I'll tear up if I talk about it, because

things were going well in my life and

then one day just crack,

everything came crashing down.

And um

and I've learned that friendship is

super powerful. I had people descending

on my home to be with me. You know, one

day I just like look up and Lex is in

the room. And they sat with me, picked

me up and they reminded me who I am

and um

you know, I I've just such immense

gratitude for that.

Dr. Andrew Huberman is a world-renowned

neuroscientist, Stanford professor, and

podcaster.

Revolutionizing how we understand the

brain

and how we can adopt change, break bad

habits, and achieve peak performance.

Growing up, I was scared, depressed, and

confused. My parents split up, I was

getting in multiple fights, found myself

locked up in this residential treatment

program, and I realized that I need to

take control of my life. I'm so

intrigued by that because so many people

feel stuck in their lives. So, how does

someone even make those life-changing

decisions? Well, there are so many

zero-cost tools that can change your

brain. We can go through all of them.

So, I want to talk about dopamine and

this graph.

The dopamine is kind of like a wave

pool. In every domain of life, whether

or not it's food, exercise, for some

people it's work or sex, if you push

things to the max, you're going to feel

depleted and understimulated afterwards

and you need so much more energy to get

the same output. And when you're in that

dopamine-depleted state, typically what

people do is they try and access things

that are going to reactivate the

dopamine circuitry and all it does is

drive them further and further into that

trough.

So, how do you fix that? So, it's hard

to exit, but start with

This is a sentence I never thought I'd

say in my life. Um we've just hit 7

million subscribers on YouTube and I

want to say a huge thank you to all of

you that show up here every Monday and

Thursday to watch our conversations. Um

From the bottom of my heart, but also on

behalf of my team, who you don't always

get to meet. There's almost 50 people

now behind The Diary of a CEO that work

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us, thank you so much. Um we did a

raffle last month and we gave away

prizes for people that subscribed to the

show up until 7 million subscribers and

you guys loved that raffle so much that

we're going to continue it. So, every

single month we're giving away

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and 1,000 lb gift vouchers to anyone

that subscribes to The Diary of a CEO.

There's now more than 7 million of you.

So, if you make the decision to

subscribe today, you can be one of those

lucky people. Thank you from the bottom

of my heart. Let's get to the

conversation.

Andrew, at the very heart of what you

do, at the very, very high. If I If I

look to all that you've produced and I

had to encapsulate it into just

one or two sentences that encapsulates

your mission statement, what would that

be?

I want to share the beauty and utility

biology. I want people to understand how

incredible the human body and brain are

and how even a small understanding of

the underlying mechanisms about how we

interact with light or temperature,

exercise,

thoughts, emotions, etc., how that can

impact our health in really powerful

ways. You have become a cultural

phenomenon because of the

information that you've shared.

In your view, why and how is that

happened? I I guess maybe most

importantly, why has that happened? What

is it that you've kind of catered to

that was absent in people's

understanding of themselves?

Well, I think

people are intensely curious about

themselves, meaning our species, why we

feel the way we feel, why other people

feel and act the way they do, and I

think most everybody, I like to think,

is deeply interested in how to be the

best version of themselves and I think

what I've done is I've provided a lens

into all of that through biology,

through neuroscience in particular,

but also I'm a practitioner. So, since I

was pretty young, I've been actively

involved in sports and psychology and

interested in

what one can do, in some cases take,

things to avoid in order to be the best

version of oneself. And so, um

I'm an academic, right? I

have a laboratory and I'm a tenured

faculty member at Stanford. Although, I

should mention that I've shrunk my

laboratory considerably in the last year

or so, but I've done experiments on

animal models, on humans and human

clinical trials. So, I have the

understanding and expertise of a of a

research scientist.

And at the same time, I think very

deeply about

how to translate the information in

these peer-reviewed papers, how to

translate the information in the fields

of science and medicine into actionable,

what we call protocols. And my best to

um distill things down into

uh you know, actionable things,

um

but I'm not a big believer in dumbing

things down. I decided to go the

opposite way. Rather than give little

snippets, um 90-second videos, we

include those, but rather I decided to

go for full one-to-three-hour, maybe

even four-hour lectures on a topic

because I believe, and I'm not the first

to say it, that people have um near

infinite ability to learn if they are

told things in a way that's clear. So, I

believe that people want to understand,

they can understand, and it doesn't

require decorating things in a lot of

complicated language. Sometimes we need

to include some complicated language

just because that's the way science and

medicine are, and that people are

willing to learn that and carry that

along and once they understand how they

work a little bit better, you arm them

with a little bit of knowledge, then

really they're just off to the races and

the the rest takes care of itself. I may

a couple of times today just ask you to

explain something to me in more simple

terms because I don't have fundamental

understanding of of science. So,

um

much of my objective is just to if if is

just to be completely honest if I don't

understand something because I'm sure

there's a lot of people listening that

also probably don't understand

something. One of the things that was

most surprising to me about you was

your background.

And I think

the interesting thing about your

background and where you came from and

the the struggles you faced and

in contrast to the man that sits in

front of me today is it I think it

speaks to one of the fundamental

points of curiosity that I have about

your work, which is it's all well and

good knowing protocols,

but

there's something else required to be

able to pursue them.

Now, people say that this is discipline

or motivation or whatever it might be,

but when I looked at your background and

where you've come from, it wasn't a

straight line.

There's no There's an element of

transformation that's gone on there.

There's There's almost

the early Andrew Huberman, who I would

never would have guessed would have been

the man that is is almost unrecognizable

from the man sitting in front of me

today, and then there's the man sitting

in front of me today.

And the reason I'm so fascinated by that

is because if I can understand how you

went from

that Andrew Huberman to this one, it

gives me it liberates me from the

excuses that I won't be able to pursue

your protocols now.

Yeah, well certainly there's been a lot

of

adventure and transformation, certainly

some hardship. Listen, I I'll be the

first to say, you know, my life has been

easier than it has been for others and

harder than it has been for others,

right? So, I'm not trying to plant a

flag as having had the hardest or the

easiest life. I only know

um

what's my experience, right? So, all

I've got is my experience, my knowledge,

and my words uh to convey that. But

yeah, it was not a linear path. I would

say the kind of key milestones along the

way and the the the relevant pieces are

for as long as I can remember, I've

always had an intense curiosity and an

intense desire for adventure. Um so, I

want to learn and I want to learn

first-hand.

I also suppose I've always had an

intensity. Like I I've um been told

since I was a young kid, you know, I I

sort of like forward-leaning a little

bit. Uh you know, forward center of

mass, so to speak.

Um But yeah, my childhood on the one

hand was very conventional and and very

sweet in the sense that, you know, I had

two parents. My dad's actually a

scientist. He's a theoretical physicist

by training. He's Argentine, uh but then

did his graduate training in the United

States. My mother's uh a writer and she

was a teacher. She didn't work a whole

lot when we were kids. She was mostly

focused on raising us. And my childhood,

to my memory, was marked by, you know,

dinners together at the table. I was

very, very interested in all things

biology, in particular fish. So, all

things aquaria, birds, anything that,

you know, tropical birds. I I would

learn all about them, learn about fish.

