AMA #4: Maintain Motivation, Improve REM Sleep, Set Goals, Manage Anxiety & More
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Welcome to the huberman lab podcast, where we discuss science and science space tools for everyday life. I'm ander huberman and i'm a professor neuber logy and optimal gy at stanford school of medicine today isn't ask me anything or A M A episode. Which is part of our premium subscriber content.

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And as always, I will strive to be as accurate as possible, as throw as possible, and yet as conscience as possible. Our first question is about motivation, in particular, how to maintain motivation over long periods of time. This was the question asked by Martin's zoey v.

He wrote, I alternate between periods of two different states that vary from a few weeks to a couple of months. I have extremely high motivation in one state where I can do multiple things, side projects, making music as well as my main things, or really low motivational states, where I can barely do anything. And I only look for short term entertainment and guessing.

Short term entertainment comes in the form of video games, social media, and just kind of doing generally unproductive things, as we all do. From time to time. He goes on to right what would be the best set of protocols to Normalize those extremes into a more stable and consistent state.

Well, first off, this is an excEllent question. I say that because it's a question that I hear a lot, and I think that many people are interested in knowing how motivated they ought to feel. And I think a lot of people also feel a lot less motivated than they would like.

Now here, the question was specifically about how to not go from these extremes of days or weeks of high motivation to days or weeks of low motivation. But before we do that, we need to take a step back and acknowledge that just as with anxiety or happiness or sadness, we as human beings, don't have an objective window into how other people experience motivation. In fact, most the time, we don't even realize how we experience motivation.

We just know whether not we feel a high barrier or a low barrier to leaning into work in getting things done. In fact, I have a good friend who did many years in the special Operations community and then went on to the finance community, and then now works in health and wildness community. He has a great in a mental image for all of us to adopt.

It's certainly one that i've adopted, which is, for anything in our life, we can either be back on our heels, flat footed, or forward center of mass back on our heels, meaning really struggling flat fd, meaning, and we're doing okay. Or forward center of mass mean that we feel as if were really tackling things and that we are in control of our environment, or at least to some degree. So I place that imagery in your mind because i've return to A A little bit later in the question when we get into some of the underlying circuitry and tools.

In the meantime, I want to remind everybody what the basis of motivation is. There are many neural, chemical and neural circuits involved in what we call motivation, but essential theme of the neuroscience of motivation is that the neuromodulator doping is involved. Doping does other things besides control motivation of acting controls light adaptation in the retina um that is your eye.

IT controls a number of different things in terms of movement. IT controls all sorts of things. But IT is strongly related to the motivation pathways. How do we know that while there are experiments on animals and humans, which show that even in the absence of dopamine or in the presence of very low dopamine, I should say people and animals can still experience pleasure.

However, when dopamine levels are too low, people's ability to pursue pleasure, or they are willingness to pursue pleasure in particular, they'll willingness to undergo effort to pursue pleasure or any goal of any kind, not just pleasure, any goal of any kind is strongly regulated by the levels of dopamine. So of dopamine levels are too low, people simply will not put in the effort to obtain or reach a goal. If dopamine levels are adequately high, they will put in that effort.

And if dopa levels go too high, you actually see something that is pathologic, which is that people consider every goal a reasonable goal. This is often seen in the manic phase of a manic bipolar person. So for instance, somebody with manic bipolar whose in the manic episode, dopamine levels are very, very high.

And they will think every ideas a great idea, and they will have tons of energy to do that, so much so that they're not sleeping. So obviously, that's not what we what we want. And what the question asked Martin is asking about is how to keep dopamine in levels, a range that allow us to lean into effort but that we don't expand our ability to stay motivated.

And we can really trace that back to a biochemical slash neural circuit statement, which is we really want to control our output of doping and the baseline levels of dopamine from which that output is taken. In other words, we want to think about dopamine as a reservoir or residing in a revoir. That reservoir can be depleted.

So it's exhaustible. It's depletable, but it's renewable as well. And one of the best analogies that i've ever heard was by a previous guest on the human man lab podcast, doctor called geeta is a medical doctor, obesity specialist, expert and hormones.

