Huberman Lab
Essentials: Optimize Your Learning & Creativity With Science-Based Tools
Thu, 02 Jan 2025
In this Huberman Lab Essentials episode, I explain how to boost creativity and enhance learning by aligning with the body’s natural rhythms and strategically using protocols to optimize states of alertness or calm. I outline tools to improve focus and learning, including when to use specific techniques based on the time of day and how to adjust focus and tasks according to energy levels. I also discuss the two essential components of creativity and explain how to structure productive, creative work sessions. By combining biological tools — such as exercise, meals, hydration, and sleep — with subjective methods like music, I demonstrate how to tailor your approach to align with your unique biological rhythms and individual goals, fostering greater creativity and learning. Huberman Lab Essentials are short episodes, approximately 30 minutes, focused on key scientific and protocol takeaways from past Huberman Lab episodes. Essentials are released every Thursday, while full-length episodes continue to be released every Monday. Read the full show notes at hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman David: https://davidprotein.com/huberman LMNT: https://drinklmnt.com/huberman Timestamps 00:00:00 Huberman Lab Essentials; Neuroplasticity 00:01:50 Types of Neuroplasticity 00:03:46 Autonomic Arousal, Sleep 00:05:06 Sponsor: AG1 00:06:34 Waking Up, Tools: Sunlight, Caffeine Delay, Hydration 00:09:39 Alertness, Morning & Work Bout 00:10:05 Dopamine & Learning; Tool: Music & Alertness 00:14:24 Sponsor: David 00:15:40 Tool: Exercise Early; Morning Work 00:16:58 Meals; Afternoon Dip & Work, Tools: Hydration, Non-Sleep Deep Rest (NSDR) 00:19:21 Creativity: Exploring vs. Implementation 00:21:44 Psychedelics, Sensory Blending; Tool: Timing Creative Work 00:23:50 Sponsor: LMNT 00:24:07 Tool: Evening Sunlight; Lights, Evening Meal & Carbohydrates 00:26:09 Natural Sleep/Wake Schedule; Tools: Anticipate Evening Alertness; NSDR 00:30:25 Work & Daily Schedule, Tool: 90-Minute Work Bouts 00:31:43 Optimize Biological Rhythms & Tools for Creativity & Learning Disclaimer & Disclosures Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is neuroplasticity and why is it important?
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. My name is Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Let's talk about neuroplasticity. More specifically, let's talk about how we can optimize our brains.
Neuroplasticity is this incredible feature of our nervous system that allows it to change itself even in ways that we consciously decide. Now that's an incredible property. Our liver can't decide to just change itself. Our spleen can't decide to just change itself through conscious thought or through feedback from another person.
The cells in those tissues can make changes, sure, but it's our nervous system that harbors this incredible ability to direct its own changes in ways that we believe or we're told will serve us better. Today's podcast is really directed toward answering your most common questions and the bigger theme of how does one go about optimizing their brain or even think about optimizing the brain?
What is this thing that we're calling optimizing the brain? In doing so, I'm also going to share some of my typical routines and tools. I share them because many of you have asked for very concrete examples of what I do and when. And so I want to open up the discussion today by emphasizing something that's fundamentally important, which is that plasticity is not the goal.
The goal is to figure out how to access plasticity and then to direct that plasticity toward particular goals or changes that you would like to achieve. Let's start by talking about the different systems within the nervous system that are available for plasticity. And in doing so, I'll frame them in the context of what I do on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, and on a yearly basis.
First of all, there are several forms of plasticity. The best way to think about it is in terms of short-term, medium-term and long-term plasticity. Short-term plasticity is any kind of shift that you want to achieve in the moment or in the day, but that you don't necessarily want to hold onto forever. And I'd say, well, what kinds of things are those?
Well, for instance, short-term plasticity might be you wake up earlier than you would like to catch a flight. You're not feeling particularly alert and you want to use a protocol or you decide to use a protocol, which could be coffee, or it could be a certain form of breathing, or it could be some other tool to become more alert at a time of day when normally you aren't that alert.
But your expectation is that when you return home, you will discard with that the need to do that at 5.30 a.m. because you'll be asleep at 5.30 a.m. So there's short-term plasticity, behavioral plasticity. Then there's medium-term plasticity.
For instance, if you go on vacation to Costa Rica and you don't know your way around Costa Rica, you want to learn the different town and the routes there, but you don't have any intention of going back, it's just medium-term. You want to just program it in for sake of your time there, and then you want to discard it.
