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Andrew Huberman
Feb 8, 2021
22 protocols
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How to Focus to Change Your Brain
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Diet
Caffeine
“Most people accomplish this through a cup of coffee and a good night's sleep.”
45:27 ·
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In this episode
22 protocols
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45:27
Caffeine
Diet
“Most people accomplish this through a cup of coffee and a good night's sleep.”
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45:30
Master Sleep Schedule
Behaviors
“So I will say you should master your sleep schedule and you should figure out how much sleep you need in order to achieve alertness when you sit down to learn. If your sleep is not where you would like it to be, your ability to engage in deliberate focused alertness is in direct proportion to how well you are sleeping on a regular basis.”
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51:55
Alpha-GPC or Choline
Supplements
“Things that increase acetylcholine besides nicotine or Nicorette, the nicotine could come from a variety of sources, are things like alpha-GPC or choline. There are a number of these things.”
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54:21
Practice Visual Focus
Behaviors
“What's interesting and vitally important to understanding how to access neuroplasticity is that you can use your visual focus and you can increase your visual focus as a way of increasing your mental focus abilities more broadly. So put simply, if you want to improve your ability to focus, practice visual focus.”
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1:02:43
Use Corrective Lenses During Focus Practice
Tools
“You of course would want to use those. You don't want to take those off and use a blurry image.”
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1:03:45
Reduce Blinking During Visual Focus
Behaviors
“But if you can keep focus by blinking less, and by focusing your eyes to a particular location... the more that you can do this, the more that you can maintain a kind of a cone or a tunnel of mental focus.”
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1:04:56
Hydration
Behaviors
“Certainly want to be well hydrated. That increases, actually will increase alertness.”
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1:05:02
Use a Full Bladder to Increase Alertness
Behaviors
“Having a very full bladder will increase alertness, although you don't want your alertness to be so high due to that all you can think about is the fact that you have to go urinate because that's very distracting.”
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1:05:37
Close Eyes to Improve Auditory Attention
Behaviors
“If somebody is listening very hard... Closing the eyes is one of the best ways to create a cone of auditory attention, and this is what low vision or no vision folks do.”
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1:07:10
Focus on the Specific Thing You Are Trying to Learn
Behaviors
“So you absolutely have to focus on the thing that you're trying to learn. And you will feel some agitation because of the epinephrine in your system. If you're feeling agitation and it's challenging to focus and you're feeling like you're not doing it right, chances are you're doing it right.”
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1:08:06
Limit Phone Use During Focused Work
Behaviors
“Many people, however, have given themselves a low grade ADHD or ADD because of the way that they move through their world. They are looking at their phone a lot of the time.”
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1:12:10
Use 90-Minute Learning Bouts
Behaviors
“The typical learning bout should be about 90 minutes.”
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1:13:09
Continually Re-Anchor Attention
Behaviors
“And that's an important point, which is that attention drifts, but we have to re-anchor it. We have to keep grabbing it back.”
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1:14:01
Use Sleep to Consolidate Learning
Behaviors
“That night and the following nights while you sleep, the neural circuits that were highlighted, if you will, with acetylcholine transmission will strengthen and other ones will be lost... So mastering sleep is key in order to reinforce the learning that occurs.”
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1:14:58
NSDR After Learning
Behaviors
“There's also a way in which you can bypass the need for deep sleep, at least partially, by engaging in what I call non-sleep deep rest, these NSDR protocols... If immediately after... people took a 20-minute non-sleep deep rest protocol... the rates of learning were significantly higher.”
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1:15:30
Brief Nap After Learning
Behaviors
“If immediately after... people took a 20-minute non-sleep deep rest protocol or took a shallow nap... the rates of learning were significantly higher... So you can actually accelerate learning with these NSDR protocols or with brief naps, 90 minutes or less.”
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1:16:42
Use Self-Generated Optic Flow for Recovery After Learning
Behaviors
“A lot of people find that they can recover best from these intense bouts of focused learning by doing some motor activity, where you get into self-generated optic flow.”
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1:17:58
Let the Mind Drift After Focused Effort
Behaviors
“So for many people, letting the mind drift where it's not organized in thought after a period of very deliberate focused effort is the best way to accelerate learning and depth of learning.”
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1:19:10
Use Your Most Alert Time of Day for Learning
Behaviors
“I think a lot of people don't think about when in their 24-hour cycle they're most alert... or just ask yourself, when during the day do you typically tend to be most alert? That will afford you an advantage in learning specific things during that period of time.”
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1:23:01
See a Clinician for Suspected ADD/ADHD
Behaviors
“If you think you have ADD or ADHD, see a clinician.”
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1:23:24
Do Not Try to Focus All Day
Behaviors
“You should also ask yourself whether or not you're trying to focus too much for too long during the day... and none of them are focused all day long.”
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1:24:23
Deliberate Disengagement After Learning
Behaviors
“And then of course, getting some non-sleep deep rest or just deliberate disengagement, such as walking or running or just sitting, eyes closed or eyes open kind of mindlessly, it might seem in a chair, just letting your thoughts move around after a learning bout will accelerate the rate of plasticity.”