Optimize Your Learning & Creativity With Science-Based Tools

00:00:00.000 | - Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials,

00:00:02.320 | where we revisit past episodes

00:00:04.380 | for the most potent and actionable science-based tools

00:00:07.560 | for mental health, physical health, and performance.

00:00:10.340 | My name is Andrew Huberman,

00:00:13.080 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

00:00:16.120 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:17.840 | Let's talk about neuroplasticity.

00:00:20.400 | More specifically,

00:00:21.660 | let's talk about how we can optimize our brains.

00:00:25.480 | Neuroplasticity is this incredible feature

00:00:28.180 | of our nervous system that allows it to change itself,

00:00:31.400 | even in ways that we consciously decide.

00:00:34.960 | Now, that's an incredible property.

00:00:36.680 | Our liver can't decide to just change itself.

00:00:39.520 | Our spleen can't decide to just change itself

00:00:42.340 | through conscious thought

00:00:43.720 | or through feedback from another person.

00:00:46.880 | The cells in those tissues can make changes, sure,

00:00:49.840 | but it's our nervous system

00:00:51.520 | that harbors this incredible ability

00:00:54.000 | to direct its own changes

00:00:56.760 | in ways that we believe or we're told will serve us better.

00:01:01.760 | Today's podcast is really directed

00:01:04.540 | toward answering your most common questions

00:01:07.320 | and the bigger theme

00:01:08.780 | of how does one go about optimizing their brain

00:01:11.620 | or even think about optimizing the brain?

00:01:13.900 | What is this thing that we're calling optimizing the brain?

00:01:16.940 | In doing so, I'm also going to share

00:01:18.440 | some of my typical routines and tools.

00:01:21.880 | I share them because many of you

00:01:24.020 | have asked for very concrete examples of what I do and when,

00:01:28.580 | and so I want to open up the discussion today

00:01:31.740 | by emphasizing something that's fundamentally important,

00:01:35.220 | which is that plasticity is not the goal.

00:01:38.900 | The goal is to figure out how to access plasticity

00:01:43.120 | and then to direct that plasticity

00:01:45.420 | toward particular goals or changes

00:01:48.400 | that you would like to achieve.

00:01:49.840 | Let's start by talking about the different systems

00:01:53.180 | within the nervous system that are available for plasticity.

00:01:57.220 | And in doing so, I'll frame them in the context

00:01:59.420 | of what I do on a daily basis,

00:02:01.980 | on a weekly basis, and on a yearly basis.

00:02:04.740 | First of all, there are several forms of plasticity.

00:02:10.080 | The best way to think about it is in terms of short-term,

00:02:13.280 | medium-term, and long-term plasticity.

00:02:16.820 | Short-term plasticity is any kind of shift

00:02:19.900 | that you want to achieve in the moment or in the day,

00:02:23.980 | but that you don't necessarily want to hold onto forever.

00:02:26.820 | And I'd say, well, what kinds of things are those?

00:02:28.780 | Well, for instance, short-term plasticity might be

00:02:31.860 | you wake up earlier than you would like to catch a flight,

00:02:35.360 | you're not feeling particularly alert,

00:02:37.920 | and you want to use a protocol

00:02:40.420 | or you decide to use a protocol, which could be coffee,

00:02:43.140 | or it could be a certain form of breathing,

00:02:44.860 | or it could be some other tool,

00:02:46.140 | to become more alert at a time of day

00:02:47.760 | when normally you aren't that alert.

00:02:49.560 | But your expectation is that when you return home,

00:02:53.100 | you will discard the need to do that at 5.30 a.m.

00:02:56.780 | because you'll be asleep at 5.30 a.m.

00:02:58.500 | So there's short-term plasticity, behavioral plasticity.

00:03:01.780 | Then there's medium-term plasticity.

00:03:03.740 | For instance, if you go on vacation to Costa Rica

00:03:06.740 | and you don't know your way around Costa Rica,

00:03:08.700 | you want to learn the different town and the routes there,

00:03:11.100 | but you don't have any intention of going back,

00:03:13.100 | it's just medium-term.

00:03:14.000 | You want to just program it in for sake of your time there,

00:03:16.260 | and then you want to discard it.

00:03:17.860 | Most of the time when we think about

00:03:19.420 | or talk about optimizing the brain,

00:03:20.800 | we're talking about long-term plasticity.

00:03:23.200 | We're talking about the kinds of changes

00:03:24.920 | that people want to make

00:03:25.760 | so that their brain reflexively works differently.

00:03:29.240 | Long-term plasticity is almost always the big goal.

00:03:33.520 | It's I want to know how to speak that language.

00:03:35.320 | I want to be able to do that skill.

00:03:37.080 | I want to be able to feel this way.

00:03:38.760 | I'm going to frame all this in the context of the daily life,

00:03:42.840 | the weekly life, and the yearly life.

00:03:46.420 | And that's because neural plasticity

00:03:48.820 | and optimizing your brain rides on a deeper foundation

00:03:53.820 | of this thing that governs plasticity,

00:03:58.440 | and in fact, governs all our life called autonomic arousal,

00:04:01.840 | which is that we're asleep for part of the 24-hour cycle

00:04:04.440 | and we are awake almost always.

