Rick Rubin's Daily Routine | Rick Rubin & Dr. Andrew Huberman
00:00:00.000 | - There were a lot of questions about your daily routine.
00:00:05.000 | People love this, the morning routine, the daily routine.
00:00:09.440 | And while I have to believe that everybody's necessary
00:00:14.240 | routine is quite different from the next,
00:00:17.280 | if you wouldn't mind just giving us a sense of like the
00:00:20.080 | first couple hours of your day,
00:00:21.380 | what that typically looks like when you're like not
00:00:24.360 | traveling and you're settled into a place.
00:00:27.880 | - It's different depending on the place that I'm in,
00:00:30.320 | but typically it involves waking up,
00:00:34.040 | going out into the sun as naked as possible
00:00:36.760 | to start the day.
00:00:37.800 | I try to take slowly,
00:00:42.600 | wake up slowly.
00:00:45.000 | And probably within an hour of that,
00:00:51.360 | I'll leave the house and go for as long of a beach walk as
00:00:55.000 | possible. Or if I'm in a place where there's a gym several
00:00:58.120 | days a week, I'll go to the gym instead.
00:01:00.440 | But some, I'll do some activity.
00:01:03.300 | I would say about an hour after waking up.
00:01:05.360 | Sometimes it's an hour and a half.
00:01:07.120 | Sometimes it's less depending on the place I'm at.
00:01:10.240 | I also might do stretching before I go on the walk and do
00:01:13.880 | just several stretches on yoga mats on the floor
00:01:17.560 | or with foam rollers or balls or some different things.
00:01:24.320 | I don't start my day until those things are out of the way.
00:01:29.320 | I try to avoid any work-related anything.
00:01:34.840 | Now that said, if a thought comes up that I'm excited about,
00:01:39.560 | I'll note it. I won't avoid thoughts,
00:01:43.060 | but I tend not to engage in any work until probably 11
00:01:50.480 | o'clock, 11 a.m. would be the soonest.
00:01:53.400 | And in some days, not until one o'clock.
00:01:56.200 | And then I do focused work until maybe six,
00:02:01.200 | and then I spend the rest of the night
00:02:07.040 | trying to wind down out of work mode.
00:02:14.200 | - So 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. are really the peak,
00:02:18.360 | quote-unquote work hours. - Yeah, could be 11 too.
00:02:21.000 | Like today we started here at 11 and that felt like,
00:02:23.520 | I felt like I'd be good by 11.
00:02:25.360 | And I already did my morning walk.
00:02:27.640 | I had the argument on the beach.
00:02:29.560 | I was in the sun. I was in the hot tub.
00:02:32.080 | I had a whole morning already.
00:02:34.300 | - And then what does your evening wind down look like
00:02:39.120 | in terms of the space that you're in
00:02:41.640 | or trying to create and your internal landscape?
00:02:44.880 | - Well, it's only red light.
00:02:48.100 | I'm usually wearing, from the time the sun sets,
00:02:50.900 | I'm wearing red glasses.
00:02:52.640 | I'm in a space with only red light.
00:02:54.580 | I'm 99% of the time home with my family and we talk.
00:03:00.740 | I might watch a wrestling or a documentary
00:03:11.060 | with red glasses on.
00:03:15.100 | We eat dinner together or we eat dinner in shifts,
00:03:18.980 | depending on how it's working, but we're all together.
00:03:21.860 | And I find something to occupy my mind
00:03:26.980 | that gets me out of the workday.
00:03:30.060 | That said, sometimes the ideas still flow
00:03:32.540 | and I'll note them.
00:03:33.980 | But I avoid any kind of a work phone call
00:03:38.980 | or anything that's stimulating
00:03:42.840 | or that will get me thinking about it.
00:03:45.300 | I aim for sunset.
00:03:51.020 | And then I'm usually in bed.
00:03:52.920 | I'm usually in bed by 10
00:03:56.020 | and fall asleep within 15 minutes.
