Welcome to the huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and Ophthalmology at Stanford school of medicine. Today. We're going to
talk all about how to optimize your workspace for maximum
productivity, indeed, that means to
heightened levels of focus to increase levels of creativity
to improve your ability to
task, which and this could be for Seiko school or for work.
Radim Endeavors, personal Endeavors. This really extends to everybody, most
often when we hear about how to focus or how to get the most out of our work sessions. We hear about the biology in the psychology of that. We hear about dopamine and we hear about serotonin and we hear about caffeine and indeed,
those are topics that I've covered a lot
on the huberman Lab podcast
today. We will touch on each of those but we are mainly going to focus on how we arrange our physical environment and indeed how we arrange
ourselves in that physical environment in order to
To bring out the best. In our
neurobiology that is how to put
ourselves into a heightened state of focus
by virtue of things. As simple as where we place. Our screen relative to our eyes at a given time of day, believe it or not. There's excellent research on this and there's excellent research, for instance on whether or not you should or should not listen to music whether or not you should use things like binaural beats. And if so, what frequency of binaural beats, we are going to cover all of that. And by the end, you will have a checklist of things that you can do to optimize your workspace on.
Budget. I will mention various products and apps that some of you might find
useful for optimizing your
workspace. But I want to emphasize at the outset that none of those that I mentioned are any products or apps
that we have a financial relationship to
and more importantly, you don't need them. I'm going to explain how 40 cost you can arrange your
workspace in ways that makes you maximally productive.
Maximally focus and allows you to
adapt. Your workspace to different environments, whether or not you're traveling working with others working alone.
Own Etc. Just to give you a
little hint of where we are going. I will mention a zero cost app that will deliver binaural beats at a particular frequency that peer-reviewed research has shown can enhance certain types of learning and memory. However, peer-reviewed
research also shows that it can diminish performance in other types of tasks.
So stay tuned. We'll go into all the details so that you can optimize your workspace
for zero cost and get the most out of your efforts and Endeavors
before we begin. I'd like to emphasize that this
Cast is separate from my teaching and research roles at
Stanford. It is however, a part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to Consumer information
about science and science related tools to the general public
in keeping with that theme. I'd like to thank the sponsors
of today's podcast.
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hubermann. Let's
talk about work space optimization. This is a topic that's
intrigued me for a very long.
Time.
Because my
undergraduate advisor, my graduate advisor, and my postdoc advisor
had many things in common, including being great, scientists being kind people in terrific mentors, but they had another thing in common, which always perplexed me,
which is that their offices were a complete disaster. They had mountains of books,
mountains of papers, mountains of all sorts of stuff. And yet all of them were extremely productive and could remain extremely focused in that incredibly.
Cluttered environment. Now, I'm somebody who doesn't like
clutter. I find it very hard to focus in cluttered environments.
And indeed. There's tremendous variation among people as to whether or not they can remain focused or whether or not. They struggle to
focus in physically cluttered environments.
There's no right or wrong to this. But the question we should ask ourselves is why were they all able to be so focused? And it turns out that the reason they were able to be so focused is that they all captured one single and yet fundamental variable of work space
optimization.
We'll talk about what that variable is. In fact where you're going to talk
about what all the variables of optimizing, a workspace are things like
Vision, things like light things like noise in the room whether or not you listen to music or not, whether or not you use noise canceling headphones
or not. We're going
to talk about all of that and we're going to do that in a way that you can optimize your workspace regardless of whether or
not you were at home whether or not you're on the
road Etc. Because the last thing I would ever want to do is to create a situation where you
You find the optimal workspace. And then you are a slave to that optimal workspace. That's just not the way the world Works. What you want to do, where my goal for you rather is that you will have a short checklist of things that you can look to any time you sit down to do work. And you can think about the underlying variables that impact your brain and your body, and allow your brain and
body to get into the optimal state. In order to
learn in order to be productive and to need to move through your work belt, in a very relaxed and pleasure for way while maintaining focus and
Pursuing any of the number of things that you're doing the
first variable, we want to think
about. In terms of work, space optimization is vision and light
on a previous episode of the human Lab podcast devoted all to habits. I talked about the importance of dividing your
24-hour day into three different phases. And for those
of you that haven't heard that episode. I'm just going to Briefly
summarize what I described.
From the time you wake up in the morning until about six or seven or eight, sometimes nine hours later. Your brain is in a unique state. It is in a state of high levels of dopamine, a neuromodulator and high levels of epinephrine as well as hormones like cortisol and so forth. Without going into the biology of those things. They set your brain into a state of high alert - and this is true whether or not you indulging caffeine or not. I know some of you say, oh, I really don't wake up until the afternoon a much more alert and focused in the
We will talk about that phase of the 24-hour day in a
moment, but that early part of the day is a time of day in which, for sake of work. Space
optimization
being in a brightly lit environment, can lend itself to Optimal work throughout the day, not just during that
early phase. And
so, while on many episodes of this podcast, I've also emphasized the importance of getting morning, sunlight in your eyes within 30 to 60 Minutes of waking not as often, but
Now, and again, I will also mention that it's important to light your daytime environment as brightly as you safely can. So if you are going to be doing work in this early,
what I call phase one portion of your day,
you want to have as much light and indeed as much
overhead light shining on you as safely possible. Now, of course, you don't want to so bright that it's
glaring and you have to squint etcetera, but you want as much light as as safely
possible and
you can do that, a couple of simple ways. One is, if you do own
Or you're an in an environment. We have overhead lights. Turn on those overhead lights. What's special about overhead lights? For setting alertness? Is that the neurons in
our eyes which are called melanopsin ganglion cells. That's the fancy name. Melanopsin ganglion cells
are mainly enriched in the
lower half of our retinas in our
eyes, and view the upper visual field. Those neurons. Send little wires to an area of our
hypothalamus. Right above the roof of our mouth. That creates a state of alertness. Now
early in the
Say we want to be as alert as
possible. And this phase
one of our circadian cycle is when we are best at doing analytic detail type work. So we're going to go into other aspects of work space optimization that are important for Phase 1 but during phase 1 again within 0 to about 8 or 9 hours after waking bright lights in your environment. In particular overhead lights are going to facilitate Focus. They're going to facilitate further release of things like dopamine,
and norepinephrine and
healthy amounts of cortisol, and we want that to happen.
Early in the day for a variety of reasons. For instance. We don't want that cortisol, Peak to happen too late in the day. That's why she associated with depression and insomnia, and a number of things that we just don't want. So, one of the things that I've done for my workspace is to make sure that when I wake up in the morning, I do go get my sunlight if the sun isn't out, I turn on as many bright artificial
lights as I can manage or tolerate and then I go get my sunlight exposure. But
once I set out to do
some work that all the overhead
lights in that room, Iran as well as lights in front of me.
And that's again to stimulate heightened. Levels of focus
and further release of. These neuromodulators. I mentioned before, dopamine norepinephrine and epinephrine.
Now, the way that one could do that could be a very
low cost way of having, for instance, at a desk lamp and those overhead lights.
If you're somebody that wants to take this, to the next level, you can purchase a ring light, which is, I think those are mainly made
for people doing selfie-type videos, you know, for Instagram posts and things of
that sort, ring lights can be pretty cost-effective and yet they're very bright and they
Have the sort of bright blue light that is going to optimally
stimulate those melanopsin ganglion
cells. So some people I know will have a blue light or a bright LED on their desk in front of them and indeed I have one of these I don't use a ring light. I use a light pad. The particular light pad. I use I bought on Amazon I can mention the brand. But again, I have no Financial affiliation to them. This is the art o graph.
Light pad is designed for, for drawing.
And it says, on it, 930
Lux, Lux is just a measure of brightness.
So, I placed that on the desk in front of me and I turn it on essentially, throughout this phase one of the day, even if I walk away from the desk, I tend to keep it on. It doesn't consume that much energy. And in that way, I'm constantly being bombarded with photons, that keep my levels of alertness up because
the early part of the day is when I do the majority of that focused
work again, you don't need the light pad, you can use a ring light or you can simply use any kind of other
lights that you might happen to have artificial
lights. For those of you that can place your desk near a window and even better to open the window that
Would be really fantastic. I don't have access to that. Why would I say open the window? Well, it turns out that sunlight is going to be the best stimulus for waking
up your brain and body through this melanopsin to hypothalamus system.
And by looking at sunlight through a window, it's 50, 50 times less effective than if that window were to be open. Mostly because those windows filter
out, a lot of the wavelengths of blue light that are essential for stimulating, the eyes and this wake up signal. So
all of this is rest on the premise that we need to
Be
alert in order to do our work, in particular focused work. And I've talked about before in the habits episode, and I'm saying again, now,
that first phase of the day that first seven or eight or nine hours of the day is really the time in which our neural chemistry is primed for getting the most amount of focused kind of
challenging work done where a lot of
precision and detail is required. So you want to brightly
light your work environment during that first phase again from the time you wake up
try and get sunlight, but then even if you're
To
get exercise or do other things. You want to get as much bright light in your eyes as you safely can, and then you want to light your work environment? Now in the afternoon, starting at about 9, and continuing until about
16 hours after waking,
you want to start dimming the lights
in that environment.
Now, you don't want to make it dark because you don't want to get
sleepy at 2:00 in the afternoon. Unless you're going to take a brief nap, which I do and is perfectly fine. As long as it doesn't interfere with your nighttime sleep,
but the idea is that in this so-called phase, two of the
Of
the 24 hour cycle from about 9 to 16 hours after waking.
You want to bring the level of lights down a bit. And when I say down, I literally mean down having lights that are in front of you, is fine, but overhead lights. At that time are not going to be optimal for the sorts of neurochemical states that your brain wants to be in the states that I'm referring to are a shift from the dopamine and norepinephrine. That's highest early in the day to increases in things like serotonin and other.
Neuromodulators that put your brain into a state that's better for Creative Endeavors or four more abstract thinking. Now, as we will soon, see, there are other things you can do to improve creative thinking and
abstract thinking. And in fact, there are things you can do to improve analytic thing that we will talk about those
things that are distinct from like, but right now we're just focusing on light. So what I recommend doing and what I personally do is, I will turn off the overhead lights in the afternoon. It's not completely dim. It's not completely dark, but I will start to reduce the amount of overhead light.
