Top 40 Jim Kwik Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The treasure you seek is in the work you’re avoiding.”

— Jim Kwik

Featured in: Friday Quotes for Work, Professional Growth Quotes, Procrastination Quotes

2. “If an egg is broken by an outside force, life ends. If broken by an inside force, life begins. Great things always begin from the inside.”

— Jim Kwik

3. “The French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre noted that, “Life is C between B and D,” meaning that the life we live is the choices we make between the “B” of birth and the “D” of death.”

— Jim Kwik

4. “Don’t take criticism from someone you wouldn’t take advice from.”

— Jim Kwik

5. “All behavior is driven by belief, so before we address how to learn, we must first address the underlying beliefs we hold about what is possible.”

— Jim Kwik

6. “Our background and circumstances may have influenced who we are, but we must be accountable for who we become.”

— Jim Kwik

7. “Your time is one of your greatest assets. It’s the one thing you can’t get back.”

— Jim Kwik

8. “The purpose supersedes the discomfort.”

— Jim Kwik

9. “New belief: There is no such thing as failure. Only failure to learn.”

— Jim Kwik

10. “But being limitless is not about being perfect. It’s about progressing beyond what you currently believe is possible.”

— Jim Kwik

11. “How can I use this? Why must I use this? When will I use this?”

— Jim Kwik

12. “Life is the c between b and d.”

— Jim Kwik

13. “When you do what others won’t, you can live how others can’t.”

— Jim Kwik

14. “I suggest you use the Pomodoro technique, a productivity method developed by Francesco Cirillo based on the idea that the optimal time for a task is 25 minutes, followed by a 5-minute break.2 Each 25-minute chunk is called a “Pomodoro.” As you read this book, I suggest that you read for one Pomodoro and then take a 5-minute brain break before continuing.”

— Jim Kwik

15. “I will see it when I believe it.”

— Jim Kwik

16. “If you’re struggling to find motivation to learn, or to accomplish anything else in your life, there is a good chance you haven’t uncovered the why of the task.”

— Jim Kwik

17. “He held up a finger, saying, “Don’t let school interfere with your education.” I later learned he was paraphrasing a quote often attributed to Mark Twain.”

— Jim Kwik

18. “Reasons that are tied to your purpose, identity, and values will sufficiently motivate you to act, even in the face of all of the daily obstacles that life puts in your way.”

— Jim Kwik

19. “You can learn to unlimit and expand your mindset, your motivation, and your methods to create a limitless life. When you do what others won’t, you can live how others can’t.”

— Jim Kwik

20. “Give a person an idea, and you enrich their day. Teach a person how to learn, and they can enrich their entire life.”

— Jim Kwik

21. “The human brain does not learn as much by consumption as it does by creation.”

— Jim Kwik

22. “Our most precious gift is our brain. It is what allows us to learn, love, think, create, and even to experience joy. It is the gateway to our emotions, to our capacity for deeply experiencing life, to our ability to have lasting intimacy. It allows us to innovate, grow, and accomplish.”

— Jim Kwik

23. “Make sure you have a block of time set aside to get into flow. It’s commonly believed that, when conditions are right, it takes about 15 minutes to achieve a flow state and that you don’t really hit your peak for closer to 45 minutes. Clearing out only half an hour or so isn’t going to allow you to accomplish much. Plan to set aside at least 90 minutes, and ideally a full two hours.”

— Jim Kwik

24. “Our most precious gift is our brain.”

— Jim Kwik

25. “What I have come to find over my years of working with people is that most everyone limits and shrinks their dreams to fit their current reality.”

— Jim Kwik

26. “Some people who claim to have twenty years of experience have one year of experience that they’ve repeated twenty times.”

— Jim Kwik

27. “Consider your passion, your desired identity, and your values: How can they create the basis for your reasons?”

— Jim Kwik

28. “In his TED talk about sleep, Dr. Jeff Iliff of Oregon Health and Science University takes the “laundry cycle” metaphor even further. He notes that, while we’re awake, the brain is so busy doing other things that it doesn’t have the capacity to clean itself of waste. The buildup of this waste, amyloid-beta, is now being linked to the development of Alzheimer’s disease.”

— Jim Kwik

29. “In a era of autonomously driven electric cars and vehicles capable of taking us to Mars, our education system is the equivalent of a horse and carriage.”

— Jim Kwik

30. “Before each reading, take a few minutes to talk about or write what you remember from the previous reading.”

— Jim Kwik

31. “If you are struggling to reach a goal in any area, you must first ask: Where is the limit? Most likely, you’re experiencing a limit in your mindset, motivation, or methods – which means that it’s not a personal shortcoming or failure pointing to any perceived lack of ability.”

— Jim Kwik

32. “To remember any new piece of information, you must associate it with something you already know.”

— Jim Kwik

33. “If we believe that it’s not possible to improve, then in reality it won’t be possible to improve. It’s extremely difficult to accomplish something when you don’t believe it can be done in the first place.”

— Jim Kwik

34. “The important distinction here is that family is a means value – a means to an end. The end value is actually love or belonging. When we look at our values, we can determine whether the value we’ve stated is an end or whether it evokes something else.”

— Jim Kwik

35. “Remember that we tend to remember that which we create.”

— Jim Kwik

36. “It’s not accurate that your memory works like a container, cup, or hard drive in that once it’s full of data no more can fit. It’s more like a muscle in that the more you train it, the stronger it gets and the more you can store.”

— Jim Kwik

37. “Whenever possible, try to do one thing at a time.”

— Jim Kwik

38. “Do you remember what it was like when you were approaching your teens and you first started formulating thoughts and opinions independent of your parents? My guess is that this experience was extremely liberating for you and that it might have even been the first time in your life when you truly felt like your own person. What had happened to you, of course, was that your critical faculties had become refined enough to allow you to regularly employ reason to navigate through life.”

— Jim Kwik

39. “If at all feasible, allow yourself to do whatever you’re doing to the exclusion of everything else. If you’re on the phone, don’t scroll through social media at the same time. If you’re making breakfast, don’t also work on your to-do list for the day. By doing one thing at a time, your concentration “muscle” will become incredibly.”

— Jim Kwik

40. “Scientists have learned that animals that experience prolonged stress have less activity in the parts of their brain that handle higher-order tasks – for example, the prefrontal cortex – and more activity in the primitive parts of their brain that are focused on survival, such as the amygdala.”

— Jim Kwik