Maximize Productivity, Physical & Mental Health With Daily Tools | Huberman Lab Essentials
By Andrew Huberman
Summary
## Key takeaways - **Morning Walk for Anxiety Reduction**: Engage in forward ambulation, like walking, outdoors to experience 'optic flow'. This visual input calms the amygdala, reducing anxiety and promoting an alert yet calm state. [02:26], [03:24] - **Delay Caffeine for Sustained Energy**: Wait 90 to 120 minutes after waking to consume caffeine. This strategy prevents an afternoon crash by allowing adenosine to build up naturally before caffeine blocks its sleep-inducing effects. [06:07], [07:24] - **Optimize Workspace for Alertness**: Position your computer screen at eye level or slightly higher. Looking down, especially with eyelids partially closed, decreases alertness and increases sleepiness. [08:27], [09:15] - **Leverage Temperature Rise for Focus**: Schedule demanding cognitive tasks 4-6 hours after your temperature minimum. Your body temperature naturally rises after this point, supporting increased focus and cognitive performance. [11:54], [13:45] - **Dinner Carbs for Sleep Transition**: Consume starchy carbohydrates for dinner to increase serotonin levels. This aids in the transition to sleep, as serotonin is crucial for falling asleep and staying asleep. [21:40], [22:52] - **Hot Bath Accelerates Sleep Onset**: Taking a hot bath or shower before bed can help you fall asleep faster. The subsequent cooling down period your body undergoes after the heat exposure accelerates the natural drop in body temperature needed for sleep. [24:51], [25:30]
Topics Covered
- Start Your Day Calm, Focused, and Anxiety-Free.
- Fuel Your Brain: Fasting, Smart Meals, and Movement.
- Leverage Your Brain's 90-Minute Focus Cycles.
- Your Daily Cycle is Key to Optimal Brain Function.
- Optimize Evening Habits for Deeper, Restorative Sleep.
Full Transcript
Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials
where we revisit past episodes for the
most potent and actionable science-based
tools for mental health, physical
health and
performance. I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm
a professor of neurobiology and
opthalmology at Stamford School of
Medicine. I decided that we would hold
office hours. Office hours in the
university setting are when students
come to the professor's office or you
meet outdoors on campus or in the
classroom to review the material and
questions from lecture in more detail.
Now, unfortunately, we don't have the
opportunity to meet face to face in real
life, but nonetheless, you've been
sending your questions, putting them in
the comments section on YouTube, etc.
And I prepared a number of answers to
the questions that have shown up most
frequently. Now, in order to provide
context and structure to the way that we
will address these questions, I've
arranged the science and science-based
protocols that relate to various aspects
of life such as mood, exercise, sleep
waking, anxiety, creativity, etc. into
the context of a day. Selecting the unit
of a day in order to deliver this
science information and protocols is not
a haphazard decision on my part.
It's actually the case that every cell
in our body, every organ in our body
and our brain is modulated or changes
across the 24-hour day in a very regular
and predictable rhythm. And so
selecting the unit of the day is not
just a practical one, but it's one
that's related to our deeper biology.
So, let's talk about how to apply
quality peer-reviewed science to your
day and how to optimize everything from
sleep to learning, creativity, meal
timing, etc. I'm going to do this in the
context of my day and what I typically
do. I tend to wake up sometime around
6:00 a.m. 6:30. The first thing I do
after I wake up is I take the pen that's
on my nightstand and the pad of paper on
my nightstand and I write down the time
in which I woke up. The reason for
writing down what time I wake up is
because I want to know what's called my
temperature minimum. I don't care what
my actual temperature is. I care when my
lowest temperature is. And I know that
that lowest temperature is approximately
2 hours before my average wake up time.
The second thing I do after I wake up is
to get into forward ambulation, which is
just nerd speak for taking a walk.
