by Steven Kotler: I have a new book coming out early next year, The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance.
As the title suggests, my subject matter is the outer limits of human potential and the question of what might actually be possible for our species.
During the course of writing this book, I’ve been lucky enough to meet a lot of amazing people interested in this very same question. This is a story about one of them, a really nice guy named Jim Kwik. It’s also a story about learning and education, innovation and entrepreneurship, and, well, superheroes. Actually, mostly, it’s a story about superheroes.
Of course, since I’m telling you this is a story about superheroes, I now have to satisfy two additional requirements. There has to be a superpower; there has to be an origin story. Let’s take them one at a time.
Jim Kwik’s superpower is learning. He’s the CEO of Kwik Learning for a reason. Kwik is really, really quick. He can learn faster than mere mortals.
A lot faster.
As learning requires reading, well, Kwik can read alright. Most folks put away text between 200-250 words-per-minute (wpm). Kwik fires through heavy technical tomes at about 500 wpm; he devours light fiction at upwards of 1300 wpm. And he can remember what he reads.
Actually, he can remember a lot more than that. If you’ve ever seen Kwik on stage or attended one of his seminars, then you’ve seen him memorize the names of every face in the crowd. Or long strings of random numbers. Most people struggle to remember all seven digits of a phone number. Kwik can remember phone numbers all day long. Hundreds of them. And this isn’t a parlor trick: as was mentioned before, Kwik also remembers what he reads.
Consider what this really means. Books are the best way to store and transport knowledge we have ever developed. Years and years of back-breaking research go into books. And we can access that research in hours? How crazy is that.
It’s also for this reason that leaders are readers. This is true for American Presidents (JFK, Carter, Clinton, etc.) and American business leaders. In fact, Bill Gates—also a voracious reader—was once asked what superpower he most wanted. What did he choose? “Being able to read superfast.”
Warren Buffett, who was sharing the stage with him at the time, agreed, saying: “I’ve probably wasted ten years reading slowly.”
Now, for those of us raised on Shazam and the Wonder Twins, fast reading and better recall may not seem like true superpowers, but that’s only because we haven’t done the math.
Kwik did the math:
“The average person reads 200-250 words-per-minute and spends 3 to 4 hours of their work day reading. That’s more than one-third of their time on the job. If that person makes $60,000 a year, then at least $20,000 of that money is paying for them to read. But proper training can easily double the average person’s reading speed (up to 400-450 w.p.m.). That cuts 3 to 4 hours down to 1 to 2. That’s a savings of over an hour a day. If you do that for 365 days a year, that’s 9 different 40 hour work weeks saved. That’s real time productivity. Imagine what you could do with all that extra time.”
But you can do more than imagine. Because there’s another side to superherodom that’s relevant here—Kwik’s origin story.
Kwik Origins
Jim Kwik wasn’t always a great learner. In fact, just the opposite. At the age of 5, he suffered a head trauma and afterwards felt broken. Like his brain was broken. Like he could never keep up.
And, truthfully, he never could keep up. Growing up in Westchester, New York, he was exceptionally challenged in school. His friends seemed to excel effortlessly, while Kwik had to struggle privately just stay in the game. Worse, this led him to be painfully shy. The combination almost proved his undoing.
Kwik was temporarily relieved by the chance to go college. “It was supposed to be great,” he recounts. “College was a place where no one knew me. They didn’t know I had trouble learning. They knew nothing about me. I thought I could be anyone—even a smart guy.”
On his way towards smart, Kwik overloaded himself with classes. Once again, very quickly, the burden proved too much to bear. Unwilling to let himself slip behind, Kwik sacrificed everything at the alter of study. He stopped eating, stopped sleeping, stopped exercising. The neglect took its toll.
One day, Kwik passed out at the public library. He fell down a flight of stairs and woke up in the hospital. He was battered and bruised, dehydrated and exhausted. A nurse brought him a cup … More