Brain and memory coach Jim Kwik sat down with Inc. to analyze the daily routines of successful entrepreneurs--and told us which strategies work better than others, according to science.
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00:00 Try brushing your teeth, Britt, with your opposite hand.
00:03 Just for like two days, three days.
00:05 I thought you were going to say try brushing your teeth and I was like, "Oh my god."
00:08 [laughs]
00:09 [music]
00:13 Hi, I'm Britt Morris, an associate editor for Inc.
00:16 and I'm here at South by Southwest with brain and memory coach Jim Quick.
00:20 Jim, thank you so much for joining us.
00:23 So good to be here.
00:24 We're here to talk about daily routines and do you have any of your own?
00:26 Yeah, I do.
00:27 Everyone, you watch these videos online and Tim has his and Oprah has hers.
00:31 Mine's all about getting my brain right and really jump-starting my brain so I can jump-start my day.
00:36 That's amazing.
00:37 Do you have one?
00:38 No.
00:39 [laughs]
00:40 No, my daily routine is entirely focused on whenever my dog feels like waking me up
00:44 and we just kind of move on from there.
00:46 Yeah, we have one of those too.
00:48 We're going to check out some daily routines from other people.
00:50 [music]
00:52 I want to know the very first thing you do.
00:55 You get out of the bed, you go to the bathroom.
00:58 Oh, I don't--no, the first thing I do is look at my phone.
01:00 Oh, you look at the phone first.
01:01 Okay.
01:02 That's interesting.
01:03 Yeah.
01:04 I do that too.
01:05 I look at Facebook to see what's going on in the world.
01:08 Right, right.
01:09 And I check my messages.
01:12 I look at Messenger and WhatsApp.
01:13 And how long--how many minutes would you say you spend?
01:16 You know, it depends on what's going on in the world.
01:18 On a good, calm day, it'll probably be no more than a few minutes.
01:22 Right.
01:23 And then do you take a shower or you work out first?
01:26 The better strategy is to work out and then you shower, I think.
01:29 Not Barack Obama.
01:30 He likes to shower--
01:32 And then work out.
01:33 --and shave and work out, which I found to be very odd.
01:36 That doesn't make any sense.
01:37 Doesn't make any sense.
01:38 It really doesn't make any sense, honestly.
01:40 My thing is not everything's for everybody.
01:42 I know Mark checks his phone.
01:44 I was trying to interview with Gary V., and he checks his phone.
01:47 For me, I just don't do it because I feel like I get easily distracted
01:51 with every ring, ping, ding, like, share, comment, cat video, whatever.
01:55 I definitely talk to my phone for two minutes maybe in the morning
01:58 just to make sure I don't have anything urgent.
02:00 And then I go outside.
02:01 Yeah.
02:02 Then I walk my dog.
02:03 I think it's important to disconnect to be able to reconnect.
02:05 But in the morning, you're very suggestible.
02:07 You're in these brainwave states--alpha, theta.
02:10 And you can literally rewire your brain to be more distracted
02:14 just by--if that's a first input.
02:16 I really don't want a lot of input in the morning, I guess,
02:18 is what I'm saying.
02:19 I want to be more creative in the morning, and then I'll start checking things.
02:22 Yeah.
02:23 I think the world of the journalist is really a little against that in some ways.
02:28 [♪♪]
02:30 One of the good things about this five-minute drive
02:32 is that on the way there's a McDonald's, so I'll pick up something.
02:37 Good morning. Thank you for choosing McDonald's.
02:42 Go ahead and order whenever you're ready.
02:43 I'll have a sausage muffin with egg and cheese.
02:47 Anything else?
02:48 That's it. Thank you.
02:50 And I tell my wife, as I shave in the morning,
02:54 I say either $2.61, $2.95, or $3.17.
02:59 And she puts that amount in a little cup by me here,
03:02 and that determines which of three breakfasts I get.
03:06 Okay, $2.95.
03:09 How you doing, sir?
03:10 Hey, great. You're on candid camera.
03:12 I see. Hello, everybody.
03:15 Hi. How are you?
03:17 I'm doing good.
03:19 $3.17 is a bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit,
03:23 but the market's down this morning,
03:25 so I think I'll pass up the $3.17 and go for the $2.95.
03:30 I would never imagine Warren Buffett eating at McDonald's.
03:33 Like, what if you walked into McDonald's
03:35 and you just saw Warren Buffett sitting there, like, eating a bacon, egg, and cheese?
03:39 I'm not a big fan of fast food in the morning,
03:44 so I'll just put that out there.
03:45 We talk a lot about brain food and the best foods for your brain.
03:50 And so what you eat matters, especially for your gray matter.
03:54 And this obviously works for Warren.
03:57 What do you eat in the morning?
03:59 So for me, I'm not a big breakfast eater.
04:01 I don't really have my first meal until lunchtime.
04:04 No, I'm exactly the same way.
04:05 Yeah?