And just simply keep the light pad on and whatever other
lamps I happen to be using.
Now. One thing we haven't talked about is screen brightness. This is highly individual, people have different retinal sensitivities, what I mean by that is everybody differs in terms of how bright they can
tolerate their visual environment and their screen
and whether or not you are sensitive to light or not, will depend on a lot of factors. Some of it is I
color indeed people with darker color eyes. Generally can tolerate more bright light than others. I have green.
As I am very, very sensitive to light if I'm Outdoors at a cafe or something in the table has any kind of reflective properties and it's a sunny day. I can barely see the person across the table from me, unless I'm wearing sunglasses.
Some people other members of my family, for instance, have dark
brown eyes and can just sit there and have a conversation without the need for
sunglasses at all. So that's there's tremendous variation there, one or the other isn't healthy or advantageous necessarily just understand that. You never want to be in an environment where it's painful.
To maintain looking
at whatever it is that you're looking at. If
something's painful to look at it could be
damaging to your eyes. So you do want to protect your eyes
now in this second phase of the day, since most of us are working indoors. But even if you're working Outdoors, you want to try and get the amount of light
reduced overall, but in pursuit of that overhead
light and you also want to start reducing the
amount of blue light that you're being exposed to so
somewhere around 4 or 5 p.m. Which, for me is, you know, about 12 hours after
I've been awake or for,
Hours after I've been awake, I will turn off that light pad and
start to transition the lights in my environment to more yellows
and reds. Now, I can't always do
this. I have friends that actually have converted their entire homes from Blue Light, early in the day to Red Light late in the day. That's really cool and
fantastic. I haven't done that.
It's, you know, there's a cost to doing that and it is optimal in terms of
optimizing productivity and sleep and so forth, but it's not feasible for a lot of
people. But what I do is I simply switch to using yellow lamps.
I will turn off that led in the later afternoon. Again around 4:00 or 5:00
p.m. And I tend to wake up around 6:00 a.m. Or so. I'll turn those off
and what I'll try and do also as I'll try and dim the screen that I'm working on so that I can still manage to see everything that I need to see, but it's quite a bit dimmer than it was early in the day.
So that's phase two of the day and that's how we want to think about light.
And then I'll just mention because I know there are people who are working in the middle of the night. There's phase 3, which is about 17, to 24 hours after waking, and
Realized that for shift workers or people that are pulling all-nighters or for students, often times. You need to be awakened studying in the middle of the night. I myself, am somebody who for years would pull anywhere from five to ten all-nighters per year. I
still pull an all-nighter now and again because of deadlines and so forth. I don't recommend it. If you can avoid it, great, but many people just simply have to do this for sake of shift work or because of impending deadlines or procrastination or all of the above.
If you are going to be doing, work in that third phase of your circadian cycle.
You really want to limit the amount of bright light that you're getting in your eyes to just the amount that allows you to do
the work that you're doing. Because if you
get light in your eyes, that's any brighter than that, you're going to severely deplete. Your melatonin levels. You're going to severely shift your circadian
clock and it's effectively like traveling to another time zone. So if you stay up
from 3 a.m. Until 6 a.m. Or 2 a.m. Until 4 a.m. Working on a
term paper or something of that, sort in your getting bright light in your eyes, you are effectively.
Playing six hours to a different time zone or at least, that's what your body registers it as and it can really throw your sleep in your metabolism and a number of other things out of whack.
Now, there's an exception to this, which is if you really want to be awake, it can often be beneficial to flipping on all the
lights in the room and keeping them really bright.
One of the hardest things to do is to stay up all night studying when
you're in a dim environment. So you have to
determine the trade-off between whether or not you want to
shift your clock or whether or not you want to get the work done.
And I would say the ideal situation.
In is to
sleep at night and to do your work during the day and in the
afternoon, but if you
do have to be awake in the middle of the night, do understand that you want to dim those lights overall. You would not want to use that led. You would not want to have overhead lights on
unless you're really struggling to stay awake in which case you
want to get as many bright lights on as possible.
So, there are a couple of tricks to all-nighters. I don't really want people pulling all-nighters unless they have to, but there are a few things that you can do without taking stimulants in order to stay up all
night, that can be beneficial that maximize on your Biology. One of
That's a little less
commonly known is you can drink 32 ounces of water
and commit to not going to the
bathroom for 90 minutes at least turns out that there is a circuit that goes from your bladder literally neurons that go from your bladder to your brain stem. And
when you have to urinate it makes you very alert. As many of you have probably experienced. This is actually what wakes us up in the middle of the night when we have to use the bathroom. Is this circuit for alertness that goes from full bladder? It signaled by the bladder, being full to the brainstem
and this is the circuit that is disrupted in.
Kids that have bedwetting issues and there are a number of cognitive behavioral approaches to that sometimes bedwetting in very young kids is because the circuit hasn't developed yet, most adults, fortunately are
not bedwetting. But you can increase the amount of alertness in your system
and remain awake in the middle of the night by drinking a little, bit more water than you normally would. And then refraining from going to the restroom that certainly will lend itself to alertness. You know how difficult it is to fall asleep when you have to use the restroom for instance.
So that's one tool. The other thing is again to
flip on as many bright lights in.
Environment
as possible. And then of course, people will rely
on stimulants. Like caffeine or even more, aggressive stimulants. That's not something I necessarily recommend. You'll each have to determine that for you. But if you do, in fact have to use all-nighters for any reason, you can maximize this bladder to brain approach and the right light
approach. Okay, so that more or less covers how bright to
keep your overall environment and how bright to keep your screen.
If you really want to get nerdy about this. There is a free app
called light meter where you can start measuring, how many locks
Ox, how many photons are in a given environment? It's actually measuring
reflectance of photons and so on
and you can look up what a lux meter does. If you
like. I don't necessarily recommend doing that. I don't want to set a
critical threshold by which you know, for instance we say once your environment is more than 1500 locks than it's too bright or not, bright enough etcetera.
Everyone has different metal sensitivities. Everyone will find that different levels of brightness will cause them to be alert different levels of dimness. If you will in the room will cause them to feel sleepy.
You really want to just modulate across the 24-hour cycle, where it's very bright as bright as it safely can be early in the day so that you are alert. You can do your focus
detailed work in that first phase and then in the afternoon, As you move into more creative type works or abstract
thinking or working with other people and kind of a brainstorming mode
that you would shift to dimmer
lights yellow lights, eliminate the blue lights as much as possible. Now, that's light,
but there's another aspect of vision that has been shown to be critically important for how alert we are going to
Be and how well we can maintain that
alertness and that has to do
with where our visual focus is in a given environment. So I'm not about overall brightness. What I'm referring to now is simply where you place your phone or your tablet, or computer screen or
book, whatever it is that you happen to be looking at.
There's a very
underappreciated and yet incredible aspect of our neurology that has to do with the relationship between where we look and our level of alertness and it works in a very logical way.
Have clusters of neurons in our brain
stem and those clusters of neurons
control, our eyelid muscles and they control
our eye movements up and down into the sides. And indeed, if you were to look at an eyeball looked a lot of eyeballs in my lab and I teach neuroanatomy. So we do this from time to time, we would
see that there are
six muscles attached to your eyeball.
Now, four of them are located at the top of the bottom and the two sides of your eyeball, prevent the twelve o'clock six o'clock.
3:00 and 9:00 of your eyeball and those muscles can move your eye in the socket from side to side and up and down.
And then we also have some muscles that can actually pull the eyeballs at
Angles. Okay. So there's these, we have different muscles that can move the eyes at different angles as well. That's why we can look up into the side or down into the side, not just from side to side, or up or
down. Now, the neurons that control those muscles. Have a very interesting feature, which is that when we are looking down toward the ground, or
Anywhere below basically, the central region of our face, the neurons that control that eye movement are intimately related to areas of the brain stem that release certain types of neuromodulators and neurotransmitters and they activate areas of the brain that are associated with calm and indeed, even with sleepiness and there's an active inhibition or prevention of neurons that increase
alertness. Now, the opposite is also
true.
True. We have neurons that place our eyes into an upward gaze above the sort of level of our nose, and up above our forehead, literally
looking up while keeping the head stationary, or if you tilt your head back and you look up, these neurons are still active.
Those neurons. Don't just control the
position of the eyes and cause them to move
up. They also trigger the activation of brain circuits that are associated with alertness. Now, this is a fundamental feature of the
way that our eyes and brain are wired.
Together and how they relate to what we call autonomic arousal and they're a
bunch of details there. We will actually have a guest in a few weeks who has learned to exploit these neurons. And the fact that they control these different states
of calm or
alertness, in order to generate hypnotic states to place people into very atypical States in which
they are both very alert and very calm,
save that for a future episode. But the important thing to understand is when you are looking down below the level of your nose, you are
essentially decelerating your alertness, you're reducing your amount of alertness. It might be subtle, but it's happening. Whereas when you look straight ahead or in particular, when you look up,
you're increasing your level of alertness.
Now, this has some obvious implications when we get sleepy
our eyelids, tend to close. And we tend to nod down, when we're wide awake. We tend to be wide-eyed are, we don't tend to Blink as often and we tend to be chin up and kind of on vigilance and alertness. So this
has a revolutionary or at least an
Component to it.
This can be exploited and indeed. It's been researched in terms of how it can be used to
optimize work environments.
Contrary to what most people do, which is to
look down at their laptop tablet or phone.
If you want to be alert and you want to maintain the maximum amount of
focus, for whatever it is that you're reading or doing.
You want that screen or whatever it is that you're looking at to, at least,
be at eye level, and ideally slightly above it.
Now, I haven't seen many workspaces that. Take advantage of this
very hard, wired neurobiological
fact. So what should you do with this information? Well, if you're somebody who sits down to do work, and start to feel sleepy or simply unfocused unable to attend, to whatever it is that you're doing. I highly recommend that you take your laptop or tablet, do hope that most people aren't doing serious work on their
phones because it's such a small visual window and we can talk about why that's an issue later.