I would then lecture about these things

in class on Monday as a way to try the

teachers to try and get me to not talk

to students around me because I'd be

telling them about it otherwise. So,

I've been giving little lectures since I

was a kid. And

and then I suppose

as I matured, um so to speak, um

you know, around adolescence, my parents

split up. It was a very high-conflict

divorce. Um and that sent me uh in the

direction of more kind of a wilder

foraging, and let's call it that. I was

a bit feral.

Um just the the circumstance led to a

situation where I was seeking out sports

and friends for which there wasn't any

parental involvement. So, for me, the

immediate attraction was to

skateboarding and punk rock culture. And

so, I was very fortunate that I was

drawn into skateboarding and punk rock

culture in the late '80s, early '90s.

I'm 49 now, or almost 49. And at that

time, that was a very nascent culture.

There was no X Games, there were no

major sponsors, that sort of thing. And

so, there were all these not parentless,

but rather feral kids. Some were

parentless. And I got to be exposed to

some I'm skateboarding. And I was not a

particularly good skateboarder, but I

certainly had the drive to try and do

it. I kept hurting myself. So, that was

actually an important event. I kept, you

know, hurting my body trying to push

myself to get really good. Friends of

mine were getting sponsored. Close

friend of mine got picked up as a pro

while we were in high school. We were

traveling, going to contest. What you

probably might have noticed is there

wasn't a lot of attending school. So, I

don't recommend this to young people.

Stay in school. At least at the early

stage, get that basic education while

your brain is still hyperplastic. But,

you know, I was exposed to and

fortunately did not partake in a lot of

drugs and violence, but I saw that. I

also saw a lot of incredible

skateboarding. Some of these people went

on to

um start huge companies and do

incredible things in the realm of action

sports. So, like DC. Um I know the guys

that started that. Danny Way, Colin

McKay. You know, I like I knew at that

time um I knew of, I wasn't close with,

but you know, Tony Hawk, watched his

ascent, right? He was a few years ahead

of me. Um but I would attend contest

skating contest. So, I was in this world

where it was all DIY. It was all

self-created. Now, at some point, I got

a girlfriend and um got into other

things um

and kind of left skateboarding. Um

thought I might be a firefighter for a

little while. I was always very

physical. What age is this?

Um so, I was 16 when I got my first

girlfriend and um

I wasn't doing well in skateboarding. I

kept breaking my foot. Um people were

moving on without me. That's just the

nature of it. I was in love with her,

wanted to spend time with her, and so I

thought, "Well, I'm not really doing

well in school. I'm not really attending

school. I know I'll need to work and

take care of us." You know, I was really

thinking kind of like an adult at that

point in terms of what I would do. And

so, I thought I'd get into the fire

service. So, I started trying to

strengthen my body. I started doing

resistance training. Keep in mind back

then, the only people that lifted

weights were, you know, preseason

American football players, people going

to the military, and bodybuilders. And I

wasn't interested in any of those three

things. But, I started doing resis-

resistance training

um and realized, "Wow, like this is a

really powerful tool. I can make my body

stronger through work." I could I

couldn't do a single pull-up when I

started. I was always pretty skinny. I,

you know, shot up uh a full foot in

height, but was very, very skinny, you

know, at that point. And um

within, you know, a summer I could do

pull-ups. I could do these things. I

thought, "Wow, like there's this

remarkable relationship between doing

physical effort and kind of ability or

outcome." And then I also started

running a lot. For whatever reason, I

ran cross country my senior year of high

school.

And also there I felt like there was a

direct relationship between effort and

outcome. If I ran further, then the next

time I could run even further. If my

lungs burned on a hill run, well, then

the next time I could do that hill

without my lungs burning. Whereas in

skateboarding, no matter how hard I

seemed to try, I just couldn't match the

level of effort with the outcome. So, it

was from that point forward that you

know, 16 years old forward that I made

running and resistance training just

part of my regular weekly schedule. Um

what ended up happening was she went off

to college.

I ended up just basically living in my

car or her dorm room

while she was off at college. She was a

year ahead of me. And I realized I

wanted to be near her. So, eventually I

applied to college and somehow got in.

By the end of my freshman year, I had

been getting in multiple fights. So, I

was still had that kind of wildness from

the world I was previously in. I was

getting into physical altercations. I

was never into drugs or alcohol. That

was fortunate. I don't have a propensity

to be addicted to those things. But, my

life really wasn't in order. And it was

really it was actually nearly 30 years

ago to the day. It was

July 4th, 1994. I went to a barbecue. I

got into an altercation with a bunch of

people that were robbing the house that

we were at.

Um

and and by the way, there's sort of a

little tangent side story. One of my um

friends in college, we weren't super

close, but my girlfriend at the time had

lived with the now wife of Jack Johnson,

the musician. So, Jack recalls that

party. Uh we have other friends from

that party. That was a kind of a a

meaningful day for me because I got into

this altercation. Everything turned out

okay

um in the sense that, you know, we got

our belongings back. No one was badly

hurt. But, I remember going back to the

place where I was staying at that time

and thinking to myself, "Okay, this is

bad." Right? Um you know, like 19 years

old.

Or I guess it was just shy of of of 18.

I am

not doing well in school. My freshman

year was a disaster where I went to

college. I don't think I flunked out,

but I it just wasn't really attending

class. I wasn't doing well. I'm getting

in physical altercations. I'm working at

this little bagel shop delivering

bagels. And there's nothing wrong with

that, but it's not much of a future in

it for me. Um I didn't end up going to

the fire service. I didn't end up a

professional athlete. I thought like,

"What am I going to do with like what am

I going to do?" Right? Because the story

of whatever happened to me prior to that

was kind of meaningless unless I made

something of myself. So, that day I

actually wrote myself and my parents a

letter saying that I was going to turn

my life around. And I actually still

have this letter. My mother still has

this letter. And what I decided to do

was to take a leave of absence from

university. I didn't drop out. A leave

of absence allows you the option to go

back. I moved home and I worked. So, I

was a busboy at a little restaurant in

town where I grew up. And I still

continued to run and do resistance

training, you know, three times a week

each or so. And I went to community

college, which is um

typically where kids who can't afford to

go to university or kids that just stay

back for whatever reason. It's a

wonderful aspect of the the um

educational system in California still.

And I made learning and filling my mind

with formal, rigorous coursework-based

knowledge my absolute mission. Now, I

didn't care if I liked it. I just It's

like, "I'm going to trust my ability to

learn." Because I could tell you a lot

about tropical fish, skateboarding, punk

rock music, a fair amount about physical

training at that point. I sought out the

right people. This has always been

something I've been good at is seeking

out the right people with knowledge. So,

I got great knowledge from the late Mike

Mentzer, who had trained Dorian Yates.