00:04:06.080 | I've said it before, but I'll say it again.

00:04:07.680 | The trigger for plasticity and learning

00:04:09.560 | occurs during high focus, high alertness states,

00:04:12.660 | not while you're asleep.

00:04:14.480 | And the focus and alertness are both key

00:04:16.460 | because of the neurochemicals associated with those states.

00:04:19.540 | But the actual rewiring and the reconfiguration

00:04:23.300 | of the brain connections happens

00:04:24.860 | during non-sleep deep rest and deep sleep.

00:04:28.880 | So you trigger the change and in sleep, you get the change.

00:04:32.180 | So some of the things that we'll talk about today

00:04:35.220 | about optimizing the brain are centered around not sleep,

00:04:38.940 | but around the autonomic arousal system.

00:04:41.620 | We have this system of neurons in our brain and body

00:04:44.300 | that's just incredible that wake us up and make us alert.

00:04:48.860 | And when we're not accessing that system well,

00:04:51.580 | we cannot access plasticity, we cannot optimize our brain.

00:04:55.220 | Likewise, if we cannot sleep well and we can't rest well,

00:04:59.180 | we will not access plasticity and rewire our brain

00:05:02.780 | because that's when the actual configuration

00:05:04.660 | between the connections occurs.

00:05:06.860 | So to set this in context, I wake up each day

00:05:11.620 | and I'll be totally honest,

00:05:14.300 | I usually don't feel like bouncing right out of bed.

00:05:17.540 | I wake up generally more tired and groggy than I would like

00:05:22.460 | because I tend to go to sleep too late.

00:05:24.680 | What it means is that I'm not really matching

00:05:28.540 | my hardwired needs of going to bed probably at 8.30 or 9

00:05:33.540 | and waking up at 4 a.m.

00:05:36.900 | So neuroplasticity will allow me

00:05:39.540 | to optimize my wakefulness,

00:05:41.060 | but I have to do something in order to access that.

00:05:44.220 | And some of you may already be anticipating

00:05:46.220 | what I'm about to say, which is,

00:05:47.540 | oh no, he's going to tell us to get sunlight in our eyes

00:05:49.820 | in the first 30 minutes of the day.

00:05:51.540 | I am going to tell you to do that,

00:05:52.780 | but I'm going to also tell you two things

00:05:54.540 | that I have not discussed before,

00:05:56.920 | which relate to the plasticity

00:05:59.340 | between the melanopsin cells,

00:06:01.220 | these sunlight detecting, bright light detecting cells

00:06:03.980 | in our eye and the circadian clock.

00:06:06.320 | I've never said this before on this podcast,

00:06:08.060 | but it turns out that the connections

00:06:09.860 | between these melanopsin cells and the circadian clock

00:06:13.000 | are plastic throughout the lifespan.

00:06:15.260 | So there's an opportunity for short-term plasticity.

00:06:18.020 | So that's why I view sunlight first thing in the day,

00:06:19.780 | it helps me wake up.

00:06:21.100 | The other thing that I do is that there's a circuit

00:06:24.360 | that exists between the circadian clock

00:06:26.300 | and our adrenals that I've talked about before

00:06:28.460 | that triggers the release of cortisol

00:06:30.180 | first thing in the morning that wakes us up,

00:06:32.380 | especially when we view light.

00:06:34.180 | So if you're groggy in the morning,

00:06:35.500 | that's why viewing light is helpful.

00:06:37.420 | The other thing that I do is I delay my intake of caffeine

00:06:41.420 | for the first two hours that I'm awake.

00:06:43.420 | Earlier, we talked about the adenosine system

00:06:46.220 | and how the accumulation of adenosine makes us sleepy

00:06:49.540 | and caffeine suppresses adenosine, it makes us feel alert.

00:06:53.900 | And so by delaying caffeine

00:06:55.400 | until about two hours after waking,

00:06:57.700 | I'm able to capture and reinforce to potentiate

00:07:01.460 | the neural circuit that exists between the circadian clock

00:07:04.220 | and the cortisol release in the adrenals,

00:07:06.380 | as well as leave those adenosine receptors unoccupied

00:07:10.580 | so that I can then use the caffeine to get a natural lift

00:07:14.540 | in alertness and focus two hours later,

00:07:16.660 | as opposed to using it

00:07:18.140 | just to wake myself up out of sleepiness.

00:07:21.260 | I also make sure I hydrate first thing in the morning.

00:07:23.580 | There's plenty of data now showing

00:07:25.660 | that even a slight increase in dehydration,

00:07:28.860 | meaning just when you're lacking water,

00:07:30.700 | can make people have headaches,

00:07:32.660 | it can provide some additional photophobia.

00:07:35.100 | For those of you that are migraine prone,

00:07:37.200 | bright light can trigger migraines.

00:07:38.780 | That's no surprise to those of you

00:07:40.020 | that get headaches and migraines,

00:07:41.200 | but dehydration can compound the vulnerability

00:07:45.620 | to migraine and headache.

00:07:46.700 | So I drink water, I drink black coffee, or I drink mate,

00:07:49.300 | which is just because I have Argentine lineage,

00:07:51.780 | which is just a high caffeine drink

00:07:54.140 | first thing in the morning,

00:07:54.980 | but I delay it until two hours after I wake up.