We did episode on optimizing hormones in males with our college. Al, let you can find that at huberman lab docotor, anywhere you can find. Podcast doctor gelled offered an analogy of the baseline levels of doping as a wave pool.

And I really like this. So if you think about this poor, full of doped, and here we're just talking about the dopamine that resides in the circuits of the brain that control motivation. But that pool of dopamine, you can imagine, is just sitting.

They're not doing much of anything while you are sleep. In fact, while you are sleeping, you're replenishing those dopamine levels. I'll tell you another tool in a moment to replenish those doping levels.

But if you were to pursue a goal really, really go forward center of mass for many, many hours or many, many days in some cases, and pursue a goal or multiple goals and really driven to do a on, what you're effectively doing is generating waves in that wave pool. And if those waves are too big, well, then the waves can keep repeating themselves. So think of the waves as the motivation, and the depth of the pool is the reservoir of the opening.

And if those waves are too big, too much excitement, too much motivation, too much center of mass for a given period of time, then the water, in this way, pool slashes out of the wave ball, lowering the reservoir. And then there are really three ways that you can replenish that reservoir. And you want to maintain or replenish that reservoir if it's been depleted.

How do you do that? Well, first of all, quality sleep. So when I say quality, I mean where you're getting enough slow way asleep and rap, and I move and sleep for some people six hours, for some people eight hours.

Some people might even need a little bit more or a little bit less. We have episodes, the perfect or sleep episode, the master or sleep episode. We have a tool kit for sleep, all available, zero costs.

Who women up up com links at sea to check those out for getting your sleep right. But sleep really, when you replenish that reservoir of doping. So you cannot ignore sleep. I'll come back to this in a moment.

The second science supported tool that's really been shown to replenish doping, in particular dopamine e, within the pathways that regulate motivation, is the practice i've talked about before on the podcast called non sleep depressed, sometimes called yoga eja. Although yoga eja is a little bit different, there are two studies out of denmark that have explored yoga edra in the context of dopamine. The first one simply involved having people do a yoga edra practise.

Again, this doesn't involve any movement, but involves people, potentially, you doing anywhere from thirty to sixty minutes, although there are ni da showing that is short as ten minutes of a non sleep deep ast A K yoga eda protocol leads to dramatic, really dramatic increases in stride dopamine in reserves. So IT essentially is replenishing the dopamine reserve pool. This is why i'm such a fan of using N S D R A K yoga edra at least once a day and a ally under times when you are engaging in a lot of high output.

And when I think specially the times when you're engaging in a lot of high output, this is a mistake many people make. They push, push push push push their pursuit of a goal, then they hit that point where they are exhausted. Then they start doing all the dopamine reserve pool replenishing tools such as organiser N S D R.

The real key is to always tap off that or refill that reservoir once a day before it's completely depleted. Now this gets into some of the biochemistry of doped and the relevant circuits, but IT takes a lot longer to restore the dopamine reservoir. AR think of IT still as a wave pool, but that reservoir from a place of complete depletion, then IT does a partial depletion.

So there's an a symmetry in the way this is done. So it's not as if, you know, you drink a glass of water, you fill the glass water, a certain rate and IT fills up to a certain level, and the rate is constant. Think about IT as once the level of doped in your reserve is depleted past a certain point, IT takes a lot more effort, much more sleep, much more N, S, D, R, M, things of that sort, to replenish that reservoir.

Now, often times what people will do when they start feeling less motivation is they will start relying on things like adora riddling, some cases illegal substances that can increase dopamine. You know what those are? Please don't ever lean to those.

They are extremely dangerous. They really are because of their ability. To potently release dopamine and guess what, deplete that reservoir even further.

We've talked about some supplements on the podcast that can replenish doping l tyring in particular. Mcneice aries is actually ninety nine percent aldobrand precursor to dopa. Mean, I don't necessarily recommend mcneice arann.

IT tends to make people, uh, very dopamine gic drive motivated and then crash again, deleting that pool alter scenes a little bit milder. But I really encourage people to lean first on the behavior tools such as N S D R. And by the way, there is A N S D R script totally zero cost that you can find by putting my name in n sdr into youtube.