Um I was reading every book I could on

physical fitness and rehabilitation,

trying to get my body strong. Um never

wanted to be big. You know, I was always

interested in being strong and being

able to run far and fast. That was

always a goal, like a capability. I I've

not been one of the um

people to like really care about like

hypertrophy. That wasn't something that

mattered to me. If some came along as a

consequence of training, great. But, it

was more about a a capability to do

things. So, at that point, I just became

a voracious learner. I took every bit of

energy that I had applied to these other

areas and put them into learning math,

science, art history, English,

literature, whatever, you know,

coursework was thrown at me. And then

after a year of that, went back to

university, lived alone in a studio

apartment, and

basically for the remaining portion of

university, all I did was

study, work out, hang out with my

girlfriend,

run, listen to

at that time, like early '90s punk rock

music, which is still a wonderful genre.

So, mainly like Rancid, Operation Ivy,

Bob Dylan, always love Bob Dylan,

classical music when I study,

and that was it. I didn't do anything

else. And at that point, I started

getting straight A's. People didn't

recognize me. They were like, "Aren't

you the guy from freshman year that was

getting in all these fights?" I will

admit that I wasn't um completely devoid

of of uh the typical college um

phenotype. Once a month, I would allow

myself to go out to a party and I'd

party once a month. But, stayed away

from drugs, was never never my thing.

And um so, drank, which, you know,

eventually I realized wasn't my thing

either. But, I was just completely

committed. So, I graduated university

with honors. I went to graduate school,

did a master's up at UC Berkeley.

Um then did my PhD, did my postdoc at

Stanford, and then eventually got a

laboratory um

first at UC San Diego, excellent

neuroscience program. Eventually was

recruited to Stanford uh with tenure.

And all along maintaining physical

fitness in the background, focusing very

heavily on doing primary research,

meaning making discoveries in

neuroscience, and publishing papers. And

then in 2019,

I decided to start posting science on

Instagram. Just really nerdy stuff. Um

no protocols, just telling people about

sunlight and the relationship to the

eye, dopamine, and ex- I just

enjoyed talking about it just like I did

when I was a little kid, telling people

about tropical fish.

And in 2020, my plan was to release a

book. So, I got a guy, a PR guy. His

name is Rob Moore. He's now a close

friend of mine. And we're talking about

how we would, you know, I don't know,

maybe go on podcasts or do something of

that sort when the book came out. And

then the pandemic hit. And I said, "You

know what? Let's pause the book." And he

said, "Why don't you just maybe go on

podcast?" So, that year, 2020, I went

on, I think, somewhere between 20 and 30

podcasts.

No book, no website, no nothing. Just

like talking science and delighted in

that. And then January 2021,

I got a little place um

in a little uh kind of canyon region of

Los Angeles, a little sabbatical-like uh

retreat and um set up some cameras.

I had my bulldog Costello there. Rob

Moore became my podcast producer. And on

January 1st, more or less, we launched

the Huberman Lab podcast, where now I

still just blab about stuff that I find

interesting and that I think can be

useful to people. So, that's the kind of

that's the arc. And as I tell all this,

I also just want to make sure that

people know that

it sounds like this magnificent arc, but

along the way there were

absolutely times when I thought, "Oh my

like what am I going to do?" Like this

is working, but this isn't working. And

my life at times became very lopsided. I

focused mainly on work and research. Um

you know, I'm 49 years old. Now I've had

some wonderful relationships across my

life, but I opted to

delay on marriage and family as a way to

uh well, it wasn't the intention, but as

a way to really just continue to pour my

energy into the things that I was most

passionate about. So, there's always

sacrifice. There were you know, sadly

I've lost a lot of friends along the way

to some to drugs and alcohol, suicide,

depression, and so on. Um others to just

unfortunate consequences or age. But the

um I think the major themes have been

I just simply can't pull myself off a

desire to learn and adventure through a

particular space. And then once I learn

things and as I learn things, I can't

seem to help but just tell everybody

about it. And you know, provided there's

somebody there to listen, then I'm eager

to share what what I learn.

It's funny in life how some of the most

traumatic things that happened to us.

And trauma is such a subjective thing.

So, what's trauma for me is not for

Francis Ngannou, who I've heard his

story and you know, walking out of

Africa and jumping over barbed wire and

walking across the Sahara desert. His is

an amazing

I just can't you know, it's like

I hear he's a very nice guy.

He's exceptionally nice. He's a

wonderful individual. But I'm I'm really

interested in how our traumatic

experiences end up um

dragging us in whatever shape in life.

Dragging us or making us driven. That

it's almost two sides of the same coin

sometimes. But I just wanted to zoom

back in on when you were younger. Um cuz

I was reading about at 14, 15 years old,

you were put into a residential

treatment program.

I was.

So, one day in school and by the way, I

wasn't in school much and if I was

there, I was the kid with the hoodie on

with his head on the table, you know,

just kind of like sleeping or drawing or

um I was not tuned in to what I should

have been tuned into. Um I was looking

back, I think I was depressed. I was

sad. I was confused by the fracture of

my family. And listen, um

divorce and family reorganization can

take place without all that. It

unfortunately this was a very

complicated situation.

Um

and maybe it was also puberty combined

with general confusion about life. Um

those things um combined to you know,

put me in a state that I think looking

back I was I was scared, depressed,

and confused like a lot of young people

happen to be at that age. So,

a number of things happened. Um I was

getting into trouble.

I wasn't attending school. I was truant

a lot.

Um and

yeah, one day they came to like get me.

They basically called me into the

office. I was sitting there

um talking to school counselor. It

wasn't my first time doing that. And

then some other people showed up there

and I started to realize like uh-oh, I

think I know what this is. Um which was

they were going to take me away. Um now,

the exact stimulus for all this, whether

or not a friend, I think I know who it

was, had been concerned about me and had

intervened or whether or not it was

purely from the parent side isn't clear

to me still. I have my theories and they

have theirs.

Um but in any event, I soon after found

myself in a residential treatment

program. And um

it was interesting because

it was the first time that I had ever

had my freedom taken away from me. You

know, that was an experience like doors

go locked and you're like, "Whoa, you

know, like my freedom's taken away."

Well, you're locked you're locked in a

treatment program basically. You know,

these were all kids that were delinquent

or had problems of various sorts. So,

you're on a hallway with a bunch of

other kids.

Um

you know, you're staying there at night.

You're not leaving. You're not free to

walk to leave. And they make you do

group therapy. You have to do one-on-one

therapy. Um you you have an hour to

exercise outside. You're not leaving the

the grounds. Yeah, this is a like a

combination of like if you were to just

sort of merge in your mind like youth

detention and hospital, right? That's

kind of the the the the unity of these.

Now, kids there and they and we were

kids, right? Um and there was a there

was a unit of much younger kids. And

there was a unit of people much older

than us. And I'll never forget what they

said.

One of the counselors there said to us,

"Listen, the kids over there, the

younger ones,

and the adults over there,

they're crazy. You guys, you're not

crazy. You just have problems." And I'll

never forget one of the kids that was in

there with me goes, "Yeah, but that's

exactly what they're telling the people

in the other two in the other two

units." So, pretty quickly I realized

like this place is is problematic. And I

was scared. I I won't forget like my my

roommate, who turned out to be a very

kind person, but he looked like Richard

Ramirez, the Night Stalker. And he had a

cutting problem.

And he was like a scary looking guy, but

as I got to know him,

I realized that he um

was just a a

kid with a lot of problems. Different

than mine, but a lot of problems.