00:07:58.460 | And that's because I want the circuits

00:08:01.520 | between my eye and my circadian clock and my adrenals

00:08:05.100 | to be functioning in a particular way

00:08:07.220 | so that then later the caffeine is an addition,

00:08:09.580 | it adds more alertness.

00:08:11.340 | Now, this is a discussion about how to optimize your brain.

00:08:14.660 | Many people who wake up quickly

00:08:16.940 | and just naturally feel like bouncing out of bed,

00:08:19.500 | I envy these people,

00:08:21.300 | they will do just fine by going into a learning bout

00:08:25.440 | or taking care of whatever it is

00:08:27.560 | that they need to take care of.

00:08:28.500 | Sometimes that's kind of more mundane tasks

00:08:30.780 | like email and whatnot.

00:08:33.380 | Here's more or less a rule about how the brain functions

00:08:37.900 | vis-a-vis focus, learning, and creativity.

00:08:41.280 | Generally, states of high alertness,

00:08:43.960 | when we're very, very alert,

00:08:45.780 | are great for strategy implementation,

00:08:49.180 | the sort of thing that we are very good at

00:08:51.380 | when we're well-rested and we're focused.

00:08:54.020 | And our autonomic arousal, or our alertness rather,

00:08:56.740 | is at a high level.

00:08:58.700 | If you are somebody who is hitting

00:09:00.500 | that alertness phase of your day very early,

00:09:03.420 | right after you wake up,

00:09:04.860 | that's a great time to move right into things that,

00:09:08.500 | at least the research says,

00:09:10.040 | you already know have the strategy

00:09:11.940 | and you just want to implement the strategy.

00:09:14.100 | But for me, for instance, I get up,

00:09:15.980 | I'm not terribly alert first thing.

00:09:18.220 | And so I try and just get my brain

00:09:20.420 | and my thoughts organized.

00:09:21.940 | It's not a time for me to be responding

00:09:23.980 | in a very linear fashion to emails

00:09:26.020 | or carrying out calculations.

00:09:28.020 | That comes about two hours later.

00:09:29.620 | And I think many people out there will relate,

00:09:31.760 | mid-morning is when we tend to,

00:09:33.740 | when many people tend to achieve their peak

00:09:35.660 | in alertness and focus.

00:09:37.460 | Now, many times I get the question,

00:09:41.220 | and this is what I'm about to say

00:09:42.780 | is directly related to the hundreds of questions

00:09:45.060 | I got about this.

00:09:46.460 | Should I use background music in order to learn?

00:09:49.760 | So as a rule of thumb, if you're feeling too keyed up,

00:09:53.220 | then silence and quiet is going to be helpful.

00:09:56.060 | In fact, if you're very keyed up,

00:09:57.820 | a particular circuit related to the basal ganglia

00:10:02.320 | starts getting triggered more easily.

00:10:04.340 | It's called the go-no-go circuit.

00:10:06.500 | We have circuits that connect our forebrain

00:10:08.900 | to a structure in our brain called the basal ganglia,

00:10:11.340 | which is actually a collection of structures.

00:10:13.380 | And the forebrain, which is involved in rational thought

00:10:16.900 | and thinking and planning and action,

00:10:18.400 | is always trying to plan what should I do

00:10:21.180 | and then implement that action.

00:10:22.660 | And the basal ganglia are intimately involved

00:10:24.980 | in that discussion.

00:10:25.820 | There's a reciprocal loop of communication

00:10:28.340 | between basal ganglia and cortex.

00:10:30.220 | The basal ganglia has one set of connections to the cortex

00:10:33.980 | and the cortex back to the basal ganglia

00:10:36.100 | that facilitates go.

00:10:38.620 | It facilitates action.

00:10:41.020 | And the molecule, the neuromodulator dopamine,

00:10:44.620 | triggers the activation of go.

00:10:46.620 | It tends to make us want to do more things.

00:10:49.140 | It tends to make us biased toward action

00:10:52.220 | by the way that dopamine binds

00:10:54.140 | to something called the D1 receptors,

00:10:55.820 | just a particular type of dopamine receptor,

00:10:57.940 | for those of you that want to know.

00:11:00.220 | The no-go pathway,

00:11:02.020 | the pathway in the basal ganglia and cortex

00:11:05.180 | that suppresses action

00:11:06.740 | involves dopamine binding to this other receptor

00:11:10.700 | called the D2 receptor.

00:11:12.660 | Now, D1, D2 receptors, you can't just consciously decide,

00:11:15.380 | oh, I only want my D1 receptors

00:11:17.020 | and my D2 receptors to be active.

00:11:19.340 | You have to think about which sorts of states of mind

00:11:24.260 | and body facilitate go and which ones facilitate no-go.

00:11:29.260 | There are three sort of levels of autonomic arousal,

00:11:34.300 | of alertness that bias us more toward go, no-go, or both.

00:11:39.300 | So here's how it works.

00:11:41.220 | Let's say I'm very alert.

00:11:43.060 | Maybe I got a particularly good night's sleep

00:11:44.700 | the night before, I had a little too much coffee

00:11:47.580 | and I'm going to sit down to some work.

