How To Successfully Optimize Your Brain For Maximum Productivity, According To Science
A simple framework for organizing your brainwork
Imagine the following,
“You’ve just woken up. You feel refreshed and motivated. After a perfectly executed morning routine, you sit down at your computer.
But nothing happens — your brain simply won’t work.”
“Infinitely frustrating”, is the only way I can describe this scenario (from personal experience). At times, your brain can feel like it has a schedule of its own. This is because… well, it does.
Yours, mine, and everyone’s.
Luckily, they share the same schedule.
Here’s how you can maximize your time by optimizing your mind. All by understanding a few fundamental truths about how your brain works.
I used to resent social media.
Before I started writing full-time, I wrote as a side hustle.
Every morning between 8–9 AM was my time to write. I felt as though I had my best energy in the morning, so it was my prime slot for creativity.
Aside from weekends and lunch breaks, it was really the only time I had to build my dream life.
- On good days, I’d sit down at my computer and churn out hundreds of quality words. This made the remainder of the day easy.
- On bad days, the gears in my brain wouldn’t turn. I’d stare at my computer screen — infinitely frustrated.
In addition to writing, I was trying my hardest to build a social media presence. But truth be told, it felt like a chore.
On the days I couldn’t write, I’d focus on social media. But, I resented the fact that my brain would only grant me surface-level thought. I began to resent social media and eventually got burnt out from it.
This lack of control frustrated me to no end.
Even after doing everything right, creativity felt like a coin flip. I thought, ‘What the heck is wrong with my brain?’
Fast-forward to today, and I happily spend my mornings engaging on social media. I no longer worry about wasting my creative energy or resent the fact that social media is a part of life.
Most importantly, I don’t push myself to burnout.
It’s not because I discovered a productivity hack or complicated system. It’s because I’ve learned that, although humans are unique, our brains are all wired the same way.
Before wiring was even a thing.
The human brain is (actually) pretty simple.
You’ve heard the expression,
“A person is smart but people are dumb.”
Well, this expression rings true in many ways. Although the thoughts, goals, and desires of any one human are nuanced, our motivations are incredibly simple.
These 2 things control everything we do:
- Dopamine
2. Circadian rhythm
Dopamine is our natural brain drug — a reward system keeping us alive and motivated. Our circadian rhythm (24-hour clock) dictates how and when we achieve our goals.
A person is complex. People are simple.
Although some people deem themselves night owls and others love the wee hours of the morning, we’re all wired the same way.
If you think back to our hunter-gatherer days (before electricity), a normal day in the life of any human looked something like this:
You would rise with the sun, forage for food, then return to your tribe to eat. You would then share what you learned with others before falling asleep as the sun set.
These were simpler times.
Although our lifestyles have drastically changed since then, our brains haven’t.
These 3 fundamental truths are still ingrained into us. And dictate how we live:
- Dopamine shapes perception and reality
- Your brain looks for specific activities in the morning
- Your brain looks for (different) specific activities in the evening
Let’s dive in.
How to regulate dopamine — the easy way.
Dopamine is the driving force behind everything we do. It gives us the motivation to get up in the morning, makes us feel happy, and shines a positive light on our lives.
Dopamine regulates the motivation to act, think, and lead fulfilling lives. It’s a natural pleasure drug that pushes us to survive through achieving goals.
In the past, dopamine was hard to come by. We had to do hard things to earn rewards (like hunt prey, find a mate, or build shelter).
Often, we never received any reward at all. This kept us hungry, focused, and highly motivated.
Nowadays, we literally have expertly programmed attention magnets (our phones) designed to pump us full of dopamine anytime we choose.
And like anything in life, what comes up must come down. Dissatisfaction with life is at an all-time high because, frankly, life has become too easy.
Luckily, there’s an easy fix.
According to neuroscientist and Stanford professor, Andrew Huberman,
“You want to teach the circuitry [of your brain] to work regularly, be rewarded every once in a while, and at random.”