So, you're in there with kids with

severe drug issues, with um

some were suicidal, some weren't, some

had aggression issues. Um it was a coed

unit during the day. Obviously you're

you're housed, you know, it was boys

with boys, girls with girls. Um

and after about 2 3 days, I realized,

"Okay, the only way out of here is to do

the work." So,

I did the work. I sat down and I started

for the first time really talking about

what was going on for me

and listening. You can learn a lot in

those places by listening to what's

going on for other people. And I

realized that a lot of what was going on

internally for me had to do with the

fact that you know,

you know, I mean what do we need? We we

basically need safety and acceptance at

some level. You know, from from parents

we also need guardrails. And at that

time I was lacking all three.

Um

and

I think you know, my inherent intensity

and I'm a pretty

um

I'm not an emotional person in the sense

that I don't emote easily. Um but I'm a

very feeling person. I feel a lot. I

don't know how other people perceive me,

but I feel a lot. And um I think what

was happening in my family unit at that

time felt devastating.

And um I missed my sister. She was off

off in college. She had gone off to

college. I've always been really close

with my sister. And and really because

this was like late well, this was late

'80s, early '90s.

I also didn't know many people from

homes without you know, a mom and dad,

this kind of thing.

And I had been exposed to a lot already.

You know, one of the beautiful things

about skateboarding, at least back then,

it's different now, is that it was

completely self-organized. So, whenever

I could, I would get a ride with a

friend or take the bus up to San

Francisco. There was this now famous

{slash} infamous scene, the Embarcadero

Plaza, that's called EMB, was this kind

of self-organized

place. You have these in major cities

elsewhere. There was Love Park in

Philadelphia, you know, Washington

Square Park in New York. And back then,

I learned a lot from the older it was

mostly guys then. Now there's more women

in skateboarding, girls and women in

skateboarding and they rip. They're so

good. But um back then it was mostly

guys and so I learned all sorts of

things there, some of which you know, I

was far too young to learn. I got

basically a street education

um from kids that weren't going to

school and who were just like living

this wild free life. And I do want to be

clear that even though there were

let's call them untoward elements, there

was also a lot an incredible beauty. And

like you know, my friend Jake Rosenberg

started going up there as well. He had

his own challenges that I only learned

about later.

Um and he brought a video camera, Hi8

video. He started filming the now like

just like truly iconic videos of Mike

Carroll. These names will mean things to

you. Henry Sanchez, like Marc Gonzales

is like he so he just started filming

all this and then he made the first Plan

B videos and he made the Waiting for

Lightning documentary about Danny Way,

like jumping the Great Wall of China.

And our friend Mike Blabac, who's the

photographer for the Huberman Lab

podcast of all things, who became one of

the most iconic action sports portrait

photographers, was a kid who basically

drove out from Michigan.

I don't even know if he graduated high

school. Some he probably did. And then

he slept in the clothing stacks at the

Gap store, hung out in Embarcadero, and

took photos. And those photos and those

videos that Mike and Jacob and other

people took are now iconic in

skateboarding.

And so,

I was also exposed to this incredible

world of DIY like like take your

passion, take your circumstance, and

pick a craft and just document stuff.

And so, in many ways like what happened

at Embarcadero and what happened in

skateboarding and I always loved punk

rock music and going to shows. I have no

musical talent and I

I didn't suck at skateboarding, but I

wasn't going to go anywhere with it.

But the what I saw was if you love

something and you want to learn as much

as possible about it and you love the

culture around it,

you do have to learn how to sort out the

untoward elements. Don't get yourself

into trouble.

But

you take that energy and I just took it

to academics. I remember realizing when

I got to graduate school, I found a

wonderful lab to work in with a

wonderful woman named Barbara Chapman.

Unfortunately, she passed away.

And at the time she said, "Listen, I'm

going to have a couple kids, but we have

grants. You can So, she said I'm going

to have a couple kids, so I'm going to

be very busy, but we have grants and

here's the lab." She said, "Don't burn

the lab down. Don't hurt yourself, but

just do experiments. Have fun." And I

realized, I was like, "This is the

best." And I had so much energy, and I

thought, "I never have to go home." So,

I lived there a lot of the time. Brush

my teeth in the sink there, work out at

the gym, go and shower, come back. And I

remember people saying, "You're going to

burn out. What are you doing?" And I'm

like, "What are you talking about?" And

I would work 80, sometimes 100 hours a

week. I was so happy.

And I realized, like, this is the exact

same feeling. I'm just taking my

interest, and I'm just pouring myself

into it. I did that when I was a

graduate student. I did when I was a

post-doc. And actually, when I was a

post-doc, I started writing some music

um articles for Thrasher magazine. I've

always kept some little tie to the

skateboarding industry that way, just to

make some extra cash.

And then, when I was a junior professor,

I had to really pour myself just into

the laboratory, but it still worked out.

And

I guess the point is that

you know, earlier you and I were talking

about if you have, and I'm borrowing in

this phrase from one of my heroes,

Martha Beck, um who's a wonderful person

and teacher, has such wisdom, and she

calls it a um interest-based attention

system. Some people might call it ADHD,

but have you ever noticed that even

people And we know this from the

scientific literature, people, kids,

adults with ADHD, when they're in

so-called ADHD,

when they are doing something they

really love, they're like a laser.

They're not going to peel off that.

Their attention is like level 11 out of

10. So,

I took

that energy that I've always had in me

for fish, for tropical birds,

skateboarding, punk rock music,

eventually it was biology, and I just

went, "Okay, here are my chips.

I'm all in. All in." But the goal has

always been and remains to take what I

learn

and share it. Because the real joy in

doing anything,

for me, anyway, is the ability to share

in that knowledge or in that experience.

And so, um those early years were really

choppy and really dangerous, you know,

frankly. But then, when I started a

laboratory and decided, "Yeah, I'm going

to study human stress. Let's go get VR

of stressful circumstances." And my

friend Michael Muller, who's a very

accomplished portrait photographer in

Hollywood, and also takes photos of

great white sharks out of cages, he said

to me, "Oh, you know, your VR stimulus

in your lab, um here's what he told me."

He He's like, "It sucks." He said, "It

sucks. It doesn't look real. It's all

CGI. It's not scary at all.

How about we, you know, go film some

great white sharks down in Guadalupe

Island, and we leave the cage?" And, you

know, the the young Andrew was like,

"Okay." So, got dive certified, went and

did it one year, stayed in the cage,

went the next year, exited the cage. I'm

not recommending people live this way.

I'm not, because I had an air failure at

depth the second year while I was in the

cage. I bailed out. I made it. I lived,

but it was super scary. And it was not

an experience I want to repeat. And I

realized, you know, that's the line.

Like, I you know, the great Oliver

Sacks, another hero of mine,

British-trained neurologist and and

author, he wrote uh was basically what

became the script for Awakenings and

things like that. Um

there's a quote about him that resonates

a lot. And the quote, I think, is, I

mean, you know, uh an early teacher of

his said, "Oliver will go far, provided

he does not go too far."