00:11:50.020 | The thing to know, and what I always tell myself,

00:11:52.780 | is when I'm very alert, I am very prone to go to action,

00:11:57.780 | but I'm also prone to not no-go, right?

00:12:03.100 | I'm not going to be very good at suppressing action.

00:12:05.740 | So those are two different things,

00:12:06.900 | being biased toward action

00:12:08.060 | and being biased towards suppressing action

00:12:10.380 | are two different things, okay?

00:12:12.820 | So those are push-pull, toward action, suppress action.

00:12:16.440 | So if I'm very alert, I'm aware

00:12:19.020 | that I will have a bias toward action.

00:12:21.880 | It'll be hard for me to suppress non-action,

00:12:24.540 | but that it's very non-specific.

00:12:26.900 | When you are very alert, the best situation for learning

00:12:29.980 | is going to be silence.

00:12:31.860 | It's going to be complete quiet.

00:12:34.300 | If you are low arousal and you're tired

00:12:37.180 | and you're kind of sleepy, a lot of people find

00:12:39.500 | that having some background chatter

00:12:41.180 | and some background noise can help elevate

00:12:43.980 | their level of autonomic arousal.

00:12:45.400 | For most people, three hours after waking,

00:12:48.780 | those three hours tends to be the period

00:12:51.180 | in which they're most alert throughout the day.

00:12:53.020 | So that morning three hours is quite vital.

00:12:56.260 | Now, many of you might ask about exercise

00:12:58.920 | and when to exercise.

00:13:00.260 | In terms of rising body temperatures

00:13:02.260 | and matching body temperature to mental alertness, et cetera,

00:13:06.620 | it's pretty clear that exercising early in the day

00:13:10.020 | not only biases us towards waking up earlier,

00:13:12.820 | but that it also triggers the release of things

00:13:15.240 | like epinephrine and other neuromodulators

00:13:18.200 | that lend itself to a situation

00:13:21.540 | where we have heightened levels of arousal

00:13:24.360 | and mental acuity in the late morning

00:13:26.880 | and even into the afternoon.

00:13:28.560 | This can be very good because if you want to restrict

00:13:31.420 | most of your focus learning to the early part of the day,

00:13:33.880 | exercising early in the day does set

00:13:36.120 | a neurochemical context or milieu for go.

00:13:39.700 | It tends to trigger activation of the go pathway.

00:13:42.640 | And so for those of you like myself

00:13:44.400 | who have a hard time kind of engaging

00:13:45.960 | and getting into action early in the day,

00:13:47.800 | early morning exercise within an hour of waking

00:13:50.480 | and certainly no later than three hours after waking

00:13:53.440 | will give you quote unquote more energy throughout the day.

00:13:57.120 | So in kind of reviewing what I've set up until now,

00:14:00.160 | I do the morning light thing,

00:14:01.800 | I delay my caffeine two hours after waking,

00:14:04.780 | and then I generally try and get exercise in the first hour

00:14:09.200 | or ideally within the first three hours of waking up,

00:14:11.720 | and then I'll move into a focused learning bout.

00:14:14.480 | If I find that I'm too alert,

00:14:16.040 | and then I generally will tend to eat

00:14:19.080 | and kind of bring down my level of alertness

00:14:21.400 | and we'll continue working.

00:14:22.800 | I typically eat my first meal right around midday,

00:14:26.500 | whether or not I've exercised or not.

00:14:29.320 | In general, I rely on a low carbohydrate meal.

00:14:32.360 | I'll eat meat or salad or some variation of that

00:14:34.580 | and nuts and fats and things like that

00:14:37.200 | because of the choline content for focus.

00:14:39.200 | I'm just going to continue to march through my day.

00:14:42.120 | And this is of course what I experienced.

00:14:44.960 | Some people are quite different,

00:14:46.420 | but what I find is around two or 3 p.m.

00:14:49.200 | I start getting a little groggy, a little bit sleepy.

00:14:52.240 | I will tend to shift my work

00:14:54.720 | from work that requires a lot of duration path outcome,

00:14:58.040 | really careful analysis and activation of the no-go pathway

00:15:02.240 | around early afternoon,

00:15:04.160 | I find I can do kind of typical more mundane tasks

00:15:08.120 | because those tasks require less cognitive load

00:15:12.240 | and they can be done more or less in and out of sequence.

00:15:15.800 | I can answer a couple email here,

00:15:17.200 | maybe answer that email there.

00:15:18.760 | And then typically around 4 p.m. or so, I do two things.

00:15:23.640 | One is I make sure I hydrate

00:15:25.840 | and then I always do a non-sleep deep rest protocol

00:15:29.880 | sometime in the afternoon.

00:15:31.000 | This is sometimes a 10 minute yoga nidra type protocol

00:15:33.960 | or a 30 minute yoga nidra type protocol.

00:15:36.640 | And I do that because for me by about 4.30 in the afternoon,

00:15:40.640 | I'm capable of doing basically nothing.

00:15:43.040 | I personally find it a mistake to at that point

00:15:46.560 | down a double espresso and charge really hard.

00:15:49.800 | It just doesn't work for me.

00:15:50.920 | I end up really disrupting my sleep schedule.

