Our Episode

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Welcome to
the Huberman Lab podcast,
where we discuss science
and science-based tools
for everyday life.
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I'm Andrew Huberman,
and I'm a professor
of neurobiology
and ophthalmology
at Stanford School of Medicine.

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Without further ado, let's get
to answering your questions.

And as always, I will strive
to be as accurate as possible,
as thorough as possible, and
yet, as concise 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 Zokov.

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."
I'm guessing, short-term
entertainment comes
in the form of video
games, social media,
and just doing generally
unproductive things,
as we all do from time to time.

He goes on to write, "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 of the
time, we don't even
realize how we
experience motivation.

We just know whether
or not we feel
a high barrier or a low
barrier to leaning into work
and 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 wellness community.

He has a great 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 in our heels, meaning
really struggling; flat footed,
meaning we're doing OK;
or forward center of mass,
meaning that we feel as if
we're 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'll return to
it 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 neurochemicals
and neural circuits involved
in what we call motivation,
but a central theme
of the neuroscience
of motivation
is that the neural modulator
dopamine is involved.

Now, dopamine does other things
besides control motivation.

In fact, it controls
light adaptation
in the retina, 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?

Well, 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 their willingness to pursue
pleasure, in particular,
their 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 if 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 dopamine
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
who is in a manic
episode, dopamine levels
are very, very high,
and they will think
every idea is a great idea.

And they will have tons
of energy to do that,
so much so so that
they're not sleeping.

So obviously, that's
not what we want.

What we want, and what the
question asker, Martin,
is asking about, is how to keep
dopamine levels in a range that
allow us to lean into effort
but that we don't expend
our ability to stay motivated.

And we can really
trace that back
to a biochemical/neural
circuit statement, which
is-- we really want to
control our output of dopamine
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 reservoir.

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
Huberman Lab podcast, Dr.

Kyle
Gillett, who's a medical doctor,
obesity specialist, expert
in hormones.

We did an episode on
optimizing hormones
in males with Dr.

Kyle Gillett.

You can find that at
hubermanlab.com or anywhere
you can find podcasts.

Dr.

Gillett offered an
analogy of the baseline levels
of dopamine as a wave pool,
and I really like this.

So if you think about this pool
full of dopamine-- 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 could imagine
is just sitting there not
doing much of anything
while you're asleep.

In fact, while you're
sleeping, you're
replenishing those
dopamine levels.

I'll tell you another
tool in a moment
to replenish those
dopamine 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 you're really driven to do
a ton, what you're effectively
doing is generating
waves in that wave pool.

And if those waves
are too big, well,
then the waves can't keep
repeating themselves.

So think about the
wave as the motivation
and the depth of the pool is
the reservoir of dopamine.

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 wave pool
sloshes out of the wave
pool 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
wave sleep and rapid I
move in sleep.

So 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 Your Sleep episode,
the Master Your Sleep episode.

We have a toolkit for sleep.

All available at zero
cost at hubermanlab.com,
links et cetera.

So check those out for
getting your sleep right.

But sleep is really
when you replenish
that reservoir of dopamine.

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
dopamine, in particular,
dopamine within the pathways
that regulate motivation, is
a practice I've talked about
before on the podcast
called non-sleep deep rest,
sometimes called yoga nidra,
although, yoga nidra is
a little bit different.

There are two studies
out of Denmark
that have explored yoga nidra
in the context of dopamine.

The first one simply involved
having people do a yoga nidra
practice.

Again, this doesn't
involve any movement,
but it involves people,
potentially you,
doing anywhere from 30 to 60
minutes, although there are now
data showing that as
short as 10 minutes
of a non-sleep deep rest,
a.k.a. yoga nidra protocol,
leads to dramatic,
really dramatic increases
in striatal dopamine reserves.

So it essentially
is replenishing
the dopamine reserve pool.

This is why I'm such a
fan of using NSDR, a.k.a.
yoga nidra, at least once a
day and especially under times
when you're engaging in
a lot of high output.

And when I say,
especially at times
when you're engaging in
a lot of high output,
this is a mistake
many people make.

They push, push,
push, push, push.

They're in pursuit of a goal.

Then they hit that point
where they're exhausted.

Then they start doing
all the dopamine reserve
pool replenishing tools
such as yoga nidra or NSDR.