There's a phenomenon whereby when we
generate our own forward motion, forward
ambulation, visual images pass by us on
our eyes, so-called optic flow
experiencing visual flow has a powerful
effect on the nervous system. The effect
it has is essentially to quiet or reduce
the amount of neural activity in this
brain structure called the amygdala. And
many of you have probably heard about
the amygdala for its role in anxiety and
fear and threat detection. And indeed
the amydala is part of the network in
the brain that generates feelings of
fear and threat and anxiety. It does a
bunch of other things too, but that's
one of its primary functions. Forward
ambulation, walking or biking or running
and generating optic flow in particular
has this incredible property of lowering
activity in the amydala and thereby
reducing levels of anxiety. That walk is
a particularly important protocol each
day because it really serves to push my
neurology in the direction that I'd like
it to go, which is alert but not
anxious. I want to have a high degree of
focus and alertness because I'm soon
going to move into a bout of work. I
need to lean into the day. So, in order
to do that, I make sure that the walking
is done outdoors. I do it outdoors
because I also want sunlight in my eyes.
Getting sunlight in your eyes first
thing in the morning is absolutely vital
to mental and physical health. Even if
there's cloud cover, more photons, light
information are coming through that
cloud cover than would be coming from a
very bright indoor bulb. So getting
outside for a 10-minute walk or a
15-minute walk will basically ensure
that you're getting adequate stimulation
of these neurons in the eye that are
called the melanopsin, intrinsically
photosensitive ganglen cells. These are
neurons that convey to the brain that
it's daytime and it's time to be alert.
And it sets in motion a huge number of
biological cascades within every cell
and organ of your body from your liver
to your gut to your heart to your brain.
Early in the day, we experience a
natural and healthy bump in a hormone
called cortisol and promotes
wakefulness. It actually promotes a
healthy immune system. It's very
important that that pulse of cortisol
arrive early in the day. That pulse of
cortisol is going to happen once every
24 hours. No matter what, it's going to
happen. And you get to time it. How do
you time it? Primarily by when you view
bright sunlight. You can combine it with
the forward ambulation with the walk and
the optic flow that I talked about
before. And that's what I do each
morning to generate a sense of alertness
in my body and brain to generate a sense
of calm yet alert. So now we have a
first protocol which is to write down
the time of day that you wake up. The
second protocol is to get take a walk
first thing in the morning. And the
third protocol is woven in with that
walk, at least for me, which is to get
that sunlight exposure. I'm a big
believer based on quality peer-reviewed
data that hydration is essential for
mental performance. As many of you know
neurons require ionic flow. What that
means is neurons need sodium, they need
magnesium, and they need potassium in
order to function. We do tend to get
dehydrated at night. I try and make sure
that I'm hydrated early in the day
before I begin any work. So, I make
myself drink this water with a little
bit of sea salt. How much sea salt? If
you really want to get detailed, it's
you I suppose it's about half a
teaspoon. It's not much. At that point
I start craving caffeine, but I don't
drink that caffeine yet. I purposely
delay my caffeine intake to 90 minutes
to 120 minutes after I wake up. The
reason I delay caffeine is because one
of the factors that induces a sense of
sleepiness is the buildup of adenosine.
The buildup of adenosine accumulates the
longer we are awake. When you wake up in
the morning, your adenosine levels are
likely to be very low. However, caffeine
is an adenosine blocker. It's actually a
competitive antagonist for you
aicionados. sort of parks in the
receptor that adenosine normally would
park at and prevents adenosine from
acting on that receptor. That's why you
feel more alert. The reason for delaying
caffeine intake 90 minutes to 2 hours
after waking is I want to make sure that
I don't have a late afternoon or even
early afternoon crash from caffeine. One
of the best ways to ensure a caffeine
crash is to drink a bunch of caffeine
block all those adenosine receptors, and
then by early or late afternoon when
that caffeine starts to wear off and
gets dislodged from the
receptors, a lower level of adenosine is
able to create a greater level of
sleepiness. Delaying caffeine at 90
minutes to two hours optimizes this
relationship between adenosine and
wakefulness and sleepiness in a way that
really provides a nice consistent arc of
energy throughout the day and brings
energy down as I'm headed toward sleep
and falling asleep. My primary objective
early in the day is to get into a mode
of being focused yet alert so that I can
get work done. I found that the best way
for me to achieve that state is through
fasting. So, I don't eat anything until
about 11:00 a.m. or 12
noon. Fasting increases levels of
adrenaline, also called epinephrine, in
the brain and body. And when our levels
of epinephrine and adrenaline are
increased, we learn better. We can focus
better. You don't want
epinephrine, aka adrenaline, too high.