00:15:52.980 | I end up disrupting a lot of different things.

00:15:54.680 | So for me, I do the non-sleep deep rest protocol.

00:15:57.880 | I usually emerge from that

00:15:59.800 | feeling like I have another whole day second wind,

00:16:03.800 | like I could just work, work, work, work, work.

00:16:05.600 | And then I'll do a second bout of learning.

00:16:09.240 | I'll do some sort of work

00:16:10.640 | that either involves linear analysis of something.

00:16:14.200 | So maybe numerical work or I'm trying to learn something.

00:16:18.580 | This learning bout is very different

00:16:20.080 | than the morning one.

00:16:21.600 | This is a work bout or learning bout

00:16:23.360 | that's more in the clear common focus regime

00:16:25.720 | because I've come out of this non-sleep deep rest.

00:16:28.480 | I'm not ingesting caffeine

00:16:29.920 | because I want to make sure

00:16:30.760 | that I can sleep later that night really well.

00:16:33.280 | And this tends to be more when I do creative type work.

00:16:37.120 | Creativity is a very interesting state of mind

00:16:40.040 | in which we're taking existing elements,

00:16:42.680 | things that we already know

00:16:44.960 | and rearranging them in ways that are novel.

00:16:48.640 | Creativity has two parts.

00:16:50.340 | It has a creative discovery mode

00:16:54.040 | where you're kind of shuffling things around

00:16:55.760 | in a very relaxed way and kind of being playful

00:16:58.000 | or exploring different configurations.

00:17:00.600 | And then creativity also has

00:17:02.900 | an absolutely linear implementation mode

00:17:05.880 | in which you take the idea or the design you've come up with

00:17:09.200 | and you create something very robust and concrete.

00:17:12.640 | And so creativity is really a two-part thing.

00:17:15.480 | And the first part

00:17:17.060 | of actively exploring different configurations,

00:17:19.900 | sometimes in a playful way,

00:17:21.560 | sometimes in a way that's almost random

00:17:25.240 | and just kind of exploring,

00:17:27.340 | that state is definitely facilitated

00:17:31.340 | by being relaxed and almost sleepy.

00:17:34.960 | When you find yourself

00:17:35.900 | in that kind of clear, calm, and focused mode,

00:17:38.140 | creative works tend to come about very well

00:17:41.100 | in those regimes.

00:17:42.640 | Now, I know that a lot of people out there

00:17:44.020 | rely on substances to access creative states.

00:17:46.740 | I'm not a marijuana user.

00:17:49.060 | It's just not the drug for me for a variety of reasons.

00:17:52.640 | I'm not a drinker.

00:17:54.100 | It's not the substance for me for a variety of reasons.

00:17:57.340 | The problem with using substances to access creativity

00:18:00.900 | is that generally the substances that relax people

00:18:05.060 | will allow them to get into that creative brainstorming mode

00:18:08.940 | but not so good at the linear implementation mode.

00:18:13.140 | So that afternoon block is when I try and access

00:18:16.260 | the freer kind of looser mindset

00:18:18.900 | that's associated with the fatigue

00:18:20.220 | that comes later in the afternoon.

00:18:22.340 | For some of you, that state that favors creativity

00:18:25.300 | and creative learning might be better in the morning.

00:18:28.220 | I don't know.

00:18:29.040 | You're going to have to decide.

00:18:29.880 | For some of you, you're going to be late shifted.

00:18:31.860 | Some of you are going to be morning shifted.

00:18:33.500 | But where we have alertness,

00:18:34.900 | generally we are good at linear implementation.

00:18:37.020 | We're good at activating the no-go pathway

00:18:39.260 | and suppressing action.

00:18:40.380 | And we are good at pursuing particular goals

00:18:43.820 | and strategy implementation.

00:18:45.980 | And where we tend to be more relaxed

00:18:48.140 | and we tend to be almost in a kind of sleepy mode.

00:18:50.240 | So for me coming out of one of these

00:18:51.440 | non-sleep deep rest modes or sleep,

00:18:53.960 | that's when we tend to be better

00:18:55.780 | at novel configurations of existing elements

00:18:58.820 | which is creativity.

00:19:00.300 | And this brings about a question that I get all the time

00:19:04.420 | which is what about psychedelics?

00:19:07.460 | On psychedelics, people report being able to smell colors

00:19:11.020 | or to hear trees, et cetera.

00:19:14.620 | And that's because there's a lot of sensory blending.

00:19:16.660 | However, that's led to the misconception

00:19:19.260 | that sensory blending itself is a creative process.

00:19:22.900 | There's nothing creative about sensory blending.

00:19:26.080 | The essence of a creative process

00:19:29.020 | is new ways of configuring things that lend themselves

00:19:32.220 | to a bigger or greater or deeper or novel understanding

00:19:36.500 | on the part of the observer.

00:19:38.400 | And just sensory blending is not going to accomplish that.

00:19:41.620 | Now, I think that there may come a time

00:19:45.220 | and certainly there are clinical trials

00:19:46.540 | that are happening now

00:19:47.600 | where psychedelics are leveraged

00:19:48.940 | toward particular clinical goals.