Ah that one works quite well. If you're looking for a short n sdr uh there some other n sd r you can simply look on the internet um or youtube and just put nsd r you will fine N S D R or if you prefer to do the more classic yogananda type approach, there are a lot of different yoga edia options to choose from on youtube. Many people think N S D R yoga eja simply meditation with a body scan.

That's not true. Meditation is a focus exercise OK. Most meditations are focus exercise. N S D R restores energy through the dopamine e system and newer data starting to show that can actually recover lost sleeps if you're not sleeping enough.

But to return to N S D R A K yoga ear as a practice, yes, it's been shown in laboratory studies in humans, by the way, to restore dopamine levels. There's another study lesser known from that same group that was publishing two thousand eleven, which is entitled dop energy c stimulation enhances confidence and accuracy and seeing rapidly presented words. This was a cognitive task.

They explored yoga eja A K N S D R in the context of increasing style. Do mean they already knew that he did that. So that's great.

They confirm that result. But what they also found is that doing n sdr could restore confidence in cognitive ability and performance in these cognitive tasks. So this is a really powerful zero cost tool for reusing or replenishing that dopamine e reserve.

And so this is something to do every day, especially when you're not feeling depleted. So the question again was about how to make sure that you don't go through these cycles of extreme tivo and then lesser motivation. Well, get your sleep right.

I would say eighty percent or more of the nights of your life hollowly the nights that it's not good for good reasons that you're enjoying yourself. But hey, life happens. So one hundred percent of the time is just not reasonable to expect of yourself do n sdr once a day for either ten minutes.

If you have the time to do twenty, thirty minutes or an hour, you will see even more positive effects. IT has been shown in these research studies to planisphere pami levels of confidence, coding ability at sea and sense of motivation. And I said there were three tools, and the third tool, s that really can allow you to keep the dopamine A K motivation circuitry tuned up properly, is to really start paying attention to peaks in dopamine and be very careful about layer in too many things that can stimulate the dopamine system.

I talked about this quite a bit in the episode that we did on add and building and maintaining focus. There are many things out there in nowaday that will delete the dopamine in system, for instance. And by the way, none of what i'm about to list is necessarily bad.

I actually use some of these things. For instance, caffeine will increase dopamine receptors that allow whatever dopamine is available to be more potent. okay? So caffeine is great for some people, less good for people with anxiety.

Don't try get too late in the day because you will interfere with your sleep and so on and so forth. But many people will combine caffeine with music that they pretty good. Like music, great music can stimulate dopamine release.

We know this. That can enhance motivation, especially it's kind of music that really puts you in the group for the particular type of work you're going to do for me. I like to listen to either loud, fast music or black gold classical piano.

So one or the other, I know what's right for me for a given time. You'll know what's right for you for a given time in your preferences. But what will happen if people will start consuming caffeine higher and higher levels? Again, caffeine isn't necessarily bad.

They'll start doing that and they'll start laid in or stacking very potent music, potent for them, plus things like i'll tyre acy. Again, none of these things are terrible on their own so that they could be very beneficial. Sometimes theyll start taking macaron, sometimes still start relying on things like atrial riddle.

And pretty soon what's happening is there are getting these big waves in, that dopamine wave will big peaks. And within a few days, or maybe even within a few hours, they're depleted and there at that low. And then as doctor on a ym key, who is a guest on the podcast, talked about in terms of addiction, but also in her wonderful doping ation, what what happens is after those big peaks in dopamine, the reservoir, the baseline in dopamine e drops below its initial level.

So it's as if the reservoir got deeper and its emptier and IT takes much, much longer to fill. okay. So to be quite specific, what i'm recommending is get your sleep right, ideally every night of your life, but for as many minutes of your life is possible. That's clearly replenishing dopamine and sense of motivation.