That feels like stress and panic. You
get jittery. You can't focus. But in its
optimal range, adrenaline really
provides a heightened sense of focus and
the ability to encode, meaning bring in
and retain remember information. Next, I
want to talk about what I'm doing while
I'm working. A couple of things for
optimizing workspace that are grounded
in neuroscience and physiology. I've
talked before about the fact that when
our eyes are directed upward, it creates
a state of heightened alertness. And
this has a relationship to the brain
stem neurons that create alertness and
their control over the muscles of the
eye and believe it or not the
eyelids. The point here is that you can
optimize your workstation in a physical
way that leverages this aspect of the
visual system and your level of
alertness. Try and position your screen
or your tablet, whatever device you
happen to be working on, at least at eye
level and ideally slightly higher. Most
people are looking down at their
computer or tablet or are angling their
eyes at their screen at about 30°. When
we look down, when our eyelids are
slightly closed, it tends to decrease
our levels of alertness and increase our
levels of sleepiness. So we're now at
the description of my day and these
protocols in which I would do a 90inute
bout of work. Now why 90 minutes? Well
the brain is going through these 90minut
so-called altradian cycles throughout
the entire day and night. Every 90
minutes we shift over from being very
alert to being less alert and then back
to alert again. Here's how it works. At
the start of one of these 90-minute
altradian cycles, my brain is not quite
engaged in whatever it is I'm trying to
do, but I set a timer for 90 minutes and
I try and get a strong bout of work done
inside of that 90 minutes with the full
understanding that the entire 90 minutes
is not going to be uniform in terms of
my ability to focus. So, the goal is to
get into what I call the tunnel, to
really get into a tunnel of quality
work. The brain loves that state, but
it's very hard for many of us to access.
My phone is absolutely off. It's not on
airplane mode. It's absolutely off
during this time. In addition, I use
low-level white noise. White noise
which is essentially all frequencies of
sound or all frequencies of sound that
we can perceive mixed up kind of
randomly. There's no structure to it
turned on at a low volume puts the brain
into a state that's optimal for learning
and workflow. So everything about this
90-minute block, from the low levels of
white noise to the position of my
computer, how I'm standing and where my
eyes are positioned is geared towards
putting me in this tunnel of work. And I
have to say that while it can be a
challenge to try and achieve this state
and this tunnel of work, some days, you
start to get kind of addicted to it. It
feels really good. It's like a workout
for the mind. And it uh is something
that as you exit that 90 minutes, you
really feel like you've accomplished a
lot because often um you have and it
just feels deeply satisfying. And I'm
convinced that that's because of the
release of neurom modulators like
dopamine and the uh norepinephrine
that's circulating in your system. And I
want to be clear that I'm not perfect
about this 90 minutes. Occasionally I
get drawn away, but I really try and
achieve this most if not every day that
I'm alive because for me that work
session is kind of holy. There's a
powerful way in which you can place the
timing of this 90minute workout in an
optimal
way. You have access to a very important
piece of data that dictates when this
bout should start more or less and when
it should
end. That piece of data is your
temperature minimum. If you're somebody
who wakes up on average at 7:00 a.m.
well then your temperature minimum is
5:00 a.m., you can be reasonably sure
that your best work is going to be done
anywhere from 4 to 6 hours after your
temperature minimum. How do I know this?
How do I know this relationship between
temperature minimum and focus cognition?