00:19:50.900 | These are clinical studies done with a psychiatrist present

00:19:54.540 | that is authorized to do that,

00:19:56.140 | that can help people through depression, trauma, et cetera.

00:19:58.820 | So all of this is to say that no,

00:20:01.340 | I don't take psychedelics to access creative states.

00:20:04.300 | That's not where I think the major role,

00:20:07.740 | the important role of psychedelics might show up

00:20:10.180 | if it's going to for humanity.

00:20:11.620 | I think that it may have these important roles

00:20:14.360 | in the clinical context

00:20:15.660 | provided it's done legally and safely.

00:20:18.260 | I think that the creative process

00:20:21.380 | being a two-stage process

00:20:22.800 | means that I am personally best served

00:20:25.800 | by having this period of non-linear exploration of concepts,

00:20:30.340 | whatever it is I happen to be working on in the afternoon,

00:20:33.540 | but then I'll actually shelve that work.

00:20:35.860 | I'll just set it aside

00:20:37.220 | and then I'll revisit it the next day or even the next day

00:20:40.340 | to see whether or not the work itself is ready

00:20:44.420 | for deliberate linear implementation,

00:20:46.440 | which I would want to do

00:20:47.280 | during one of these highly focused states.

00:20:49.400 | So the long and short way of saying this

00:20:52.100 | is that when we're very alert, do linear type of operations.

00:20:55.540 | When we tend to be more sleepy and more relaxed,

00:20:58.260 | that's when creative works can first be conceived,

00:21:02.020 | but their implementation requires high levels of alertness.

00:21:06.340 | Now that gets us more to the kind of late afternoon evening.

00:21:11.220 | Now I am, as I've mentioned before,

00:21:13.260 | I'm a proponent of getting sunlight in the evening as well.

00:21:17.420 | By getting light in the evening,

00:21:18.940 | it accomplishes two things for me.

00:21:20.540 | First of all, it makes sure that I don't get up too early,

00:21:23.300 | that I'm not waking up at three or four in the morning

00:21:25.340 | because it's going to shift my clock,

00:21:27.180 | it's going to delay it a little bit.

00:21:28.940 | And so this is really important.

00:21:30.940 | If you want to keep your schedule on a normal routine

00:21:34.860 | on a regular 24-hour cycle

00:21:37.380 | and not have your circadian rhythms of sleep and wakefulness

00:21:39.860 | drifting all over the place,

00:21:41.020 | and you want some predictability

00:21:42.340 | to how your mind is going to work

00:21:43.840 | in order to optimize learning and performance,

00:21:46.100 | well, then you need to get morning light and evening light.

00:21:48.380 | The morning light is going to advance my clock,

00:21:50.220 | make my system want to get up earlier,

00:21:51.980 | and the evening light is going to delay my clock a little bit

00:21:54.820 | so that on average, it kind of bookends

00:21:56.660 | my circadian mechanisms,

00:21:58.340 | and I'll basically want to go to sleep

00:22:00.340 | at more or less the same time each night and wake up

00:22:03.020 | more or less at the same time each morning.

00:22:05.300 | That's how it works.

00:22:06.500 | And that's a hardwired mechanism.

00:22:09.080 | That's not some subjective thing that I tell myself,

00:22:11.580 | that's a hardwired mechanism.

00:22:13.800 | So that gets us to the evening.

00:22:16.180 | And generally in the evening,

00:22:17.420 | I'll get that light by going outside,

00:22:19.180 | and then I'll start to dim them for the evening

00:22:20.960 | 'cause as I've mentioned many times before,

00:22:22.500 | and I'm not going to belabor the point,

00:22:24.120 | you want to minimize your light exposure,

00:22:26.340 | especially overhead bright light exposure

00:22:28.380 | in the evening from about 10 p.m. to 4 a.m.

00:22:30.940 | So for me, it screens off, it's dim lights,

00:22:35.020 | and that's what favors falling asleep

00:22:37.380 | in a good night's sleep for me.

00:22:38.840 | Since we were talking about food earlier,

00:22:40.300 | I'll just revisit a little bit of what I said before.

00:22:42.860 | My evening meal tends to be more carbohydrate rich.

00:22:45.940 | So I'm not one of these people that's keto

00:22:48.340 | or high meat only or anything like that.

00:22:51.380 | Remember, fasting and low carbohydrate states

00:22:53.680 | facilitate alertness.

00:22:55.780 | Carbohydrate rich foods facilitate calmness and sleepiness.

00:22:59.700 | They stimulate the release of tryptophan

00:23:01.400 | and the transition to sleep.

00:23:03.180 | I tend to achieve that state using carbohydrates

00:23:05.940 | and it also replenishes glycogen.

00:23:08.060 | The next piece of scientific data that I'm going to describe

00:23:10.860 | is a very important piece of scientific data

00:23:13.420 | for sake of understanding how to optimize your brain

00:23:15.660 | and access sleep.

00:23:16.780 | It also can help avoid a lot of anxiety issues.

00:23:20.120 | The peak output of the circadian clock for wakefulness,

00:23:24.740 | in other words, the peak of our wakefulness

00:23:26.980 | and the suppression of the sleep signal

00:23:30.140 | actually happens very late in the day.

00:23:33.340 | So we have this trough of activity

00:23:36.620 | and body temperature is lowest right before waking.