And so, you know, you have to be

careful, right? These adventures,

leaving school, doing you you can't be

haphazard about it. So,

if you look at the broad arc, it's

highly nonlinear, but there's a common

thread through all of it, which is this

desire to learn, curiosity,

desire to share, intensity.

And

when I'm involved in any one thing, and

I recommend that if people are involved

in any one thing, if it's podcasting or

sport or video games or math or AI or

program, whatever it is, skateboarding,

whatever it is, that you can't be

haphazard in that world.

Because

forward progress, even if you change

things over time, is the consequence of

taking that inherent uniqueness that we

each have, and whatever level of

intensity we have, and making sure that

you, you know, do take steps forward.

And there are What I've learned is

as a child, as an adolescent, and as an

adult, there are all these traps along

the way. There are all these shoots down

to failure and destruction, and you have

to be very, very thoughtful. And so, you

can't be reckless.

I'm really compelled as well by the

letter you sent to your parents.

Yeah, they they must have been very

surprised. That letter was written

in a house on a little street in the

little town called Isla Vista, um Pasado

Street, where I'd essentially been

squatting for the summer with my ferret.

That was the I tell you that cuz that

was the picture. I had a ferret, her

name was Iris, that my first girlfriend

who had left me by then, cuz she was

smart, cuz I had nothing going on. Um

We were me and Iris were living

together. I didn't even have a bed in

the place. I thought, "Well, why pay

rent, you know? Like, no one in Like,

where I grown up with all these like

like riffraff kids." Now, the town To be

clear, the town I grew up in, Palo Alto,

now is known as like one of the

wealthiest places. At that time, it was

like kind of upper middle class, but

when I say like riffraff kids, I mean,

like the people that congregated around

skateboarding in the late '80s, early

'90s, were the kind of like parentless,

feral types. So, I learned a lot. I

learned I can sleep mummy style

anywhere.

In a car, in a van, in a corner. So,

like, why pay rent? That summer, I'd

have more money to keep and save if I

just

got a pillow and a couple blankets and a

sleeping bag. And this little place, I

was living there with my ferret.

And I came back from that fight on July

4th,

and I thought, "Okay, like, this is it."

And I think it was by the end of the

weekend I'd written out this letter that

said, essentially,

the following. It said, "Look, I don't

know why

you guys decided to just fracture

everything.

I understood why my parents didn't want

to be together. They were incompatible.

Um By the way, they're both happily

married now to wonderful people for many

years. So, there there's a happy ending

there. But at the time, I was very

confused. It wasn't that I needed them

to be together, but the level of

friction in their separation was just

like it I felt like a lot of it fell on

me.

And And there are reasons for that.

But

I basically forgave them.

I basically said, "Listen, I

forgive you.

Um

I realized that I need to take control

of my life. I was 18. So, I'm a fall

baby, so it was like I was almost 19.

Um

you know, 18 years old, 19 years old.

And I need to do something with my life.

And

the only way I'm going to do that is by

getting super focused

and super organized. So, I somehow had

the the idea to externalize this.

And then, I wrote essentially the same

letter to myself.

And then, I just

as my girlfriend who eventually got back

together with me. That was interesting.

As soon as I started working hard in

school, I'll never forget what she said.

We're still friendly. She's married with

her own family, and they have a

beautiful family, but every once in a

while I'll hear from her, and I will

never forget what she said to me about a

year later when I was just absolutely

rabid about learning. She said, um

"You know, you've become a monster." And

I was like, "A monster?" And she's like,

"Yeah, a monster of learning and class

and getting up early, and you tuck your

shirt in." Like, I got into this whole

thing of like dressing

the opposite of everyone else that lived

in that little town. It's a little beach

town. Everyone wore flip-flops, rode

beach cruisers.

Uh at that time, it was like baggy

shorts, long T-shirts, and I started

tucking in my shirt, a belt. I would get

like all like, you know, like cleaned

up, and I'd and I'd go to class, and

people are like, "What is wrong with

this guy?" I just wanted to go

completely against the grain and just be

as disciplined and organized as

possible. And I basically was parenting

myself.

And I think that this is something that

I learned how to do early on. I love my

parents, but I learned how to mother and

father myself. And that was powerful. It

was like I was a young guy, um but let's

face it, you know, at 19, you're young,

but you're not that young in the sense

that if you screw up,

you know, if you

you know, I don't know. I had friends

who got into drunk driving stuff. A

friend of ours was killed in a drunk

driving accident. Um I wasn't real close

with him, but I knew him real well. This

guy, Phil Shaw, great skateboarder,

was killed cuz someone drove drunk. He

wasn't driving drunk. Dead. Bunch of

people dead or in jail. So, you know,

when you're 18 or older, like, the

consequences go super superlinear, you

know, shift, um

where small mistakes can lead to really

bad outcomes. So, yeah, I just kind of

scruffed myself, and I was like, "Let's

do this." And, you know, here I am. I'm

so intrigued by that, because in that

moment, you have, I think, a moment in

which a lot of people are searching for

in their lives, where where you have you

have a decision to do it differently.

And I've always wondered what it takes

for someone to get there. And is it

something that you can accelerate

towards? Like, is there If I'm laying on

the couch right now, and I'm feeling

that, is there something I can do to get

me there, or do I need more pain?

Fear.

Fear.

I'll tell you.

Super scary being

like almost 19 years old, girlfriend

left me.

I'm not good at anything. I wasn't good

at anything.

Not skateboarding, couldn't play an

instrument.

Everyone in that town surfed.

Um Family?

Family, I mean, I didn't Yeah, I could

have gone to the fire service, and

that's a wonderful career path. Um

Yeah, I didn't I didn't have any like

marketable skills. I couldn't really do

anything, except I knew my capacity to

learn. I've always had a very good

memory,

and I've always enjoyed learning.

So, I thought, "Okay, school seems like

a good option. They tell you what you

need to know." In fact, at one point, I

realized, and I think it was Ryan

Holiday that said that, you know, the

people who should absolutely not drop

out of college are the people who are

not doing well, because the real world

is a lot harder in many ways. It's a lot

harder than college. In college they

tell they tell you what to do. I

remember taking a class in Greek

mythology. You go there, if you sit near

the front, you pay attention, you try

not to pay attention to anyone else. You

sit down, they tell you what you need to

know. Now, sometimes it's complicated,

you can't keep up, but then they have

these things called office hours where

you can ask, they have teaching

assistants. I mean, the whole thing is

set up so that you almost can't fail if

you do the required steps. Whereas with

skateboarding, it's like I was always

getting broke off, as they say, you

know, I was always rolling my left foot,

snapped again, uh nothing, couldn't do

it.

Um

there's so much uncertainty in other

things. At least with a college

education, for me, it was like, okay,

I can I can learn this stuff. And then

what I found is when there's a desire to

learn, and then you learn, and then you

do well, and I'd started doing very

well. Um

and but there's that one class that I

got a B+ in that I'm still pissed off

about, you know. My first year was a

disaster, then it was all A's, and then

there's this one class in neural

development from Ben Reese,

and I got a B+.

