Good Habits to Start, like, Today
During a recent pilgrimage to Barnes & Noble at The Grove in LA, I was struck by a book’s cover and title.
I picked up Live Your Best Life, started thumbing through the pages, and found I couldn’t put it down. The book is organized into a series of poignant health, wellness, and psychological questions I’ve asked myself many times. Some examples:
· Is it ok to check my phone as soon as I wake up?
· Why is it so hard to motivate myself to exercise?
· How can I get the most out of my workday?
· Should you really drink eight glasses of water a day?
· Is sitting down the new smoking?
· Do we really only use 10 percent of our brain?
I would later find out the book’s author, Dr. Stuart Farrimond, is a trained MD in the UK. He left medicine 15 years ago when he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Unfortunately, the surgery left him with epilepsy, and he could no longer practice. But he was able to write books.
And write books he does, good books, treated with the carefulness and accuracy of a surgeon. All his books—the other two are called The Science of Cooking and The Science of Spice—use the latest science and research to back up his claims. So, when Dr. Farrimond sets out to tackle pseudo-science maxims like the importance of drinking eight glasses of water a day, he digs down into the bottom of the well.
On the latest episode of the Write About Now podcast, I asked Dr. Farrimond to take a critical look at a few habits both I and, I suspect, many of you have. I also asked about a few new routines I considered adapting to my daily regime.
Here are a few of the topics we address.
When should you drink your first cup of coffee in the morning?
Even though you crave a cup first thing in the morning, Dr. Farrimond recommends you wait at least an hour, maybe two, before you imbibe. This sounds like the rantings of a mad man but let him explain.
“Caffeine works by blocking one of the naturally calming sedative chemicals in the brain called adenosine,” Dr. Farrimond says. “Adenosine starts off very low in the morning and builds throughout the day. So, there’s not much of this sleepy hormone in your brain to block.”
But your brain has a boost of cortisol, the stimulating hormone that gets you out of bed in the morning. Think of it as naturally occurring coffee, sort of a tall Americano. There’s no sense in drinking coffee during your cortisol high. Better to wait until “the cortisol has started to wane and you start to lose energy levels,” Dr. Farrimond says. “You're gonna get much more bang for your buck with your coffee at that point.”
What’s the best time of the day to exercise?
Read enough articles about highly achieving individuals, and you become convinced that the secret to success is taking a spin class before the sun comes up. Tim Cook, Oprah Winfrey, and Michelle Obama are all part of the 5 am workout club.
But it turns out that is not necessarily the best time to get your fitness groove on. Sure, some super humans, like the ones mentioned above, can function on very little sleep—but they are the genetic minority, says Dr. Farrimond.
“When you look at the research, it shows about nine hours after waking up is the time when your body is most ready to exercise,” he says. He compares it to the little engine that could. “It takes a while for you to get up to speed, for the chemical processes in your muscles to get going, the enzymes to start working, and the whole thing to warm up and get going. So about nine hours after waking up is when you perform best, and you're least likely to have injury.”
What’s the best workspace for creativity?
There are fewer excuses writers enjoy more than needing to find the perfect place to write. We’ll move all over the house, go to a coffee shop, clear our desks for 4 hours—anything to not have to write our pages.
I put it to Dr. Farrimond directly. Does it make a difference where we write, and what does that workspace need to look like?
He told me, “There is some research to say that a more organized, more orderly workspace helps you think more, more logically. Whereas if it's a slightly more chaotic environment that isn't conducive towards more logical analytical thinking, it may help people who are more creative.”
Natural light is also very important. Very good research shows that natural light and having some greenery around you has an impact,” Dr. Farrimond says.
What about my fake Ikea plant?
“There is some research to show that something about the soil microbes within the soil might release vapors that are mood-lifting vapors,” he says. So Iksnay to the Ikea palm.
Lastly, he emphasizes the importance of having a “third space” accessible. “This is a space that’s not for work or play. It’s somewhere between the two. Somewhere that’s informal and has a couch overlooking a window or a bench in a park. In those relaced informal areas are when the ideas come. When our mind is freed from this concentrated thinking pattern, which is controlled by the frontal thinking parts of our brain, the rest of the brain can be free to throw around ideas.”
For more tips on adopting healthy habits, check out my full conversation with Dr. Stuart Farrimond.