00:23:39.720 | Then as we wake up, our body temperature goes up

00:23:41.980 | and into the afternoon, it continues to go up, up, up, up,

00:23:44.340 | and then it tends to fall in the evening

00:23:46.500 | and towards bedtime.

00:23:48.180 | But there's a brief blip of release of peptides

00:23:53.000 | and other substances from the sleep centers in the brain

00:23:56.980 | that signals the peak of alertness and wakefulness

00:23:59.260 | about an hour before bedtime.

00:24:02.160 | Now that's often the time when people start stressing

00:24:05.060 | about the fact that they have something to do the next day

00:24:06.900 | and they worry about not being able to sleep

00:24:08.420 | and it can cascade into a whole set of things.

00:24:10.440 | I anticipate a peak in alertness and activity

00:24:15.200 | and I don't worry about it.

00:24:16.780 | I use that perhaps to get organized for the next day.

00:24:19.020 | But basically I just go through,

00:24:20.900 | if I'm going to do anything,

00:24:21.780 | it's going to be very mundane tasks like cleaning

00:24:23.820 | or things that require almost zero effort.

00:24:26.500 | And that probably speaks to my cleaning abilities too.

00:24:29.500 | I tend to go to sleep somewhere around 10, 30, 11.

00:24:31.540 | And if all goes well, I stay asleep for four or five hours.

00:24:35.620 | Typically it's three or four and then I wake up.

00:24:37.820 | What it probably reflects is that the real time,

00:24:42.340 | meaning the time that I should go to sleep

00:24:44.440 | is probably closer to eight o'clock.

00:24:46.060 | The word midnight was literally supposed to mean midnight.

00:24:49.380 | We were meant to go to sleep and wake up

00:24:52.200 | with the setting and arising of the sun.

00:24:54.100 | So I think that's the natural pattern

00:24:55.740 | and we've just deviated from it with artificial lights.

00:24:58.180 | So waking up at 3 a.m. or 4 a.m.

00:25:00.220 | doesn't necessarily mean

00:25:01.540 | that there's something screwed up about you.

00:25:03.340 | What it likely means is that you were supposed

00:25:04.980 | to go to bed much earlier.

00:25:06.260 | And because of this asymmetry

00:25:07.740 | in the autonomic nervous system,

00:25:09.040 | where it's much easier for us to push

00:25:11.960 | and to delay our sleep time

00:25:13.740 | than it is to accelerate our wake up time.

00:25:16.140 | In other words, it's easier to stay up

00:25:18.220 | and hang out at the party,

00:25:19.300 | even if you don't want to be there,

00:25:20.340 | than it is to wake up when you're exhausted

00:25:22.240 | and you're fast asleep.

00:25:23.400 | Most people are pushing through

00:25:26.620 | into the late hours of the evening and night

00:25:28.860 | and going to bed much later

00:25:29.940 | than they naturally would want to.

00:25:31.760 | And so I personally don't want to go to bed at 8 p.m.

00:25:34.540 | A lot of good things happen between 8 p.m. and 11 p.m.

00:25:39.340 | And so I want to enjoy those

00:25:41.040 | and I push through the evening hours.

00:25:43.520 | But as a consequence, I'm running out of melatonin.

00:25:46.340 | My melatonin release is basically subsided

00:25:49.280 | by about 3 or 4 a.m.

00:25:50.340 | And so it makes sense that I would wake up.

00:25:52.700 | If I wake up in the middle of the night

00:25:53.940 | and I'm anxious for whatever reason,

00:25:55.520 | and my mind is looping, I have a couple rules.

00:25:58.100 | One is I don't trust anything I think about

00:26:01.700 | when I wake up in the middle of the night, any of it.

00:26:03.700 | There's just nothing either for me terribly creative

00:26:07.020 | or worth linear implementation at that time.

00:26:10.020 | But one thing that has been very helpful

00:26:12.100 | is to sometimes do one of these

00:26:13.840 | non-sleep deep rest protocols

00:26:15.580 | as a way to go back into sleep.

00:26:17.620 | Those for me have been very useful

00:26:20.020 | at helping me turn off kind of looping thinking

00:26:22.900 | in the middle of the night and fall back asleep.

00:26:25.020 | In reviewing my schedule for you,

00:26:27.840 | just as a context for how to implement

00:26:29.980 | certain types of tools for optimizing learning,

00:26:33.340 | realize that it gives the impression

00:26:35.140 | that there's a 90 minute bout

00:26:36.500 | of learning and work in the morning,

00:26:38.180 | and then a 90 minute bout

00:26:39.660 | of creative type work in the afternoon, and that's it.

00:26:42.380 | There are a lot of hours in between, of course,

00:26:44.100 | and I just want to be very clear.

00:26:45.860 | Those hours for me are occupied by pretty,

00:26:48.420 | not mundane tasks, but things that are kind of random.

00:26:52.540 | Those are things like email or attending to Zoom meetings

00:26:55.700 | or meeting with colleagues and students

00:26:58.380 | and things of that sort.

00:27:00.020 | I mentioned those two 90 minute bouts

00:27:01.860 | because those are the two 90 minute bouts

00:27:03.800 | where I'm trying to expand on the mental capacities

00:27:07.520 | that I already have.

