My Best Tools and Protocols of 2021
Check out what I've been checking out and trying out this past year.
In a previous post, I described my belief in the power of daily habits in regards to both physical and cognitive performance, highlighting some of Andrew Huberman’s most-valued practices for optimizing output. Anybody who knows me well understands that I am often fixed on finding, tweaking, and implementing those types of tools and protocols in an effort to max out my productivity, health, and abilities. In the year 2021, I made particularly large leaps in this regard, as — whether it be abstaining from my beloved eggs and bacon for multiple days, shining a flashlight in my eyes during my morning reads, or convincing peers to become subjects in my hangover experiments — I have taken my dives to deeper depths, both in terms of exploration and implementation. I figure that the voyage is only getting started, and, in case my oxygen reserves happen to run dry or I bump into some great whites, I might as well leave a digital trail for everybody to follow in the aftermath. So, here you have it: the best of my habits, tools, and protocols from 2021.
Disclaimer: I am not a medical professional, and none of the information below serves as medical advice in any way, shape, or form — don’t sue me. I am not recommending that anybody try any of the concepts below; rather, I am offering them as sparks for your own research and investigation.
Fasting and Time-Restricted Feeding
Of all of my lifestyle protocols, fasting and time-restricted feeding certainly grab people’s attention the most, often provoking some combinations of concerned, flabbergasted, or curious facial expressions. That said, fasting and time-restricted feeding are also the lifestyle protocols that I adhere to most regularly and have reaped some of the greatest and most consistent results from. Although I first dipped my toes into the world of fasting about 3 years ago, 2020 served as my first real cannonball and 2021 as a more refined and elegant dive. In particular, I spent the first half of 2021 expanding my self-established limits on time-restricted eating — engaging in up to 48-hour fasts — and exploring some of the bachelor’s level science and strategies behind fasting — such as electrolyte supplementation, insulin resistance, and athletic performance. If there is anything I have learned from conducting heavy lifts, high-intensity intervals, and up to 18-mile long ruck marches fasted, the notion that we need to eat around the clock to have energy is false. After all, our bodies do seem to build up glycogen stores and lay down fat after a bout of eating for a reason: to store energy for times when we don’t have anything to eat. If you are interested in learning more about fasting or time-restricted feeding, here are some resources I have found useful on everything from 16:8 to prolonged fasts and circadian dieting.
Conjugate Training
My first efforts to improve my physical performance came around 6th or 7th grade, during which I realized that my height and lack of jumping ability were going to impede my success on the basketball court. I vaguely remember avoiding the Frito Flavor Mix snack packs in my garage and turning down offers of fruit snacks and sodas, but, in hindsight, it was during my first couple years of high school that the tide really turned. It only took one summer of adding on 20-30 pounds of muscle and raising my bench press by several dozens of pounds for me to realize that diet and programming could have profound effects on physical performance if utilized properly. Since those years of exponential beginner gains, the importance of what I eat and how I train in regards to strength and size has become more apparent to me. In terms of the training aspect of strength development, I spent 2021 traversing and trying out Westside Barbell’s famous conjugate methods. Built off of American, Soviet, and Bulgarian training methodologies and consisting of three main components — the dynamic effort method, the max effort method, and the repetition method — this programming system is designed to avoid plateaus and develop long-lasting strength while simultaneously building up proportional tendon and ligament stability. Below, there are some conjugate intro videos from Matt Wenning (former world record holder) and explainers from Dave Tate (founder of EliteFTS), both of whom hold illustrious careers at Westside Barbell; additionally, there is content from Louie Simmons, the mad mastermind behind both the conjugate method and Westside Barbell’s unparalleled success.
Huberman Studying/Learning Protocol
As I mentioned above, I learned early on that, by using science and physiology to my advantage, I could significantly impact my physical potential; however, it was not until more than halfway through college that I began to recognize that the same was true for cognitive potential. Although there are physical mutants and natural anomalies in the world of sports, I think that people commonly attribute greater weight to the nurture side of the scales when it comes to athleticism compared to that of cognition and intelligence; nonetheless, I have come to learn that through manipulating environmental controllables, like diet, sleep, and training, we have more control over how our brains perform than we believe. This year especially, I have investigated and toyed with methods for optimizing the studying environment and the learning process, both of which I addressed in a previous post about Andrew Huberman’s Logitech speech about neuroplasticity. Here are the links to that post and speech, along with some of the key takeaways that I implement into my reading, studying, and learning practices every day.
Key Takeaways:
Become both focused and alert at the start of your learning session by engaging in one of the following epinephrine, dopamine, and acetylcholine stimulating practices: cold shower, Wim Hof breathing, staring at a small object for 60 seconds straight.
Position your book, laptop, etc. at or above eye level to increase focus and alertness.
Listen to white noise to increase focus on the topic at hand — I often use instrumental piano or classical music if I am reading.
Consider arranging your learning sessions in 90-minute increments to mirror the ultradian cycles of the brain and the duration of time in which you are able to focus.