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 dopamine
and the relevant circuits,
but it takes a lot longer
to restore the
dopamine reservoir--
think of it still
as a wave pool,
but that reservoir from a
place of complete depletion
then it does of
partial depletion.

So there's an asymmetry
in the way this is done.

So it's not as if you
drink a glass of water.

You fill the glass of
water at a certain rate
and it fills up to
a certain level,
and the rate is constant.

Think about it as once the level
of dopamine in your reserve
is depleted past
a certain point,
it takes a lot more effort,
much more sleep, much more NSDR,
things of that sort to
replenish that reservoir.

Now, oftentimes
what people will do
when they start
feeling less motivation
is they will start relying
on things like Adderall,
Ritalin, some cases
illegal substances that
can increase dopamine.

You know what those are.

Please don't ever
lean in 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 dopamine,
L-tyrosine in particular.

Mucuna pruriens is
actually 99% l-DOPA,
the precursor to dopamine.

I don't necessarily
recommend Mucuna pruriens.

It tends to make people
very dopaminergic--
drive, drive, drive, drive,
motivated, and then crash.

Again, depleting that pool.

L-tyrosine is a
little bit milder.

But I really encourage
people to lean first
on the behavioral
tools such as an NSDR.

And by the way, there's a NSDR
script, totally zero cost,
that you can find by putting
my name and NSDR into YouTube.

That one works quite well if you
are looking for a short NSDR.

There are some other NSDRs.

You can simply look on
the internet or YouTube
and just put NSDR
and you'll find NSDR.

Or if you prefer to do
the more classic yoga
nidra type approach, there are
a lot of different yoga nidra
options to choose
from on YouTube.

Many people think NSDR
or yoga nidra are simply
meditation with a body scan.

That's not true.

Meditation is a focus exercise.

Most meditations
are focus exercise.

NSDR restores energy
through the dopamine system,
and newer data are
starting to show
that it can actually
recover lost sleep,
so if you're not
sleeping enough.

But to return to NSDR, a.k.a.
yoga nidra, 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 published in 2011,
which is entitled Dopaminergic
stimulation enhances confidence
and accuracy in seeing
rapidly presented words.

This was a cognitive task.

They explored yoga nedra, a.k.a.

NSDR, in the context of
increasing striatal dopamine.

They already knew that it
did that, so that's great.

They confirmed that result.

But what they also found
is that doing NSDR could restore
confidence in cognitive ability
and performance in
these cognitive tasks.

So this is a really
powerful, zero cost
tool for re-upping
or replenishing
that dopamine reserve.

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 motivation and
then lesser motivation.

Well, get your sleep right.

I always say, 80% or more
of the nights of your life,
hopefully the nights that it's
not good, are for good reasons
that you're enjoying yourself.

But hey, life happens,
so 100% of the time
it's just not reasonable
to expect of yourself.

Do NSDR once a day
for either 10 minutes.

If you have the time to do
20-30 minutes or an hour,
you will see even
more positive effects.

It has been shown in
these research studies
to replenish dopamine,
levels of confidence,
cognitive ability, et cetera,
and sense of motivation.

And I said there
were three tools,
and the third tool
that really can
allow you to keep the
dopamine, a.k.a. motivation
circuitry, tuned up
properly is to really start
paying attention to
peaks in dopamine
and be very careful
about layering
in too many things that can
stimulate the dopamine system.

I talked about this quite
a bit in the episode
that we did on ADHD and
building and maintaining focus.

There are many things
out there nowadays
that will deplete
the dopamine system.

For instance-- and by the way,
none of what I'm about to list
is necessarily bad.

I actually used some
of these things.

For instance, caffeine will
increase dopamine receptors
that will allow
whatever dopamine
is available to be more potent.

OK, so caffeine is
great for some people,
less good for
people with anxiety.

Don't drink it too
late in the day
because it will interfere
with your sleep,
and so on and so forth.

But many people will
combine caffeine with music
that they particularly like.

Music's great.

Music can stimulate dopamine
release, we know this.

It can enhance
motivation, especially
if is the kind of music
that really puts you
in the groove for the
particular type of work
you're going to do.

For me, I like to listen to
either loud fast music or Glenn
Gould 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 and your preferences.

But what will happen is people
will start consuming caffeine
at higher and higher levels.

Again, caffeine isn't
necessarily bad,
but they'll start doing that.

And they'll start layering
it in, or stacking,
very potent music,
potent for them,
plus things like L-tyrosine.