00:27:08.880 | They're really where I'm trying to stretch

00:27:10.520 | and grow what I'm able to do

00:27:12.080 | on a regular basis reflexively.

00:27:13.840 | And so for many of you out there who are in school

00:27:16.120 | or have family demands or other demands,

00:27:18.380 | the key is to slot in those brain optimization segments

00:27:21.800 | of about 90 minutes, one or two, or maybe more per day.

00:27:25.400 | You're trying to slot those in wherever you can

00:27:27.680 | amidst your other obligations

00:27:30.360 | and things that you need to do.

00:27:31.960 | But you want to do that in an intelligent way

00:27:34.560 | that's anchored to your biology,

00:27:36.480 | and then you want to do a number of things,

00:27:37.920 | which I've talked about today,

00:27:39.000 | in order to optimize those sessions

00:27:40.960 | to get the most out of them.

00:27:42.560 | I think the way to look at any tool to modulate

00:27:46.800 | or measure the nervous system is ask whether or not

00:27:49.660 | it's going to move you up or down

00:27:52.280 | the state of autonomic arousal,

00:27:54.080 | whether or not it's gonna make you more alert or more calm,

00:27:56.500 | more focused or less focused.

00:27:58.080 | That's kind of the two axes here

00:27:59.800 | is that we need to think about.

00:28:01.360 | I think the subjective reading of whether or not one

00:28:05.120 | is alert or calm and whether or not that alertness

00:28:09.080 | or calmness matches the goal

00:28:11.320 | or the thing that we're trying to achieve

00:28:13.080 | in terms of learning, including sleep,

00:28:15.340 | is the most valuable internal tool and recognition

00:28:19.960 | that we can all have.

00:28:20.840 | But ultimately it's about tailoring that alertness

00:28:23.920 | and calmness to the specific types of learning

00:28:26.240 | and activities that you are going to do and perform.

00:28:29.160 | And it's reciprocal, meaning some of those activities

00:28:32.760 | like exercise early in the day will increase

00:28:34.960 | your level of autonomic arousal and alertness.

00:28:37.680 | Certain foods will tend to wake you up.

00:28:40.520 | Certain foods will tend to make you more sleepy.

00:28:42.560 | And the volume of food and the timing of food

00:28:44.960 | is a factor also.

00:28:46.160 | So it's a huge parameter space.

00:28:47.940 | It's a huge set of variables that impacts

00:28:50.120 | whether or not we're feeling well, performing well,

00:28:52.120 | learning great or not learning great.

00:28:54.280 | And the key thing is to become an observer

00:28:57.340 | of your own system and what works for you.

00:28:59.740 | And to recognize that there are two bins of tools

00:29:03.120 | for optimizing learning and brain performance.

00:29:06.360 | One are tools that are really anchored

00:29:08.620 | in biological mechanism.

00:29:09.940 | And we are certain of what those are.

00:29:11.840 | I've talked about some of those.

00:29:12.840 | The other, the more subjective tools.

00:29:14.360 | For some of you, visualization might work terrifically well.

00:29:18.280 | For some of you, one song might really wake you up

00:29:20.800 | because of the associations you have with it.

00:29:22.920 | And for me, I might just, you know,

00:29:24.760 | it might repel me from the room 'cause I don't like it

00:29:27.280 | or it might put me to sleep.

00:29:29.200 | But of course, volume is kind of a universal.

00:29:31.960 | Loud music tends to wake people up.

00:29:33.560 | Soft music doesn't tend to wake them up quite as much.

00:29:36.640 | So part of today is really getting you to think about

00:29:40.320 | in a scientific way, in a structured way

00:29:42.840 | about the non-negotiable elements,

00:29:46.780 | which are that you're going to have a period

00:29:48.560 | of every 24-hour cycle when you tend to be more awake

00:29:50.840 | and a period when you tend to be more asleep

00:29:52.520 | and how to leverage those

00:29:53.780 | so you're not fighting an uphill battle to wake up

00:29:56.240 | when you actually would want to be and should be sleepy

00:30:00.640 | and not trying to go to sleep

00:30:02.600 | when you are naturally, you know, going to be most awake.

00:30:06.200 | So a lot of it is really anchors back

00:30:07.880 | to those core mechanisms of biology.

00:30:09.840 | And then you start layering on the different protocols

00:30:11.880 | of food and supplementation, et cetera.

00:30:14.080 | And I think it's important to recognize

00:30:15.740 | that some people are just more go, go, go, go, go and no go.

00:30:20.100 | And some people are just calmer

00:30:23.360 | and have a harder time getting into action in an activity.

00:30:26.000 | It's just the way that we're wired.

00:30:27.560 | Some of us have autonomic nervous systems

00:30:29.240 | that are more geared towards parasympathetic calm states.

00:30:32.320 | And so there are people like that too.

00:30:34.720 | And so you have to know where you are

00:30:36.400 | and what particular goals you're trying to pursue.

00:30:39.280 | As always, thank you for your interest in science.

00:30:41.760 | [upbeat music]

00:30:44.340 | (upbeat music)

Optimize Your Learning & Creativity With Science-Based Tools | Huberman Lab Essentials

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