Limitless - Jim Kwik Page 0,73

CEO of the online learning platform Synap. “It forces learning to be effortful and, like muscles, the brain responds to that stimulus by strengthening the connections between nerve cells. By spacing the intervals out, you’re further exercising these connections each time. It produces long-term, durable retention of knowledge and, in my experience, once people start using it, they swear by it.”5

Spaced repetition seems to work most effectively when you can review the material at similar intervals. This is why it’s important to give yourself enough time. Perhaps you perform the review once in the morning and again right before dinner for four days in a row, and then move on to other material you need to study at similar intervals. Use this technique in concert with active recall. Review the material, test yourself on what you remember, then take a break before coming back to this particular material.

Habit 3: Manage the State You’re In

As we talked about earlier in this book, the state you’re in when you perform any activity will have the greatest impact on your success. For example, if you had a really bad day and were asked to give a presentation for your job or take a test, you most likely would not perform to the best of your ability. This is because your state of mind did not promote optimal performance. On the other hand, if you’re feeling great, when the same opportunity arises, you would definitely produce better results. The more positive and resourceful your state, the greater the results you’ll produce. Studying is no different.

Your posture also controls the state of your mind. Sit as if you’re about to learn the most crucial life-changing information. Did you just have to move? If you did, then notice how you feel more focused after you’ve changed your posture. When you sit straight, it also facilitates breathing and the circulation of necessary oxygen to your brain and the rest of your body. If you are slumped over, it could stifle the breathing process and make you tired.

KWIK START

While you are sitting in a chair, slump over, look down, take short breaths, and put a frown on your face. Do this now. How motivated do you feel to achieve success? How productive do you think you are in this state? This is the posture a lot of students take while studying. Is it any wonder they dislike studying and have to work hard to achieve bare minimum results? Now sit up straight and smile. How much better do you feel?

Habit 4: Use Your Sense of Smell

I’m sure something like this has happened to you: You walk into a room and discover the air filled with a particular scent. Maybe it’s the smell of a specific spice baking in the oven. That scent immediately sends you back to a day with a childhood friend when she made a joke that was so funny that milk came out of your nose. Why would the smell of that spice trigger that memory? Because that smell was in the air when the event that you’re remembering happened, and smells are especially effective at bringing memories to the forefront of our brains. The scent of rosemary has been shown to improve memory. Peppermint and lemon promotes concentration.

“The answer is likely due to brain anatomy,” writes Jordan Gaines Lewis, postdoctoral researcher at Penn State College of Medicine. “Incoming smells are first processed by the olfactory bulb, which starts inside the nose and runs along the bottom of the brain. The olfactory bulb has direct connections to two brain areas that are strongly implicated in emotion and memory: the amygdala and hippocampus. Interestingly, visual, auditory (sound), and tactile (touch) information do not pass through these brain areas. This may be why olfaction, more than any other sense, is so successful at triggering emotions and memories.”6

What this shows us is that smell is an enormously important, yet underused, memory tool. If a particular scent can rocket us back to our childhoods, a different scent can be used to accelerate our recall. If you’re studying for a big test, put a bit of a particular essential oil on your wrist while you’re studying and then make sure you do the same thing before you take the test. If you do the same thing in preparing for a big meeting, the results should be similar. Obviously, you want to take other people into consideration, so you don’t want to douse yourself with the scent, but just a touch