WHY YOU'RE ALWAYS TIRED - It All Begins With Your EVENING ROUTINE! | Tom Bilyeu

Summary

Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu

Episode Summary: "WHY YOU'RE ALWAYS TIRED – It All Begins With Your EVENING ROUTINE"

Date: March 27, 2023
Host: Tom Bilyeu
Guest Expert: (Not explicitly named in transcript; main host is Tom Bilyeu, with references to Andrew Huberman and advice from other experts)

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Episode Overview

In this insightful solo episode, Tom Bilyeu dives deep into the root causes behind chronic fatigue and poor sleep. Distilling science-backed strategies, self-experimentation lessons, and anecdotes, Tom lays out a comprehensive guide to optimizing your evening routine for better sleep and higher daily energy. The episode exposes common misconceptions, outlines critical mistakes people make at night, and provides practical steps to build an evening ritual that transforms not just your sleep but your entire life.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Core Importance of Sleep and Evening Routines

• Sleep Quality Determines Daily Performance:
  "Failing to get good sleep means you’re gonna fail to be productive the next day." (00:45, Andrew Huberman)
• Tom emphasizes sleep as foundational for cognitive function, energy, and even happiness.

2. The Most Common Sleep Disruptors

a. Poor Food Timing and Diet

• Eating Late Kills Sleep Quality:
  Heavy meals close to bedtime force the body to digest rather than relax, leading to discomfort, stomach aches, and poor sleep phases.
  “Eating too late, that’s a huge mistake people make. ...You don’t want it to be a distraction while you sleep. It isn’t something that ends up upsetting your stomach.” (02:02, Andrew Huberman)

• Acid Reflux and Food Choices:
  Poor evening diet (especially high processed carbs or trigger foods) can cause reflux, which radically disrupts sleep.

• Tailoring Diet Through Self-Experimentation:
  “There’s never gonna be a one size fits all. ...If you don’t feel perfect, it’s either a timing or a diet issue.” (03:26, Andrew Huberman)

b. Alcohol

• "Alcohol...it can be fun, is absolutely a neurotoxin." (04:03, Andrew Huberman)
  Even moderate consumption will impact deep and REM sleep—effects can last up to 24 hours.

c. Blue and Bright Light Exposure

• Blue/bright light in the evening signals the brain to stay awake by disrupting circadian rhythms rooted in human evolution:
  “Your circadian rhythm is baked into basically every cell in your body.” (04:59, Andrew Huberman)
  Even small exposures (like a flashlight on the back of a knee!) can alter sleep cycles.

d. Inconsistent Morning Light

• Failing to get outside into natural morning light prevents proper circadian rhythm regulation.
• Outdoor light trumps indoor light due to UV spectrum and intensity. (06:35)

e. Pre-Bed Stress

• Stress from emails, social media, or problem-solving projects in the evening raises cortisol and sabotages falling asleep:
  “Every time that I mess up my sleep it is always because of stress. ...I put a rule into my life—I don’t do those things right before bed.” (08:23, Andrew Huberman)

f. Evening Exercise

• High-intensity exercise raises stress hormones, making sleep significantly harder if done late.

g. Caffeine and Genetics

• Caffeine late in the day disrupts sleep for most, though genetics (and even eye color!) affect metabolism rates:
  “There is a gene for how efficient you are at cleaving the caffeine molecule in half.” (09:36, Andrew Huberman)
  “People with blue eyes are more susceptible to caffeine than people with dark colored eyes.” (10:23, Guest Expert)

h. Irregular Bedtimes

• A consistent sleep schedule is vital. More sleep hours before midnight yield better rest. Chronic shift work correlates with long-term health risks, even cancer. (11:42)

i. The Sleep Environment

• Temperature: Cool down your room (ideally ~68°F/20°C) to align with evolutionary patterns and improve sleep depth.
• Darkness: Eliminate light sources (especially blue spectrum as from screens or nightlights).
• Nasal Breathing: Mouth breathing increases sleep disturbances. Nasal breathing (sometimes enforced by mouth tape) enhances sleep quality. (14:34)

j. Additional Disruptors

• Sleep Apnea from Excess Fat:
  Excess body fat increases risk and severity of sleep apnea, which fragments sleep and harms recovery.
• Alarms and Subconscious Stress:
  Setting alarms creates low-level anxiety about waking up, leading to lighter, fragmented sleep. Try to wake naturally.

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3. Tom’s Optimized Evening Routine (Case Study)

“I am almost never tired. I never need an alarm. ...I have all the energy in the world.” (17:40)

Key Components:

• Early Last Meal: Eats at 2pm; never less than three hours before bed, usually seven.
• Whole-Food, Low-Carb Diet: Minimizes processed foods and manages glucose levels with intermittent fasting and continuous monitoring.
• Rare Alcohol, Always Early: Drinks (rarely) only early in the day, ensures total sobriety and hydration before sleep.
• Evening Light Management:
  • Wears blue-blocking glasses three hours before bed if using screens.
  • Switches devices to ‘night mode’.
  • Dims house lights and transitions to warmer (“firelight”) hues as sunset approaches.
• Stress Management:
  • Strictly avoids emails, social media, or stressful tasks at least one hour (preferably two) before sleep.
  • Last hour dedicated to enjoyable (yet low-cortisol) tasks only.
• Bedtime Consistency:
  • Beds down at 9pm religiously, with exceptions for rare occasions.
• Cool, Dark Room:
  • Room always at 68°F, blacked out for total darkness.
  • Uses technology like a chili pad to cool bed if needed.
• Audiobook for Falling Asleep:
  • Listens to audiobooks (fiction or non-fiction depending on mood) with headphones to ease back to sleep after night waking.
• Minimal Caffeine:
  • Never any caffeine after 1pm.
  • Focuses on being metabolically and neurochemically flexible—can skip caffeine and not feel withdrawal.

4. The Importance of Meaning, Relationships, and Physical Activity

• Purpose and Connection:
  “Meaning and purpose—those are two of the most important words that you should be focused on.” (47:28, Andrew Huberman)
  Pursuing meaningful work and loving relationships boosts mood, energy, and even sleep quality.

