The Science of Making & Breaking Habits

Most knowledge dense podcast ever. This guy is a planetary treasure

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." - Aristotle

Your zero cost to science efforts will compound a lot of value for the mankind. Kudos , Sir Huberman.

A few weeks ago, some random lady replied to a comment of mine on a totally separate channel regarding my alcohol abuse problem. She recommended watching Andrew Huberman. She has no idea how her one suggestion to a random person on YouTube has helped me understand and begin to try and overcome a 20+ year addiction and anxiety issue that was overwhelmingly negatively affecting my life. Thank you to her and of course to Andrew Huberman. 5 days no alcohol so far 👍

Congrats for 1 year, Dr. Andrew Huberman! Thanks as always. Sharing my lecture notes: Goal Based vs Identity Based Goal: targetted (losing weight), Identity: larger picture of yourself (as a fit person) "It takes 21 days to form habit." study (2010) - it may take 18 days-254 days to form habit. the habit was : taking a walk after dinner/meal. When is a habit considered formed : they do it 85% of the time, and takes not much mental effort to do it. Limbic Friction : activation energy to engage in a particular behavior. Too tired to do it, or too anxious / distracted to do it. Limbic Friction can be measured, and it will be a factor affecting how you can form habits. Linchpin Habits: easy to execute, and make other habits easier to execute. Can be used to access habits that are harder to execute. Linchpin habits are always things that we enjoy / like doing. Ask yourself, what habits you do everyday. Mapping your Habits; Habit Strength, Context-Dependence Habit Strength: Context-Dependence: (context-independence) if you do something regardless of where / what situation you're in, it's a very strong habit. How much limbic friction is required to do the habit? (how much do you have to force it) Will tell you if the habit is embedded deeply or shallowly in your nervous system. The goal is to reach: Automaticity Less mental/physical effort (less limbic friction) Tool 1 : Applying Procedural Memory Visualizations. Procedural Memory: Simple visualization exercise, think through each of the steps from start to finish of the habit gives more likelihood of performing the habit regularly through the days and weeks to come. This step-by-step visualization allows the limbic friction to come down. Hebbian Learning, NMDA receptors make it easier to turn on more neurons when stimulated. Just do the habit once or twice, then think through the steps (from start to finish), will make it easier to form/maintain a habit. Tool 2: Task Bracketing; Dorsolateral Striatum Basal Ganglia: Action execution, suppression. Go / No Go. Dorsolateral Striatum: Particular Structure that marks the start and end of habit, but not the habit per se. This affects the Context-Dependency of the habit. States of Mind, Not Scheduling Time Predicts Habit Strength If you are very specific about performing a habit on time, it isn't working in the long term habit formation. It's not time that affects the habit. Instead, it is the state your brain & body are in that affects your likelihood to perform the habit. Tool 3: Phase-Based Habit Plan 24-hour day: Phase 1: 0-8 h after waking up Phase 2: 9-15h after waking up Phase 3: 16-24h after waking up Phase 1: 0-8h Alert and Focused State: Action and Focus oriented. Viewing Sunlight / Bright Artificial Light Exercise Cold Exposure / Shower Caffeine Ingestion Fasting Places the body in a state to more easily able to engage in activities that have lots of limbic friction. Place the most important and often difficult habits (high limbic friction) into this 0-8 h after waking up. Phase 2: 9-15h Highest Serotonin, Relaxed state of being. Limiting Light / Blue Light Seeing sunset light, but not too much light. Non-sleep Deep Rest, Meditation, Yoga Nidra, Selp-Hypnosis Heat and Sauna, Hot Baths/Hot Showers Alert, Present, Working, etc. But try to taper off your stress level. Take on habits that you're already doing that require very little limbic friction. Journaling, Brainstorming. Skills you've known, a bit challenging, but less resistance to do (little limbic friction). Habits you already enjoy. Less energy to override / overcome limbic friction. If you exercise, try to do NSDR afterwards, to allow better rest and recovery. Phase 3: 16-24h State of Mind/Body to allow Neuroplasticity of the day Very low to no light. Keeping room temperature low. Well-fed enough so you're not hungry; not eating. What if you wake up? Try to use very little light; light may make it harder falling back to sleep. Try to fall back to sleep. This phase will allow your brain to form and maintain these habits through neuroplasticity (reframing of the brain cells). It's not just the neural circuits engaged by the task itself, but also before and after, gets consolidated. During the sleep neuroplasticity, you'll find the habits easier to do the next days. Habit Flexibility When the habit becomes reflexive, try to play around when you are doing the habit. By being able to do the habit any time, means the habit is becoming Context-Independence. (it becomes a stronger habit) Recipe: is maintained until you know how to cook something. Afterwards, the information is passed off to a different area. The whole habit step-by-step process eventually becomes reflexive, and no longer needed to be bracketed. How much limbic friction? How much context-dependence? (this is how strong the habit is) Should We Reward Ourselves? How? When? When NOT to. Notion of Reward Prediction Error to improve learning and habits-formation. If you expect a reward and reward comes, that's great. However, if something positive happens unexpectedly, dopamine reward is even better. But if you expect a reward and it doesn't come, that's going to be dangerous (dopamine drop). Tool 4: “Dopamine Spotlighting” & Task Bracketing It's very useful to not just think about the procedural execution, but also the events that preceeds and follow the habit. It casts a spotlight to which dopamine can be associated with. Lean into the habit. Positively anticipate the onset and offset of the habit. Start rewarding task-bracketing instead of rewarding the execution only. Feel good about putting the habit into phase 1, and how it is affecting the events before and after the habit. (Association with broader scale of time) Knowing the positive events that happens afterwards, will help form the habit. Thinking of the events that lead to the habit, will also help form the habit. Tool 5: The 21-Day Habit Installation & Testing System Rooted in the Biology-Psychology Literatures, System: build in habits and test the habit. 21 days: 1. write 6 things you would like to do everyday. 2. what phase of the day they will fall into. 3. you'll only complete 4-5 of those everyday. Some things shouldn't be done everyday (to shuffle out) 4. if you miss a day, there's no punishment. Don't do habit-slip-compensation, just get back to it normally. You need to decide what you can do consistently, 5-6 days a week. 5. Chunking these 21 days into 2 days bin, reset. (just look at 2 days) After 21 days, stop doing these, and go to autopilot. How many of them are you naturally doing afterwards? This is important to know who you are, and how capable you are for these habits. To know how well you've embedded these habits. Reasonable and Realistic. Breaking Habits: Long-Term (Synaptic) Depression Look at the Mirror Image NMDA Receptors: if sets of neurons are active, it is recruiting more neurons. Breaking synapses for habits that you don't want to do (or you want to break) Long-Term (Synaptic) Depression (nothing to do with Psychological Depression): Weaken the connection between neuron A and neuron B How to desynchronize these neurons? Habit: picking up phone in the middle of work session. Reflexive habit of taking up your phone. Most people aren't aware of the immediate steps involved. Realize/Measure the fact that you did the behavior, this may help with the breaking of the habit. Notifications Don’t Work Reminders work in the short term, but not in the long term. Penalties are really effective to break habits. Tool 6: Break Bad Habits with Post-Bad-Habit “Positive Cargo” Take the period following the bad habit execution, you don't have to capture the sequence of events that led to the event, but upon realizing a bad habit you can engage in a replacement behavior immediately afterwards. It takes advantage of the recently activated neurons and recruit different neurons into the habit. It helps to plug in a different continuation habit. It creates a double habit that starts with bad habit, and ends with good habit, but eventually turned into an adaptive habit. You start to recruit other neurons that can dismantle the sequence fired for the bad behavior. It creates a temporal mismatch, and makes bad habit more apparent to you. Bad habit is like a closed-loop (self-repeating), but incorporate the good habit and you can rewrite it in the brain as an open-loop. You want the good behavior to be easy to execute.

