Huberman: How To Optimize Your Day
Tired of relying on sheer willpower to grind through your day? Huberman argues that peak performance isn’t about working harder—it’s about working smarter by leveraging your biology.
From the moment you wake until your head hits the pillow, specific, science-backed protocols can optimize your energy, sharpen your focus, and regulate your mood.
Table of Contents
Huberman's Morning Routine
Sunlight and Movement
Huberman begins his day between 6:00 and 6:30 am. He first jots down the time on a notepad to track his temperature minimum, the lowest point of his body temperature, which occurs roughly two hours before waking. This practice helps him understand his natural sleep-wake cycle.
Huberman emphasizes the importance of "forward ambulation," or walking. The optic flow experienced during this motion calms the nervous system by quieting the amygdala, the brain's center for fear and anxiety. This morning walk helps him achieve an alert yet calm state.
He recommends taking this walk outdoors for sunlight exposure. Even on cloudy days, sunlight is significantly more potent than indoor lighting. This exposure stimulates melanopsin cells in the eyes, signaling to the brain that it is daytime and promoting alertness.
This practice also supports a healthy morning cortisol pulse, a natural hormonal surge that enhances wakefulness. By combining a morning walk with sunlight, Huberman effectively times this cortisol release, optimizing his alertness for the day.
Hydration and Caffeine
Huberman is a firm believer in hydration for mental performance. Since dehydration often occurs overnight, he emphasizes hydrating early in the day by drinking water with a small amount of sea salt – about half a teaspoon – before he even thinks about caffeine.
He intentionally delays his caffeine intake for 90 to 120 minutes after waking.
This practice revolves around adenosine, a neurotransmitter that promotes sleepiness. Upon waking, adenosine levels are typically low. Caffeine acts as an adenosine blocker, creating a feeling of alertness. By delaying caffeine, any residual adenosine from sleep can be cleared out.
This strategic delay prevents the afternoon crash that can occur when early-morning caffeine wears off, allowing a more consistent energy arc throughout the day.
Fasting for Focus
Huberman's primary morning objective is achieving a focused yet alert state for productive work, which he finds is most effectively reached by fasting until 11 am or noon. This practice elevates adrenaline (epinephrine) levels in the brain and body.
Increased adrenaline enhances learning and focus. However, maintaining optimal adrenaline levels is key, as excessively high levels can lead to stress and jitteriness.
Within the optimal range, adrenaline sharpens focus and improves information encoding and retention, allowing for better learning and memory.
Structuring Deep Work
The 90-Minute Framework
Huberman structures his work in 90-minute blocks, aligning with the brain's natural ultradian cycles which shift between high and low alertness.
The goal is to achieve a "tunnel" of deep work within this timeframe. He acknowledges this can be challenging but finds the feeling of accomplishment afterward—driven by neuromodulators like dopamine and norepinephrine—to be highly rewarding.
A powerful strategy is to dedicate one 90-minute block in the morning to your most demanding cognitive tasks. Placing this deep work session early helps ensure it gets done before other demands arise.
A second work block can be incorporated later in the day. This combined three hours of focused effort, though it may seem brief, likely represents a significant portion of genuine deep work for most people.
Of course, other responsibilities will fill the day. The key is to establish boundaries around your dedicated work blocks while still remaining flexible. You are encouraged to adapt this framework to suit your individual needs and schedule.
Optimizing Your Workspace
To facilitate deep work, Huberman recommends positioning a computer screen at or slightly above eye level. This is because looking upward increases alertness, while looking down can promote sleepiness.
He also eliminates distractions by turning his phone completely off and uses low-level white noise to promote an optimal workflow.
Finding Your Peak Time
The optimal timing for a work session is linked to your body's temperature minimum, which typically occurs about two hours before waking.
Huberman explains that peak cognitive performance often falls four to six hours after this minimum. This window capitalizes on the steepest incline of the body's natural temperature rise. For someone waking at 7:00 am, the ideal session would be between 9:00 am and 11:00 am.
He advises working with these physiological rhythms, though notes that individuals who feel sharpest first thing in the morning should leverage that natural advantage.
Exercise for Brain Health
Physical activity is crucial for brain health, with data from as far back as the 1990s demonstrating both immediate and long-term benefits. Exercise can be categorized into two main types: strength and hypertrophy training, which increases muscle strength and size, and endurance work, which improves stamina.
However, it's best to avoid excessively long workouts. Sessions exceeding an hour can elevate cortisol levels, which may be detrimental if chronically high.
Combining strength and endurance training throughout the week—though not necessarily in the same session—offers synergistic benefits. This approach promotes brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), reduces inflammatory cytokines like IL-6, and boosts anti-inflammatory ones like IL-10.