• Physical Touch and Sex:
  Sleeping with someone you love improves rest due to neurochemical syncing. “Loneliness has as strong of a negative impact on your longevity as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.” (48:41, Andrew Huberman)

• Work and Workouts:
  The harder you work and train (morning is best), the deeper and faster you’ll sleep.
  “If you want to have more energy, you need to be busting your ass in the gym. Sleeping is huge.” (46:57)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Failing to get good sleep means you’re gonna fail to be productive the next day.”
  (00:46, Andrew Huberman)

• “Alcohol...is absolutely a neurotoxin. ...You should assume more or less a 24 hour effect.”
  (04:03, Andrew Huberman)

• “Sunlight actually penetrates so deeply into your body that it will reach the cells in your bone.”
  (05:08, Andrew Huberman)

• “I put a rule into my life—I don’t do those things right before bed.” (re: stress and devices)
  (08:23, Andrew Huberman)

• “Caffeine is a very potent drug. So if you treat it like a drug, I think you will make fewer mistakes in keeping your sleep hygiene on point.”
  (10:01, Andrew Huberman)

• “Every hour of sleep that you get before midnight counts as double to how you will feel in terms of being rested the following day.”
  (11:42, Andrew Huberman)

• “If you want to elevate your happiness quotient in your life, getting more sleep is a huge part of that.”
  (38:52, Andrew Huberman)

• “If you’re anxious, if you’re depressed, one of the most important things that you should be looking at is your sleep.”
  (41:30, Andrew Huberman)

• “Loneliness has as strong of a negative impact on your longevity as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. That’s insane.”
  (48:41, Guest Expert)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:45 – Intro: Why poor sleep wrecks productivity
• 01:10–03:43 – Dangers of eating late and food-induced sleep problems
• 04:03 – Alcohol as a neurotoxin and its impact on sleep
• 04:25–06:12 – Light exposure, circadian rhythms, and evolutionary cues
• 06:31–07:57 – Importance of morning sunlight for syncing rhythms
• 08:03 – Effects of stress, emails, & social media before bed
• 09:33–10:18 – Caffeine, genetics, and individual thresholds
• 11:09–12:40 – The necessity of a strict sleep schedule, and early sleep hours
• 12:40–14:05 – The case for cool, dark rooms & nasal breathing
• 14:34 – Sleep apnea, excess weight, and breathing issues
• 17:14–29:34 – Tom’s personal routine in detail: food, fasting, diet, alcohol, light, stress, exercise
• 33:08 – Caffeine habits & flexibility
• 33:55 – Strict bedtime routine and consistency
• 35:45 – The value of never using alarm clocks
• 36:54–38:52 – The transformative impact of good sleep on cognition, health, and happiness
• 41:30 – Sleep and emotional/mental health (anxiety, depression, memory)
• 43:17–45:48 – Advice for hustlers and how sleep is crucial for maximum output
• 46:22–47:39 – Seven-day transformation: work harder, work out, get purpose, build relationships, improve sleep
• 48:57–49:50 – Role of loving relationships and sex in sleep
• 50:23–50:38 – Final recap of actionable takeaways

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Actionable Takeaways

• Eat last meal 3–7 hours before bedtime; focus on whole foods and stable glucose
• Avoid alcohol (or drink only early, with hydration, and never near bedtime)
• Remove blue/bright light exposure for 2–3 hours before bed
• Dim and warm lights at night; get out in bright light in the morning
• Strictly avoid emails, work problems, or social media in the last 1–2 hours
• Work out (ideally in the morning); physical exhaustion aids sleep
• Bedtime and wake time should be virtually identical every day
• Cool and darken your room as much as possible
• Use nasal breathing at night (with mouth tape if needed)
• Test and reduce caffeine based on your own response and genetics
• Don’t set alarms unless absolutely needed
• Cultivate purpose, meaningful work, and deep emotional relationships for optimal well-being and sleep

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Closing Reflection

Tom’s message is clear: The difference between chronic exhaustion and boundless daily energy is built step-by-step, night-by-night. The evening routine isn’t just about winding down—it’s about setting the foundation for your cognitive performance, joy, and resilience the next day.
“You are going to be cognitively optimized. Your life is going to be amazing. You can thank me later.” (50:43, Andrew Huberman/Tom Bilyeu)

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If you found this episode interesting, Tom recommends following up with his episode on discipline as a daily habit.

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End of summary.

Transcript

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[Andrew Huberman]

Failing to get good sleep means you're

[Guest Expert]

gonna fail to be productive the next day.

[Andrew Huberman]

First, let's go through the mistakes that

[Guest Expert]

people make that oftentimes they don't even realize are a mistake.

[Andrew Huberman]

Eating late is one of the biggest offenders.

[Guest Expert]

People end up eating a heavy meal,

[Andrew Huberman]

oftentimes an hour or two before they go to bed. I think that that is a huge mistake. A big part of what's going to

[Guest Expert]

allow you to sleep in a relaxed

[Andrew Huberman]

state is to not be digesting food.

[Guest Expert]

So you want the food to be

[Andrew Huberman]

able to work its way not just through your stomach, but through your digestive tract. Because when you go to sleep, all of that shuts down. And what ends up happening is if you've eaten this large meal and that's sitting in your stom or your gut when you go to bed, then your

[Guest Expert]

body is going to stop working on it.

[Andrew Huberman]

And that can actually irritate people, which is why oftentimes people will get stomach

[Guest Expert]

aches if they go to bed too

[Andrew Huberman]

close to when they ate. It isn't that the food is in

[Guest Expert]

and of itself problematic, though. I'm sure we'll get to the next one.

[Andrew Huberman]

Many people are actually making mistakes there as well.

[Guest Expert]

The most common mistake is just eating

[Andrew Huberman]

too close to bedtime. So you want to give yourself a lot of hours before you end up going to bed. I'll get specific as I walk you

[Guest Expert]

through how to fix these.

[Andrew Huberman]

But just eating too late, that's a huge mistake that people make. So you don't want to do that.

[Guest Expert]

You want to give your body plenty

[Andrew Huberman]

of time to be finished with that. So it isn't a distraction while you sleep. It isn't something that ends up upsetting your stomach. And that pain, which certainly I have

[Guest Expert]

experienced in my own life, ends up

[Andrew Huberman]

keeping you awake or just disrupting the stages of your sleep, which is what

[Guest Expert]

happens to a lot of people who

[Andrew Huberman]

don't even realize because their whole life they've eaten so close to bedtime, they don't even realize that it's diminishing their

[Guest Expert]

ability to get quality deep sleep.

[Andrew Huberman]

Another thing that people do is just their diet itself is problematic.

[Guest Expert]

And the most obvious symptom that people get from eating a poor diet is they have acid reflux. Now, acid reflux, because it's literally acid building up in your esophagus. You can feel it gurgling up from your stomach. It is so horrible.

[Andrew Huberman]

It is one of the worst feelings. And trying to sleep like that, no way are you going to get quality sleep. This is where people start popping tums which that kind of thing is just suppressing the symptom. It's not getting to the root cause. It's going to be devastating to your sleep. A lot of times people will try

[Guest Expert]

to sleep sitting up.

[Andrew Huberman]

It's really a disaster. So you want to be very thoughtful

[Guest Expert]

about the kind of things that you eat.

[Andrew Huberman]

And there's a lot of literature out

[Guest Expert]

there about how what you eat does

[Andrew Huberman]

have an impact on how you sleep. Carbohydrates, for instance, in your last meal

[Guest Expert]

can have an impact on sleep and deep sleep.

[Andrew Huberman]

And so being very thoughtful to do self experimentation. There's never gonna be a one size fits all.