Well, temperature minimum defines the
trough the the nadir as they say of the
of your temperature across the 24-hour
cycle. And immediately after that, your
temperature will start to rise. That
temperature rise is actually what
triggers the initial cortisol release
that you experience and wakes you up
further. And then, of course, that
sunlight that you're getting is going to
further enhance that healthy release of
cortisol. That cortisol will then
provide fuel, if you will, for that
increase in temperature. And your body
will continue to increase in temperature
throughout the day toward the afternoon.
What you're trying to do in this in this
idea of optimizing this 90minute workout
to a particular time of day is catch the
portion of the steepest slope of that
temperature rise. So if you're somebody
who wakes up at 8:00 a.m. each morning
your temperature minimum is 6:00 a.m.
Chances are you're going to want to
start this workout somewhere around
10:00 a.m. or 11:00 a.m. Now, some
people wake up and feel very alert first
thing in the morning. and they can
really do their best work first thing in
the morning. Please, if that's you
continue to do that. Leverage that time.
Use that time. But if you're somebody
who struggles to find focus, definitely
let your physiology and this rise in
your body temperature support your
efforts to focus rather than trying to
do your best work at times of day when
your physiology is actually directing
your body and your brain toward defocus
and towards being more lethargic. It
just is setting yourself up for success
when you try and capture this rising
phase of your temperature. Data going
back to the
1990s supports the idea that physical
movement of particular kinds can support
brain health and brain function both in
the immediate term and in the long term.
So after I've finished a bout of work
this 90-minute bout of work, I force
myself to do some sort of physical
exercise that is going to be supportive
of my brain health and brain function
and organ health and bodily function in
general. Now there are various forms of
physical activity or what we call
exercise, but those can generally be
batched into two categories. First is
strength and hypertrophy work. So
physical movements that are designed to
make you stronger and/or make your
muscles
larger. There's also endurance work
physical exercise and movements that are
designed to allow you to do more work
over time or to extend the amount of
time that you can do work of any kind
both physical and mental. The data all
point to the fact that working out hard
for longer than an hour can actually be
detrimental because of the way that it
raises cortisol. And cortisol can be a
good thing if it's appropriately timed
and in the appropriate low levels, but
you don't want to have your cortisol
levels up throughout the day or have big
spikes of cortisol repeatedly. So
keeping workouts relatively short can
definitely help with that. Endurance
work and strength training or
hypertrophy training done in combination
meaning not necessarily in the same
workout but done across the week is
immensely beneficial for the production
of things like brain derived neutrophic
factor for limiting uh inflammatory
cytoines like IL6 for promoting
anti-inflammatory cytoines like IL10
provided that exercise is of the proper
duration and that it's not so intense
that you're actually creating damage to
the various systems of the body. What
about the structure of the actual
workouts? Well, approximately 80% of the
resistance training you do should be
resistance training that doesn't go to
what they call failure, where you can't
actually move the resistance anymore.
The other 20% can be of the higher
intensity to failure type training. That
8020 rule of less than failure and work
to failure in the resistance exercise
regime can be transported or translated
to the endurance exercise portion by
focusing on that thing that we're
familiar with which is the burn. When
we're running hard or cycling hard
we'll experience a kind of burning of
the muscles that's associated with the
lactate system. And actually the lactate
system is its own form of fuel for the
brain. And so there's increasing
interest in generating the lactate or
pushing past that lactate threshold for
small portions 20% or so of endurance
work in order to support brain health
and function. So on any given day I
finish that work block and I train. I do
some sort of resistance or endurance
training. I put those on alternate days
or different days rather. So, we've now
talked about the arc that spans all the
way from waking to a morning bout of
focused work to physical
training. I have not mentioned ingesting
anything or nutrients. One of the most
common questions I get are what should I
eat for my brain? Well, um, ironically
enough, uh, one of the best things you
can do for your brain is to not eat.
