Jim Kwik’s book Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life sounds like a scam but is one of the best books I’ve read this year. While I don’t typically read personal development, I found myself highlighting line after line on the kindle. One concept I’ll share from the book is the ‘four digital horsemen’, or four dangers that the digital age brings.

Digital deluge. There is too much stuff. The average person consumes 3x as much information as we did in the 1960s and a 2015 report indicated that respondents spent eight hours a day consuming media. As time goes on, this problem will only get worse. The problem is, according to Jim,

“There is a growing body of evidence that suggests that if we never let our mind wander or be bored for a moment, we pay a price – poor memory, mental fog, and fatigue.”

Digital distraction. We are too connected to our devices. These devices are shiny, addictive and are endless. Dopamine heaven! But this means we are never present and become unhappy as a result. Furthermore, shifting attention from one thing to another is very energy costly. As Jim writes,

“Asking the brain to shift attention from one activity to another causes the prefrontal cortex and striatum to burn up oxygenated glucose, the same fuel they need to stay on task… and the kind of rapid, continual shifting we do with multitasking causes the brain to burn through fuel so quickly that we feel exhausted and disoriented after even a short time.”

Digital dementia. We rely on technology to do so much these days. We use it to navigate maps. Remember phone numbers. Autocorrect wrong words. This overreliance results in the breakdown of cognitive abilities. As Jim puts it,

“Too often, we outsource our brains to our smart devices, and our smart devices are making us, well, a little bit stupid.”

Digital deduction. A ubiquity of information results in a ubiquity of opinions about everything. If you want to inform yourself on an issue, just go on reddit to find some opinions. The problem is that the process of deduction – a blend of critical thinking, problem solving and creativity – is becoming automated. Jim writes,

“We’re letting technology do the deduction for us. And if technology is forming our deductions, then we are also ceding much of our problem-solving ability – something so important and something we will discuss at length later in this book.”

---

So, here are the four digital horsemen.

• Digital deluge: We have too much to process -> we get tired.
• Digital distraction: We are too connected in a noisy digital environment -> we are unhappy and cannot focus.
• Digital dementia: We are relying too much on technology -> we get dumber.
• Digital deduction: There are too many opinions -> we cannot think for ourselves.

Jim also includes a fifth emerging horseman: digital depression: there is too much comparison -> we feel bad. However, since the book is ultimately about productivity, he doesn’t go into this in much detail.

Reading about these horsemen (and writing them here) serves as a personal reminder: technology is great, but there are some serious dangers. Personally, I can relate to all of the symptoms above. And yeah, it’s concerning. However, this is simultaneously encouraging: that the antidote might lie in just a simple airplane mode once in a while.

You can find Limitless here.