00:00:00 · Andrew Huberman, Daisy Wolf
[00:00:00] S0: If you take yourself and your work really seriously, you need to organize your day that way. [00:00:04] S1: If you had to recommend three things to people to live a healthier life, what would those be? [00:00:09] S0: Morning bright light ideally from sunlight. Do the weight training protocol I talked about earlier. It will completely change your life. Then And the last one would be figure out some way to make the sleep you can get the highest quality sleep. [00:00:22] S1: Did you take any supplements or medications yesterday? Loads. What's something you recommend to others are not that good at following yourself? [00:00:31] S0: I think the social media thing might be the biggest one. I recently moved x and Instagram to a separate phone, and then I keep that phone in a lockbox. You can't actually code out of it. [00:00:43] S1: We have a lot of founders who listen to our podcast. If you had to narrow it down to three pieces of evidence based habits for cognitive performance, what would those things be?
00:00:43 · Daisy Wolf, Erik Torenberg, Andrew Huberman
[00:00:43] S1: We have a lot of founders who listen to our podcast. If you had to narrow it down to three pieces of evidence based habits for cognitive performance, what would those things be? [00:00:55] S2: If Andrew Huberman could recommend only three things for better health, they'd be morning light, resistance training, and better sleep. In this episode, Daisy sits down with Andrew to find out what his own routine actually looks like, from the moment he wakes up, through exercise, food, supplements, work, and sleep. They also talk about where he struggles, including putting his social media phone in a lockbox, and why health protocols should support your life rather than take it over. And for founders, Andrew explains why knowing and protecting the hours when your brain does its best work may be one of the most important things you can do. [00:01:31] S1: Doctor. Huberman, welcome to the a16z Show. [00:01:34] S0: Thank you. Delighted to be here. [00:01:36] S1: Your podcast launched in January '21 and has changed the way millions of people live their lives. This morning, I got my son. I delayed my caffeine a little bit, probably not as much as you would like. And you famously got our firm's founder, Mark Andreessen, to stop drinking alcohol. I'm not there yet. But I'm wondering if looking back, you remember a moment where you were like, holy cow. People aren't just listening to me. They're like changing their daily habits because of what I say.
00:01:36 · Daisy Wolf, Andrew Huberman
[00:01:36] S1: Your podcast launched in January '21 and has changed the way millions of people live their lives. This morning, I got my son. I delayed my caffeine a little bit, probably not as much as you would like. And you famously got our firm's founder, Mark Andreessen, to stop drinking alcohol. I'm not there yet. But I'm wondering if looking back, you remember a moment where you were like, holy cow. People aren't just listening to me. They're like changing their daily habits because of what I say. [00:02:06] S0: Well, it's been a wild ride. I didn't anticipate any of it, but I'm delighted that people are doing things for their health. And I don't know whether or not to accept by saying thank you or apologize that Mark stopped drinking. I know he enjoyed the occasional drink. [00:02:21] S1: Want He's grumpy about it.
00:02:22 · Andrew Huberman
[00:02:22] S0: Yeah. Well, I wanna be very clear. The data say zero is better than any. Two per week is probably the upper limit for an adult nonalcoholic, and I don't think Mark is alcoholic. He could, in theory, have two drinks. But when I suggested that, he goes, no. He kind of did what many people do, which is sometimes none is easier to stick to than some. And I do think that alcohol can be enjoyed, and if one wants to do that, just to think about doing some of the other things that can be beneficial. But to directly answer your question, I didn't anticipate any of it. As I said, I'm delighted people are taking measures for their health. And at some point, realized, woah, people are starting to do things, and I couldn't tell whether or not it was because of the science that we were presenting, or because the protocols I know work extremely well. The nice thing is I don't take credit for the actual protocols because in most cases, with rare exception, like some things related to stress mitigation, in most cases, the protocols come from other people's science. So in looking at the fields of science and health education, most people who've been out there have been talking about their own science. So doing it this way affords me a certain amount of freedom, have to be careful too, because I'm talking about other people's science often. But I love to learn, and I love to teach. So for me, nothing makes me happier than reading papers and sharing what I think is interesting information, and trying things out and seeing what works. And the people that have been close to me will tell you that for my whole life, when I've learned something I thought was cool, I'm out there teaching about it, whether people wanna listen or not. So they just kinda stuck a microphone in front of me, and here I am.
00:04:05 · Daisy Wolf, Andrew Huberman
[00:04:05] S1: Amazing. You've been very transparent about your daily protocols. Like I mentioned, sunning your eyes, delaying caffeine, but also rotating exercise by day, cold punch in sauna, doing yoga nidra, taking a variety of supplements. But maybe you can just walk us through like yesterday. I'm curious. What did you eat? What exercise did you do? What supplements did you take? What of your advice did you follow and what did you not? [00:04:30] S0: A single day. So I wake up, I use the bathroom like everybody else. I [00:04:35] S1: Do you get on your phone while you're in bed?
00:04:36 · Andrew Huberman
[00:04:36] S0: No. Okay. No. Phones Very disappointing. Phones out of the room while I sleep. If I didn't love, love, love my eight sleep so much, I would figure out a way to have no WiFi on in the house at all at night. Interesting. So I woke up, I'm groggy like everybody else, my mind starts going places, you know, it's discombobulated on waking. I don't think I've ever woken up and just done a big yawn, and been like, life is so good. I wake up and I think, I have this to do, I have that to do. So the first thing that I do is get up, use the restroom, and then I go do... These days, I do a five minute meditation. I set my phone for five minutes, and I do a standard meditation of just breathing. This I think is an extremely important practice that I haven't talked a lot about. If for no other reason, then it gets you very aware of what the inputs to your brain are about to be, and it also makes you very aware of how chaotic it can be in our minds. And after talking to a number of people who worked on the science of meditation, in particular folks out at University of Wisconsin who've done a bunch of the brain imaging, it's very clear that the real benefits of meditation come from not quieting the mind, but from being able to just observe how chaotic it is, and see that as something slightly separate from the quote unquote observer. And we have circuits that we think underlie the observer versus all the monkey mind stuff, as they call it. But I always thought that meditation was about achieving a really peaceful state. Turns out, it's about observing the chaos. And so the best way I can describe this practice in terms of its utility is just as with exercise, if you get a burn in your legs or the final repetitions of lifting weights, that's what triggers the adaptation. With meditation in terms of consciousness, and focus, and awareness, I think the lactate of the mind, as it was described to me, so I didn't come up with that phrase, the lactate of the mind is to be able to experience that chaos, observe it, and not do anything with it. That's what allows you to move into your day with, I think, more awareness Mhmm. Of what is a meaningful thought or reaction and what isn't. Okay. So I do that five minutes. These days, I find the buzzer goes off without me going, when is this over? When is this over? And then I get sunlight in my eyes.