And as a consequence, when I went to

graduate school, I studied neural

development. You know, it's the thing

that you don't get, the the place where

you make an error that you forever carry

that signal, I need to get better at

that. So, I think a lot of it is just

having the

the knowledge of self, right? What did

the oracle say? Know thyself. The

knowledge of self

to really think, okay, like, what are my

strengths? Do I like to learn if I'm

interested in something? Do I have a

voracious appetite? Maybe if you're a

person with less energy, um maybe uh

you're more reflective, or you like to

journal, or you need more time to

process. I think turning what often

appear as weaknesses into strengths is

really possible.

And then I do think that we are all each

endowed with some unique gift. I really

believe in this. Um it's not mystical

for me. I think that we all have some

wiring of our brains that's very

similar, and we all have some unique

wiring based on our genetics and our

experience.

And I just thought,

I'm going to

keep paying attention to what fills my

body with energy.

One of the most inspiring, and I think

liberating, things that I've heard in

your work is this idea of

neuroplasticity, because

if your if the brain can physiologically

change based on what I'm doing, then it

means that who I am now, my identity,

that 60 that 19-year-old who's sleeping

in the mummy thing with the ferret,

isn't who I always have to be. I can

literally change.

Um we've spoken a little bit around like

what causes the motivation to actually

change, but knowing that there's a my

brain will actually change, those two

things are really inspiring for me,

because it means that whatever rut I'm

stuck in isn't necessarily a permanent

one. Now, you said that the motivation

to change comes from fear. Well, in my

case, it took a a fear circumstance,

fear of becoming a

permanent failure, Yeah. to motivate

immense change. And um

uh that was that circumstance. I I do

believe, however, that the

best work, our most creative and best

work, comes from a a love of craft.

But sometimes, in order to find what you

truly love, you have to be scared into

setting off on a path to find it. And um

yeah. And And And that goes for

relationships, too. Sometimes, to find

the right relationship, um or

relationships, it could be friendships,

romantic relationships, etc., one has to

be

like deathly afraid of having to remain

in the the relationship that you're in

enough to leave.

So, neuroplasticity

is absolutely real. Um it actually

worked out that my scientific

great-grandparents, two guys,

David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel, won the

Nobel Prize for

for neuroplasticity. Now, they weren't

the people who discovered it. It had

actually been described for centuries.

People understood that young kids

can learn more easily than adults can.

But David and Torsten won the Nobel

Prize for essentially formalizing the

and discovering the principles of

neuroplasticity, how it works. And then,

some years later,

mainly one guy by the name of Mike

Merzenich, but there were others that

worked with him,

discovered that neuroplasticity is

actually a feature of the nervous

system, the brain, throughout our entire

lifespan. The rules change a little bit

in terms of how you rewire your brain.

But if the question is, can

a person change? Can you learn new

thing? Can you unlearn certain patterns?

Can you overcome traumas

at any age? The answer is absolutely,

categorically, yes.

How? Well, it's very clear that as a

child until about age 25, more or less,

just passive experience will shape the

brain, for better or worse.

After about age 25, and again, these are

not strict cutoffs,

we can change our brain, but what's

required is a marked shift in the

neurochemical environment under which

something happens. So, one of the

reasons why any traumatic event will

forever be remembered, although, by the

way, you can remove some of the

emotional load of that, trauma does not

have to be traumatic forever,

is because when we see or experience

something very intense of a fearful

nature,

there is the release of certain what we

call neuromodulators, things like

epinephrine, adrenaline, and other

neuromodulators that cause a state shift

in our broad body and brain.

And the nervous system recognizes this

as unusual, and as a consequence, in the

subsequent days, there's reordering of

the connections,

so that the brain can prepare for that

event should it happen again.

This is why we have what's called

one-trial learning. You go to a certain

location, something terrible happens

there, you will forever associate that

location with something terrible. But

there are tools, therapy, and other

tools

that can allow the emotional load to be

removed from that, so that you could go

to that location and feel calm, no fear

whatsoever.

The good news is you can also learn

anything you want to learn,

provided there's a shift in this

neurochemical environment. This is why

when we are very interested and focused

on something, two of the main

requirements for neuroplasticity, we

have to be alert and we have to be

focused. We can't learn passively as

adults. We can't just play, um

you know,

a lecture about AI and large language

models or neuroscience in the room, and

then it just the knowledge doesn't just

sink in by osmosis.

But if we pay attention and we're alert

when we pay attention,

there's a shift in the neurochemicals

associated with that attention,

what we call the catecholamines. It's

three molecules, dopamine, epinephrine,

and norepinephrine, all which cause an

increase in alertness, all which cause

an increase in focus, a tightening of

our visual field and our auditory field,

so like cones of attention is one way to

think about it. And then, it sets in

motion a bunch of biological processes

such that if we get adequate sleep that

night,

maybe the next night as well, there's

reordering of neural connections, so

that that knowledge, that new

experience,

is consolidated in your brain. You are

forever changed as a consequence of that

experience. So, when we hear that the

brain is constantly changing, everything

that we encounter changes our brain,

that's not true.

Why would the brain change unless it

needed to? Right? As a child, the brain

is basically a template for change. It's

it's trying to understand the

environment and make predictions, and so

that's true. Neuroplasticity is is

a cardinal feature of of childhood and

adolescence and the teen years. You just

think about the music you listened to

when you were a teen, no other music

will ever have as much significance. And

that's because as a teen, your body is

flooded with hormones and

neuromodulators that the amount of

meaning that comes from

now seemingly trivial events when you're

a teenager or adolescent is immense.

That song meant so much, and it's

because of the neurochemical milieu it

creates in you. But as an adult, it

takes a stronger stimulus, as we say.

And if you were to

fall in love as an adult, or see

something a painting that just strikes

you as just so unbelievable, yes, then

you are forever changed. But just going

to see a bunch of paintings at the Met

doesn't mean that every single one of

those paintings is forever stamped into

your brain. The The nervous system is

very

um efficient in that way. It doesn't

change unless it has to.

And it

always changes if it needs to in order

to keep you safe. This is why there's an

asymmetric influence of fear as opposed

to um just interest in terms of what

will shift our brain.

But

it's nice to know that love and

excitement and appreciation are very

strong stimuli for changing the brain.

And um you know, I can

kind of draw to mind conversations I've

had with my good friend Rick Rubin. I'll

get accused of name-dropping, but I'm

very fortunate to be close friends with

Rick, and Rick always talks about,

you know, how when you just see and

experience something and you just have

this love for it, it changes the brain.

He's not a neuroscientist, but in many

ways, he's a neuroscientist. So, in any

case, you absolutely can change your

brain, but you have to pay attention to

the thing you want to incorporate into

your brain. You have to be alert while

you do that, and then you absolutely

have to go get some rest, because it's

during sleep and during meditative

states and during rest that the actual

rewiring of the brain occurs.

There's a phrase that you can't teach an

old dog new tricks. And I think as we

get older and older, we become stubborn

in part because we're very comfortable

with the way things are in routine and

whatever, but also I think we start to

believe in this idea that we can't

change. And that in and in and of itself

makes it harder to change. Are you

telling me that you can teach an old dog

new tricks? Yeah, I'm so glad you

brought this up.

Um let's just

destroy that myth now. You absolutely

can teach an old dog or human new

tricks.