00:04:01.680 | - Your relationship to light is fascinating.
00:04:04.980 | The sunlight piece makes a lot of sense
00:04:07.180 | and will make sense to the listeners of this podcast.
00:04:09.620 | We haven't done too many episodes,
00:04:11.540 | but we will do more that covers
00:04:14.300 | the trying to avoid bright light exposure in the evening.
00:04:18.820 | You're wearing the red lens glasses now,
00:04:22.680 | even though it's the middle of the day,
00:04:23.660 | that's because we've got these bright lights
00:04:25.080 | around us, correct?
00:04:26.260 | And have you found that limiting
00:04:29.440 | your bright artificial light exposure in the evening
00:04:31.500 | has benefited you and in what ways?
00:04:33.140 | - Absolutely.
00:04:33.980 | And once you've done it,
00:04:35.320 | once you've changed and avoid like looking at screens
00:04:39.560 | or my phone turns red at night,
00:04:41.920 | when I see someone else's phone,
00:04:45.040 | if someone comes to visit
00:04:46.560 | and their phone lights up at night,
00:04:52.040 | it's blinding and it's so disturbing.
00:04:57.040 | And for them, that's normal.
00:04:59.200 | They're in this heightened, blown out place all the time.
00:05:04.200 | I'm staying at neutral.
00:05:05.580 | I'm staying at the more natural,
00:05:09.860 | how the world would be if man didn't create
00:05:14.980 | all of these loud things,
00:05:19.060 | loud devices.
00:05:23.380 | - Yeah, I've switched my phone thanks to your input.
00:05:25.820 | And we will have released a clip on this
00:05:28.700 | by the time this episode airs on the triple click approach
00:05:32.760 | to the phone that you can put in very easily,
00:05:35.560 | to allow it to go from regular screen to red screen
00:05:38.860 | at night so that you don't have to go into the settings
00:05:41.340 | each time you just triple click.
00:05:42.940 | We'll provide a link to that explanation.
00:05:45.660 | And Rick taught me that when I was over in Italy,
00:05:49.020 | everyone in his home turned to me and said,
00:05:52.140 | "Wait, your phone is so bright.
00:05:53.380 | "You got to do the red light thing."
00:05:54.460 | I said, "I don't know how."
00:05:55.540 | And he taught me that.
00:05:57.140 | So it's a very useful trick.
00:05:59.180 | - Have you noticed a difference since looking at?
00:06:01.220 | - Huge positive difference.
00:06:03.140 | I sleep better.
00:06:04.760 | There are great data now.
00:06:05.720 | 'Cause of course I go then find the data that,
00:06:08.000 | for shift workers, people that have to be up at night
00:06:09.960 | working, if they put them under red light,
00:06:12.040 | the amount of cortisol at that time is suppressed,
00:06:16.320 | which is great as compared to when they're under bright
00:06:19.480 | artificial lights without red lens glasses,
00:06:23.480 | or if they're in red lights, it's far more beneficial,
00:06:26.640 | less cortisol.
00:06:27.460 | You want cortisol high early in the day,
00:06:28.840 | viewing sunlight early in the day,
00:06:30.840 | increase it by at least 50%.
00:06:32.680 | And you want it to taper off and on and on.
00:06:36.700 | I heard something recently,
00:06:38.980 | which is going to make a lot of sense.
00:06:40.740 | One thing that's happened in the last 30 years,
00:06:42.740 | which may at least partially explain the obesity crisis,
00:06:45.880 | is that calories, which are depleted of nutrients,
00:06:50.880 | micronutrients are very cheap now.
00:06:54.600 | See, they're very cheap to get calories,
00:06:58.960 | but they aren't nutritious calories.
00:07:01.020 | In addition, there's been a change in lighting technology
00:07:04.100 | so that blue light photons are very cheap.
00:07:07.800 | Like when I was a kid, my parents would say,
00:07:09.700 | turn off the lights, it's costing us all this money.
00:07:11.860 | Now it's very cheap to keep the lights on in a home.