Do all the things associated with that morning sunlight, lack of artificial lighted certain hours of the night at set up, all of that in the tool IT for sleep in other episodes I mention before, have a practice that is research supported to replenish them, I mean, and incorporate that practice any time of day. Again, nsd r can be done morning, afternoon or evening or middle the night if you wake up and you need to get back to sleep, and can be very beneficial for that. But do IT as a consistent practice so that doping reservoirs remains tapped off.

And as a third point, please be wary of, or at least aware of these peaks in doping in the fact that layer in a lot of things that stimulate doping. Well, that can be wonderful for you're wedding at birth of a new child going to a sports event with a bunch of friends celebrating a big anniversary. Yes, please do celebrate and enjoy the wonderful events of life.

But please also understand and expect there will be a low, a sort of post part of low, maybe not football depression that follows that unless you incorporate some tools and practices to replenish that dopy. Does that mean you should never combine caffeine? Al terracing music and I work out in time with friends.

No, absolutely not. But don't expect to do that. And then go to an intense about of work and then get up the next morning to do IT all over again for more than a few days before you find yourself pretty depleted.

okay? So rather than give you a specific schedule of you do seven days of this and four days of this, what I encourage you to do is for at least five days a week, maybe give yourself some time off on the weekends, maybe not, but for at least five days a week, get into a consistent routine. That is, I should say, neurobiological ally, consistent as well with how the dopamine A K circuits that control motivation work.

And I assure you that you will find yourself in a more regular grove of focus and attention and alertness and motivation when you need to. And provided you're doing all the things I described and hopefully paying attention, other things like nutrition and social connection to, of course, you will find a much more even pattern of motivation over time. One last thing before I conclude the answer to this question.

When I was in graduate school, I got some wonderful advice from an excEllent neurologist. This is Robert night. He's to be a university called for your berkeley.

I think he's retired now, but still active in the scientific community. And I asked him what he was doing that weekend. I don't know why this came up. And he, i'm going fishing. I like kind of a mindless recreation.

And so it's great yeah fishings for not particularly into fishing myself, but I done a few times and I enjoy IT and he said, you know the most important thing for a science or medicine career or any demanding career I said what I was all the year as as a super, super hungry to to get in the maxon, do research and publish papers. And he said, figure out how many hours a day you can do real work consistently. That means five days a week for some people, six or seven.

But five days a week, I think, for most people, is going to be a healthier overall for your social life and family at sea. And he said, figure that out and know that that number is what you should apply over and over and over again, but update that number about every four, five years and I said, okay, so does that mean that over time i'm working more and more or less than less? And he said, I here's the deal.

As you get Better at your profession, you will find that you can do more potent work, more directed work in the order amount of time. But that does not mean that you can continue to expand the amount of time that are doing focus work, in fact the opposite. So this follows a general principal that's also present in resistance training, weight lifting, right?

Um the analogy there is that people always imagine that as you get Better and Better at resistance strain that you should do more and more volume, just keep adding volume and there's some evidence to support that more volume for hypertext y is posed less set set or we have done episodes this however, there's a different school of thought that works succeedin ly well and he runs in the exact opposite direction. Which is as you get Better at controlling muscular contractions, or let's say, for in an enduring sport, as you get Better at regulating your stride and breathing and all those things, you actually can do more quote, quote, adaptation, stimulating damage during a given training session. So you want to train less, not more, over time, because beginners don't actually have the ability to get much done in a lot of time or a short period of time, or as expert can come in there and really nailed.

So I think that advice, that Robert night, I was really key. And at something that followed throughout my career. So at one period of my life, I on't mention in the hours that I worked in graduate school, they were pretty insane, to be honest.

I family members get a little concern and actually lived in the laboratory even as a junior professor. I don't suggest people do that, by the way, but I enjoyed at the time. And the key thing is that you figure out what you can do consistently and still maintain mental health and physical health.

That's key as well. And do that. And then every couple of years or so, update that typically by reducing the total amount of time that you're doing that hypotension y work.

I think that combined with the other tools that I described before for generating ongoing total energy c circuits, keeping that reservoir full ought to give you consistent motivation. Again, it's an art and a practice and a science, so don't expect to get IT perfect the first time around. But I ish you all luck, and i'm certain that these tools work.

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