On his podcast, “The Huberman Lab”, Andrew reveals that according to the neuroscience of habits, external rewards undermine motivation. Doing something merely to receive a reward results in lower levels of dopamine, and thus, lower levels of satisfaction.
So, instead of doing hard things purely to get a reward, make the action the reward.
Try this.
Pick a handful of positive habits to do each day. For example:
- Exercise
2. Gratitude journaling
3. Practicing mindfulness
4. Working on your business
5. Eating healthy food or drinking water
Each day, make sure to do a minimum of 4 and a maximum of 5. But don’t exceed 5.
**This is because 5 is the maximum number of items your brain can work with at one time. It’s called working memory.
Then, every once in a while (and at random) reward yourself:
- Watch something on your phone
- Eat delicious food
- Take a vacation
The key is to keep the rewards random so your brain doesn’t associate hard work with an immediate reward.
“It’s not so much about the frequency but the schedule of the reward.”
With this in mind, your brain also prefers specific activities at different times of the day.
Structure your day like this to optimize your brain.
If you ask someone whether they’re a morning or night person, answers will vary drastically.
In 2016, the genetics company, “23andMe”, conducted a study on 89,000 participants:
The results showed those who deemed themselves night owls had higher predispositions for sleep disorders (such as sleep apnea), anxiety, and depression.
The truth is, we operate best when rising and falling with the sun. Our bodies operate on a 24-hour timer known as our circadian rhythm. Being that we sleep roughly 8 hours per night, this leaves us 16 hours of wakefulness per day.
But what’s more important than what time we rise/fall is how we use our energy once we’re up.
Our brains delve out different hormones at different times during the day to get us to engage in particular activities.
Andrew Huberman does an amazing job of breaking down each day into 3 distinct phases, based on numerous peer-reviewed studies.
Phase #1: 0–9 hours of your day:
High-dopamine and high-stress habits.
Your body regulates its hormones on a 24-hour clock (your circadian rhythm).
When you wake up, your stress (epinephrine & cortisol) and pleasure (dopamine) hormones are at their highest. From an ancestral standpoint, this encouraged us to wake up and start foraging for food when the sun is out.
It’s also the best time of day for “linear habits”.
In other words, “step-by-step” habits. Things you know how to do and you just need to do them. Habits that are best to do during this time of day would be:
- Exercise
- Checking emails
- Step-by-step learning (with a clear path)
Your dopamine and stress hormones are highest in the morning — so use them. As the day carries on, they will gradually lower into the evening.
This is why creative work can be difficult in the morning even though you’re full of energy.
From the time you wake up to approximately 9 hours later, focus on high-dopamine (productive and tangible) habits.
Phase #2: 10–16 hours into your day:
This is for high-learning activities.
During this second portion of the day, we tend to be a little bit calmer. According to Andrew Huberman,
“It’s clear that other habits that involve non-linear thinking go best in the second phase.”
This includes:
- Brainstorming
- Creative writing
- Exploratory learning (no right or wrong answer)
If you think about this, again, from an ancestral standpoint, after foraging for food and shelter it was important to record our learnings. This time is best utilized for learning and creative work.
Your high-energy hormones are lower at this time of day, allowing you to feel calmer and think deeper.
Phase #3: 17 -24 hours:
Sleep.
Deep sleep is one of our most vital functions. Another great trick from Andrew Huberman is to strategically place habits during these same phases of the day, to optimize sleep.
It’s called “The 90-Minute Rule.”
Final thoughts: knowledge is power.
Bio-hacking is rapidly turning into one of the most eye-roll-inducing topics on the internet.
Instead of looking to fads or systems for quick fixes, I find diving into the “why” of our biology to be most effective and sustainable.
To summarize, work with your brain instead of against it by remembering these things:
- Reward yourself randomly and intermittently
- Phase #1: high-dopamine
- Phase #2: high-learning
- Phase #3: high-sleep
Most importantly, remember your roots — your primal routine. Before smartphones and the electric air we call the internet, what did your day look like?
Try to mimic it as best you can.
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