For workout structure, approximately 80% of resistance training should be performed below the point of muscle failure. The remaining 20%, however, can involve higher-intensity training to failure.
This 80/20 principle also applies to endurance work. The "burn" felt during an intense run or cycle is linked to the lactate system, which also serves as fuel for the brain. Pushing past the lactate threshold for roughly 20% of endurance training can therefore provide additional support for brain health.
Fueling Your Focus and Mood
The timing and content of your meals are critical for optimal brain function. Ironically, one of the best things for the brain can be fasting. While food is necessary, a strategic approach to eating is key.
A common practice is to fast until around noon, as large meals can divert blood flow to the gut, leading to lethargy and reduced cognitive performance.
For the first meal of the day, a lower-carbohydrate approach helps maintain alertness. Prioritizing protein sources like meat, chicken, or salmon with a side of vegetables is effective. On exercise days, starches like bread, rice, or oatmeal can be added, but they are often kept low or omitted on non-training days. This isn't about following a ketogenic diet but rather avoiding the sleepiness that can result from the serotonin release triggered by starch consumption.
Additionally, consuming at least 1,000 milligrams of the EPA form of omega-3 fatty acids daily can support a healthy mood and may even complement prescription antidepressants.
A short walk of five to 30 minutes after a meal can accelerate metabolism and nutrient utilization. This walk provides another key benefit: exposure to natural light. Getting sunlight in the afternoon gives the brain valuable information about the time of day, which is crucial for regulating sleep, wakefulness, and hormones.
Specifically, afternoon sun exposure can lower the retina's sensitivity to light later in the evening. Between 10:00 pm and 4:00 am, the retina becomes highly sensitive, and bright light during this window can disrupt dopamine and sleep.
By getting 10 to 30 minutes of outdoor light in the afternoon (without sunglasses), you can mitigate the negative impact of artificial light later at night and support your body’s natural production of melatonin.
Optimizing Sleep
Evening Nutrition
Huberman emphasizes that dinner plays a crucial role in preparing for sleep. His evening meal generally consists of starchy carbohydrates combined with protein, such as pasta, rice, and vegetables with chicken, fish, or eggs.
This combination helps promote serotonin production, a key factor in the transition to sleep. He notes that low-carbohydrate diets can sometimes lead to sleep difficulties due to challenges in producing adequate serotonin.
While serotonin precursors like 5-HTP or tryptophan can be supplemented, Huberman cautions against it. He explains that while they can induce sleep quickly, they can disrupt sleep architecture, making it difficult to return to sleep after waking.
Instead, he focuses on dietary strategies like his carbohydrate-rich dinner to facilitate a sense of calm and replenish glycogen stores.
Temperature Regulation
A natural body temperature drop of 1 to 3 degrees is crucial for falling and staying asleep.
To facilitate this process, Huberman suggests accelerating the temperature drop with a hot bath, shower, or sauna before bed. This counterintuitively helps by exposing the body to heat, which then triggers enhanced cooling mechanisms when returning to a normal room temperature, promoting an easier transition to sleep.
A cool, dark room is also beneficial. The body has natural cooling behaviors, such as unconsciously extending a hand, foot, or part of the face from under the covers. These areas contain specialized vascular structures (AVAs) that are highly efficient at releasing heat from the body, aiding in temperature regulation throughout the night.
A Simple Supplement Stack
Huberman discusses three compounds that can help the transition to sleep, emphasizing that a physician should be consulted before starting any new supplements.
Magnesium: He recommends 300-400 milligrams of magnesium threonate or bisglycinate 30-60 minutes before sleep. These forms cross the blood-brain barrier and promote the release of GABA, an inhibitory neurotransmitter that quiets the forebrain.
Apigenin: A 50-milligram dose of this compound, found in chamomile, can help calm the forebrain and reduce anxiety.
Theanine: This compound also increases GABA and helps lower neuron activity.
These three ingredients can be taken together for a synergistic effect.
Dealing with Night Awakenings
Huberman identifies two primary causes for waking in the middle of the night. The first is fighting natural sleepiness. If you push past your body's desire to sleep, your melatonin pulse might occur too early relative to your bedtime, causing you to wake a few hours later. The solution is to go to bed earlier to align with your body's natural rhythm.
The second cause is anxiety or needing to use the restroom. In this case, he advises using only dim lights and turning them off as quickly as possible upon returning to bed.
Wrapping Up
Optimizing your day doesn't require a total life overhaul; it requires understanding your neurobiology.
As Huberman’s protocols demonstrate, performance hinges on timing—when you see sunlight, when you drink caffeine, and how you structure your deep work.
These aren't just habits; they are levers that control your hormones and neurotransmitters. By aligning your actions with your biology, you can systematically unlock a sharper, more energized version of yourself.