Utilize 15-20 minute bouts of non-sleep deep rest (NSDRD), such as napping, meditation, and hypnosis, following or during a learning session to allow your brain to rapidly cycle through the neural patterns associated with the subject or activity you were just engaging in.
Circadian Hygiene
Of all of the biohacker-esque things that I do, the measures I started taking this year to keep my circadian health in check are some of the weirdest. They include things like shining a flashlight in my eyes as I read in the morning, following a schedule of cold-showers in the morning and sauna at night, and operating in the dark — sometimes even taking showers in blackness — for an hour prior to bedtime. That said, all of these odd habits revolve around the abundance of sources I encountered in 2021 that exclaim the benefits of preserving consistent circadian habits and warn about the consequences of failing to do so. In my post about Rhonda Patrick’s discussion with circadian expert Dr. Satchin Panda, I focused on the dietary aspects of circadian health, and how eating in a regular period of the day can help set your body’s cellular and endocrine clocks; however, the waters of circadian health go to much greater depths, involving light exposure, exercise timing, sleep schedules, stimulant and depressant consumption, normalizing temperature cycles, and more. At the close of 2020, I was locked and loaded with a plethora of reasons why sleep is important; similarly, at the close of 2021, I am convinced that maintaining circadian hygiene is both a key component to optimal health and a potential lever for boosting physical and cognitive performance. Here are some of the best resources I have encountered regarding circadian health and how you can improve yours.
Meditation
Contrary to common belief, the scientific process shares some similarities to religion, in that the two are founded upon faith. In religion, this is often faith in one or more higher powers, and in science, this is faith that the events of tomorrow will behave similarly to the events of today and yesterday. If we follow this thread, we find that, like those present in religion, science has its own sorts of sin, such as bias, misinterpretation, statistical manipulation, and more. Of these scientific sins the concept of, “woo-woo,” or seemingly illogical or unbacked suppositions that claim to be backed by science, has gained a lot of attention in recent years. I’ll be honest, when I first came in contact with meditation, I immediately ascribed it and its followers to woo-woo; yet, in the past year or so, I have been converted, so to speak, to a believer in the benefits of regular meditation. There are multiple physical pro’s of meditation, such as the improved focus touted by world memory champions in the Memory Games documentary, but the benefits I have found to be most pronounced and helpful are those related to mental health and emotional regulation. By slowing your breathing, halting your movement, and engulfing you in silence or soothing background music, it is intuitive that meditation would provide calmness; however, I find that it can also provide spurts of creative thought, and, when approached correctly, can assist you in training your mind to detach and remain objective and sensible in stressful or chaotic moments. Throughout 2021, I meditated just about every day for 5-15 minutes each day, some of which I spent in silence, some of which I was listening to meditative music from YouTube, and some of which I was accompanied by Sam Harris on his app Waking Up (shout out to my cousin, Guy Shechter, for the recommendation). I especially enjoy Harris’ unique take on meditation that focuses on recognizing all experiences as bare sensations of sight, sound, touch, and even thought. If you are interested in journeying into the world of meditation, here are some resources to get you started.
Speed Reading and Memory Techniques
I could go on all day recounting stories and moments in which I came to terms with the fact that I have an awesome Grandma. Some of these moments are composed of my grandma’s brazenly inappropriate, yet hilarious, jokes. Some of them are defined by her beautiful proclivity for speaking her genuine thoughts to life and refusing to beat around the bush. Others are comprised of simple acts of selfless kindness, such as the nights when she helped me with my high school English assignments by reading aloud to me because she knew how much I hated to do so on my own. I’m not sure if there is a definitive line you can draw, past which it is certain that you have a great Grandma, but I think that the point at which she persistently reads A Tale of Two Cities to you, despite understanding that you will inevitably drift off into a snooze, is a good candidate. Although, during those years, I avidly expressed my aversion to reading and the limiting and standardized structure of public education as a whole, looking back, my issue with the former was more personal in nature: I sucked at reading. If you think about how much the brain is able to process at once — simultaneously sensing the pressure of the seat beneath you, absorbing the auditory signals of the wind chimes around the corner, detecting the aftertaste of the apple slices and peanut butter lingering in your mouth, decoding the visual content reaching your eyes, distinguishing which of these raw sensations should reach your conscious perception and which shouldn’t, and fueling your creative thought and understanding all as you read this post — it is a no-brainer that reading Shakespeare word for word at the pace of a snail would be boring. In the past year, I have delved in the world of speed-reading and memory techniques, both of which I find to be very useful in a functional sense — allowing me to engage with and move through material faster and more thoroughly — as well as from an entertainment perspective, in that they allow me to better satisfy my curiosities and interact deeper with interesting concepts and content. In 2021, I have discovered that investigating speed reading and memory techniques can lead you down a vast rabbit hole; though, after more than doubling my reading speed and utilizing memory athlete strategies to remember long biochemical pathways for exams, I have also discovered that these rabbit holes are well worth traveling down. For now, I will follow Pareto’s Principle and leave you with a handful of resources that have provided a disproportionate benefit to me with these topics.
Speed Reading
Memory Techniques
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5fi_YS6Tf7gUhJadaDWXg8D3byXibXD7