[Guest Expert]

But making sure that you do self

[Andrew Huberman]

experimentation to know what kind of diet you can eat to feel perfect when you go to bed. There is nothing that says that you shouldn't feel perfect when you go to bed. If you don't feel perfect, it's either

[Guest Expert]

a timing or a diet issue.

[Andrew Huberman]

And you're gonna want to figure out what it is that's causing that unease. When you lay down to go to sleep, the next thing that people do is drinking alcohol. Drinking alcohol is not only going to have an impact on things like acid reflux, but it's also going to disrupt your sleep cycles. So alcohol, the right way to think about it, while it can be fun, is absolutely a neurotoxin. So your body is trying to metabolize it first to get rid of it out of your system. But the impacts that it has on your system last for a very substantial amount of time. And you should assume more or less a 24 hour effect. Which means even if you're drinking earlier in the day, while it's going to dramatically minimize the impact of that, you're

[Guest Expert]

still going to have that and it's

[Andrew Huberman]

going to disrupt deep sleep for sure. I can't remember. It may also have implications into REM sleep. So be very thoughtful about drinking alcohol. The next thing people do is intaking blue and or bright light before they go to bed. So for millions of years, we have evolved to, to be very cued off of light and the position of the sun, the brightness, the color temperature of the light. And so there really is no way to escape that. They call it a circadian rhythm. Your circadian rhythm is baked into basically

[Guest Expert]

every cell in your body.

[Andrew Huberman]

And so even bone cells can detect light. Let that sink in. Sunlight actually penetrates so deeply into your

[Guest Expert]

body that it will reach the cells in your bone. So be very thoughtful about how you

[Andrew Huberman]

expose yourself to blue and bright light because you are timed to that. And so if you're experiencing blue light near bedtime, it's going to give your body the signal that it's not bedtime, it's time to stay awake. And so when you try to go to sleep, and millions of years of evolution have told your body that it's not time to sleep for two, three or more hours after the sun has begun to change its color temperature. And as you notice, as the sun goes down and you get into sunsets, it becomes what they call mag hour. It's known as golden hour, literally, because the color temperature of the light is changing.

[Guest Expert]

All of the cells in your body

[Andrew Huberman]

are picking up on that, especially your eye cells. They've done research where if you shine a flashlight on the back of someone's knee while they're sleeping, you can disrupt their sleep. It's literally crazy. And it's something like shining the light for 30 seconds. It's not even for a long period of time, but exposing cells in the body that you would not think are light sensitive actually are light sensitive.

[Guest Expert]

And it will. So this is not a hoax. This is not a thing to sell

[Andrew Huberman]

blue light blocking glasses. This is a very real thing, and

[Guest Expert]

you want to be very thoughtful about

[Andrew Huberman]

the color of the light you're exposing yourself to, depending on the time of day and the brightness. Now, one thing that I will say also that people make a mistake on

[Guest Expert]

is they don't go outside and get

[Andrew Huberman]

sunlight on their skin. So when you begin your day, it's

[Guest Expert]

going to have a huge influence on

[Andrew Huberman]

your ability to fall asleep, because you want to regulate that circadian rhythm. So going outside, getting light on your, your skin, getting light in your eyes, what I'll do, especially if I'm traveling, I will go outside and I will look up at the sky. Not the sun, but I'll look up at the sky because I want to get as much bright light into my eyes as possible. I don't do it through windows, partly because windows block a certain part of the UV spectrum.

[Guest Expert]

And also because in a building, it's even like right inside the building, the

[Andrew Huberman]

amount of brightness that you get compared to just stepping right outside is really radically different. And if there's any kind of overhang whatsoever or you're even a few steps back into the room, it is going to be dramatically different in terms of the lumens of light falling into your eye and onto your skin. And again, part of the UV spectrum is blocked by windows. So this doesn't work unless you go outside. Now it's better than nothing because you're at least getting brighter light than you otherwise would get. But it's really, if you're trying to regulate your circadian rhythm, it is really important to go outside, get the light on your skin. Even in winter, if I'm somewhere cold, I'll try to get like as much of a pull up, expose my forearms, obviously my face and neck and try to get some light onto my skin.

[Guest Expert]

But just be very thoughtful about the

[Andrew Huberman]

brightness of your light which as the evening wears on and the sun is going down, you want to start dimming

[Guest Expert]

the lights in your house and even

[Andrew Huberman]

dimming the lights on your computer. Another mistake that people make is they do stressful things right before they go to bed. This is one of the more important things when I think so my soul vice, I don't do drugs, but I do stress that one. I do.

[Guest Expert]

And so every time that I mess

[Andrew Huberman]

up my sleep it is.

[Guest Expert]

Is it always because of stress? I'll say it's 95% of the time that I mess up my sleep it

[Andrew Huberman]

is because I ingest something stressful right before I'm about to go to sleep. So either I check an email or I look at my text messages or I go on social media, I do something that has the ability to remind me of something I have to get done or show me that I have a problem that's unaddressed or whatever. So I've put a rule into my life that I don't do those things right before bed. It's really important you not introduce stress into your the the last hour for

[Guest Expert]

me as a cutoff, the only other

[Andrew Huberman]

thing that I would create more space than an hour would be exercise. Exercise can really be problematic if you're exercising close to bed. So be very thoughtful about that because not all stress is bad. So everybody thinks about stress, something that's wearing you down. But working out is a stress. Working out is going to kick up stress related hormones. And so if you've got those stress related hormones coursing through your veins, it's going to be very hard to fall asleep. You're going to feel wired, so be very thoughtful about that. Now speaking of being wired, another mistake

[Guest Expert]

that people make is they drink caffeine

[Andrew Huberman]

far too late in the day. Now everything when it comes to your

[Guest Expert]

health is going to be individual and

[Andrew Huberman]

there actually is a gene for how efficient you are at cleaving the caffeine molecule in half. So for me, for instance, I can eat cat or drink caffeine later than probably most people, but even I'm pretty

[Guest Expert]

paranoid about intaking caffeine and I intake very little caffeine.

[Andrew Huberman]

So be very thoughtful about drinking caffeine

[Guest Expert]

later in the day.

[Andrew Huberman]

That is going to get your cortisol levels up. It is going to make it harder

[Guest Expert]

for you to sleep.

[Andrew Huberman]

So be very thoughtful to finish that off very early in the day. Be very thoughtful to figure out where your threshold is. My dad's threshold, ironically is very early.

[Guest Expert]

I think it's like 10am is the last time that he can drink coffee.

[Andrew Huberman]

Now for a fascinating side note.

[Guest Expert]

Did you know that people with blue eyes are more susceptible to caffeine than people with dark colored eyes? Now let it then not be ironic.

[Andrew Huberman]

My, my dad has blue eyes. And right on the money is somebody who is likely to have a harder time cleaving the caffeine molecule in half so it stays in his system longer than it does for somebody like me. Self experimentation is going to be important to figure out where it bothers you and where it doesn't. But remember, caffeine is a very potent drug. So if you treat it like a drug, I think you will make fewer mistakes in keeping your sleep hygiene on point.

