Huberman, Who? The Anti-Influencer routine.
Happy New Year Friends!
Of course, I know who Andrew Huberman is, I’m a big fan. You know what I can’t get behind? His morning routine.
Oh, I know it’s backed by science, but here’s the thing: science doesn’t always account for individual differences. And I am not one of the people this routine accounts for.
At the start of every year, the vast majority of people set about trying to prove something to themselves by way of punitive resolutions. “I must improve myself in these specific ways” is written in journals across the globe, but why? For sure, goals to improve, learn, and grow are necessary and useful, but instead of trying to change yourself, why not spend some time discovering how to be yourself?
A morning routine is one of these things for me. It’s taken me a long time to just accept I’m not a morning person, never was, never will be. It doesn’t matter how many influencers tell me I need to get up at 5 am. I won’t. I’ve tried, honestly. For a brief period at the beginning of 2022, I nearly succeeded, but alas, it’s not to be.
I’ve seen a couple of YouTubers try the “Huberman routine” recently, and I know that with it being the first week of the year, various people are probably also going to be trying it or something very similar.
The Huberman Routine
Wake up around 5am
Hydration
Yoga Nidra for 10 minutes
Sun exposure for 2-10 minutes
Cold Exposure
Workout
Caffeine (not until 10am!!!)
First Meal (13:00)
More Nidra at 15:00
Cardio 18:30
Evening Meal (19:00)
Turn off blue lights around 21:30
Read at 22:00
Until sleep at 22:30
Dude.
So some of this I can get on board with. I, too, hydrate as soon as I can after waking, but some of it just doesn’t work for me. And it’s ok if it doesn’t work for you as well.
I’m not going to tell you that I know better than this highly educated, high-achieving neuroscientist because I don’t. But what I do know that he doesn’t is how I work.
Allow me to de-influence you.
I like all of the things in the Huberman routine, just maybe not in that order.
I wake up at about 8am most days. I don’t have kids, and I work for myself, so I wake up naturally as often as I can. If you like waking up early before your kids, or you’re naturally an early riser, then awesome, good for you. If you’re not, there is absolutely nothing wrong with sleeping longer in the mornings. You are not less of a human because you don’t get up before the sun.
Hydration is important; you should always do that after you wake up.
Nidra, sure. I’m a yoga teacher, so I’m not going to say you shouldn’t do yoga, but Nidra isn’t what you think. If you don’t know, Nidra is a type of yoga that focuses on meditation and deep rest whilst being awake. Personally, I wouldn’t do it in the morning; I’d just sleep longer. Nidra, for me, is better before bed because it calms your nervous system and will help you drift off. You might just want a few minutes of meditation in the morning.
I’m gonna put coffee in here because it’s gotta be first on the agenda after water. Otherwise, I’ll die.
Whilst I drink coffee, I like to read a book. I like slow mornings. I’m not mad about it.
Sun exposure is ambitious in London in January, but I usually walk the dog after coffee. Breakfast can either be before or after a dog walk, depending on how I feel.
I cannot intermittently fast. Absolute hard no for me. If it works for you, excellent, but it makes me angry and miserable and causes me to binge later in the day. Try it and see if it works for you. If it does, excellent. If it doesn’t, don’t do it. Intermittent fasting is not a magic bullet; it will not make you live longer. If you have a goal to shift body fat this year, the time of day you eat makes absolutely no difference. Your body composition is determined by the number of calories you consume versus burn, so eat when it works for you.
I take cold showers, so I get cold exposure in, but not until after I’ve worked out.
11am would be my optimal workout time, but it depends. If I’m doing cardio, I like to do it fasted, so I’ll do it first thing. There’s no magic to fasted cardio; I just like spinning and my body prefers to do that with an empty stomach. If I’m lifting, I’ll want to have eaten a few hours before. Yoga I’m more flexible with, but I’ll never normally eat right before.
Before we get into the evening, let’s just think about work for a second. You’ve heard people “An hour in the morning is worth two in the evening”, sure, maybe for you.
I do my best work in the afternoon. My brain fires up about 2pm and it runs until about 7pm. This is the time I use to do anything creative or complicated. If I have to edit things, I’ll try and do that in the morning because I’m grumpy and more critical, but it’s not a hard and fast routine.
When I worked a 9-5 job, I was the same. Under pain of death would my team invite me to calls before 10am and I tried to keep my afternoons free for doing hard things. Work out when you work, then work then.
If I did my “deep work” at 7am, it’d be pretty shit. So I don’t, doesn’t matter how many influencer bros on Linkedin tell me I should. The important thing about deep work is unbroken focus, so set yourself up properly whenever you can. We all have lives around our work. Sometimes, we can’t work when we want to; we have to do it around family, pets and kids… focus is more important than timing. Don’t let anyone shame you into thinking you need to have achieved everything before 9am.
Work how you work best, whenever you can.
I also like writing late in the evenings, so if I want to, I will. Huberman or anyone be damned.
Dinner I have around 20:00, I stay up later so I eat later. Bedtime is around 23:30, time with my partner is between dinner and bed. I don’t read before bed because that’s our time for watching crappy youtube videos. I’m trying to reduce my blue light intake late at night, but it’s a work in progress.
This year, I wish that everyone had the space to work out how they work best. Agreed, we all have things we must work around, like jobs and family, but when you can take a moment to reflect on what you’re doing and why. Are you doing something because you’ve been told you should or because it makes a difference to your life and how you feel?
I have a set of things I do every day, but I rarely do them at set times. Every day I (try to) meditate for at least 10 minutes, I get in some yoga, I exercise, and I read, but I’d get very bored very quickly if I tried to do them at the same time every day.
One of the things I realised about myself quite early on was that I don’t like structure. It’s important to me that I commit to myself every day and check everything off the list. What’s not important to me is what order it happens in or what time of day. I’ll admit I feel extra productive and shiny when I get my yoga practice in before breakfast, but over time, I’ve learned not to chastise myself when it doesn’t happen that way around.
Your routine only has to work for you. By all means, try the Huberman routine: keep what works and ditch what doesn’t. Try my routine and embrace the chaos. Find your own routine, and embrace yourself.
Happy New Year. I wish every single one of you health, happiness and the freedom to find ways that work for you. Much love.