And the idea would be to place that.
Of your tablet or your laptop or other computer
and try and get it
elevated. At least, two nose, level, your nose, level or even higher. Now. I
realize that can be complicated to do. I've long just used a stack of books, or I'll
sometimes take a box and turn upside down and set it there. I do use a mix standing, seated desk. I'll talk about that in a few minutes.
There are number of different ways that you could do this. You could wall mount a monitor. I think many people are working with laptops. It's a little bit harder to do that with a laptop.
Some people.
Though, will configure a second
screen? You have to decide what's right for you and your budget. But again, in addition to
having a brightly lit room to be able to focus and attend to whatever it is, you're working on, you want to have that screen position high in your visual environment. Now, you wouldn't want it on the ceiling necessarily. All that would be pretty cool
you but you do want it above you. Now, there are a couple of solutions to this that don't
involve a wall mount or stacking books or
boxes. For instance. You could be one of those people that likes to lie in bed or on the sofa.
And get your screen up above you by putting pillows on your knees. I used to actually do a lot of my writing and work in the middle of the night. I don't do this anymore and I don't recommend it. But I used to do a lot of work from bed. Now, I no longer bring electronics for work into the bedroom. I just really try and keep the bedroom for sleeping or whatever else.
But in terms of lying down on the couch, it is somewhat easier to get that
screen up above. You can kind of slide underneath that screen and get typing
but there's a problem with that and we'll talk about this a little bit more in.
Moment, but it turns out that your posture, literally the position of your body relative to gravity. Also
has important implications for how alert you
are. So ideally, you would be standing or seated. I would say the ideal would be standing, second-best would be seated and your screen will be either directly in front of you or
slightly above you. Or if you wanted to get really fancy. You could create a situation where it was above you and slightly tilted toward you. So that you actually had to maintain kind of proper neck posture.
This accomplishes a number of things in addition.
Making you more alert. You also get away from the so called
text neck, you know, people are starting to look more like, sees nowadays, the the shape of the letter c, because we're constantly looking down. I
do every once in awhile. See somebody who's texting in
public with it at eye level, it always looks a little odd that they're doing that, but I always admire their posture at the same time. So we shouldn't give them a hard
time. So this is another feature that you can arrange into your physical workspace. Again, whether or not you're seated or your or your standing throughout the day, try and get that screen.
Added now, with reference to posture.
There are beautiful data illustrating that when we are standing up those same neurons in our brain
stem, Locus coeruleus neurons, which release I should mention things like norepinephrine and
epinephrine those neurons become active. When we are standing, they become even more active. When we are ambulatory, when we are moving and
we will talk about tread milling and cycling at your desk and so forth in a little bit,
but when you sit, they become a little less active and when you lie down and indeed any time
That you start to get your feet up above your waist, or your head tilted, back those neurons fire less and neurons in your brain that
are involved in calming and indeed putting you to sleep, start increasing their level of firing.
It's a really beautiful system. So beautiful. In fact that there are studies that show that as you adjust the angle of the body back, you actually get a sort of dose-dependent
increase in sleepiness and calmness and a dose-dependent decrease in
alertness. And so
as we were all told to sit up straight or even better to stand up straight. And now, I'm also telling you to get that visual thing that you're attending to screen or
otherwise up in front of you or or ideally above
you, those things combined to generate maximum alertness. So you can think about how you might work this into various aspects of your homework
environment or office work
environment, but as I described this, many of you are probably thinking what I'm thinking, which
is gosh, most of what we do is in complete opposite direction, to all of this.
Really grounded.
Advice, most of us are looking down at our laptop
while seated, or we are lying down, which is going to make us more sleepy, or
we are positioning our computers in front of us, but we really aren't an environment. That's bright enough, and so on and so forth. So as you can tell, we're starting to layer in the various things
that you can do first brightness in the room. S get that screen up and
try and put yourself into
a posture for work that lends itself or promote alertness. If indeed, you want to be alert for that work. If you go
Has to take a nap, get your feet elevated about 10 to 15 degrees above your head. Maybe put a
pillow underneath it, lie down, and take a nap. But that's not what we're talking about. Today. We're talking about work space
optimization, and I suppose you could also exploit that all-nighter
trick that I talked about earlier actually did this, when I was an undergraduate. I was a little bit masochistic in this way. I
would drink coffee
and water at fairly high volume. I wasn't, you know, forced drinking or anything like that, but I actually wouldn't allow myself to get up and use the bathroom except on a timer.
So, I think the longest ever went with three and a half hours. It was
kind of excruciating. I actually don't think that's necessarily a healthy advice. But again, you can use slight. You mentioned slight overconsumption of fluids in order to generate alertness. That was just me, really trying to get as much
work done as I could have had a very very demanding class schedule. And it was just the only way that I could get work done. If I was getting up every few minutes, use the restroom. I found it hard to re-engage in that work and maintain Focus, which is what I just want to briefly mention. Now I talked
about this in the
Episode on Focus. But one thing that is completely unreasonable and that you should never ask yourself to do is to sit down or stand up and immediately focus on something unless
you are stressed about what you're looking at or you're very, very excited by it. If you're very stressed about some sort of information or a deadline or you're very, very excited about something. You will find that, you can focus instantly
just within a moment and that's because of the deployment of neuro
chemicals, like, dopamine and norepinephrine that bring about our levels of alertness.
However, most of us including myself will
Go to begin a work belt and we'll find that our mind doesn't quite engage at the level of depth and focus that we would like, right off the bat I've time this and other Studies have time
this in a more rigorous way. Mine is just what we call anak data, but it's
so I've timed it for myself but there are studies that have looked at this and the data point to the fact that even at our most heightened levels of focus. Most people can only maintain Focus
before switching tasks for about 3 minutes, which is
depressingly
short period of time,
however you
An extend that period
of time and I've talked about that in the episode on Focus,
but more importantly, when you sit down to start a work bout of any kind any kind expect that it would take about 6 minutes for you to engage these neural circuits. You would expect yourself to walk into the gym and do a PR left or start running and do your best Sprint or just head out the door without warming up at all, you know, a little walk jog at first or, you know, a few warm-up sets. I mean, that's we expect that. We are not surprised that we need that. And
Sort of expected, our brain, should be able to lock on and do work in a very focused way immediately, and that's
just a ridiculous assumption. It's an
unfair assumption. I should say.
So, assume that it will take about six minutes to engage in your work about. And that those neurochemical systems will take
some time to rev up and
engage the other things that I'm describing about lighting and Screen positioning and posture. Those will also
help maximize
your focus and will limit
that ramp up time into a focused
State. And I think what you'll find, is that as you maximize your workspace.
The time the latency, as we say to get into that, Focus will start to shorten it all, especially start to shorten. If you use tools to limit
distraction, we will talk about
distraction, but things like Freedom, which is an
app, a free app that allows you to lock yourself out of the internet or turning off your phone for
instance. We're but even if you're doing work on your phone or that involves your phone or
the internet as many of us including myself do
expect there to be a
ramp up time for you to focus.
There's another aspect of our
vision. That's absolutely critical for
As in our workspace.
And that has to do with this really interesting feature of our visual
Pathways in that, it has two major
channels. Those two major channels have names, although you don't have to remember the names. The first one is the so-called parvo cellular Channel, which is involved in looking at things at specific points in space and at high resolution
or detail. And then there's the so-called magnocellular Channel that's involved in looking at Big swaths of visual space and at lower
resolution. So you can think of the parvo cell
Our system, as kind of a high pixel density. Think about your most, modern smartphone, the recent smartphone with the best best camera and think about the magnocellular system as being lower
resolution kind of an older smartphone lower pixels Etc. You might ask, why would you want a system? That's low resolution.
Well, the low resolution system is better at things
like detecting motion and not so much a detail and vice versa.
Now again, you don't have to remember the names what you do have to remember, however, is that you're going to create the maximum amount of alert?
S in your system. The maximum amount
of ability to focus when your system is in that parvo, seller mode, when you're bringing your eyes to a common Point, what we call a
vergence eye movement. Ve r g Ence. I've said this before in the podcast and people said virgin eye movement. No vergence eye movement as in convergence, bringing
your eyes to a single point in space will create a narrow aperture of a visual window. Meaning your visual World. Actually shrinks at least perceptually where
As when you relax, your eyes and dilate your
gaze, you can do this now. By whatever environment you're in, trying
to see without moving your
head off to the side
above below. You as broadly as
possible. Maybe you can dilate your gaze so much. You can see yourself your body in that visual
environment. You'll notice that your resolution of vision isn't nearly
as high as when you do that virgin side movement
virgins. Eye movements are
incredibly powerful for creating heightened states of alertness and
focus and indeed they create heightened states of cognition of thinking and that's because
Brain follows your vision in terms of focus when we say, I can't focus, what we often
are experiencing is an ability and
inability scuse me to not focus visually, whereas when we are in a very focused State, we are in a state often
where we can focus visually now. We can also do
this with our auditory system or to
touch etcetera. But right now, we're just talking about the visual system.
Now in terms of work space optimization, what this means is, we never really want to be looking at a
square or rectangle or Target area for.
Our
work that is too far beyond our ears. How far is too far? Really? You want to try and keep the blinders on? Or I should say the invisible Blinder. So that whatever you're looking at Falls within the region of visual space in front of you, that is present. If you were to cup your hands and put them right next to your eyes. Now, this is a
rough estimation, but I'm doing this. Now, for those of you that are watching on YouTube. I'm doing this. Now. I'm trying to simulate all like a horse with blinders on for those either listening. Just imagine me looking silly with my hands cup near my eyes,
but if we are are
Two for instance. Look at a screen. That's very, very big, and we're too close to it or even if we're standing back from it. It's going to be hard for us to
attend to everything within that screen space.