What’s strange about human behavior is that we can know many things, but taking action in accordance with that knowledge is whole other type of science by itself .

Every time I watch these podcasts from Dr Andrew Huberman I have to pinch myself that he is sharing all this well-researched knowledge, tools and research for free. NO charge. Thank you. I appreciate it all and do my best to share it widely.

Please never stop or delete what you do. You are literally one of the most important sources of information on the internet. Because of how good you explain life (literally) I was able to fix my sleep up to the point where i get 8 hours of uninterupted sleep, and reduced all the stress and anxiety which i thought was genetical or something. Im not even from an english speaking country so im grateful that I somehow reached your content

Exactly one year ago I started with this podcast and it has broken everything I did before in terms of „self help“. It’s just incredible. I watched every episode, some two or three times and can only imagine that the team is only getting started. Let’s go Andrew!!

Thank you Dr. Huberman for letting your information to be free and accessible. It helps me a lot,living in a village in Kyrgyzstan.

I'm establishing the habit of listen/viewing your podcast every morning, already done 5 days in a row. It's incredible the amount and variety of high quality knowledge that i'm receiving for free. THANK YOU A LOT Professor Andrew Huberman, you are helping me to improve my life by a lot.

When you started talking about the 21 days and 6 habits I couldn’t help but smile and tear up as I think to myself that you are saving my life and a lot others and helping us reach our potential and be better people.

I’m a 17 yo anxious kid from India and I must say your channel is one of the most transformative channels on YouTube. Your content is filled with transcendental wisdom. After watching only few of your videos, I must say I'm more hopeful than ever. You made me realise how my circadian/emotional rhythms are completely messed up and what I need to do in order to make my life better. You are one of the giants of YouTube. Jordan Peterson, lex, Joe Rogan and you! Thanks 🙏

This is my personal favourite podcast now. Science based, well informed and yet concise and completely accessible to ordinary lay people. Absolutely fantastic work.

Insane, the level of quality embedded in this podcast. You can tell how thorough Andrew is, and how he manages to translate difficult concepts into easy explanations for all of us to understand. I can´t thank you enough. This information is mindblowing to me, and I am sure to many others. I do not have to engage limbic friction to listen to you, I actually would set listening to your podcasts in the Linchpin section. Thank you Andrew!

Your thorough , scientific, meticulous and clear approach makes these lecturers incredibly effective. No instant gratifications, no shortcuts, no crowd-pleasing statements. . Your goal is primarily educational and it shows.. A heartfelt thank you Signor Huberman.. These are gifts !

1:15:55 habit execution (effort to engage in a particular habit) 1 - pick habit u wanna form 2 - what are the steps involved in executing that habit 3 - what are the sequence of events that need to immediately precede the habit, so like 10-15 min before the habit 4 - what are the events and/or feelings that will happen immediately after the habit, so like 10-15 min after the habit  in doing this, (positively associating with the idea that you're going to complete this entire sequence), you will engage reward prediction error in the proper way that the dopamine surge can lend itself towards motivation.

im addicted to the huberman lab podcast

Mr. Huberman makes me want to go back to university to study neuroscience. I’m completely fascinated by his teachings and they’ve already helped me so much in overcoming PTSD (breastcancer survivor). By sharing what he taught me and referring to his channels I’ve been able to help others as well. Powerful. Thank you mr. Huberman🙌🏻.

Dr. Huberman: You are a treasure, and you will stay as my house member for the rest of my life. Thank you for making such huge efforts to educate us.