04:06 No, literally. I have, like, coffee or maybe, like, some almonds
04:09 or, like, something really small in the morning
04:12 because I feel like it just gives me more energy for some reason.
04:15 And then by the time I'm actually hungry, it's, like, noon.
04:18 I asked Google how to become rich,
04:22 and I came across the founder of Amazon and the richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos.
04:27 He claims his routine will make him more successful, so I'm doing it for the week.
04:31 Here's what I learned.
04:32 He wakes up early but likes to keep his mornings relaxed before his first meetings at 10 a.m.
04:36 He uses the extra time in the morning to do things he enjoys, like working out,
04:39 which I noticed drastically improved my energy for the remainder of the day.
04:43 I'm usually still asleep by this time, and I'm feeling good.
04:45 Claiming that he feels less productive after lunch,
04:47 Jeff schedules his most important events from 10 a.m. to noon.
04:50 As a student, this meant I pushed all of my bullshit online classes to afternoon
04:53 while taking care of my more demanding ones first.
04:56 Instead of worrying about what needs to get done,
04:58 attack the most important things first, and your whole day opens up.
05:00 Thanks, Jeff.
05:01 Do you wake up at 5.45 a.m.?
05:03 I do not wake up at 5.45 a.m.
05:05 There was a study done at Appalachian State University,
05:08 I don't want to get too geeky, but they found out
05:10 they took three groups of people and they had them work out at 7 a.m.,
05:14 a group at 1 p.m., and 7 p.m.,
05:17 and they found that those who worked out in the morning at 7 a.m.
05:20 actually got upwards of 75% deeper sleep, and I thought that was pretty cool.
05:24 That's amazing.
05:25 Basically, Picasso would start off his day at a time I think most of us would consider quite late, 11 a.m.,
05:32 and for the next few hours, he would have breakfast and then see friends
05:35 up until about 2 or 3 p.m.
05:38 At the Boulevard de Quichy, he would shut himself in the studio from 2 p.m.
05:41 and work there until at least dusk.
05:43 He'd have dinner from 10 to 11 p.m.,
05:46 and then he'd go back to work for another four hours until 3 a.m.,
05:49 and then he'd go to bed, and the cycle would begin again.
05:53 Yeah, I don't know, I kind of love that.
05:54 I mean, as someone who stays up--
05:56 What do you love about it?
05:57 Well, I'm someone who stays up late at night.
05:59 I am someone who--I wouldn't eat dinner that late, I don't think,
06:02 but when I was in school, for example, my peak hours of productivity were 9 p.m. to 3 a.m.
06:09 Wow.
06:10 My whole thing is being mindful and intentional about it.
06:13 It doesn't have to be so rigid and so stressful and full of anxiety,
06:16 but I think the structure gives you freedom.
06:20 When you have certain things there, it gives you the freedom just to release it.
06:23 For me, it's not just about time management.
06:25 It's about priority management, and it's about energy management.
06:29 Those are your resources, not just your time.
06:31 It's the things that are most important.
06:33 I think the most important thing is to keep the most important things the most important things.
06:38 You don't want to get really good at the things that don't matter.
06:40 Well, success, whatever you want to call it.
06:42 So I wake up, I don't check my phone.
06:43 This is the perfect morning for offense and conflict.
06:46 I don't check my phone.
06:47 I think of something I'm grateful for, a few things.
06:49 It could be a smile on my son's face when he got a double playing baseball or anything.
06:54 I think of three wins I had the previous day.
06:57 Oh, wow, I did accomplish that.
06:58 Oh, my God, I did help out here.
07:00 Oh, I got to thank you.
07:02 And it puts you in a different mindset.
07:03 And then I think of three wins I want to happen that day.
07:06 I like this video.
07:07 I like Adeen's message here, starting with wins and gratitude.
07:11 We did a podcast episode on how gratitude rewires our brains for productivity and performance and prosperity and also peace of mind.
07:17 And it could be three things personally and three things professionally.
07:21 So maybe I did take my dogs out for a walk, and that was one of my wins because that brought me joy.
07:26 And so I don't think they have to be monumental things.
07:29 I think it's important to acknowledge the progress that we make and the things that we do for self-care.
07:34 So, Jim, I mean, do routines really matter?
07:38 I think they do.
07:39 I just don't think that as you watch all these videos that anyone's routine is for everybody.
07:45 I think, you know, it's nice to get inspiration and ideas from these kind of videos.
07:49 But I think ultimately we are our own expert and we are our best coach.
07:53 Nobody knows us better than we know us.
07:55 And we just try a lot of things.
07:56 And then we see what works and what resonates with us.
07:59 And then we're flexible.
08:00 And I don't think we have to stress about it.
08:02 Jim, thank you so much for joining us on this video.
08:05 It's been amazing having you.
08:07 And also make sure to check out his new book, Limitless, which you can pick up just about everywhere.
08:14 Thanks, everyone.
08:15 [MUSIC PLAYING]