I'm your brain coach, Jim Kwik. And in this lesson, I'm gonna show you how to give your brain a break. Because your brain is not built to be going 24 7 all the time without any kind of rest. The challenge is nowadays is we're behind screens for hours upon hours upon hours. We know there's a dip in concentration and focus after about 25 or 30 minutes. About the span of a sitcom and they call it the Pomodoro technique that if you are studying and you are thinking and you are working it actually helps to take regular interval breaks because it gives your brain a little time to recharge, to rejuvenate, and also it creates more primacies and recencies. Primacy means you tend to remember something in the beginning. Recency means you tend to remember something at the end.

So if I give you a list of 30 words, you're probably gonna remember the first ones, primacy, and the last ones, recency. The challenge is you lose a lot in the middle. So the reason why you take breaks is you create more primacies and recencies, so you can learn and remember a lot more information. Now, what do you do during these brain breaks? I recommend after 25, 30 minutes, you take a little pause and for 5 minutes, you do 3 things. Number 1, in no particular order, I want you to breathe. Because a lot of times, if we are fatigued and you have mental fog and you don't have clarity, part of it is your brain is only 2% of your body mass approximately, but it requires 20% of the nutrients and oxygen. And so give yourself the gift of oxygen and deep breathing. What else do you wanna do during your break? I would remind you to hydrate.

When you are dehydrated and you have more water, it actually increases your reaction time and thinking speed about 30%. What is the third thing you do during this brain break? I need you to stand up and move. A lot of people, they say that sitting is the new smoking. We're behind screens all day, hours and hours goes by. And the primary reason you have a brain is to control your movement. As your body moves, your brain grooves. As your body moves, your brain grooves. You create brain derived neurotrophic factors BDNF, which is like fertilizer for your brain.

When you take long walks, we talk about geniuses and how they come up with creative ideas, and they have walking meetings outside in the sunlight and the clean air, and they're grounded. These are very important things to do. Even when you're listening to an audiobook or a podcast, if you are taking a nice walk or you're on a elliptical or a treadmill and you have that rhythm, you're likely to remember the information, understand it better. Now one of the exercise I like to do because there's multiple benefits is juggling. Did you know jugglers have bigger brains? There's a study done at Oxford University that said juggling actually creates more white matter in your brain. So in a moment, I'm gonna show you how to juggle. And you can pause this video right now, and I want you to get one ball. Maybe 1 ball, 2 balls if you've done this before, 3 if you're good at it, or a rolled up sock.

Even better than a ball, a rolled up sock because it doesn't roll all around when you drop it. I actually taught myself how to juggle to actually increase my reading ability. So I noticed that trained readers, when they're reading, they don't look at one letter or one word at a time. It's not their foveal vision. They're expanding their peripheral vision so they can see more words at the time, so they can read faster. And I noticed a similarity when I'm juggling. I have to relax my sense of sight so I could take more in so I could see the balls because I only have 2 eyes. But if there are 3 balls, I could be following all of them so I expand my peripheral vision so I could take more in.

So you get the benefits of a bigger brain and it's great training for your reading. So let's grab your juggling balls or a sock or a tennis ball right now. Pause the video and do that now. Okay. Do you have something to juggle with? I'm not talking about swords and flaming knives but something really simple like a sock. And for juggling, you have 2 balls in one hand, one in the other. Now, if you are new to juggling just start with 1 ball. But ultimately, to give you a picture of what it looks like successfully, and again, I'm not a professional juggler, it's not my backup plan, but I learned and I taught myself, so this is what I feel like juggling looks like.