So this is actually support for
the idea of using a phone, or a tablet, or a laptop. Some, my
laptop is about 15 inches in diameter. I think is the one that I have, some are 13 somewhere 17. Some of you like to use big monitors, make sure that whatever it is that you're looking at. If you want to remain focused, it doesn't extend to
far beyond where
your eyes are. There's the sides of your head. That is so just think blinders on a horse. And actually that's the reason they put blinders on a horse so that they're not looking off into the
periphery horses. Unlike humans, don't have the same shaped pupil. They don't have a visual system that's organized in quite the same way. They mostly see in
Panorama in magnocellular vision. And
so those blinders are designed to
keep their visual Focus straight ahead. So, they physically restrict it.
Now, some people will actually go to lengths to further.
Restrict their visual
Focus, they will do things like putting on a hoodie or wearing a hat for instance, to restrict their visual window and indeed that works quite well, but as we'll talk about in a moment, when you really restrict your visual window down to a very, very narrow portion of visual space that actually changes the types of
information that you are best at processing.
And we'll talk about that in terms of something that's
called the cathedral effect in a few moments,
but for now, here's the principle make
Sure, that whatever you're looking at is directly in front of you and doesn't
extend too far out to the side.
Once you get out to say 6 or 12, or certainly 18 inches on either side of your eyes, you are dilating your gaze by
definition, you're dilating your gaze. It's completely subconscious
and it becomes very hard to
maintain attention. Now, the caveat to this
is that if you are going to look at a narrow space, a narrow window, for any period of time, whether or not it's a
book or a laptop, or a tablet,
or a phone, those virgins.
Movements, not only create
alertness, but they also require
energy and they also can fatigue the eyes, because there's a process called accommodation, where by the shape of your eye, literally
has to change so that the lens can move so that you can focus at that location. Accommodation
is incredible process, but it is a demanding one and that's the reason that your eyes get tired when you focus on something for too long. So here's a principal
extracted from the Ophthalmology in Neuroscience literature that you can adopt
for every 45 minutes in which you are.
Focusing on something like a
phone or a tablet
or a book page or your computer. You want to get into magnocellular panoramic vision, for at
least five minutes and the way that I suggest to do. This is actually to take a walk ideally outside. We're going to talk about ambulation about movement and about how that can maintain alertness throughout the day.
So for every 45 minutes or so try and get five minutes
of relaxing your
eyes. This is something that's not often done, especially in today's homeschooling and where people are working.
They're going to school by zoom and adults are working by Zoom. This is a
serious problem. People are getting, I
fatigue. They're getting headaches indeed. Some people getting migraines. They're having all sorts of issues neck, pain, much of that. If not, all of that, in some cases can be alleviated by this 45, 25 rule, for every 45 minutes of focused work that you do, get five minutes where you
get outside or if you have to be indoors where you can dilate your gaze. Now, some of you may be saying, well, that spits in the
face of your
90 minute rule, you're trying to you've told us before that. We should focus for 90 minutes. I would still want you to take
breaks within those 90 minutes. If you're looking at a narrow piece of visual world, meaning at a phone or a laptop or so forth.
And again, the best way to do this, would be to
go outside. Just relax, your eyes, look off into the distance. Looking at a horizon will automatically trigger this panoramic gaze, which is very relaxing to the eyes and will allow you to go back into a focused work bout.
The one thing you absolutely do, not want to do is to go outside.
And check your phone because if you're
outside checking your phone or you're taking a break and check your phone. You're still in that vergence eye movement. Okay. So this is very very important because virgins eye movements increase, focus and attention and you can exploit that to increase focus and attention when you want to but you absolutely need to relax the system
again for every 45 minutes in which you've been in that focused mode. You want to get at least five minutes of panoramic Vision. If you can take a 15-minute walk, even better next. I'd like to
To talk about an aspect of work space optimization that can
actually bias whether or not our brain and nervous system are better suited for detailed. Analytic work or more abstract
work. In fact, there's a way that you can
arrange your work environment or
I should say there's a way that you can place yourself into certain environments that will allow abstract
thinking creative thinking and indeed expansive thinking
to emerge, there are other environments that you can put yourself in.
That will make your brain shift towards more analytic work toward more
detailed and precise types of work. Now. I just
briefly want to mention something that was covered again on the habits
episode that I did a few weeks ago.
But again, you don't need to
see that episode. In order to digest this information.
It goes back to this issue of
three phases within the Circadian 24-hour
cycle phase one, which as I mentioned, is
about 0 to 8 hours after waking Phase 2 9 to 16 hours, after waking and phase 3, 17 to 24.
Hours after
waking phase, one being ideal for analytic precise. Detailed types of work Phase 2 better suited for most people for
Creative, kind of abstract thinking, expansive thinking brainstorming, Etc.
There are some exceptions to that. But most people
follow that pattern because of the different neuromodulators and hormones and so forth that are released into the brain and body at those different phases.
What I'm about to tell you is a way.
Which you can use your physical environment to further
shift, your brain and nervous system into a mode. That's either Prime for analytic or abstract and creative. Thinking,
what I'm about to describe is
called the cathedral effect. The cathedral effect
has been discussed. Well really for many many decades, maybe even hundreds of years, but formally
has been discussed since the early 2000s
in which it seemed that people who were in high-ceilinged environments.
Hence, the phrase Cathedral
Would shift their thinking and their ideas to more abstract and creative
lofty type thinking. So,
literally higher ceiling loftier thinking higher aspirations that this was observed, in terms of the language that they use, but also to the sorts of ideas that they would generate.
And conversely that people that were in
lower ceiling, environments would
be more oriented toward using language. That was more restricted, literally more detailed analytic about things in their immediate
space. Now this seems
kind of wild on the one hand, but actually if we go back to our understanding of the neurobiology the visual system and the way that our
brains and bodies evolved in different environments. It actually makes a lot of sense.
We don't have time to go into a long.
Lecture about evolutionary neurobiology, but
we have to remember that our nervous system has a number of features that are adapted to different environments and indeed. We are able to go from Big open prairies or
mountaintops or large Cathedrals or concert
Halls into small environments and everything scales with
it. Right when we're outdoors in a big expanse of space, our vision tends to go long. We tend to be in panoramic magnocellular Vision
are hearing tends to extend long, even if we're having a conversation with somebody, we tend to also be attending.
Being somewhat to the on the Screech of, of
hawks off in the distance or to the rush of a river. Whereas, when we were in
small spaces, everything our vision, our hearing and indeed, even our physical movements become more restrained, even if we can still
extend our hands out as far as
we want. What do I mean by that? Let's say you're in an elevator.
That's a small space compared to outside on a field. This has been measured over and over again
people's the size or the amplitude of people spontaneous movements actually scales down in smaller environments,
even if
Aren't completely restricted from extending their limbs all the way. Whereas, when we were Outdoors. We feel a natural impulse to move further away from our body. Our torso, with our limbs. This is just feels like more appropriate behavior. And when I say appropriate, I don't mean in any kind of social context necessarily. There's actually a
reason for this, the visual system and the so-called vestibular motor system are intimately linked and I can just tell you,
briefly one way in which you can test this in, observe this and even
In use this, it's a little off topic from today's episode. But let's say you have a certain amount of flexibility. You can extend your arms off, like wings is what I'm doing for those either listening, not watching off to your sides with arms straight. And you have, you reach a maximum positioning of flexibility. You can do a
quick experiment where you sit,
still, you would bring your arms in for a moment. You can put them on your knees if you like, or in front of you and you can move your eyes very far off into the
Of your visual field. So you actually, I'm going to do this. Now. It looks kind of silly, but moving my eyes without moving my head off into the periphery all the way to the right than all the way to the left. All the way up all the way down. But especially all the way to the left, almost looking over my shoulder without turning my head, all the way to my right,
and you will find that you actually can extend
your arms further back, subsequent to that, and that's not magic, it has to do with the ways, in which your cerebellum, which actually means mini brain and your, and your eyes your vision.
Dual system are connected and the way in which your cerebellum
controls, some of the spindles and other aspects of the neuromuscular
architecture of your nervous system because your nerves control your muscles and allow those muscles to move further out. So for those of you that lack flexibility, you can actually exploit your visual
system for this. Now, that's again a bit of a tangent, but it's a fun one that relates
back to this so-called Cathedral effect. The cathedral
effect is a way in which our
thinking becomes more restricted and restrained, in tighter smaller more confined visual environment.
Or
if the ceiling is high or we are in expansive space, with a lot of distance above us or space above us and out to the sides, maybe even out on a field. Are thinking goes into these more broad abstract and kind of loftier future thinking. In particular.
This is actually been measured. There's a really nice paper. I will post a link to this. The
authors are Joan Myers
Levy andrewy and then in
parentheses Juliet Zoo, I'm going to assume that they go by Juliet.
the title of the paper is that the influence of ceiling height, the effect of priming on the type of processing that people use
and I won't go into all the details of this paper, but what's
really cool about this paper is they looked with very rigorous statistics and they
have a fair number of subjects and everything about this paper looks solid to me
at the difference in cognitive processing, an abstract thinking and detailed analytic work that people are able to perform in environments that have a 10-foot ceiling versus
an 8-foot ceiling which is
That much of a difference is just 22-foot difference there
and what they found were significant effects, whereby High ceilings activate concepts related
to
abstraction. Whereas low ceilings Prime confinement related Concepts, but our
promote the kind of detailed thinking that that lends itself well to sort of spreadsheet type work or accounting type work, whereas abstract creative work was supported by these higher
ceilings and the way they analyze, this was really interesting. Again. We don't have time to go into all the details but
But they asked people to sort of generate word
sets of related to particular, topics like sports. And you know, so people talk about soccer football, baseball golf, Etc, and talk about some of the equipment and other things,
and then they had kind of a challenge a cognitive challenge, whereby, people had to link different concepts along different dimensions
so that you depart from the dimension of sport and you start thinking about, you know, sports that involve teams are sports, that involve a ball
Etc. And so, in the same conditions, you can accept,
The fact that the ceiling height is different, eight feet or 10
feet. What one finds is that the kinds of language and the kinds of associations that people
start to create are vastly
different and they they're actually two experiments in this
study. You're welcome to go look at it. So it wasn't just about sports. There were some other things that were analyzed as well.
And in the references of this paper, it also points to other examples.