We know this. In fact, there's studies

incredible studies that were done down

at the Salk Institute in San Diego

showing that even in people who are very

old, right? These are people in their

80s and 90s. You know, the human

lifespan probably maximum human lifespan

as we understand it is probably about

120 years

more or less, but most people don't make

it to 100, but so 80 or 90 is pretty

old.

Mhm.

There's still the addition of new

neurons occurring. These people who were

unfortunately dying of terminal cancer,

I believe, but other causes agreed to

take a a dye that actually gets

incorporated into new neurons. And then

after they died, their brains were um

you know

looked at under the microscope and there

was the addition of new neurons even at

late age. Now, I want to be very clear

that most of learning is not the

addition of new neurons, at least not in

humans.

But from everything we know about

neuroscience, it's clear that doesn't

matter if you're 90 years old, 70 years

old, 50 years old, if you want to learn,

you can learn. And that learning occurs

through neuroplasticity, which is the

reordering of neural connections,

strengthening of certain connections,

weakening of others, and in some rare

cases the addition of new neurons, but

brain change is absolutely real at every

stage of life.

I also wonder about habit formation. So,

you said there that some of the more

sort of startling stimuluses like fear

are great ways and and obsessive sort of

deep focus are great ways to start

forming these new behavior patterns. But

if I want to break a habit cuz there's

habits I've got in my life that I've

kind of just told myself are

who I am.

And

accordingly, I've just kind of accepted

them. Well, you've been very successful,

so Yeah, but even with all there's all

thing Thank you, but with there's many

things I'd still I've just accepted it's

part of who I am. Some of those come

from my childhood. So, one of them is

that I grew up in a very disorganized

home where like the doors inside my

house had holes in them and our house

there was like some rooms that looked

like a hoarder lived there. Just piles

and piles of stuff to the roof. Um house

demolished in many respects. Like the

back of the garden was 6 ft high. It was

it was a mess. So, I've grown up with

mess and I'm therefore still pretty

messy today. And it's something I've

always wanted to defeat, but I just

sometimes I tell myself, well, it you

know, it was hardwired into me when I

was a kid

and it it is just who I am. And a lot of

people go around saying that. They've

just kind of

identified with and accepted a certain

bad habit as part of who they are.

Well, I will say that some of the most

brilliant people I know had terribly

messy offices. And they were very

internally organized people. It's kind

of interesting. They were like a laser

beam in their ability to kind of sort

through mess. They didn't see the mess.

In fact, my post-doc advisor, who also

sadly passed away, but an incredible

human by the name of Ben Barres. Used to

walk into his office and there'd just be

piles of stuff everywhere. And I'd say,

"Ben, I I think we should clean your

office." And he'd say, "Don't touch

anything because if you move anything, I

won't know where it is." And I said,

"How could you possibly know where

anything is right now?" And he said, "I

know where everything is." And so, I

think some people also by growing up in

or being in that environment also

maintain an uncanny ability to find

things. Whereas, I'm the sort of person

where I can't do any work until

everything is cleared away.

And so, um I see myself as on the weaker

side of this ability. Um but to your

question, I think

stories are very powerful and very

dangerous.

Stories are the way that humans organize

knowledge by and large, right? We don't

tend to

organize things into lists. We have

these narratives that we call stories

because from a young age

we learn things not just by hearing them

and seeing them, but they are

compartmentalized into narratives that

have a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Sometimes they have a

uh kind of a crescendo and then a

relaxation. Just think about a childhood

song of learning like the ABCs.

They don't teach you the ABCs A B C D E

F G H I J K, right? They don't do that.

What do they do? They give you a song,

which is a story. Musicians will

understand this inherently. Again, I'm

not one, but

when I started researching neuroscience

of music in the brain, came to

understand so it's A B C D E F G, right?

The change in the inflections

as one does the alphabet as a young kid

is the story of the alphabet. Now,

people might say, "Okay, what what is he

talking about?" What's happening here is

you create variation in terms of

batching of ideas

so that something has a beginning, a

middle, and an end. So, if you think,

"Okay, I grew up in this house and it

was really messy and now I have too much

mess and in order to undo that, there's

this kind of like hardwired right

dangerous words hardwired neural

circuitry in my brain that I would have

to work really really hard to undo and

I'd have to be scared into being a

cleaner person or what you or what you

know, I'm a tidier person, whatever it

is."

That's very dangerous because there's a

beginning to that, a middle to that, and

an end to that and it has immense

meaning as a consequence.

One of the most powerful things is to

understand that neuroplasticity really

involves taking an existing story and

dismantling some component of it. What

could the component be? Well, there's

all this stuff like the Byron Katie work

which says, you know, you you take

something that you believe as true and

you say, "Okay, like uh like I'm an

untidy person." And then you counter it.

How do I know that? Well, okay, I have

this experience. Okay, that's the story.

And then you start running counter

narratives. You say, "I'm uh

I'm

uh actually a tidy person." And then

people say, "Well, this is silly. You're

just lying to yourself, right?" Or they

say, "Is it always true that you're a

messy person?" You start challenging the

story from different sides. Now, I

believe as because I'm a neuroscientist,

I'm not um in I'm not a psychologist or

in the self-help world

that the brilliance, the kind of

unconscious genius of that approach is

actually that what one is doing is

you're starting to create a new story.

You're starting to kind of infuse

different questions into the existing

neural network. Now, the brain loves

questions. Like that the brain since

we're we're young kids, we're asking

questions. And so, if you take an

existing story and you start challenging

it with questions, you're not saying lie

to yourself. You're not suddenly going

to say, "Okay, like I'm super tidy."

You're not going to cuz you're not going

to believe that. But if you start

challenging

why it's that way or, you know, you've

been able to change so many other

things, why you wouldn't you be able to

change that. We say, "Well, it's just a

habit. I can't do it." You say, "Well,

what's a habit?" And you start poking

and pushing and pushing. What you

eventually arrive at is this kind of

huh.

Actually, there's nothing keeping me

from being a tidy person except this

kind of fluency of a particular story.

And what you've done is you've

interrupted the fluency of that story.

So, then when you go to the behavior of,

you know, do you set things down all

over the place or do you put them in an

orderly fashion, you start interrupting

the habit, the fluency of your typical

behavior. So, I raise this as a as a way

um to kind of shine light on essentially

what

I do in my podcast career, which is, you

know, we I I believe very strongly in

the fields of psychology. I think

self-help has some wonderful things to

offer. We've got ancient wisdom that

goes way back. And when you start to

look at things through the lens of

biology you start to see that all of

these things actually have merit and

they're just different paths to the same

outcomes. So, if you wanted to become a

tidy person, I would encourage you here

would be one

let's just say neuroscience supported

approach would be to write out one page

about what a tidy person you really are.

You'll know that's a lie, right? And

then

to

look at it and realize that in many ways

if you just replace tidy with, you know,

messy at any location, it'd probably be

the exact same story. And so, what

you're really talking about here is just

a default that your nervous system is

running.

