The science of yawning
Why we yawn? How yawning works at different levels - blood flows, muscular and skeletal aspects, neurological pathways, social (being rather contagious), etc. - and how those mechanisms help achieve the goal of yawning. It looks like there are no single definitive answer to "why" question and myths about regulating the CO2-vs-O2 balance have been dispelled several years ago, so very interested to hear your thoughts on this topic. Also, interested to know why we DON'T yawn when we sleep.
The relationship between Motivation and Self-discipline
Hi Huberman Lab Team Thanks for all the great content you guys put out, its really interesting and helpful for me and most likely to the rest of your listeners. I'm trying to understand the relationship between self-discipline and motivation. Dr. Huberman mentioned that we can leverage our dopamine to increase our levels of motivation by primarily increasing our general baseline dopamine levels (thus increasing our overall feeling of motivation), and also by attaching a dopamine increase above baseline to certain tasks and behaviours (thus making a particular task very rewarding and increasing the craving we have for the task while we aren't engaging in it). As a student completing a Double Major in Finance & Accounting in Australia, I'm finding it really difficult to remain disciplined and complete the readings, lectures, tutorial work etc that I'm required to if I want to do well. The reason for this is that I'd say I'm not that interested in the subject. I was wondering if you could advise a particular mantra, routine or some sort of script to help students who are struggling with the same feelings of lethargy and disinterest in the content we are learning (trust me there are many students in this boat ahah).
Setting goals for creative work
I have watched a minimum of 15 of your podcast appearances, where you talk about Carol Dweck’s Growth Mindset and how you especially combine it with your deep understanding of the underlying dopaminergic pathways, which has absolutely blown my mind. I took many pages of notes from your various podcasts, like “getting the dopamine from effort and friction, effort being the right path, focussing on the process rather than the outcome etc.”. But I really struggle to understand how to set long- and short-term goals properly, in order to really focus on the effort process, while still having a concrete goal in mind at the same time (which confuses me a bit). Especially when you work in fields, where you simply can not really set actual measurable goals like in e.g. math (i am a music producer for a living and setting an exact goal like “creating 1 song per day (or week)” isnt hardly ever going to work out because its creative work and the process and timespan is always different per production). So the question is: Are goals neccesary for it and how do i set the best short and long term goals for the growth mindset (as a music creative), so that i can really give my absolute best effort to enjoying the process consistently, if i can’t define career goals clearly? Thank you so much!