Top Highlights from Andrew Huberman

A friend of mine recently recommended Andrew Huberman’s content. Wikipedia describes Andrew Huberman as an “American neuroscientist and tenured associate professor in the department of neurobiology and psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine who has made contributions to the brain development, brain plasticity, and neural regeneration and repair fields.”

Culturally, Andrew Huberman is the host of the Huberman Lab podcast in which he attempts to provide practical advice to people based on research in his fields of excellence.

The purpose of this post is to explain the most highlighted pieces of advice that Andrew Huberman gives. As I am not an expert in his fields, I am not sure how well founded his advice is, my interest in his content stems from positive experiences my friends and I have had experimenting with his advice — nothing more. Personally, I intent to continue experimenting with his advice, take what seems to work and leave what seems to not work.

Here are the top pieces of advice from Andrew Huberman —

Highlight 1: Morning Daylight

Huberman suggests to get daylight in your eyes as early in the morning as possible. Doing this has several benefits —

• Improved mood throughout the day
• Improved energy levels throughout the day
• Improved sleep

Huberman suggests following these guidelines —

• Get the natural light exposure as early in the morning as you can.
• Get at least ten minutes of natural light exposure each morning.
• Get the exposure by being outside without sunglasses. Getting the exposure through a window or through sunglasses simply takes too long.
• If you live in an area that is cloudy/dark try to get more like 30 minutes of natural light exposure in the morning.

Personal Experience

I have followed this advice for several months and have noticed a positive impact on my mood and alertness early in the day. The change has not been significant but it has been noticeable.

Highlight 2: Cold Exposure

Huberman is a big proponent of cold exposure early in the day. He has a lot of content on ice baths and cold showers. According to Huberman cold exposure has the following benefits —

• Improved mood and energy levels throughout the day
• Improved immune system
• Reduce inflammation
• Improve fat burning
• Reduces stress and improves sleep

Huberman suggests following these guidelines —

• Ease into it slowly and do not expose yourself to dangerously cold temperatures.
• A minimum of 11 minutes of cold exposure per week seems to be the magic number required in order to get some of these benefits.
• Get the cold exposure early in the day because after the cold exposure your body will actually warm up and that will help you wake up.
• The 11 minutes of cold exposure per week can be broken up into several chunks of just a few minutes each. So if you took six cold showers per week each two minutes long, you would hit this magic number.
• Huberman suggests that the water be cold enough that its uncomfortable, induces an initial panic and you want to get out. But not cold enough that you feel unsafe. The exact temperature will vary person to person.

Personal Experience

I have not yet experimented with this, but I do intend to give it a try.

Highlight 3: 90 Minute Focus Intervals

Huberman suggests doing deep focus work in 90 minute intervals. The claim is that this is the ideal duration to immerse yourself deeply into a task without getting too mentally fatigued.

Huberman suggests following these guidelines —

• Do deep focus in 90 minute intervals.
• During this time be fully immersed in a hard task without distractions.
• After this focus interval is over give yourself at least 20 minutes of chill time. During chill time let your mind wonder and do something relaxing.

Personal Experience

I actually followed this advice before I heard it from Andrew Huberman. I have found for myself that a 90 to 120 minute coding session is the ideal length of time for an uninterrupted coding session. I have also had highly productive eight hour coding sessions but personally those are far less reproducible than a highly productive 90–120 minute coding session. This upcoming quarter I am going to experiment with doing two 90 minute uninterrupted focused sessions per day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.

Highlight 4: Skip Breakfast

Huberman recommends skipping breakfast and making lunch the first meal of the day. The short term benefit of this is improved focus and long term there are many suggested benefits of this “intermittent fasting.”

Personal Experience

I really have not ate breakfast regularly since I was a child. I never liked breakfast and over a long time I just adapted to really not wanting to eat in the morning. After skipping breakfast for so long, its very hard for me to know if this is a helpful piece of advice or not.

Highlight 5: Delay Caffeine

Huberman recommends delaying caffeine consumption by 90–120 minutes after waking up. The idea of this recommendation is you want to wake up naturally through the process of natural light exposure and natural body warming. If you jump start this process by using caffeine you are short changing your bodies natural rhythm. Huberman is not against caffeine, but recommends simply delaying consumption by 90–120 minutes after waking.

Personal Experience

I do this pretty naturally. I typically have green tea in the morning but I don’t crave it when I first wake up. I typically wait 2–3 hours after waking up to have my first tea. I do not notice any impact of this habit.

Highlight 6: More Light at Day and Less at Night

Huberman recommends turning on more indoor lighting during daytime hours and dimming lights later in the day. This is not a substitute for getting natural light by going outdoors, but it will still help with improved energy during the day and improved sleep at night.

Personal Experience

Historically, I have done the exact opposite of this. I like my office to be dim. But I am prone to getting tired during the day so I am going to try out this tip and see how it works for me. If I do find benefits of doing this, I might go all in and buy some large natural mood lights for my office.