00:07:15.100 | The heat is a different story, but with respect.
00:07:17.500 | So we have a lot of cheap photons.
00:07:19.500 | So I think of blue light as cheap photons,
00:07:23.420 | not the good for you photons, not nourishing photons.
00:07:26.460 | - That's correct.
00:07:27.300 | - And consuming calories too often
00:07:28.680 | or at the wrong times of day, we know is bad for you,
00:07:30.580 | consuming photons in the wrong form
00:07:33.060 | at the wrong time of day, bad for you.
00:07:34.560 | And I think those two things combined,
00:07:36.360 | plus all the downstream negative cascades
00:07:39.320 | can largely explain the obesity
00:07:40.960 | and in some sense, mental health crisis.
00:07:43.000 | - Interesting.
00:07:43.840 | - Yeah, so just there, I editorialized again.
00:07:46.260 | I realized that we're trying to shift the ratio
00:07:47.980 | to more Rick, less Andrew, but-
00:07:49.640 | - He can't help himself.
00:07:50.480 | - He can't help himself.
00:07:51.720 | And Rick indulges me, so.
00:07:53.440 | Actually, there were a number of questions in here
00:07:54.880 | that asked me, how has Rick helped you?
00:07:56.940 | And I'm refraining from answering those
00:07:59.080 | 'cause people want your answers for them.
00:08:00.900 | But I do all the things that Rick's referring to.
00:08:03.540 | I'm not wearing red lens glasses now,
00:08:05.140 | but I have changed a lot of my health practices
00:08:07.940 | and or sought out science to test
00:08:11.660 | whether or not some of the things
00:08:12.660 | that you've been doing for a while makes sense.
00:08:14.380 | And indeed, in every case, they've made sense.
00:08:16.220 | I'm not just saying that because you're here,
00:08:18.020 | but you and I do a lot of the same things.
00:08:19.980 | - Yeah, we're interested.
00:08:21.420 | And if it didn't work,
00:08:22.600 | we'd probably stop doing it eventually.
00:08:24.940 | - Right.
00:08:25.780 | - It's like we're testing, Rick.
00:08:26.780 | - Right, and I do believe that what starts out as crazy,
00:08:30.400 | like Mike Mencer's stuff of low volume weight training
00:08:34.320 | with heavy weights,
00:08:35.160 | it works so much better than the high volumes.
00:08:37.040 | All that stuff is being shown to be true
00:08:38.960 | in these peer reviewed trials.
00:08:40.440 | So, you know, that's the nature of science.
00:08:42.960 | It often comes, science often follows the practitioners
00:08:47.760 | by many decades.
00:08:49.000 | You know, it doesn't get there first
00:08:52.120 | because it's a slower, more iterative process.
00:08:55.000 | But some people need to see those clinical trials
00:08:57.220 | to feel comfortable doing something.
00:08:58.780 | I think the creative process is uniquely separated
00:09:01.980 | from academic science and academic scholarship
00:09:05.820 | in a way that I think has really benefited it.
00:09:07.660 | I mean, can you imagine if the ghetto boys
00:09:09.420 | had to get a degree in music theory
00:09:11.660 | in order to do what they do?
00:09:12.940 | - They wouldn't be the ghetto boys.
00:09:14.020 | - Right, or Slayer.
00:09:15.420 | - They would not be Slayer.
00:09:16.380 | - Yeah, or Public Enemy.
00:09:19.060 | - Yes.
00:09:19.900 | - Or Adele.
00:09:20.720 | - Yes.
00:09:21.560 | - Or Eminem, right?
00:09:22.380 | It's almost by virtue of the fact
00:09:24.020 | that there is no degree for that, per se,
00:09:27.220 | that allowed them to do what they did, right?
00:09:30.500 | Yeah.
00:09:31.660 | - Absolutely.
00:09:33.120 | (upbeat music)
00:09:36.540 | (upbeat music)
00:09:39.120 | (upbeat music)