Now of the cathedral
effect, which I find very interesting because as a vision scientist
and someone who spends his life thinking about and indeed
talking about the nervous system.
We know that our cognition
follows our vision for
Low Vision or blind. People will
follow their mostly their hearing, and to some extent, their touch.
But for most people who are cited, its most people are cited, our cognition follows our visual environment. So what does this mean for work space optimization? Well, most of us have a fixed ceiling level in our, in our home, but you might have rooms in
which the ceiling is higher and rooms in which the ceiling is lower. If that were the case, I recommend, if you want to do creative work during phase 2, the 9 to 16 hours.
First of your circadian cycle 9 to 16 hours after waking that. Is that you do that in the high ceiling room, or maybe even Outdoors out on a deck or on a patio because the highest ceiling, of course, is the sky.
Whereas if you're going to do detailed analytic work in, I would suggest doing that during phase one of the day, but even if you're going to do it during phase 2 of the day,
for whatever reason scheduling or other sorts of constraints that you do
that in the lower ceiling environment. Now, if you are interested in
controlling your the height of your visual world, but you
Don't have control over your, the ceiling height of the environment that you're in. There is another way to do that. And I used to observe this in the cafe is in and around Stanford in the Bay area, where you would
see somebody who despite the weather would be in a hoodie, maybe with a baseball cap
or other form of hat or some sort of
Blinder above their eyebrows, which is actually another way of just
lowering the ceiling height, very, very low and restricting your visual field. Not
unlike blinders that we talked about before.
That one would put on a horse or one would put on them themselves by restricting their visual.
Goal of focus to directly in front of them but not too far out beyond the sides of their
head. So these Cathedral effects I think can be leveraged toward doing particular types of work best. And again the lower the ceiling or the lower your visual environment. The more that one tends to do
were I should say performs, detailed analytic, work accurately, and the more that one's thinking is oriented towards detailed sort of correct. Answer type work.
Whereas when the ceiling is higher or
there's no ceiling, the more that the brain and the
rest of the processing that we call cognitive processing
is related to
abstract reasoning brainstorming and indeed can pull
from broader swathes of memory resources because really what abstract
reasoning is is it's taking existing elements in maneuvering them or arranging them into novel ways. So you can think about like notes on a piano playing a particular song learning scales. That's very analytic. There's a there's a correct answer that.
Trying to arrive at or generate, whereas writing music or
writing, poetry or generating new
material of any kind involves taking existing elements, right? You're not going to use words that you don't have committed to your memory of that. You're not
aware of, and arranging them in novel ways. So I think the cathedral fact can be leveraged and again, you don't need to move into a different home or
build a slanted roof and work at one side of the room at one part of the day, and the other side of the room at the other. Although if that's the way you, you want to swing it. That's great. Most
Us don't have that flexibility, but
it's very clear that the height of the ceiling of the visual
environment that we're in. Has a profound effect on the types of cognitive processes that we are able to engage.
Now. I'd like to shift our attention to the
auditory environment or the
noise in the room or the music and the Rumor the music or noise in the headphones because it turns out that there is a
lot of quality scientific data
out there that speaks to whether or not listening to particular, sounds
can enhance our
Sharon and indeed. The answer is yes, but
there are very particular types of things to listen to
Under very particular types of conditions that allow one to do that.
First off. I want to say that people vary tremendously the extent to, which they can
tolerate background noise for work. In fact, individuals will vary tremendously from one day to the next, or even within the same day, the extent to, which they can tolerate background noise. I've experienced this myself there, been times in which I've been
working at home and I felt
Like for whatever reason, I just could not engage in focus and
what worked to generate more Focus for me,
was to go to a cafe, or to a library or some place where there's actually more commotion, more people moving about maybe even more noise, maybe even music in the room. And we have to all be in touch with when we want more background noise, or when we want
less background noise. There is no hard and fast rule. If you look across the literature for
studies that involve complete silence or white.
Always or binaural beats or music or classical music or rock and roll, you can find results to support any
type of environment as being more beneficial.
However, as we'll talk about in a moment. There are a few types of environments to really avoid and a few types of sounds that really can enhance the
cognition and your ability to focus in your workspace environment across the board, that really seemed to work for all people. Let's talk about background, noise to avoid.
And here we're talking about background noise to avoid because it actually can cause
it's a pretty severe deficits in cognition. There's a paper first author. Jordan love cool name. Last author. Alexander Francis. The title of the paper has to do with psychophysiological responses, to potentially annoying heating, ventilation and air conditioning noise during
mentally demanding work, which is a
mouthful. But basically what this paper identifies is
large data set in which
workplace and environmental noise, mostly the humming of air conditioners. That's very loud or the
Meaning of heaters. It's very loud and ongoing, just incessant doesn't let up can really increase mental fatigue, and can vastly decreased cognitive performance. And if you're interested in looking at the cognitive performance data, that authors are Banbury and
Barry 2005, that paper is the one that supports the fact that cognitive performance is worse
when there's just the hum of an
air conditioner in the background or the hum of a heater and otherwise complete silence.
There's also evidence which I discussed on the episode about hearing
which is that in young children. White Noise can cause some
impairments in the development of the auditory system. Now, I don't want parents to freak out, and if you're exposed to White Noise, as a, as a sleep aid as a child,
which I know many of you were don't freak out, but it turns out that white noise, especially if it's loud. White
Noise can cause some disruption in the auditory Maps, the representation of different frequencies of sound in
the brain that can lead to some deficits in
auditory and even language processing. So we
really have to be careful.
About long-term exposure, extended exposure
to White Noise, where and of air
conditioning noise. That's really at a high level. I wouldn't worry if it's
in the background and shutting off and turning on again as the thermostat kicks
off and on, but really trying to avoid
work in loud fan filled or ventilation generating or heat generating environments because it really can cause damage to the auditory system long-term and as we described it can impair cognitive performance.
Formance and overall increased fatigue. I think we've all experienced
that when you're in a room and there's some
ongoing background noise and all of a sudden it stops and you just feel this enormous relief.
And the reason for this is that our auditory system has a parallel to our visual system in our visual system that light entering the eyes. Triggers the activation of those melanopsin cells which triggers activation of the hypothalamus, a particular area of the hypothalamus,
which generates alertness generates, the release even of cortisol, a stress hormone.
In the auditory system, when there's ongoing sound, your auditory system. Here's that even if you're not paying attention to it, if you're paying attention to something else. It's still registers those little hair
cells as they're called in. Your inner ear are fluttering. The ear drum is beating and concert to that to that
sound frequency. And there's a brainstem mechanism that generates alertness and a kind of vigilant. So when you have a sound that's
ongoing in the background, it shuts off. I'll send you experience that peace, which is the turning off of those brainstem circuits that are associated with
Once the locus coeruleus, which we talked about earlier which release epinephrine and norepinephrine and generate that heightened state of alertness in your brain and body, those neurons then can turn off and you experienced that as
relaxation. So, does that mean that we shouldn't listen to White Noise or pink noise or brown noise while we're working? Certainly, a lot of people do. In fact, do you want to know what White Noise? Pink noise and brown noise are, they're just different
constellations of auditory frequencies that are played together. Most of us,
think of white noise as the shine
on us.
Screen, you know, all the black and white pixels going on all around.
Like they call it visual snow, but pink noise has certain sound
frequencies. Notched out taken out brown noise. Has others. It has different frequencies that are that are included at higher amplitude, etcetera. You can look this stuff up on YouTube. If you want, you just put Brown noise. None of it sounds terrific, doesn't sound like music. It's literally just noise, mixed frequencies and no particular
Arrangement. There is some evidence that
playing white noise in the background, or on headphones or
Always are brown noise can facilitate cognition
but it's mainly through an increase in this
overall alertness
as a consequence of areas, like
Locus coeruleus and other brain stem areas that are associated with autonomic arousal, from that noise. So it's a lot like the air conditioner
effect and I think done in a restricted way, meaning not for hours and hours, but maybe if your focus is
waning and you're having a hard time, engaging and working might put on some brown noise, or white noise, or pink noise and work that way for 45 minutes or so.
Oh, before you go to your panoramic vision, walk and get some sunlight, that should be fine.
There's really no reason to suspect. However, that those
particular patterns of noise are going to optimize particular mental functions. So, what I'd
like to turn to next, or particular patterns of sounds that indeed have been shown in peer-reviewed studies to optimize certain
types of mental processing, because you can incorporate these into your optimize workspace environment,
through headphones, or through speakers, whatever mechanism that you want.
In order to get more out of your work efforts,
if you were to search for apps or go online and try and find the sounds that can improve
thinking or change your
emotions. You're generally going to find three types one or called isochronic tones. These are tones, usually of a common frequency. So it might be a
beep and then a pause and then be of the same frequency and then
beep, forgive my
terrible beeping. I don't know what good beeping would sound like,
but
Contrast isochronic tones with monarchical Beats monarto beats would be repetitive. Almost percussive, like beats delivered to just one ear.
Tuned to do. Do do, do do, do do do do this kind of thing. Okay, you can find apps that
can deliver Montero beats. You can find also apps that deliver so-called binaural beats. Can also find YouTube
scripts that were channels that will deliver
binaural beats binaural beats as the name suggests are Beats delivered to the two ears,
one pattern of kind of, percussive beat to one ear.
In a different pattern that's or at least a pattern that's out of
phase. That's not synchronized delivered to the other ear. So on one are you here doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo? And in the other ear you've got Doon Doon, Doon and what happens is because of the way that the auditory system, converges in the brainstem
and generates what are called interaural time differences. I'll explain what that means in a
moment interaural time differences.
The difference between the two patterns of Beats that are heard
by the each of the two different ears.
Leads to a third pattern that the brain in trains to
and kind of maps onto and
generates particular types of
brain waves. Okay.
So without going into a lot of detail interaural time, differences are the ways in which if you were to hear something off to your
right? Like I just snap my finger just to the right of my right
ear that a signal arrives in my right ear before that's
sound signal. Those sound waves arrive in my left ear. So there's
an intraoral between ears time difference.
And there's a brain stem area in which signals from one ear
and signals from the other ear converge and there's literally a
math done by your nervous system that says this
signal arrived before the other signal.