[Guest Expert]

So be thoughtful about caffeine.

[Andrew Huberman]

Another thing that people do is they don't adhere to a consistent bedtime.

[Guest Expert]

So part of this goes back to

[Andrew Huberman]

the idea of the circadian rhythms. Your body has a clock and it is very good at telling time. And if you give it a rhythm that it can get into where it's like, okay, this is bedtime. It's this many hours after the sun goes down. You want to make sure that you get a certain number of hours of sleep before midnight. If I remember correctly, every hour of sleep that you get before midnight counts as double to how you will feel in terms of being rested the following day.

[Guest Expert]

So it isn't like, oh, as long

[Andrew Huberman]

as you get seven hours, you're going to be fine. You actually want a certain number of those hours to be before midnight. So that's very important. And if you really want to freak yourself out about staying up too late, go do a Google search. Or these days, go ask ChatGPT about the link between cancer and swing shift. It's crazy.

[Guest Expert]

And the philosophy, or the theory, I

[Andrew Huberman]

suppose, is that there's something about the disruption of the circadian rhythm and that you're going to be sleeping through some of the daylight. It's that kind of important that there is some very intense correlation. Don't know that any causation has been shown yet, but there's a very interesting correlation between not getting enough hours before midnight and cancer. So be very thoughtful about how you swing your sleep schedule, because it really does matter.

[Guest Expert]

Another thing that people do that is going to disrupt their sleep is not cooling down the room. So this goes back to an evolutionary perspective. For eons, we were out exposed to the elements. So as the sun went down, the temperature would change, would obviously get cooler. And when we went to sleep, it was one for one. It was going to be the coolest time of the day. Even if you live somewhere hot, the coolest time of the day is always going to be when the sun is down. So understanding that your body is going to be used to that cycle, from an evolutionary perspective, we're used to that cycle. The clock picks up, the internal circadian rhythm clock picks up on all of that stuff. So cooling your room down, we'll talk more in a minute about exactly what temperatures and, and different ways that you can do that. So be very thoughtful to get your room nice and cool. And then another thing that people do is they don't black out their room. So going back evolutionary standpoint, at night it would be dark. The only thing that you would have would be the moon and the stars. And so when you have a bright light present in your room, it can really be disruptive to sleep. Going back to that idea of shining a flashlight on the back of your

[Andrew Huberman]

knee can disrupt your sleep.

[Guest Expert]

You can understand how if you keep a nightlight on or something like that, again, especially if it's artificial light, especially if it's in the daylight, color, temperature, so it's a blue light, that can really be problematic. So you want to get your room

[Andrew Huberman]

as dark as possible.

[Guest Expert]

All of those things are going to cue your body that it's time to go to sleep. So get that as dark as you can. And then one that people don't talk a lot about. But read James Nestor's book, book Breathe, which is goes into how dramatically people are affected by nasal breathing. So you want to make sure that you, if you're not already a nasal breather, that you do something to force yourself to breathe through your nose. So for me, I am very much a mouth breather, as much as that's

[Andrew Huberman]

known as like being for Neanderthals dragging

[Guest Expert]

their knuckles at night. I breathe through my mouth. So what I have had to do over time is I tape my mouth. And so every night I tape my mouth and I thought, oh, hey, if I do this for a couple months, then I can stop taping my mouth. I'll be so used to sleeping with my mouth closed, I will be well, nope. So the second I sleep without tape on my mouth, I start breathing through my mouth and then it dries out my airway and then that ends up waking me up. And so you want to be breathing through your nose at night. I know there can be a lot of reasons, allergies and the like why people don't breathe through their nose, but you really want to address that. And then one thing that I know is because becoming more people are becoming more aware of, but that you need to be very thoughtful of is not to be carrying extra fat on your body. If you're carrying extra fat on your body, the odds of you having sleep apnea skyrocket. So you want to be very, very thoughtful about that. You want to be able to breathe free and clear and not have so much weight pressing down in your chest that breathing is actually laborious where without your conscious mind there, you know, willing you to take those deep breaths, you actually will stop breathing in your sleep. And if you stop breathing in your sleep, then it wakes you up a little bit, which is going to disrupt wildly the rhythms of your sleep. And the rhythms of your sleep are exactly the things that make you feel well rested, that let your body do the repair mechanisms, the cleaning mechanisms that it needs to do that it won't be able to do if you're constantly waking up. So not being able to sleep well is like its own ring of hell. So be very thoughtful, and I know that that's not easy, but it is very important, and I cannot stress enough the need to do that.

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[Guest Expert]

Another thing that people do that messes them up is they set an alarm. Now the reason that setting alarm is problematic is really twofold. One, setting alarm is going to be this subconscious thing in your mind that you know that you have to get up at a certain time. And if you haven't given yourself plenty of time to wake up naturally before that, there's a low grade anxiety that is going to be messing with you. And if you're anything like me, when you're going through your sleep cycles about every 90 minutes, you tend to come into a much lighter sleep. Now for me, as I come into that lighter sleep, I actually wake up every night and have for 15 years. So just is a thing. Now when I'm stressed, then I tend to have trouble falling back asleep at that moment. If I'm breathing through my mouth, I have trouble falling back asleep at that moment. And if I have an alarm that I've set, then I really start going, oh man, like what time is it? Is this the first time I'm waking up? The second time is my alarm about to go off? Maybe I should just check really fast. You end up looking at the clock and now you've got a bit of a problem because one, you're taking light into your eyes, Two, the timing, you're going to be like, oh my God, I have to be up in an hour, whatever. It's just all things that are not conducive to falling back asleep. So you want to leave enough time that you can sleep without setting an alarm. There is a potential that electronic devices in your room is problematic. I have not noticed this personally, but there are people that say that they really can tell the difference in the quality of their sleep. I tried tracking it with an OURA ring with and without the OURA ring turned on with devices around, not around. And I just didn't notice a big difference. So I'm not sure that that one is going to be something that's problematic for everybody. But it's certainly worth testing. And then last but not least, another is smoking marijuana? I say possible. To me, I don't do it. I'm convinced it absolutely messes up your sleep. But I have not researched this well enough other than my n of one that when I smoke, I notice it. So by all means, self experiment should it be legal in your local neighborhood. But I would be very thoughtful about anything, quite frankly, other than water that you drink or smoke that could potentially be disrupting your sleep. So don't take that stuff for granted. Be sure to test it out. Okay, now let me talk about what you do about all these things. What is the ideal way I'm going to walk you through my daily habits that lead to very clean sleep hygiene? I am almost never tired. I never need an alarm. The only time I set an alarm is if I have a ridiculously early flight or something like that. Otherwise I get as much sleep as I need every night. I have all the energy in the world. And so you really can construct your routine every day to optimize for sleep, which is going to have huge impacts in cognition and your overall health. All right, so I'm going to go back through all the things that we talked about before. So the first we know that food timing is an issue. So I eat my last meal at 2pm I go to bed at 9. So I'm eating my last meal at 2pm and the reason that I do that is what I was explaining earlier. I want to make sure that I've completely digested that food, that I'm not, you know, I don't have a grumbled stomach or anything like that. I'm not going to get a stomachache. So by giving myself seven full hours, not only have I dealt with the digestive part, but also I'm now going into intermittent fasting. And so by intermittent fasting, I'm training my body not to be unable to go without food. And so that allows me to really have relaxed sleep. I'm not hungry, I'm not digesting the food.

