Essentials: Optimizing Workspace for Productivity, Focus & Creativity

This Huberman Lab Essentials episode, presented by Andrew Huberman, a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine, is about setting up a workspace to raise focus, creativity and the ability to switch between tasks, whether for school, work, creative projects or personal projects. The host opens with a puzzle from his own training. His undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral advisors were all strong scientists and good mentors, and all of them had offices that were "a complete disaster."

Despite the mountains of books and papers, all three were very productive and stayed focused. The host says he personally finds clutter hard to work in, and that people vary a great deal on this, with "no right or wrong." He says the advisors' focus came from all of them capturing one fundamental variable of workspace optimization and promises to name it. That variable has not yet been named by the end of this section.

The stated goal is not a single ideal room. The host warns against becoming "a slave to that optimal workspace" and instead wants listeners to have portable principles that work at home or on the road. The variables he lists are vision, light, room noise, music, and whether to use noise-canceling headphones.

you will have a short checklist of things that you can look to anytime you sit down to do work

Light comes first. For roughly the first six to nine hours after waking, the host describes the brain as being in a distinctive state, with high levels of the neuromodulator dopamine, high epinephrine, and hormones such as cortisol. He argues that a brightly lit environment during this early window supports good work for the whole day, not only in the morning. His own routine is to get sunlight after waking. If the sun isn't out, he first turns on as many bright artificial lights as he can tolerate and then goes out for sunlight anyway.

When he starts work during this phase, he turns on all the overhead lights and also uses lights in front of him. He says this boosts focus and the release of dopamine, norepinephrine and epinephrine. Cheap options he mentions are a desk lamp plus overhead lights, or a ring light, which he describes as bright and rich in the blue light that best stimulates melanopsin ganglion cells. He doesn't use a ring light himself. He uses a light pad bought on Amazon, placed on his desk and left on through what he calls phase one of the day.

He also recommends working near a window, and ideally an open one. His reason is that sunlight is the strongest wake-up signal through the melanopsin-to-hypothalamus pathway, and glass filters out much of the blue light that drives it. He puts a number on the difference:

50, five zero, times less effective than if that window were to be open