And the difference between those
signals is the interaural time difference. So if I were to snap
my fingers on both sides on my left, and
on my right side of the exact same time and they arrive. At the same time, the interaural time difference is 0. Whereas if one goes first on the right and then the left, I'm terrible snapping on the left. It's a week.
But it was there, then there's a delay in the interaural
time difference. Has a particular value. Okay, you get it. It's almost ridiculously
simple. Binaural beats have been generated in ways that create a particular pattern of interaural time differences that then Cascades up to the rest of the brain and puts the forebrain and other areas of the brain that are
involved in cognition and action
into a particular Rhythm. And some of the rhythms were waves of brain. Activity are ones that you may have heard of things like
Alpha.
Waves or theta, waves or gamma waves?
Now, I don't like to get too attached to particular, brain waves, as excellent for particular kinds of thinking. This is something that
was really popular in the 90s. And 2000's, when ways of measuring brain activity, non-invasively with electrodes on the outside
enabled people to identify the indeed. Alpha brain waves are associated with alertness States and somewhere other brain waves that are kind of larger amplitude, slow
waves like, you know, delta waves are
With kind of sleepiness or relaxation,
but in general the way that the brain works is that different brain waves are generated in different structures at different times in
those combined to give us a sense of happiness or give us a sense of focus or
give us a sense of creativity. Nonetheless. If you look across the board at the studies of binaural beats and you ask what sorts of binaural beats appear to be useful for people to enhance their brain function for particular kinds of tasks.
We arrived at some very interesting.
Dancers,
so we'll review what those are. Now, the frequency of binaural beats that appears to bring about improved cognitive functioning at the level of memory improved reaction times. And improved verbal recall seems to be 40 Hertz. Now, is it exactly 40 Hertz? We don't know. But if one wants to look up a great reference on this, the reference Cole's, Otto, see olz ATO at all.
17 describes in here. I'm quoting. So there's a direct quote. The present findings are in line with those of a recent study, which also found faster reaction times in participants that listen to binaural beats of 40 Hertz and you can find many examples of this in the literature where binaural beats of about 40
Hertz or exactly 40. Hertz in some cases,
somehow brought the brain into a state that made it optimal for learning for memory. And for certain types of
recall, including verbal recall math learning,
Etc. So, for those of you that are interested,
I stood in binaural beats. There are a number of free apps out there. I'm not going to recommend any in particular, just have
to search for one that that you happen to. Like
one thing that you will find is that many of those apps superimpose binaural beats onto raindrops or ocean sounds, or that rather. They
superimpose. Ocean sounds and Rain Drops onto the binaural
beats. That does not appear to be as effective as pure. Binaural beats. There has been an exploration of lower frequency binaural beats. So,
Instance 7 Hertz, which is Theta. Binaural beats done for 30 minutes with an overlay of Rain, Sound or rain sounds only that's been analyzed, and believe it or not, that showed immediate recall memory was significantly decreased. Okay. So that's a negative
effect of binaural beats on
memory. So the idea that binaural beats are just great for us across the board, I think is wrong. It does appear that the higher frequency binaural beats as one moves up
toward 40. Hertz are going to be the most beneficial
there are
Dances, in which for instance 15 Hertz binaural beats increased response accuracy on a spatial verbal memory tasks. This is a complicated working memory task working memory is the kind of memory of remembering a phone number. So if I say, for instance, 493
2931 and you have to remember that number keeping
it online is what we call
your working memory. It's likely that you would forget that two or three days later.
You can get improvements in working memory with 15 Hertz binaural beats. Whereas the other
Conditions, five, Hertz and 10 Hertz. Binaural beats all decreased accuracy of working memory.
However, when I look at the literature and I examined a number of different studies, what I always seem to come back to was that 40 Hertz or so, plus, or minus five Hertz seem to be optimal
for generating
improvements in cognition and math performance, and even in various types of memory recall. And even
in musical performance, you might wonder well, how can people to musical performance, they're listening to binaural beats?
It's here's another surprise. Many of the studies that I looked at didn't have people listening to binaural beats while they were doing the tasks the memory task or the Music Learning Etc. They would do it beforehand for 30
minutes. There were instances in which people were listening to binaural beats during the task. But if you decide to employ binaural beats, I recommend this 40 Hertz as a great place to start. I don't recommend doing it for all of your work bouts. I think there's it. Good reason to believe that you can attenuate to it. But if you are going to try it, you might try it both.
Ways you might try listening to binaural beats for about 30 minutes, while doing something else and then maybe eating lunch or something of that sort, or taking a walk, and then going into the work bout. Because remember the moment that you start listening to these binaural beats, the brain doesn't immediately switch
into a particular pattern of oscillation or brain waves. It takes some time,
neural circuits again, take time to engage. The only neural circuits that are going to engage instantly are going to the ones that are of a sort of reflexive sort,
like you step on a sharp object and you have to retract your limb or you.
Suddenly are stressed by distressing text message or you're suddenly delighted about a delightful text message,
but when it comes to shifting your whole brain State toward optimizing work. It
takes a little bit of time. So
again 40 Hertz binaural beats many, many apps many YouTube scripts out there probably other resources for Brian, normal beats.
Hopefully zero cost. So you can access those without any need to chill out any money. If you find one that you particularly like maybe put in the comment section. So other people can find it at. YouTube would be the best place to do that. Feel free.
A put a link or just a description that will be
wonderful and again, you don't need to listen to binaural beats at the exact same time that you're doing the work. Although that could
also enhance your productivity.
Some of you out there might be craving a little bit more
mechanism by which binaural beats can influence things like Focus or reduced
reaction time. This is actually been explored this 40 Hertz binaural beats pattern
seems to have an effect on what's called striatal dopamine. We have dopamine as a neuromodulator of
Course involved in many things in motivation. It's actually involved in adaptation to light in the retina. Something that most people don't know.
But it's involved in movement, which is why people
with Parkinson's who have a depletion of
dopamine. Neurons actually have movement deficits and so on, but striatal dopamine is closely related to motivation and focus and forty Hertz. Binaural beats appears to increase striatal dopamine release and this is actually been measured indirectly by what
we call spontaneous blink rate. I've been
Used in various Instagram posts and even on this podcast of being a
non blinker. Let's call it
or a minimal blinker. And as an important aside,
there is no evidence whatsoever. That people that don't bling very much are sociopaths or lie.
Also, you will hear that people who blink a lot are sociopaths and are lying. There is
absolutely no evidence that blink frequency correlates with anything
except alertness.
Now, longer blinks are associated
with less alertness as we get
Tired. We tend to Blink longer and longer until we take the long blink. That is sleep. I guess the long blink would be death, but the long is blank would be sleep,
but it turns out that the more firing a striatal dopamine neurons
that's occurring. The more frequently we blink
and so it is associated with a resetting of our visual window. That's what happens when we blink and there's a whole relationship between
blinking and time perception that we covered in the episode on time perception.
But here's the bottom line for sake of this discussion.
40 Hertz. Binaural beats appears to increase spontaneous blink rates because it increases
dopamine Transmission in the brain stem and in the striatum in several locations, in fact,
and so the way in which these binaural beats set a rhythm in the
brain recruits dopamine
release that dopamine release leads to heightened levels of motivation and focus. Why motivation and focus? Well, dopamine is actually the substrate by which epinephrine is made dopamine. The
molecules actually converted into epinephrine.
Adrenaline and they work together like
close cousins, dopamine and epinephrine, in order to put us on a path of
movement or if we are doing work of mental movement, toward a goal. So that's a little bit of mechanistic meet
to explain, at least part of the reason why 40 Hertz binaural beats can
enhance our Focus, reduce our reaction times and improve indeed, learning and memory. Next. I'd
like to talk about the role of movement
in optimizing our
workspace and whether or not standing sitting or lying down tread Milling, or even believe it or not.
Cycling can
enhance our work output and performance.
Before we do that. I want to touch on two aspects of optimizing workspace. That will come up at some point in your work, or
school life. Alas. There isn't a lot of science around this but I think they are worth
mentioning. And I think I can offer a
little bit of advice in terms of how to navigate these in a way that would be beneficial to you. The
first one is interruptions, you know, if you go online and you asked about, you know, how to avoid interruptions people will say, okay well,
If you have kids at home, or even if you don't or at work, you'll have a
light like a recording. Like we're recording is on. We're busy now or have a
sign on the door that says bother only in a
case of emergency or fine to knock or don't knock at all.
I've used a different policy throughout the years. I am somebody who
works pretty hard to control my time and focus but of course, as a laboratory director, I have people coming by and who want to talk about things and of course, we have phones and we have computers and people's opportunity to reach us in.
Options really are deadly to our ability to generate
focus. And it's not just about the distraction
that occurs of say, a minute or two minutes or five minutes when we were interrupted. It's also about the additional time to get those brain circuits re-engaged to a mode of focus. So it's really kind of a double whammy.
Now, none of us, including myself want to
be harsh or cruel, or shut off from the
world and often times interruptions, bring
incredible insights and people are providing support and very useful things that are
Chill to my workday and presumably to your work day in school day
as well. But there's a simple method that I learned from my graduate
advisor. That works very very well. Again, no, peer review data support it. This is just my
experience. But this is somebody who had immense
powers of focus had a very, very demanding life, a long, commute to Children
extensive laboratory, Etc. And what she would do was
if I came by and asked a question or if anyone came by and asked the question, she would
acknowledge their presence, but would not
shift.
Body toward them. So, she purposely did not position her computer facing the door, which I think is a deadly, or I should say deadly to focus way of positioning your workspace.
