Morning Protocols for Mental Discipline | Andy Stumpf & Dr. Andrew Huberman

Building a Disciplined Routine

00:00I can imagine that many people are thinking, "Okay, g give me the program." I know you're anti-hacks. I am too. But what would that look like? What can they do? Start with the bed. So, wake up in the morning. Let's let's walk through it. Yeah.

00:12The bed. Do the bed. Don't do the bed. I would say start as early as you can with some semblance of a disciplined act. If you don't want to do the bed, drink a drink a 16 glass of water in the morning before you have a cup of coffee. Not many people enjoy doing that.

00:25uh especially if it's not flavored with something. But I tell you what, I implemented that and it's kind of amazing how much better you feel when you hydrate a little bit after you sleep with your mouth tape, of course, on your sleep metrics because you have to have a competition with your wife on who's winning the sleep score.

00:42Not a big deal. And I I hate being prescriptive. And so just broadly, I tell people to pick the choice as often as possible that is slightly more difficult. And the reason why the bed doesn't work for some people is that you have somebody you care about deeply still sleeping on the other side.

00:59And maybe your day starts at a time where they're not ready to get out of bed, right? So you don't want to negatively impact somebody else's life. So you can have this, I have to do this to get started. To me, it's the small stuff that nobody sees that makes the biggest difference in the world.

01:11It's the choice to have the water before your coffee. It's the choice to the night before you go to bed, if you're, you know, you're going to have a busy day, meal prep. or if you're going to have a breakfast that is other than ready to eat or complicated, do all the prep work beforehand so it makes it, you know what I mean?

01:29It's just the small things that nobody Oh, great. posting on Instagram. Look, I'm cutting up asparagus so I can put it into my omelette. But in the next

Physical Activity & Sweat

01:36morning when it's ready to go and you actually have a healthy breakfast over something far less healthy, the difference in your life and the difference in your energy and your thought process and all those things continue to build. I try to get people or advocate sweat or get as close to sweat as you can once a day.

01:53For some people, that's just getting off the couch and walking around. And I get it. I have limited time just like everybody else does. If I push my physical exertion until later in the day, I am far more likely to push it off until the next day.

02:04So, I try to bring it a little bit earlier into my day. The jiu-jitsu training for me usually occurs around midday. So, that's a nice setup. And that's based off a class schedule, not my own creation. Are you working out early day as well? Uh I will either do jiu-jitsu or workout.

02:18I generally don't do both. Um as I am getting older as well. I see the utility in both and the lack of utility in doing both very hard in the same day because man you can augur yourself in with a little bit too much. So I'll do one of the other.

02:32But also sweat could be and again this I mean they can get as far out there as you want. It could be sitting in the sauna for 30 minutes if that's all you got and you don't have you know what I mean? Figure it out. which in your case is an ice bath.

02:45Well, I'm just using 80. Yeah. Set the sauna to 105, which is the perfect temperature for sauna. Easy. I mean, you could put one in the other. You could ice bath and sauna. How much research has been done on that, Andrew? Not enough. You know, we could create the world's first ice bath sauna.

03:03I don't think it's going to sell. Called the stump. It's not going to sell. It's not going to sell. Yeah. It would just be at 90° for both of them, which I think actually would be perfect and delightful. Everybody knows

Choosing the Harder Choice

03:14the harder choice versus the easier choice. Everybody to include myself will look externally and say what do I need to do? I know what I need to do and so do they. They need to do the thing then even if it's microscopic that they want to do less more often than they do the thing that they want to do more.

03:35That's the And I know that's broad and I know people want more of a prescription than that, but that over time is the juice. What I like about it so much is that it it transcends circumstances and it transcends the kind of moment to moment.

03:52So there's always an opportunity to do something slightly harder and then you find yourself in that friction point, that laziness point of like I'll do this later or you know like leave that dish in the sink and you know how many times you realize, oh I got to go and you got a coffee cup in your hand.

04:05Finish it off and the sink's right there and so is the dishwasher. This is a perfect example. Easy one. Put it in the sink which you have to deal with later. Crack the dishwasher opener, put the thing in there, close it up and be on your way.

04:15That is an example to me of a small victory. That's making the slightly harder choice. Is that in and

Compounding Small Wins

04:21of itself going to change your life? No. But what if you make that choice a hundred times in your day? You're telling me it's going to look the same as it did yesterday? No way in hell. No way in hell. Pair that out over a week, over a month, over a year.

04:34Your life's not going to look the same. Yeah. I think the the social pressure to not do that stuff is the new counteracting pressure and the draw to to the phone and all these things. But look, it's just all more opportunities to grow your anterior mid singulate cortex size uh without somebody sticking I'm assuming a thing in your head.

04:54That doesn't sound fun.