a16zAndrew Huberman on Focus, Energy, and Performing at Your Best
a16z
Daily discipline 0:00
He says you need to organize your day if you take your work seriously. He points to three basics for health: weight training, the best sleep you can get, and careful use of alcohol. He also admits he is not perfect with his own advice, especially about social media, so he moved X and Instagram to a separate phone and locks it away.
Morning routine 4:00
He starts the day by getting up, going to the bathroom, and doing five minutes of breathing meditation with no phone in bed. Then he gets sunlight in his eyes, or uses a 10,000 lux light if it is still dark. If he is going to train, he takes caffeine right away, usually yerba mate, and then follows a simple week of weights, hard cardio, and recovery work he has used for 35 years.
Food and digestion 14:30
He says you have to test foods one by one if you want to know what feels good after eating. He suggests single-ingredient meals, like broccoli with olive oil or butter, because mixed dishes hide the cause of problems. He mentions onions, histamines, and foods that leave some people itchy, sleepy, or uneasy. He also names a food enzyme that he says can help before histamine-rich meals.
Meals and evening routine 17:17
His lunch is simple: beef, grilled steak, cucumbers, tomatoes, rice, and olive oil. He does not care much for sweets, though he will eat 100% chocolate, Parmesan, pizza, chocolate chip ice cream, croissants, and other fatty foods. Later in the day he uses a short yoga nidra rest, takes a walk before sunset, stops caffeine around 2:00 p.m., eats dinner around 7:30 or 8:00, dims lights, puts away the phone, and reads at night.
Sleep supplements and experiments 29:30
At night, he says AGZ has been the best sleep supplement for him. He describes it as a mix that includes magnesium 3NA, tart cherry, and other extracts, and says it improved his sleep enough that he stopped carrying several separate pills. He also says he has experimented with peptides and other hormone-related tools since about age 45, after a long stretch of relying on simpler approaches.
Social media and focus 31:00
He names social media as the main thing he does not manage well. To limit it, he moved X and Instagram to a separate phone and keeps that phone in a lockbox, so he can check it only for an hour. He says the apps are too good at pulling him in, and that keeping the phone out of reach frees up mental energy. He also says a study showed that an inaccessible phone lets you focus with less cognitive effort.
Find the daily rhythm 44:30
Focus sits in a sweet spot. You want to be alert, but not too alert, or you become distractable. For founders, the advice is simple: organize your day around the work that matters most, get your best work done twice a day, and treat yourself like an athlete. Sleep earlier when it counts, take one day off each week, and know how much real work you can sustain.
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