So her computer was facing the wall, the door was perpendicular to that. And I would come by and I say, I have a question and she would say yes, so she would knowledge my presence, but she wouldn't actually Orient. Her body toward me which told me that this conversation was not going to last very long and
no matter how long I stood there what I asked, she would never Orient toward me which generally kept these conversations. Very very,
Short. We had other designated meetings, where we would be face to face the
other approach, which
I confess colleagues of mine have used before not
necessarily at Stanford. But elsewhere is to Simply say no
to everything. That's somebody requests or comes by. So, if someone knock on the door, they would just shout no through the door
or if someone say, can I bother you for a second? They would say no. Or someone say I have something. I want to tell you, they would just say no. And they would just continue doing this
until the person went away. That was actually very
effective. These were some of the most productive people
No, not always the kindest people, but some of them were very kind. The other approach that I've seen in actually, this is an approach that was used
by someone who has been a guest on the huberman Lab podcast, someone who's immensely productive was that he? So, I'm constraining the who this might be by saying he
he actually despite having the
option to have a very large office. Would Place himself
in a workspace that was literally
a coat closet
clear.
It out with a desk, small lamp, completely dark. So this violates everything that I've talked about before,
or prior to this, everything
about high ceilings bright light etcetera and woodwork still works underneath a desk lamp in a completely dark closet minimal ventilation. This is my definition of
hell, and yet
is one of the most productive people on the planet. Also
very, very hard to find. I actually know where his closet isn't turns out. He has several of them that he migrates from, in order to avoid distractions.
So I mention these as kind of
Extremes, I think that most of us exist on the Other Extreme and that's why I mention it which is that most of us like some social engagement. And I don't welcome or at least set our work environment in a way that
welcomes Interruption and we have to be very, very careful about this. Now in the digital
realm. I already mentioned a few of the things that we can do as practical tools to
limit interruptions. One is to use the program Freedom. The other would be to Simply turn off the Wi-Fi. If you do
need to be online and navigating you're doing research of any kind.
That's not going to be
possible. Turning off one's phone. I've at times
put my phone phone on, airplane mode. If that didn't work. I've locked it in a safe. I've done that. I've left in the car outside. It all
depends on one's levels of self discipline, which as you probably know from your own experience, tends to kind of Wax and Wane. Sometimes we are
better at avoiding these distractions than others. So if you find yourself in a
place where it's very hard to reduce those distractions,
you may need you to go to more elaborate lengths. I will say that a graduate student in my lab who was immensely productive.
Focused had the habit of coming in each
day. She would take her phone. I don't know, she turned it
on off or not. And she would just place it in a door. Excuse me, in a drawer
and would then go start doing experiments. We do
experiments all day attend courses engage in discussions avidly with the rest of us and then would take her phone out at the end of the day and leave
and I don't think
that behavior was not correlated with her immense productivity. I think the ability to
untether ourselves from the phone is going
owing to be the way in which many
of us are either going to succeed or fail in our various Pursuits.
I'm somebody who engages on with the phone on a regular basis, throughout the day for various reasons, but I do try and have large
swaths of the day in which it's either on airplane mode or it's completely physically separated from me. When I mean large swaths. I might do every other hour with the phone on airplane mode or even a two or three-hour. Bout where I just am simply not engage with the phone at all. So is it better to sit or is it better to stand when doing work? At least as it relates to?
Focus and productivity and
the answer is both.
There have been a number of systematic studies exploring what are
called sit-stand desks. So these are desk that can be set to height that makes standing the best practice. And then they can be lowered to a height that makes sitting the best practice or the easiest practice, I should say. And
it turns out that just sitting is terrible for
us. Okay, and there's an
enormous number of
studies out there that
They point to the fact that people who sit for five or six or seven hours a day doing work have all sorts of issues related to sleep, neck, pain, cognition, suffers their number of cardiovascular effects
even digestion. There may even actually be some
almost pressure effects on the pelvic floor and things of that sort, depending on the chairs that one
uses. But that people who stand or in a slightly better situation,
where many of those Health metrics
improve but that people that do a combination of sitting and
Standing at the same desk throughout the day or moved from one desk to another. If they don't have a combination sit-stand desk, that's going to be best.
The good news is it's very easy to
convert a Sit desk into a stand out. You can just stack some boxes have done this at times or stack books. There are also some pedestals and things that you can purchase if that's your preference in order to set your computer at a particular height. And of course, there are desks that have Motors and they're ones that have cranks and they're all sorts of variations both in terms of the types and whether or not they have Motors, as well as the cost to these things.
So they can go from very low cost like placing boxes or books as a create a standing desk to very high cost in some cases.
Now. What's interesting if you look at the scientific literature is that people who decreased their sitting
Time by about half each day, so they took
let's say they were working for 7 hours a day. Three and a half hours of though
that day they decide
to stand and it's not even clear that it
matters that they do. All those three hours in one bout or they divide that up into shorter belt.
Half an hour and then sit for half an hour at cetera, alternating back and
forth, showed incredibly significant effects on reduced, neck and shoulder pain, increase in subjective Health vitality and
work-related environments. And perhaps
most importantly, for sake of today's discussion Improvement in
cognitive conditioning and the ability to embrace new tasks and cognitive performance. There are several studies, that if one wanted to explore, they could explore this in more
detail. I'll put a link to this as well.
The article that I'm referring to is called effective. Workplace sit-stand desk intervention on health and productivity. And I like this paper because many of the papers out there. Focus on the effects of sit-stand desks on health and trying to get people to
burn more calories, improve their posture, relieve neck pain, slumped over etcetera, but not on productivity. In this particular paper, focus is also on the metrics of productivity has
its own study and also references the number of
important studies. What does this mean for you? And me? Well, I've
long used
Standing desk or some variation
thereof. What this means is that we should probably spend about half of our work
time standing in about half of it sitting, but not all sitting or not all standing. If you had to do all one or the other standing, is going to be better than
sitting. What happens if we just stand? Well, that can also generate some
postural issues in terms of stabilization and
fatigue. You know, I have a good friend who's in the movement and physical rehabilitation, and Physiology spaces. Name is Kelly Starrett.
He's very impressive and all those dumb
domains and he always says, you know, we weren't designed to sit all day. But we also weren't
designed to stand all day. And I think that's true. If we were to look back at our species over tenzer or hundreds or thousands of years. We would find that. Indeed, we did sit down, we did lie down. It wasn't that we were standing all day long.
That said most everybody at least in the u.s. Is
not getting sufficient, cardiovascular exercise or movement throughout the day and standing at one's
desk can improve some of those
health.
Tricks. And again can improve productivity, probably, because of those postural effects that I talked about earlier that when we lie down, there tends to be less alertness in our in our brain stem, if you will, and there's less activation of those brainstem circuits involved in alertness and indeed that circuits that involve a kind of a calming effect on the body, get activated. And as we become
upright, standing, or seat or sitting, but especially standing, then
those brainstem circuits for alertness, kick on, which are going to make it easier to remain focused.
Focused.
If you are going to start standing for half of your work time,
you will notice that it takes a few days to adapt. You'll notice a lot of shifting from side to side. You definitely want to wear
comfortable shoes. Some people do this on a wooden floor, other people feel uncomfortable, unless they're on carpet. You have to figure out what works for you, but it can take a little bit of time to adapt. I have to say after now, about 10 years of working at a sit-stand desk. I find I can't sit
for too long before. I want to stand and my standing balance, can be anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours. Although two hours would be a little bit long and
I catch myself kind of leaning on the desk off to the side. So again, the idea is to stand but not be leaning on the desk. Obviously if you're typing or writing, they'll be some leaning involved,
but that's what the literature support.
There is also a literature on whether or
not physical movement under your desk. Meaning tread Milling, or
in fact, there are now bicycles that allow people to Pedal. It's kind of a unicycle like thing. Although not a unicycle under the desk can be beneficial for workplace performance. So let's take a look at what those data.
Has a the
study that I'm referring to has a first author, fraud, sham. F,
r0 d. Sh am fraud scam at all. This is
a research article published in plos one. And the title of the article is, does type of
active workstation matter a
randomized, comparison of cognitive and typing performance between rest cycling and treadmill. Active workstation. It's amazing. The people do this science. I think it's great. Where else would we get peer reviewed data on these types of questions first.
Things. First, there were no significant differences between cycling or treadmill workstations on any cognitive or typing outcomes. So, it does not seem to matter whether or not people are tread Milling under the desk. So these would be stationary treadmills. It's like a little conveyor that people are walking on sometimes very slowly. I
get I'm guessing something walk more quickly, the New Yorkers probably treadmill quicker, The Californians probably treadmill, a little slower. I'm in California and so I can make that quote,
unquote joke, but nonetheless, there were no significant differences between
That and a cycling station where people are sitting and pedaling as they type away.
Whereas they work or as their own phone calls, Etc.
So really doesn't seem to matter. So if you're going to embrace these active
workstations, if as they're called, just decide what you would prefer to use. It doesn't seem to matter in terms of outcomes.
Now, this study involved, looking at 137 young adults. They had multiple sessions where they at first completed cognitive and
typing test.
They just have different names and you're welcome to look those up if you like as well as flanker task.
So these are tests of attention and things of that sort and then they either engaged in treadmill or cycling. And then there was a comparison and the statistics were run and basically what they found was there was a statistically significant Improvement in attention and cognitive control scores during any kind of active session as opposed to just a
mere seeded session.
Okay, so they compared seated to cycling to treadmill.
However, verbal memory scores actually got worse during active sessions. So I'll repeat that. Tread Milling or the cycling workstations. Improved attention and cognitive
control scores as compared to people that were just seated and working. However, verbal memory scores got worse during the active sessions. And again, just to repeat there was no difference between cycling and treadmill workstations.
So this is interesting. I suggest that as the author say that active workstations whether walking or cycling,
Are not only useful to improve
caloric output and physical activity circulation and so on,
but particularly when completing tasks, like cognitive tasks, or tasks
that require Focus, that do not require verbal memory Recall now, why verbal memory
recall was negatively impacted. We don't know, could be because people were breathing a little bit harder could be that there's something about walking and
talking that seems
incompatible in the nervous system. Although, I'm not aware of
that. I know a number of people who can walk and talk at the same
time, but if you are going
To explore these treadmills or you're going to explore the cycling stations. You probably wouldn't want to do that for
highly verbal work. Maybe more for mathematical work or for analytic work or even creative work.
