Mixed Story

This is my summary.

In this great talk show Jim introduces his younger self as a child who had difficulty reading and writing because of brain injury he sustained when he was five years old. He had to be taught three times more than the normal kid to comprehend the lesson. He also mentioned that one of the teacher berated him in-front of other children saying, “This is what looks like if you brain doesn’t work”. That was the horrible thing he had to experience as he was trying to recover. After high school, he decided to have a fresh start and learn the lessons smart. But no matter how much he tried he couldn’t succeed. He was spending so much time in library that he was merely 117 pounds at that time. He got so weak and got unconscious one day that he had to be admitted to the hospital. After he came to senses from unconscious state, the nurse brought him a soup on a cup that had Einstein’s picture in it. The inscribed letters on the cup said, “Don’t expect to get the new results, if you do the same things over and over again”. At that point he realized he had to change things. He went in the quest of sources that would teach him how to study. There were always “what” to study but not “how” to study.

He also joked about his name Kwik quite a lot throughout the talk. He shared that he used to participate in running competitions when we was a kid. For him to run slow was not an option because he had “Kwik” written on his back. He also laughed at the fact that he had no chance of swaying the officer’s mind if he ever got pulled over for speeding. In the initial phase of the talk, he asks the audience if they had read the book “Seven habits of successful people”. He mentioned the most important lesson from that book was “You need to sharpen your saw before working with the saw. In other words, when we are required to chop off a block of wood with dull axe, sharpen it first so you can chop easier than trying hard to chop with dull axe”.

Throughout the talk he includes lot of famous quotes to corroborate his message. He asks the audience to find two people they didn’t know before and pair in a group of three. Each group of three people had to personate either of superman, batman or Wonder Woman. Wonder Woman was in charge to make the group feel happy. He discusses about different states of mind such as joy, sorrow, happiness, anger etc. He mentions in the talk that we need to be in the zone or state if we want to learn things faster. He mentioned that when we are having shower, we get incredible ideas as our mind is in thita state. He also joked that he took shower six times that day before coming to the talk show. There are several states of mind; alpha, beta, thita, gamma etc.

The most important message of this talk was the following six bullet points. They can be abbreviated as “BE FAST”.

* B: Believe. Henry Ford: "If a person believes he can do it or not, both of them are true." It is important for any person on a learning journey to believe that they can achieve anything or understand anything. You will eventually become what you believe.

* E: Exercise Physical exercise takes you to a state where you can learn faster and retain more. Socrates said," If you learn something and you cannot remember it, that is of no use." Jim gives an example of a time where kids are always ready to play. Slowly that playtime becomes hangout time. As we play more our mind is a state where it can grasp things faster.

* F: Forget. In order to learn new things we should forget everything we know before learning that concept. The preconceived notions we have about the subject will hinder out capacity to understand the concept and master it.

* A: Active "When you move, your mind will groove." So, it is very important to be active when learning.

* S: State of mind it's the most important part when learning or reading. Sometimes people learn pages from a book and they don't remember anything they read. So they start over and even on second attempt nothing is retained. So, it is very important to be in a state where you feel happy and you can concentrate.

* T: Teach When you learn something you should learn with a mindset that you will teach this concept or lesson to somebody else later. This mindset will make us vigilant when we are reading, to understand what are the key concepts, what were the contexts used etc.