[Andrew Huberman]

And so I am able to really fall into a deep sleep. On top of that, my diet is incredibly clean. So I'm not eating things that are going to give me things like acid reflux. My diet, just by way of a quick nutshell, is I'm always eating whole food whenever I can. I try not to take many calories in from things that are processed in any way, shape or form. So I'm eating meat and vegetables. I'm eating things that are not packaged that you would recognize more or less from real life. So that is just the easiest way to sum up the way that I approach food. That and I try to keep my carbohydrate intake to virtually zero. Other than green leafy vegetables, my only indulgence on that front is baby carrots, which believe it or not, I'm sure some people think that's ridiculous. But if you wear a continuous glucose monitor, you will see that it really will spike your glucose. Which by the way is another thing I try to make sure that my glucose is very even while I'm sleeping. If I have elevated glucose levels, it will interrupt my sleep. It's crazy. So you want to be thoughtful about again and if one test all of this stuff, but be thoughtful about your glucose levels. If you're somebody that isn't used to intermittent fasting, if you're somebody that eats a high carbohydrate diet, if you're somebody that is is really feels like either a rise or a fall in glucose, that's another thing that can interrupt your sleep. So I spend a significant amount of time throughout the year, probably 20% of my year, I'm going to be wearing a continu glucose monitor. So I know all the things that I eat. I know what kind of impact they have on me. And on a Saturday, for instance, where I will have sugar in my life and so my glucose is going to be elevated. I do find that that's the night that I sleep the worst. It's also, by the way, the night that I eat closest to my bedtime. I still try to give at least three hours. For me, three hours is just the minimum. Even if I'm on vacation, I'm going to go three hours before I go to bed. For the reasons that I mentioned, I just sleep so much better. And to me, I being tired is a unique ring of hell. I absolutely despise being tired. So yeah, I'm going to do whatever I can to make sure that I'm really optimized. And glucose is one of those things. So be thoughtful about your carbohydrate intake. Be careful about how close to bed you spike your glucose. Now what's interesting is there actually is data that says if in your last meal you eat carbohydrates, that you will actually sleep more deeply. So be look at that. Figure out what your glucose response is. Figure out what items you eat that work and don't work. My hunch on that one is that it would actually be slowly digesting carbs that are going to be Better for you. So it'd be a low glycemic response carbohydrate that would have that kind of impact. I have to imagine that a high spike and then a low crash is not going to be the kind of thing that gets somebody to sleep well. But all of this stuff is worth experimenting. Just understand the context so you know, going into it, what to look out for. All right. The next thing on that, in terms of diet is I rarely drink alcohol. And when I do, let me tell you, I notice immediately in my sleep. But I have rules around drinking alcohol that as a surprise bonus I will give to you right now, I really think if you're going to drink, this is the way to do it. So first of all, you want to drink as early as humanly possible in the day. That's just absolutely critical. So I would much rather see somebody drink at 8am and stop at noon. Even though socially people be like, what the hell? But if you're on vacation or whatever, which is basically the only time I drink, then I would rather do it early in the day, say at lunch, rather than do it at night for dinner. That way I'm going to have hours

[Guest Expert]

and hours and hours and hours and

[Andrew Huberman]

hours after my last drink to get completely sober, to drink a ton of water, which is the next thing. Drink a ton of water and then make sure that you have at least three hours from your last meal to the time that you go to bed, that you go to bed stone cold sober, that you've had a ton of water to drink. I find if I do that, and look, I am a lightweight, so I don't drink a lot. Even when I do drink, I know what my limit is. I always stick to my limit. But if I do that, then the next day, while I certainly don't feel as good as a day where I did not drink the day before, I don't have a hangover. So again, timing makes such a big difference. Timing and quantity are two of the most important things when it comes to food. So be very thoughtful. All right. The next thing I do, because we know that light exposure can be so problematic three hours before bedtime, at least sometimes more. If I'm staring at a computer, I'm going to wear blue blocking glasses. I also have my computer set. Just in case I don't have my blue blocking glasses around, I'll set my computer to dial over into night mode. Now, I could shift it all the way to as little blue light as humanly possible. So I never needed to wear Blue blocking glasses. I don't do that just because so much of what we do at Impact theory revolves around imagery. So there are often times I don't want it to be so skewed that I can't tell the true color palette. So I put it somewhere in the middle. But at, I do it at sunset and sunrise. So at sunset it's going to go orange. At sunrise it will click back into the more typical computer blue color timed light. By doing that, I'm able again to keep my circadian rhythm regulated. But another thing that I do is as I'm going towards bedtime, I begin dimming the lights. And so dimming the lights, making the light more orange. That all mimics the evolutionary tendency to, as the sun would go down, people would gather around a fire. And so doing all of those things sends the right signals to you at a cellular level, getting back to that circadian rhythm. So that really helps. And I found that incredibly useful. I do that both on my computer and my phone, have it switching to night mode. I think that that can be really useful. Now, as I mentioned before, stress is my one vice. So stress is the one thing in my life that I am just. I really push the envelope on this. So I have to be really thoughtful to make sure that I quarantine the things in my life that I know are likely to cause me stress, to not do them. At least an hour before bedtime.

[Guest Expert]

And really probably for the last two

[Andrew Huberman]

hours, I start to like, really try to narrow the things down. If I think something is a problem that I need to address, it's going to be stressful and I only have two hours before I go to bed, then depending on what it is, if I don't think that I can move it forward meaningfully that night. Because action cures all, by the way. If you're feeling anxious about something, 99 times out of 100, the right answer is to do something about it. And that's actually going to dissipate the anxiety. But if it's something that I don't think that I can move meaningfully forward that night, I will wait to check it the next day. And I have found over time, it's actually better to have that little drip of like, oh, I know, that's waiting for me versus actually going in. But then an hour before I go to bed, I'm very strict about it. So with but very few exceptions, I stop checking my text messages. I won't look at email or for us, the equivalent I don't look at Slack all of that stuff, which could be amazing, but it could also be a problem. So same with social media. It's Russian roulette, right? If I go into the comments section, people are like, yo, this is the best thing ever. Then it's like a great night. But if you go in the comments section and some controversy has sparked off, and I know that it's going to be something that we're going to have to address in the community, that'll ruin a night's sleep. So I am very thoughtful to make sure that I quarantine that stuff. Also, in that final hour before I go to bed, whenever humanly possible, I like to only do for people that haven't heard me talk about this before. So Monday through Friday, if I'm awake, I'm either working or working out. So I work from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to bed. So even in that last hour, I'm still working. But I want to make sure that it's something that I think is fun. It's work that I want to do. It's something that's really enjoyable for me. I do this for a couple reasons.