But, of course, we all have to eat
sooner or later. So, let's talk about
food timing first. As I mentioned, I eat
my first meal sometime around noon, plus
or minus an hour. The volume of food is
also
important. If you eat a large volume of
anything, because it diverts blood to
your gut, you will feel lethargic and
you will have less blood going to your
brain. That seems like a simple and
trivial fact, but if you want to be able
to think, you can't ingest large volumes
of anything into your gut. So for lunch
I do emphasize slightly lower
carbohydrate or low carbohydrate intake
for the simple reason that adrenaline
and dopamine and their associated neurom
modulators are going to support
alertness. So for me, I fast up until
about noon. Then I eat a lunch that
consists of some sort of protein thing
like a some meat or some chicken or some
salmon and some vegetables, etc. And if
I've exercised previously, which I do as
I mentioned five days a week, then I
will ingest some starches. I'll ingest
some red bread, excuse me, or rice or
oatmeal and butter and nuts and things
like that. But I will keep the total
amount of carbohydrate a little bit on
the low side or if I haven't trained, I
won't have any carbohydrate at all. Not
because I'm ketogenic, but because
starches cause the release of serotonin
in the brain and lend themselves to a
state of sleepiness. Now, what about
components of foods that are not about
alertness, but are about mood? We did an
entire episode on mood and food. And
it's very clear based on now dozens of
studies that ingesting sufficient levels
of omega-3 fatty acids is going to
support healthy mood and even can act as
an
anti-depressant. Ingesting at least
1,000 milligs per day of the EPA form of
essential fatty acid is as effective as
prescription anti-depressants in
relieving depression. And if you're
somebody who requires prescription
anti-depressants Prozacs Oloft etc.
it can allow people to take lower doses
of those medications. A key aspect to
the midday meal, if you want that meal
to benefit you, is to take a brief walk
afterwards. It turns out that brief
walks of 5 to 30 minutes after ingesting
food can accelerate metabolism and
actually can accelerate and improve
nutrient utilization which is
essentially the same as metabolism. But
nonetheless, that's something that I do
after I finish my noon meal. I do force
myself to stand up and go outside and
take a brief walk. That also gets me
again into optic flow. It also has
another benefit which is that I am
giving my brain and thereby my body more
information about light and time of day
which is always better than less
information about light and time of day.
A key protocol for sleep health and
wakefulness and metabolism and hormone
health is viewing light in the
afternoon. So here's the reason for
doing this.
As we progress into the evening hours
there's a phenomenon where our retina
our eyes, become very sensitive to light
such that if we view bright lights or
even not so bright lights between the
hours of 1000 p.m. and 4:00 a.m., that
is strongly disruptive, very disruptive
for our dopamine production. It can
really screw up our sleep. But if you
can get outside and see the sun as it
arcs down, or if you can't see the sun
directly, get some sunlight in your eyes
in the afternoon hours, so maybe 400
p.m.ish. What it does is it lowers the
sensitivity of your retina in the late
evening hours, which allows you to
buffer yourself against the negative
effects of bright light later at night.
Now, we haven't talked too much about
melatonin, but melatonin is a hormone
that is inhibited by light. Melatonin is
the hormone that allows you to fall
asleep easily. Now, I'm not talking
about supplementing melatonin. I'm
talking about melatonin that you
naturally produce from your pineal. So
the protocol is very simple. Get outside
in the afternoon or evening for 10 to 30
minutes. Take your sunglasses off. So
get that afternoon light. So, what
you'll probably notice is that the
optimal protocols for optimizing your
brain and body health and performance
and sleep, etc. are actually really
simple. But just because they're simple
does not mean that they are not
powerful. In fact, they are very
powerful because they leverage the most
powerful technology that exists, which
is your nervous system. What we are
talking about today are really basic
things that we can all do that can steer
our neurology and our biology in the
directions that are going to support
workflow that are going to support
hormones that are going to support brain
function. So at some point in the
evening I eat that thing that we call
dinner. And while it feels sort of
strange to talk about my dinner, the
reason I want to talk about my dinner
and what I eat for dinner is that for me
dinner of course is about eating. but
also about optimizing the transition to
sleep. So my dinner generally is
comprised of things that are going to
support rest and deep sleep and that
means starchy carbohydrates. It's
absolutely clear that one of the major
ways that we can increase serotonin
which helps in the transition to sleep
is by ingesting starchy carbohydrates.