But anything that involves very precise or detailed verbal recall sitting or standing seems to be the better option. And if you're wondering why cycling or tread Milling would
enhance various aspects of cognition, we can speculate I've talked
before about this, but
Anytime we are generating forward movement
through our own actions, our own efforts. Typically if we are outside, we're not on a treadmill or we're on a bicycle or running or even on a motorcycle or in a car, we have what's called optic flow and that optic
flow is known to quiet certain areas of the brain that are associated with vigilance and indeed fear. This is the basis of things
like EMDR eye movement, desensitization reprocessing.
However, the mere Act of
Engaging, what are called our Central pattern, generators the neurons in our brain stem and in our spinal cord that engage repetitive movements also can reduce some of the areas of the brain that are associated with anxiety and Vigilant. So one pure speculation, but nonetheless grounded, speculation would be that tread Milling or cycling. In a desk, would reduce anxiety that would allow performance to improve the other. What I think is more likely explanation is that anytime we are in ambulation. We recruit the
release of neuromodulators like epinephrine.
When dopamine and things of that
sort, that further
increase overall levels of alertness. I
think that's the more likely explanation because it's hard to imagine how just a reduction in
anxiety could lead to these improvements in cognition in a direct way.
Whereas the subjects in the study. I just mentioned on average, experienced an increase in cognitive performance, merely by movement. Okay, and this does not include any
optic flow because it stationary the treadmill or the cyclist stationary. And
so we can rule out that optic flow and that
points to the idea that when we are in Movement, we recruit neuromodulators associated with the so called reticular activating system, the striatal system and so forth that would place the brain into some pattern. We don't know. We only can speculate some pattern,
perhaps its gamma waves, or some other wave pattern, that would engage heightened levels of focus and attention. Nonetheless,
tried Milling
cycling at a desk. Does improve cognition.
So we've been discussing workspace optimization
with the understanding that you're not always.
To work in the same place every day.
What I've tried to do is give you a set of high potency tools, that can improve your focus and cognition, and to place that
within a framework for particular kinds of work. Let's just review some of the basic elements of what we've covered today.
First of all, in the first part of your day that 0 to 9 hours after waking, you want Bright Lights, especially overhead lights as bright as you can keep them without feeling
uncomfortable, or certainly not without feeling any pain in your eyes or elsewhere in your body bright lights.
It's make for the maximum state of alertness
in addition try and place whatever it is that you're focusing on directly in front of you. But not
have. It extend too far out to either side of your eyes
try and generate a fairly restricted visual window as we call it. And if you can try and place whatever it is, you're focusing on at least at nose level or above that might take some engineering or some Ingenuity and creativity
in order to figure out how to do that. But that's going to be most beneficial
try and avoid.
Meaning try and avoid sitting try and stand for, at least
half of your work day. That's a good goal. And it may take some time to work up to that goal.
In addition. If you're going to use sound as a stimulus, for increasing focus and alertness, try and avoid exposure to White Noise, pink noise, or brown noise for
extended periods of time for more than an hour or so that might actually be damaging to the auditory system. And at the very least, is kind of stressful. Even though you might not notice it, it's kind of a background level of anxiety and stress. That is
Not going to serve you. Well, rather, if you're going to
pursue particular types of sound, frequencies consider using 40 Hertz binaural beats not Montero beats, but 40 Hertz binaural beats done during a particular work
about, or for 30 minutes prior to that worked out. I would not rely on, binaural beats all the time, every day. I think that could cause them to lose their
potency. Just because of the way, the auditory system attenuates and actually, you've experienced that attenuation. The mere fact that you can go into an environment where there's an air conditioner blowing.
Implying that it stops and you feel that relaxation, but you weren't thinking about the air conditioner. Before tells you that your auditory system had kind of attenuated to it and yet it was still impacting your system. You were sensing it, we would say, but not perceiving it.
There are other things that you can do to improve your
work. Space
optimization such as standing for half the day as I mentioned before, but if you're interested in this or you feel like it suits you to treadmill, find a Stationary treadmill that you can walk on. I've never tried this before, maybe after this.
Episode given what I've read in the peer-reviewed research and it's pretty compelling that treadmill and seems like an interesting way to increase
alertness and cognitive performance.
I'm not sure that I would do the cycling method
because I can't imagine just cycling and typing in the same time that sort of feels like they're like, I actually can do the rub, your tummy, Pat your top of your head, kind
of thing, but it still feels like a little bit of a
sort of a cognitive motor Collision for me, for whatever reason. But that's just my bias. I do know how to ride a bicycle. But anyway, you pick your
Some other things that you could do in order to improve your workplace, performance would be to consider the cathedral effect. If you're going to do analytic work for any part of the day, phase one or phase two is, I describe them. But really, in any time of day that detailed analytic work for which there is a correct answer. Learning scales of Music Learning mathematics, trying to figure out the solution to a problem where there is indeed a solution. It could be an interpersonal problem as well, then try and get into an environment with a relatively low ceiling. If you don't have access to a low ceiling,
Moment, you might consider using a brimmed hat or even a hoodie, or even just facing down, or even putting your
hand above above your eyes, as you. Well, as, at the level of your of your eyebrows. In other words, lower the ceiling. That's the basis of the cathedral effects of, on analytic performance. In contrast. If you're interested in
doing brainstorming creative work, your writing new things, you're creating new things of any
kind artwork, consider getting into a high ceiling or no ceiling environment. Or if you're wearing a
And hat, who are you wearing a hoodie? Maybe peel that back
again, the data within
the peer-reviewed, literature are there to support these sorts of practices and if
you'd like to start layering these protocols by all means, please do that. There's no reason why you couldn't do one or just two of these protocols. There's
no reason why for instance, you couldn't use binaural beats and try and get into a low ceiling environment to do detailed work a couple times a week, but you could also employ all of
these. Now, of course, there are an enormous number of other things that you can do.
Do to improve work
performance and productivity. And I've talked about those in previous episodes in particular in the episode on focus and the episode on motivation. There are supplements. You can take that can increase dopamine, for instance. There are
tools that you can use to increase your focus. For instance, focusing, your visual attention on one location for 30 to 60 seconds prior to entering a
focused work bout. This has been shown again and again through work from Emily. Bell cetis at NYU
in the episode on
Focus. I cited a number of studies where
Is actually been tested and deployed in various schools. Having kids do a focus task where they look at a particular visual Target for 30 to 60 seconds, then doing some mathematics
and seeing pretty impressive Improvement in focus and attention even in people that have attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder and so on.
So there's no reason why you can't and shouldn't combine the sort of practical work space.
Optimization solutions that we talked about today with the kind
of neural
optimization solutions that we talked about in the episode on focus and the
I served on ADHD in the episode on Motivation by all means layer those together. That's how you're going to achieve the optimal Focus bouts. That's all you're going to achieve the optimal
creativity about. I do want to acknowledge again. The fact that I realize people are showing up to this
challenge of work, space optimization with different budgets with different
constraints. Some people have kids at home. There are a lot of interruptions, some people do not nonetheless. I hope that the information I was able to provide today will allow you to make subtle or
Then drastic rearrangements in your workspace environment.
There's one other point
related to that that I did not cover in that. I'd like to cover just briefly which is
that there's nothing to say that you have to
always work in the same location all the time. You can move from house to Cafe. If that works for you. You can move from
office to home. You can also move from different locations within your home. I have a brief anecdote about this. I used to attend a lot of
scientific meetings. When a lot of scientific meetings were in person. And there were
always a few individuals that
That seemed to stay engaged throughout these very long
meetings. And we're talking seven, eight hour day,
sometimes evening sessions. And
sometimes these meetings would go on for, you know, four or five, even six days. These are a long meetings
and the quality of talks vary tremendously. And I always notice the individuals that managed to stay engaged and awake for the entire meeting. And I notice that people that could maintain high levels of alertness in this. One conference room. Had a habit of moving to a different
Seat, after each session sometimes even between talks and I
actually discuss this with, one of my colleagues who was doing this I said, is this conscious? Are you always moving from place to place? And they said, yeah, fights just stay in one place and I just look from this one particular visual angle at the screen. I find after one or two talks, regardless
of how interesting the talks are that. I start to kind of draft. My mind isn't as engage in indeed, sometimes can fall asleep. And so, I started this practice of moving from space to space, or I should say seat to seat with in an auditorium, and it works quite well. And I think it
works quite well because again,
Of the relationship between
our visual system driving, the majority of our
cognition, right? Our visual system drives our thinking, and that novel visual environments are going to lend themselves to heightened levels of
alertness. You don't want things to be so novel and scary or threatening or anxiety provoking or loud that they
draw your attention away from your work, but I think this is part of the reason why turning on music or moving to
an office or a cafe or an outdoor environment from an indoor environment or vice versa, maybe even within a single day.
Can bring about more heightened
levels of productivity.
I'd also like to acknowledge that what I cover today is, most certainly not
exhaustive, for all the types of work space optimization tools. That one could create
for that. Reason. I'd love for you to suggest any of your
workspace optimization tools that you found useful.
Please put those in the comments section on YouTube. That would be the best place than other people can see them also read through those and perhaps in a future episode. I'll call
about some of the ones that I've tried on the basis of your suggestions.
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This episode. We didn't talk too much about
about supplements. But on many previous episodes of The huberman Lab podcast, we talked about supplementation. And while supplementation
isn't required or great for
everybody. Some people do derive tremendous benefit from supplements. We talk
about supplements for Focus for
sleep for creativity, all sorts of things. If you'd like to see the supplements that I take, you can go to Thorn that's TH or
any.com / the letter U /
hubermann. There, you can see the supplements that I take, you can get 20% off those supplements and if you navigate deeper into the thorn site through,
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partnered with Thorne is because one of the major issues in the supplement industry, is that many of the supplements out there, don't contain sufficient quantity, or they contain too much of a given
supplement and the quality of the ingredients can vary tremendously
with Thorne supplements. There is immense stringency in terms of the quality of the ingredients and the Precision of the amounts of those ingredients.
Is that they include in each product?
Once again, thank you for joining me for this discussion about the
science and peer-reviewed literature on work space optimization. I hope some if not, all of the tools will be beneficial for you. And as always, thank you for your interest in science.