[Guest Expert]

One, by the end of the day,

[Andrew Huberman]

I'm tired because I'm busting my ass

[Guest Expert]

and I'm working out, which is another

[Andrew Huberman]

mistake that people make. They just don't wear themselves out. They don't work out hard enough. They're not tired, they haven't drained all of their energy. And so for me, because I work out first thing in the morning, another thing, to get my circadian rhythm on point, I work out in the morning. I don't have caffeine first thing in the morning. I force myself to wake up. You can learn more about that from Andrew Huberman. So I force myself to wake up naturally.

[Guest Expert]

I don't drink any caffeine or anything like that.

[Andrew Huberman]

I do work out immediately after working out. That gets the cortisol pumping and I'm

[Guest Expert]

up and feeling good. And then also, by the time I'm going to bed, I'm really tired. So that last hour, to keep that efficient, I'm still going to do something. I'm still going to do work, but I want to do work that I actually enjoy. So if you start segmenting your day out like that, you can really stretch it and make it work for you. Another thing that I do is I listen to audiobooks as I'm falling asleep. Now, this is the one thing I don't know if I can recommend wholeheartedly just because I do worry A little bit about having headphones in my ears, just from the minor amount of radiation that's gonna be kicking off from that. So while I don't necessarily recommend it, if you're in a bind and you're stressed out, it's better almost certainly to get the sleep than it is to not have the headphones in and not get the sleep in terms of deleterious impact to your health. So it is a trick that I have found incredibly useful. The type of book that will work for you is going to depend. So for a long time, more than a year, I listened exclusively to fiction books with storytelling. It would put me in a storytelling mode. It was really helpful. But then I found as my stress levels were lowering, then I could switch it over to a nonfiction book, which I actually enjoy more. So I would start listening to the nonfiction book. I'm like, wow, this is fascinating. And then I would fall asleep. And that is something that has worked out for me. That trick, more than I think anything else I've done, has had the biggest impact on the amount of sleep that I get. Because for years, what would happen is I would wake up in the middle of the night, like I said, in that 90 minute part of the sleep cycle, I would wake up, there would be something on my mind. Even if I hadn't thought about it before I went to bed, my mind would start racing about this problem that I have to solve. And now all of a sudden, I just cannot fall back asleep. And it's two hours is usually my magic number. I will be up for two hours before I can get back to sleep. Now, when you break your sleep up like that, at least for me, I always felt terrible. And so I was tired a lot. And so by figuring out this trick and all the other things that I've talked about, I've been able to. When I wake up, I'm only awake for like 60 seconds, 90 seconds maybe, and then I'm back to sleep. It has worked wonders. Absolutely amazing. On the caffeine front. One thing I am, again, just overall, I drink very little caffeine, which I think is important. I don't like the idea of being addicted to anything, so I do intermittent fasting to make sure that I am metabolically flexible, meaning that I'm not addicted to glucose. So I could go 24 hours without food. I'd be hungry. But if you've ever gone ketogenic and been adapted to producing and using ketones efficiently, you realize it completely changes your relationship to hunger. You experience hunger, there's no doubt it's a little bit annoying, but your performance does not decline. So I don't like being addicted to glucose any more than I like being addicted to caffeine any more than I would like being addicted to a drug.

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[Andrew Huberman]

So I make sure that whether I

[Guest Expert]

have caffeine or don't have caffeine, I feel completely the same. To be honest, I drink coffee not for the caffeine. I drink it more for the flavor. And so oftentimes when I go on vacation, I won't have any caffeine, or if I'm traveling, I won't have any caffeine. I don't notice it. That kind of thing I think matters. And so I would encourage people out there who I know are like eight cups of coffee a day, wean that down to where you can take it or leave it. And then for me, my last sip of caffeine, even though I have so little that I don't notice on a day when I don't drink any. I never have caffeine past 1pm so could just be an abundance of caution. I'm sure I could drink it later, but I don't. Because getting to sleep and getting good sleep is so important to me because of the way that it cognitively optimizes you.

[Andrew Huberman]

I think that's critically important.

[Guest Expert]

Now, one of the things we talked about earlier, the problem that people have is they don't stick to a schedule. So circadian rhythms, like the ninth time we've talked about it, but it's really important. So I go to bed at 9pm like it's a religion. I am in bed, lights out. I'm not perfect, but I'll say 85 to 90% of the time, I'm in bed by 9pm period. End of story. Nights like last night where there happened to be a company party, I'll make exceptions. You know, I'm when there's something that matters to me enough that I'm willing to go to bed a little bit later. Fair enough. But it really is 10 to 15% of the year, maximum. The rest of the. And even then I'm. It's not like I'm going to bed at 1am, so even then I'm missing my schedule by a little bit, not by a lot. I think it's very important to keep your schedule on point. And then I cool my room down to 68 degrees. We talked about that before. If you're not getting your room cooled down, then you're not using one of the cues that you should be using to tell your body that it's time to go to bed. So yeah, you can do that. Now there's a couple different ways that you can do that. You can use an AC machine, you can do what Rich Roll does and actually sleep outside. You can use a chili pad or

[Andrew Huberman]

something like that where you have a cooling system that you sleep on top of.

[Guest Expert]

So you don't necessarily have to have AC in your apartment or whatever to cool your environment down.

[Andrew Huberman]

Find a way that works for you.

[Guest Expert]

But as somebody who lived in LA

[Andrew Huberman]

for a very long time before things

[Guest Expert]

like chilipad came along and I couldn't afford AC and just the sleeping is absolute misery. Something like a chilipad is a very useful idea to get that temperature down. I think it's really important. I haven't set an alarm in now. Geez, how many years has it been? Like 15 years, 16 years, something like that? Maybe 17 years at this point.

[Andrew Huberman]

So it has been a very long

[Guest Expert]

time since I set an alarm. And I do that for the two

[Andrew Huberman]

reasons that I mentioned before.

[Guest Expert]

I do not want the stress of the alarm that I know it's going to be going off at some point. And then I also want to make sure that I let my body get as much sleep as it needs. So many people live in a chronically sleep deprived state. So make sure that you're really careful about that. And then like I said before, I work out really hard so that I fall asleep really fast. And then while I don't do anything to diminish the electrical outputs of devices like I sleep with my phone next to me. Obviously I'm listening to a book, so of course I am. I don't turn my WI fi off at night or anything like that, I have not noticed that that's had a big impact. But I will say that there are things out there that indicate that that may be an issue. And then to my point about not smoking marijuana, I just don't smoke marijuana. So that was nice and easy. Maybe not as fun as some people would like it, but I think that you're going to be hard pressed to get great sleep and be cognitively optimized if you're smoking all the time. So to each their own. But I have a feeling it's worse than people want to believe.

