundly and increasingly rapidly. Automation and artificial intelligence (A.I.) are affecting the future of work, and I’m not speaking only about factories where laborers are being replaced by robots. In addition, many of us are facing the need to switch from the structure of an office job to the volatility of the gig economy. And jobs that few of us might have imagined even five years ago have gained traction, while others are emerging this very moment that will affect the workplace in the coming years.

All of this points us in the same direction: We must take charge of our own learning. If schools tell us what to learn, but not how to learn, then we need to do the rest of the work ourselves. If digital overload threatens to hijack our brains, then we need to use what we know about learning to reset the ground rules. If the workplace is evolving with so much rapidity that we can never be sure of what work will mean to us tomorrow, then only by taking complete control of our learning can we truly be prepared for an unknowable future.

TURN ON THE POWER

A quick, often-told story: One day at a power plant, everything comes to an abrupt halt. All of the machines go offline. The silence is deafening. The people running the plant are frantic and after hours and hours, none of the workers can track down the problem. The head of operations is desperate at this point, so he calls the best local help he can find.

The expert technician arrives and glances around the facility. He goes to one of the numerous beams among all the electrical boxes, opens one of them, and stares at the various screws and wires inside. He turns one screw, and, like magic, everything starts working again and the plant comes back to life.

The head of operations is so relieved. He thanks the technician and asks him what he owes him. The technician says, “$10,000.” The head of operations is shocked. “What do you mean, $10,000? You were here for a few minutes. You turned one single screw. Anyone could have done that. I need an itemized bill, please.”

The technician reaches into his pocket, pulls out a notepad, scribbles a few seconds, and hands the other man the bill. The head of operations reads it and immediately pays him. The bill read: “Turning screw: $1. Knowing which screw to turn: $9,999.”

What’s the lesson of the story? It’s not that you have a screw loose. The story illustrates two things.

The first is how much added value a limitless mind can offer you and others. We’ve entered an expert economy in which brain power trumps brute strength. Where what you have between your ears is your greatest wealth-creating asset. There are those who know and those who don’t know. And that applied knowledge is not just power, it’s profit. Your ability to think, solve problems, make the right decisions, create, innovate, and imagine is how we add value. The faster you can learn, the faster you can earn.

And that takes us to the second lesson. That one screw made all the difference. I’ve mentored and coached some amazing minds, and you don’t have to be a genius to see that genius leaves clues. One of those patterns is that elite mental performers filter and focus for those handful of “screws” that make all the difference and turn everything else on. This book is filled with many of the behaviors, tools, and strategies I’ve discovered to give you the maximum results and rewards for your effort.

The world is throwing more challenges at you than ever before, and there’s every indication that those challenges will continue to increase. At the same time, there is more to be gained from having a finely tuned brain than ever before, and you know now that you have more than enough potential to meet any challenge. But it’s going to require taking control of your learning.

It may seem as if it would take superhuman capabilities to keep up with the demands of our