So my dinner is carbohydrates and some
protein. So maybe some chicken or fish
or something like that, maybe some eggs
or sometimes just pasta or just rice and
vegetables. And that's because I enjoy
those foods, but also because I want to
increase the amount of serotonin in my
brain so that I can actually fall asleep
that night. Many people who are on low
carbohydrate diets struggle with falling
and staying asleep. And that's because
it's hard to achieve heightened levels
of serotonin, which are necessary to
enter sleep. I should also mention that
melatonin and serotonin fall in the same
pathway. They are related hormones and
neurom modulators. Essentially, what
we're talking about is a system that's
biasing us towards rest and relaxation
as opposed to wakefulness. You might
ask, well, can't I just take serotonin?
Can't I just take 5HTP or a precursor to
serotonin or tryptophan? And indeed, you
can. However, many people, including
myself, find that when they supplement
with serotonin in the evening or at
night that can cause problems in the
architecture or the structure of sleep
can cause a lot of people, including me
to fall asleep very fast, sleep very
deeply for three or four hours, and then
wake up and have a terrible time falling
back asleep. And that effect, at least
for me, has u can last several days.
It's really disruptive. So I don't like
to supplement with anything that is
directly dopamine or a precursor to
dopamine at any time or directly
serotonin or a precursor to serotonin.
Rather, there are other things that can
enhance the transition to sleep safely
which we will talk about in a few
minutes. But the evening meal consists
largely of carbohydrates for that
specific purpose of generating a sense
of calm. And of course carbohydrates are
delicious. And because I'm doing
physical training and presumably you are
as well. I hope you are because it's so
beneficial to one's health. That's also
going to replenish my glycogen stores
which is the one of the primary fuel
sources for moving one's muscles and
moving around and doing exercise as well
as for the brain and for cognitive
function. So let's talk about sleep and
how to access sleep. One way to do that
is to leverage the drop in temperature
that's necessary to fall and stay
asleep. So as I mentioned earlier in the
early parts of the day after waking our
body temperature is rising and that
continues throughout the day and then
sometime late in the afternoon our
temperature peaks and then it starts to
drop. That drop in temperature of 1 to
3° is vitally important for us to be
able to fall asleep
easily. One way that we can decrease our
transition time into sleep is to
accelerate that drop in temperature. And
one way to accelerate that drop in
temperature somewhat counterintuitively
is to use hot baths, hot showers, or if
you have access to one, a sauna. Now
this is counterintuitive, but actually
if you are to get into a sauna or a hot
shower or a hot bath and then get out
your body is going to engage particular
mechanisms for cooling itself off that
are going to allow you to drop your
temperature more quickly and fall asleep
more easily. It is absolutely true that
keeping the room very dark is
beneficial. The other thing is keeping
the room cool. The reason keeping the
room cool is useful for getting into and
staying asleep is that throughout the
night there are phases of sleep where
you are paralyzed so-called REM sleep.