[Andrew Huberman]

After I adapted my night routine, I can tell you that it was dramatically different. The whole reason that I wanted to get really serious about my sleep is one, like I said, it's just not fun to be tired. And so I don't know if I hate that to an unusual degree, but when I see people that are just chronically tired, I don't understand. It's crazy to me. But the real reason that I changed it is to be cognitively optimized. I. I am not able to be efficient when I'm tired. So even in the period of my life where I was working 120 hours a week for eight months, I tried not to disrupt my sleep. Now I was so stressed during that period. Of course my sleep was being disrupted to some extent, but I was still, still, even in that, trying to prioritize my sleep. Even in that period, I wasn't setting an alarm. Now, if you run the math, you'll realize I wasn't sleeping well through that period. And there's no doubt, but even during that period, I was doing everything that I could to try to get as much sleep as I could. Because when I'm not getting the level of sleep, I'm not able to think clearly, I'm not able to perform as efficiently, and nobody is. So they've done all kinds of tests. It slows down your reaction time, it slows down your ability to problem solve, to navigate mazes. I mean, literally everything that you do is made better or worse by the amount that you sleep. Better if you're sleeping well, worse if you're not. Also, I have found that there's just more joy in your life when you're not tired. So if you want to elevate your happiness quotient in your life, getting more sleep is a huge part of that. It was life changing for me. When I was back in college, I was so chronically sleep deprived that I once took a 13 hour nap. I laid down to take an hour nap, forgot to set an alarm, woke up 13 hours later. That is a level of chronic sleep deprivation that I hope none of you go through. And it was utterly miserable. I hated it. Nothing is fun. Colors aren't as bright, you don't want

[Guest Expert]

to laugh as much.

[Andrew Huberman]

It's just, it's absolutely miserable. Really think about all the Things that you can make better in your life, like memory. My memory got way better, my glucose response got better. And this is something that's been tested. So if you get, and I forget, it's like if you miss even two hours of sleep a night, that's directionally correct. It may not be literally correct, but if you miss some distressingly small amount of sleep for the night, the next day, you will handle glucose the same way a diabetic does. Okay? That's how sensitive your body is to sleep. You've got to get the sleep to, at a cellular level, be able to perform the way that you want. Now, a swing like that in your glucose response is going to have weight loss implications. And so there are a lot of people out there now talking about if you're really struggling to lose weight, you may want to make sure that you get your sleep right. And that makes a lot of sense to me in terms of like, if you've never thought about it, the way that you actually get the fat out of your body is by oxidizing it and exhaling it. So you have to actually exhale all of the fat. So as you're burning all the calories, even at night, you're exhaling that fat. So giving your body what it needs to be handling that at the cellular level and then giving it time to shut down everything else so that you can really release the fat. And I'm saying it like that because I don't know the actual mechanism of action. I just know that there are implications here. So when it comes to all the things in my life that were made better, there were things that just, they're knock on effects on knock on effects that you wouldn't expect. This is why I tell people, if you're anxious, if you're depressed, one of the most important things that you should be looking at is your sleep. If you feel stuck in life, you should look at your sleep. Getting your sleep right is arguably the most foundational. The only thing that might compete with it is your diet. Your diet and your sleep are so foundational. Your cells are literally made of the things that you eat. And then your sleep is going to impact every mechanism in your body, from your ability to feel joy to your ability to run the Krebs cycle inside of your cells. So make sure that you get that sleep. So a lot of people ask how important having downtime is in the evening and what my wife and I do to relax. And the honest answer is Monday through Friday, I don't. I have not found it to be very important to relax in the evenings. But what I have found it important to do is to not do things that I find stressful. Now, you don't want to do things that raise your cortisol level, But I do work. So for me, I'm still working, but I'm working on something again that's fun. So the idea would be to give yourself the cues that night has fallen. Changing of the color of the light, lowering the intensity of the light, not doing things that raise your cortisol level, making sure there are many hours between you and your caffeine and the food and all that, all of that stuff which is stressing you out at a cellular level, maybe a subconscious level, that is pretty important. Now, if you find that you're going into nighttime, it's coming up on bedtime, and you are feeling stressed, which of course has happened to me many times, then I'll do something like meditate. I will really try to get myself out of that mode and let go of that stress.

[Guest Expert]

So then I will.

[Andrew Huberman]

But I meditate at night maybe 5% of the time that it really is pretty rare that I'm in a situation where I feel like I have to reach for that. So I think of it more as modes of being than I think about it as being relaxed. So for me, I don't want to be in a problem solving mode. I want to be in a creative mode. So if that means, you know, switching over to reading a novel right as I'm going to bed, if that means doing work that I find incredibly enjoyable, if that means doing work that's creative, all of those things, those I have found to be very advantageous. But I have not found that I need to worry about not doing work. I haven't found that, you know, I need to just sit back and watch tv. I don't have that thing where people are like, I just need to unwind. I can literally work till the minute I go to bed. But I just have to structure the things that I do in the ways that we've discussed so far.

[Guest Expert]

All right. For people who have a hard time

[Andrew Huberman]

relaxing and are always wanting to hustle,

[Guest Expert]

the advice that I would give them is that you should be hustling even harder if you're somebody that wants to hustle. I love that I am on Team Hustle.

[Andrew Huberman]

I think it's absolutely incredible. But the reality is you're going to have to learn how to meditate. You're going to have to learn how to step out of that stress. You're going to learn how to compartmentalize stress.

[Guest Expert]

So all the things that we've been

[Andrew Huberman]

talking about in this breakdown, you're going to have to learn to do those things. Because if you don't and you're going

[Guest Expert]

all out right to the minute you go to bed, you're stressed out and

[Andrew Huberman]

now you're not sleeping, it's going to diminish your ability to hustle. And so I don't understand people that don't make cognitive optimization their number one priority. You should not be clapping yourself on the back for the number of hours that you work as much as you

[Guest Expert]

should be clapping yourself on the back

[Andrew Huberman]

for how efficiently you work. Because you only have three things, three levers that you can pull on, and that is working hard, working smart, and working long hours. You want to be able to do

[Guest Expert]

all three, but the only way that

[Andrew Huberman]

you're going to be able to work smart is if you're getting sleep. The only way that you're going to be able to work hard is if at a cellular level, you're rested and getting sleep. And then obviously you can work a lot of hours, but if you're doing that at the cost of your sleep and your cognition, you're actually going to get less done. So I think it is far more impressive if somebody works a shorter day but gets more done than if they work a longer day and get less done. So you only want to work the number of hours that you can work, really at an ultra high threshold. Of course, the level of my productivity changes throughout the day. So in the morning, I'm at my absolute best. I get about five or six hours where I feel like, man, I'm just absolutely murdering it. And then I begin to shift my day into a more reactive phase where it's, I'm in meetings, we're talking, there's the energy of the room. It's very easy to do that kind of work for me versus the ultra creative stuff, the really deep work, the stuff that requires just an insane amount of concentration. I'm going to do that right off the jump in the morning. First of all, I'm doing it after I exercise. There's a book called Spark that goes into whatever the hardest problem is you need to work on during the day. You want to do it right after you get your heart rate up and sustain it up. So there are huge benefits to working

[Guest Expert]

out in terms of cognition.