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Chapter 2: What are the types of neuroplasticity?
as well as leave those adenosine receptors unoccupied so that I can then use the caffeine to get a natural lift in alertness and focus two hours later, as opposed to using it just to wake myself up out of sleepiness. I also make sure I hydrate first thing in the morning.
There's plenty of data now showing that even a slight increase in dehydration, meaning just when you're lacking water, can make people have headaches. It can provide some additional photophobia for those of you that are migraine prone. bright light can trigger migraines.
That's no surprise to those of you that get headaches and migraines, but dehydration can compound the vulnerability to migraine and headaches. So I drink water, I drink black coffee, or I drink mate, which is just a, because I have Argentine lineage, which is just a high caffeine drink first thing in the morning, but I delay it until two hours after I wake up.
And that's because I want the circuits between my eye and my circadian clock and my adrenals to be functioning in a particular way so that then later the caffeine is an addition, it adds more alertness. Now, this is a discussion about how to optimize your brain. Many people who wake up quickly and just naturally feel like bouncing out of bed, I envy these people,
they will do just fine by going into a learning bout or taking care of whatever it is that they need to take care of. Sometimes that's kind of more mundane tasks like email and whatnot. Here's more or less a rule about how the brain functions vis-a-vis focus, learning, and creativity. Generally, states of high alertness when we're very, very alert are great for strategy implementation.
The sort of thing that we are very good at when we're well rested and we're focused and our autonomic arousal or our alertness rather as it is at a high level. If you are somebody who is hitting that alertness phase of your day very early, right after you wake up, that's a great time to move right into things that
at least the research says, you already know, have the strategy and you just want to implement the strategy. But for me, for instance, I get up, I'm not terribly alert first thing. And so I try and just get my brain and my thoughts organized. It's not a time for me to be responding in a very linear fashion to emails or carrying out calculations. That comes about two hours later.
And I think many people out there will relate, mid-morning is when many people tend to achieve their peak in alertness and focus. Now, Many times I get the question, and what I'm about to say is directly related to the hundreds of questions I got about this. Should I use background music in order to learn?
So as a rule of thumb, if you're feeling too keyed up, then silence and quiet is going to be helpful. In fact, if you're very keyed up, a particular circuit related to the basal ganglia starts getting triggered more easily. It's called the go-no-go circuit.
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Chapter 3: How can we optimize our brain for learning?
There are a bunch of different great tasting flavors of Element. I like the watermelon. I like the raspberry. I like the citrus. Basically, I like all of them. If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com slash Huberman to claim an Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement spelled L-M-N-T.
Now that gets us more to the kind of late afternoon evening. Now I am, as I've mentioned before, I'm a proponent of getting sunlight in the evening as well. By getting light in the evening, it accomplishes two things for me. First of all, it makes sure that I don't get up too early, that I'm not waking up at three or four in the morning because it's going to shift my clock.
It's going to delay it a little bit. And so this is really important. If you want to keep your schedule on a normal routine,
on a regular 24 hour cycle and not have your circadian rhythms of sleep and wakefulness drifting all over the place, and you want some predictability to how your mind is going to work in order to optimize learning and performance, well, then you need to get morning light and evening light. The morning light is going to advance my clock, make my system want to get up earlier.
And the evening light is going to delay my clock a little bit so that on average, it kind of bookends my circadian mechanisms. And I'll basically want to go to sleep at more or less the same time each night and wake up. more or less at the same time each morning. That's how it works. And that's a hardwired mechanism. That's not some subjective thing that I tell myself.
That's a hardwired mechanism. So that gets us to the evening. And generally in the evening, I'll get that light by going outside and then I'll start to dim them for the evening. Because as I've mentioned many times before, and I'm not going to belabor the point, you want to minimize your light exposure, especially overhead bright light exposure in the evening from about 10 PM to 4 AM.
So for me, it screens off, it's dim lights, and that's what favors falling asleep in a good night's sleep for me. since we were talking about food earlier, I'll just revisit a little bit of what I said before. My evening meal tends to be more carbohydrate rich. So I'm not one of these people that's keto or high meat only or anything like that.
Remember, fasting in low carbohydrate states facilitate alertness. Carbohydrate rich foods facilitate calmness and sleepiness. They stimulate the release of tryptophan and the transition to sleep. I tend to achieve that state using carbohydrates and it also replenishes glycogen.
The next piece of scientific data that I'm going to describe is a very important piece of scientific data for sake of understanding how to optimize your brain and access sleep. It also can help avoid a lot of anxiety issues. The peak output of the circadian clock for wakefulness, in other words, the peak of our wakefulness and the suppression of the sleep signal
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