And if you were to just swap the words,

would you feel differently or do

differently? On the one hand, you'd say,

"No, that's kind of trivial." But I bet

you the practice of writing it out would

forever interrupt your notion of like

just going to set something down. You'd

be like, "Ah." Now you have something to

kind of disrupt the habit cuz so much of

habit disruption that you'll look like

some people say, "Oh, you you flick a

uh you know, rubber band on your wrist

or something like that." There's nothing

special about the rubber band. There's

nothing special about the pain on your

wrist or the you put a sticky note. We

know sticky notes work for about 1 day.

Why don't sticky notes work? Why don't

reminders on the mirror work? Because

they you don't have enough salience.

They're not new. They're not different.

The nervous system only changes if

something is new and different. So,

anyway, we could talk a lot about habit

formation, but fear works, but so does

disrupting the story. How do you disrupt

the story?

You essentially

give the opposite story. And you think,

"Well, that's just lying to myself." But

neurally, it makes sense because

the nervous system again likes to be

very economical, likes to do everything

with the minimum amount of energetic

expenditure.

And to change anything requires

attention and attention is expensive.

Attention is expensive. And also, I

would say, as I'm kind of rambling all

this

things are going very well for you. So,

you actually don't have any reason to

tidy your space.

now and another PA and I have a cleaner.

So, it's Do you know what I mean? The

Yeah, you outsource it. Yeah.

Great. Well, there is incentive for all

the folks that feel like they're not um

tidy enough. You have two choices. You

can either start to be tidy now or you

can be successful enough that you can

hire some assistants. And I actually

think and say this in in all

seriousness, I think that one has to ask

like where is my attention and neural

real estate best devoted? I think about

this every day. I mean, we are living in

a war

of attention. I wake up in the morning

and I can be a consumer or a creator. If

I reach for my phone,

I'm a consumer.

If I go to my journal, I'm a creator.

My advice to anyone who wants to be

successful in any domain

is to do things away from where you

broadcast and then take it to that

broadcast. I mean, take your real life

to Instagram

and be very cautious about taking

Instagram to your real life. Does that

make sense? If you look at successful

people, they're doing things away from

the platforms and putting them on the

platforms.

Yeah. So, I have to be very careful.

Then I go into the kitchen.

Obviously, I

talk to people in my home.

Um

but

if I pick up the phone and I start

making a phone call, it's like, is this

call really about moving

the needle forward or is this just kind

of like passive use of of attention? We

have to be so careful nowadays. So, so

careful. It's really challenging. On

that point of focus and attention and

thinking back to when you were 19 years

old, one of the things people ask me a

lot and I guess it's a bit of a debate

in the self-help world is from a

neuroscience perspective, is

manifestation

and this idea of like visualization,

visualizing who I want to become and you

know, where I'm going, is there any

neuroscience to support that that works?

There is. Um

and I'm not trying to be negative, but

I'll start with the negative counter

example for which there is evidence and

it's less often discussed. So, there's a

wonderful researcher at New York

University by the name of Emily Balcetis

who talks about how for

goal

setting and habit formation, fear

setting is often one of the best tools.

You spend some time, maybe 5 minutes or

so thinking about all the terrible

things that are going to happen if you

don't actually accomplish your goals.

Nobody likes to do this, but guess what?

It turns out to be pretty darn

effective.

Really? I know. It's really frustrating

that this is the case. But again,

you know, that has a lot to do with the

way that the human brain is is wired and

and likes to rewire itself. Now, that

said, it is important to envision goals.

Visualizing goals in detail,

um writing them out, in some cases

talking about them, although we can

discuss that,

um why that might not be the best idea

in every circumstance,

um can be very beneficial because it's

hard to conceive something that you

can't imagine, but I think when people

hear that visualizing goals or

visualizing outcomes is critical, we

sometimes forget that we don't always

know what the end goal is. Sometimes we

have to break this up into milestones.

This is where I think uh Rick Rubin,

even though he's not a

formally trained scientist, um has drawn

a lot of interest for his work on

creativity, which is you know, Rick is

about largely, you know, sensing the

kind of energetic pull of an idea and

being able to explore that without too

much uh self-judgment or filtering or

thinking about how it's going to be

received. In other words, that the

metamorphosis that leads to great music,

great poetry, great scientific

discovery, podcasts, finance, companies

one is building, etc., is a series of

iterations that occur on the time course

of about a day.

You know, and so we can't always imagine

the end or the end product as the

outcome. This is why I said university

is easy compared to other goals because

the end is a degree. Mhm. Right? And

then you pick up your diploma. Like

whereas in other areas, it's far more

mysterious often.

Now,

visualization I think can be very

powerful,

but perhaps what's more powerful is to

learn the brain and body state that best

serves the work you're going to do. So,

for instance, if I'm going to do some

writing and right now I'm working on a

book. It's largely done, but I'm writing

some bonus chapters.

Unless I'm hyper motivated to do that

when I sit down and hyper focused, I'll

spend

two, three minutes just closing my eyes,

focusing on my breathing.

It's meditation of sorts, but what I

tell myself is if I can't focus on my

breathing for two or three minutes, how

in the world am I going to focus on

writing for two or three hours? That

sort of thing.

The other thing that I want to make sure

I don't forget is

I mentioned that telling people your

goals often times can be useful if it

stimulates a little bit of fear, like

you have some accountability.

But we also know that

because of the affiliative nature of

people, in particular people that

support us,

there is this danger.

Uh a friend of mine who's a cardiologist

at UCSF taught me this. He said, you

know, be careful who you tell that

you're going to start a podcast or write

a book because often times the response

will be, oh yeah, that's great. You

absolutely should write a book or you

should do a podcast. And people get a

sort of reward from telling people about

it and then they never actually go do

it. Whereas I can cite numerous examples

of where people were told, you're never

going to be able to do that. You're

never going to be able to be successful

in that and

my goodness, those people dig their

heels and they show that they can do it.

Now,

I get into debates about this with Rick

from time to time. It's a you know, it's

unclear to me whether or not the energy

around trying to prove oneself

is detrimental to the outcome.

And I sense it is, right? This kind of

grinding against like, take that and

take that as opposed to just doing

things out of real love of craft. I

think about the way I felt about aquaria

and fish as a kid and it's just like

pure delight. That's the word that comes

to mind. Just delight. I want to learn

more about it. I want to do it and tell

people about it.

That's the wonderful romantic picture of

effort and progress and outcomes.

But in reality, you probably need both.

You need to be able to access some fear

and sense of competition, but also

delight in craft. You know, like Peter

Thiel's book Zero to One, as I recall,

defines competition as anti-creativity

in many ways because you through

competition, you are

by definition changing what you're doing

in order to outdo somebody else or

something else. And so you're morphing

your creation

in order to kind of overcome something.

Whereas if you're just purely thinking

about something you want to grow and

cultivate, there none of those barriers.

In the worlds that I've been in,

science,

to a lesser extent podcasting and that's

a wonderful feature of podcasting, but

certainly in science, it is hyper

competitive, right? Two laboratories

working on similar things, people are

concerned that if one publishes first,

the other will not be able to publish,

certainly not in as high quality a

journal and jobs are created through

these journal publications. Podcasting

is actually a wonderful field um because

let's say you and I have the same guest

on our podcast. All it does is raise it