Andrew Huberman· PhD
But as you drop deeper into that 90 minute cycle your ability to focus and to engage in this DPO process and to direct neuroplasticity and to learn is actually much greater.
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The evidence is convergent. Multiple independent sources reach the same conclusion, the underlying mechanism is well-characterized, and even the field's most cautious voices treat it as worth doing.
But as you drop deeper into that 90 minute cycle your ability to focus and to engage in this DPO process and to direct neuroplasticity and to learn is actually much greater.
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It would be perfectly good, however, to engage in a focused bout of learning each day. And now we know how long that focused bout of learning should be, it should be at least one 90 minute cycle. And the expectation should be that the early phase of that cycle is going to be challenging. It's going to hurt. It's not going to feel natural. It's not going to feel like flow. But that you can learn and the circuits of your brain that are involved in focus and motivation can learn to drop into a mode of more focus, get more neuroplasticity in other words, by engaging these ultradian cycles at the appropriate times of day.
So you're going to sit down, you're going to decide you're going to learn some nouns and some verbs, you might do some practice set. The ultradian cycle says that for the first 5 to 10 minutes of doing that, your mind is going to drift and your focus will probably kick in, provided that you're restricting your visual world to just the material in front of you, something we talked about last episode, somewhere around the 10 or 15-minute mark. And then at best you're probably going to get about an hour of a deliberate kind of tunnel vision learning in there. Your mind will drift. And then toward the end of that, what is now an hour and 10 or hour and 20 minute cycle, your brain will sort of start to flicker in and out, you might start thinking about what you need to eat or the fact that you have to use the bathroom or something. And then by 90 minutes, it's probably time to just stop the learning about and go do something else, maybe return for a second learning about later, maybe take a nap afterwards or something to enhance the learning.
the 90-minute time block seems to be the one in which the brain can enter a state of focus and alertness and do hard work and focus, focus, focus and then at about 90 minutes, there's a significant drop in your ability to engage in this mental or physical work.
But the point is this-- these 90-minute cycles occur periodically throughout the day, but there is going to be one period early in the day-- and here, I'm referring to the spirit of starting at about 9:30 or 10:00 AM-- and then likely another one in the mid to late afternoon that are going to be ideal for focused learning.
the ultradian cycle says that for the first 5 to 10 minutes of doing that your mind is going to drift and your focus will probably kick in provided that you're visually uh you're restricting your visual world to the just the material in front of you something we talked about last episode somewhere around the 10 or 15 minute Mark and then at best you're probably going to get about an hour of of uh deliberate kind of tunnel vision uh learning in there