Again, none of these things
are terrible on their own.

In fact, they can
be very beneficial.

Sometimes they'll start
taking Mucuna pruriens.

Sometimes they'll
start relying on things
like Adderall, Ritalin.

And pretty soon
what's happening is
they're getting these big waves
in that dopamine wave pool,
big peaks.

And within a few days or
maybe even within a few hours,
they're depleted and
they're at that low.

And then, as Dr.

Anna Lembke, who
is a guest on the podcast,
talked about in terms
of addiction but also in
her wonderful book Dopamine
Nation, what happens is after
those big peaks in dopamine,
the reservoir, the
baseline in dopamine,
drops below its initial level.

So it's as if the reservoir
got deeper, and it's emptier,
and it takes much,
much longer to fill.

So to be quite specific,
what I'm recommending
is get your sleep right.

Ideally, every night of
your life, but for as
many nights of your
life as possible.

That's clearly replenishing
dopamine and sense
of motivation.

Do all the things associated
with that-- morning, sunlight,
lack of artificial
light at certain hours
of the night, et cetera.

All of that's in the Toolkit
for Sleep and other episodes
I mentioned before.

Have a practice that
is research supported
to replenish dopamine,
and incorporate
that practice any time of day.

Again, NSDR can be done
morning, afternoon, or evening,
or middle of the
night if you wake up
and you need to
get back to sleep,
it can be very
beneficial for that.

But do it as a
consistent practice
so that dopamine reservoir
remains tapped off.

And as a third point, please be
wary of, or at least aware of,
these peaks in
dopamine and the fact
that layering in a lot of things
that stimulate dopamine, well,
that can be wonderful for your
wedding, 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
lull, a sort of postpartum low,
maybe not full blown
depression, that
follows that unless
you incorporate
some tools and practices
to replenish that dopamine.

Does that mean you should never
combine caffeine, L-tyrosine,
music, and a workout,
and time with friends?

No, absolutely not.

But don't expect to
do that, and then
go do an intense bout
of work, and then get up
the next morning and do
it all over again for more
than a few days before you
find yourself pretty depleted.

So rather than give
you a specific schedule
of 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,
neurobiologically consistent as
well with how the
dopamine, a.k.a.
circuits that control
motivation, work.

And I assure you that
you will find yourself
in a more regular groove
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
to other things like nutrition
and social connection too,
of course, you'll 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.

His name is Robert Knight.

He used to be at University
of California, Berkeley.

I think he's retired
now but is 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 said, oh,
I'm going fishing.

I like mindless recreation.

I said, that's great.

You know, fishing is fun.

I'm not particularly
into fishing myself,
but I've done it a few
times and I enjoy it.

And he said, the most important
thing for a science or medicine
career or any demanding career?

I said, what?

I was all ears, super
hungry to get in the mix
and 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 bit healthier
overall for your social life
and family, et cetera.

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 or five
years.

And I said, OK, so does that
mean that over time I'm working
more and more or less and less?

And he said, ah, 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 a shorter amount
of time, but that
does not mean that
you can continue
to expand the amount of time
that you're doing focused work.

In fact, the opposite.

So this follows a sort
of general principle
that's also present in
resistance training,
weightlifting, right?

The analogy there is
that people always
imagine that as you get better
and better at resistance
training that you should
do more and more volume,
just keep adding volume.

And there's some
evidence to support that.

More volume for hypertrophy
as opposed to less, et cetera.

We've done episodes on this.

However, there's a
different school of thought
that works exceedingly
well, and it
runs in the exact
opposite direction,
which is as you get better
at controlling muscular
contractions--
or let's say for in
an endurance sport,
as you get better at regulating
your stride, and breathing,
and all those
things, you actually
can do more "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,
whereas, experts can come
in there and really nail it.

So I think that advice that
Robert Knight was really key,
and it's something that I've
followed throughout my career.

So at one period of my life,
I won't mention the hours
that I worked in
graduate school,
they were pretty
insane to be honest.

I had family members
get a little concerned.

I actually lived
in the laboratory
even as a junior professor.

I don't suggest people
do that by the way,
but I enjoyed it 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 high-potency work.

I think that, combined
with the other tools
that I described
before for generating
ongoing dopaminergic 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 wish you all luck, and I'm
certain that these tools work.

Thank you for joining
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