That's a healthy paralysis. So you
presumably so you can't act out your
dreams. But there are portions of the
night where you can move. And one of the
more important movements that you do in
the middle of the night is put your hand
out or your foot out or you take your
face out from under the covers as a
means to cool yourself. You're actually
allowing cooling of the body through
what are called
AVAs, arteriovenous ammoses is the
technical name that are in the palms
the upper half of the face and the balms
of the feet. Now there are things that
one can take to enhance the transition
to sleep. Three compounds that could be
very beneficial for aiding the
transition to sleep and for which there
are wide safety margins although please
do check with your physician before
taking anything are specific forms of
magnesium something called apogenine and
theanine magnesium comes in many forms
magnesium thrienate that's t h r e o n a
trenate and magnesium
blycinate have transporters that allow
them to cross the bloodb brain barrier
more readily than other forms of
magnesium And there within the brain
they promote the release of a
neurotransmitter called GABA which is an
inhibitory neurotransmitter which shuts
off the forebrain to some extent. It
doesn't shut off completely but it
essentially shuts down thinking
rumination, planning and what we call
executive function. So for many people
taking 300 to 400 milligrams of
magnesium diglycinate or magnesium
3enate 30 to 60 minutes before sleep can
aid them in falling asleep. when coupled
with apagenine and theanine provide a
sort of synergy or a sleep cocktail that
seems to be very effective in aiding the
transition to sleep. So apagenine is the
substance that's found in chamomile and
50 milligs of apagenine taken 30 minutes
before sleep can act as a another way to
shut off the forebrain and reduce
rumination, reduce anxiety and allow
people to fall and stay asleep. And then
the third compound is theine. T H E A N
I N E. Theonine is a compound that can
also increase GABA but also increases
activation of something called chloride
channels. Chloride channels are another
way in which neurons lower their levels
of activity. So magnesium 3inator by
glycinate, epigenine and theanine in
combination can be very effective for
aiding the transition to sleep. Now what
if you wake up in the middle of the
night? This is a very common occurrence
and there are two general themes around
waking up in the middle of the night
that one can use tools to counteract.
The first theme is if you're somebody
who is tired in the evenings and you're
kind of pushing yourself to stay awake.
So, you're going to the party or you're
pushing yourself to study or work when
in fact you'd like to get into bed at
8:30 or 9 and then you're falling asleep
around 10:30, 11:00 and waking up at
2:30 or 3 in the morning and you can't
fall back asleep. Chances are that your
melatonin pulse was initiated early in
the night. So, that melatonin pulse
started probably around 8:30 or 9, but
you're staying up. You're battling that
melatonin. You may not like this advice
but one of the things that you can do to
offset that is to simply go to bed
earlier. The other thing is many people
wake up in the middle of the night
because of anxiety or because they have
to use the restroom. It's perfectly fine
to flip on the lights, but keep the
lights dim. But if you flip on those
lights, try and flip them off as soon as
possible and try and get back into bed.
So now we've essentially traveled around
the clock, so to speak, from the time
where one wakes up until the time they
get to sleep, maybe wake up, get back to
sleep, etc. I want to emphasize that
although people's schedules vary, most
people are doing more than one or two
workouts per day. And indeed, I'm doing
more than one or two workouts per day. I
really emphasize that morning 90minute
work block because I think most people
would agree that there's a portion of
each day in which we need to do the
hardest thing or the most important
thing or the thing that demands the most
of our cognitive self. I position that
early in the day and I position
everything around that in order to
ensure that it happens and that it
happens with the highest degree of
efficiency even though that morning
90minute work block is so vital. Of
course there's a second work block. So
combined that's just three hours of
focused work, which may not seem like a
lot, but if you were to dissect your day
and kind of look at the arc and
structure of your day, I'd be willing to
bet that if we added up the total period
of time in which you were in deep work
really focused, dedicated work, that it
would probably amount to about 3 or 4
hours. And of course, throughout the
day, there are other things happening
outside of those 90-minute work blocks.
I'm checking my text messages. I'm
checking my email. I'm responding to
various demands. I'm working and tending
to life. So, while I've carved some
boundaries or delineated some boundaries
around those work blocks, and I'm
certain that if you do too, you will
benefit from them. Of course, please
adapt and modify what I've described
today in ways that best serve you and
your schedule. What I've tried to do is
provide you scientific support, specific
protocols and regimens because people
are always asking me for more
specificity and detail and an example of
one way, just one way, in which these
various tools and protocols that are
grounded in science could be leveraged
in one's own life. And last but not
least, thank you for your interest in
science.
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