[Andrew Huberman]

And so you want to be really thoughtful about doing that. And so that's something that I certainly put a lot of energy in. So make sure that you're not diminishing your cognition. I think that that's really important.

[Guest Expert]

Even though I'm all about hustle porn

[Andrew Huberman]

and going hard and all of that, you want to make sure that you're doing it well. So don't let anybody tell you that,

[Guest Expert]

oh, you need to relax, you need to calm down.

[Andrew Huberman]

No, but you do need to compartmentalize. You do need to be thoughtful about doing things that allow you to optimize your sleep. And that, ultimately is the name of the game, is to be more efficient, to be able to hustle harder, to be in physical, mental, and emotional condition where you can push through and do things that other people can't because they're too tired, they're too fatigued, they're not able to focus.

[Guest Expert]

If I had seven days to completely

[Andrew Huberman]

change your mode of being, to improve your focus and energy, the things that I would get you to do are

[Guest Expert]

work harder, Believe it or not, because

[Andrew Huberman]

I want to make sure that one, you're pushing your limits. You want to be constantly pushing your limits. I'm going to have you work out

[Guest Expert]

harder for the same reason. You want to get yourself out of

[Andrew Huberman]

your comfort zone, pushing into a new

[Guest Expert]

arena, expanding your capabilities.

[Andrew Huberman]

That's the whole idea to working harder.

[Guest Expert]

It's not to please somebody else, not to impress anybody.

[Andrew Huberman]

It's to be able to make sure that you get to the point where you can actually do more. So if you want to have more

[Guest Expert]

energy, you need to be busting your ass in the gym. Sleeping is huge.

[Andrew Huberman]

But you want to really push yourself,

[Guest Expert]

really get capable of more. And the harder that you work, the

[Andrew Huberman]

harder that you work out, the more capable you're going to be.

[Guest Expert]

The more you're going to have left

[Andrew Huberman]

everything out on the field.

[Guest Expert]

The more likely you are to fall

[Andrew Huberman]

asleep quickly, the more likely you are

[Guest Expert]

to stay in a deep sleep.

[Andrew Huberman]

All of that stuff is going to be hugely important.

[Guest Expert]

The other thing that I would do is I would have you pursue things that matter to you.

[Andrew Huberman]

This is a big issue.

[Guest Expert]

Meaning and purpose.

[Andrew Huberman]

Meaning and purpose, those are two of the most important words that you should be focused on. You want to make sure that you are doing things that matter to you. If you do that, it's going to

[Guest Expert]

be a lot easier. You're going to have a sense that you're progressing in your life. You're going to have a sense that

[Andrew Huberman]

what you're doing is important, and you're

[Guest Expert]

not going to have that sense of

[Andrew Huberman]

being stuck or being in a plateau

[Guest Expert]

or Aimless, all of that stuff.

[Andrew Huberman]

So you want to make sure that

[Guest Expert]

you have a mission, that you're going

[Andrew Huberman]

after that mission, that you're working hard

[Guest Expert]

towards that mission, that you're extending your capabilities. And when you're doing that in the service of something that you love and really think is important to do now all of a sudden some of that

[Andrew Huberman]

mental and emotional weight that people struggle

[Guest Expert]

with, the depression, the anxiety, all, all of that stuff begins to alleviate. And if you're struggling with depression and anxiety, I'm telling you it's diet, exercise, meaning and purpose. And then this is a weird one

[Andrew Huberman]

in terms of what I would have

[Guest Expert]

you do if you want to optimize your sleep.

[Andrew Huberman]

But I'm going to get you in a loving relationship. This is something that I think that people really underestimate.

[Guest Expert]

Now it doesn't necessarily have to be a romantic relationship though I do very much encourage that.

[Andrew Huberman]

But having close friends that you can

[Guest Expert]

love and laugh with, all of that

[Andrew Huberman]

stuff makes a huge difference.

[Guest Expert]

Loneliness has as strong of a negative

[Andrew Huberman]

impact on your longevity as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

[Guest Expert]

That's insane.

[Andrew Huberman]

So you want to be really thoughtful about going out, seeking relationships, all this stuff matters. Which brings me to my next point.

[Guest Expert]

If you really want to have good

[Andrew Huberman]

sleep, make sure you're having good sex. So having loving relationships, being involved with

[Guest Expert]

somebody, getting that whole gamut.

[Andrew Huberman]

There is a reason that people fall asleep after sex. The neurochemical release from orgasm is incredible.

[Guest Expert]

Now of course you can self stimulate

[Andrew Huberman]

and get yourself part of the way

[Guest Expert]

there, but that's not going to release all of the feel good chemicals that you want in order to really have something lasting.

[Andrew Huberman]

I also think that there's something where

[Guest Expert]

as a tribal animal, the fact that we get so in sync biologically with

[Andrew Huberman]

other people, your breathing rate will sync up with somebody, your heart rate will sync up with somebody.

[Guest Expert]

Women's period will psych cycle up with

[Andrew Huberman]

other women if they are together. So it's really pretty incredible the way that we get in sync.

[Guest Expert]

So I have a feeling, though I don't have any studies to back this up, they're probably out there, but I have not. I cannot in good conscience tell you that I have seen them. But I have a feeling that one

[Andrew Huberman]

thing if they were to look at

[Guest Expert]

they would see is true, is that sleeping next to somebody that you have a loving relationship with and that you

[Andrew Huberman]

feel safe around, I think that's also very important, is going to make for better sleep. I'm also going to make sure that you eat your last meal early again for me. It's at 2pm 7 hours I go between that.

[Guest Expert]

I wouldn't have you drink late.

[Andrew Huberman]

I certainly wouldn't have you ingest caffeine late. I think that's really important.

[Guest Expert]

I would get you taping your mouth. I'd have you in a cool room. You'd be blocking blue light, bright light. I would get you out of problem solving mode.

[Andrew Huberman]

And of course, no drugs or alcohol.

[Guest Expert]

Sorry. All right, everybody. If you do all of those things,

[Andrew Huberman]

your sleep is going to be on point.

[Guest Expert]

You are going to be cognitively optimized.

[Andrew Huberman]

Your life is going to be amazing. You can thank me later. If you enjoyed this episode about mastering an evening routine, check out this next

[Guest Expert]

clip about discipline and how it should

[Andrew Huberman]

be a huge part of your daily life.

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