Small Experiments Can Make a Big Difference to Your Brain Health

Everyone is a bit different, so run small experiments to discover what works best for you

I wanted to sleep better when I decided to run my first experiment. Since then, I have run many and discovered:

• 7 hours of sleep starting at 21:00 or 21:30 yields a dramatically better mind and intellectual productivity than does 7 hours of sleep starting at 00:00 or 01:00.
• Audiobooks about history or light fiction do wonders for getting me back to sleep when I wake up at 03:00
• No screen time before bed and…BOOM! I fall asleep fast.

So how did I reliably figure out what works for me? Well, let’s just call it the power of small experiments and learning my way forward.

Anyone Can Run Small Experiments That Contribute to Improved Brain Health and a Sharper Mind

Anyone can do it. Here’s how.

MythBusters was a popular TV show where each week the hosts ran an experiment to test a common myth

Here’s how I proceeded.

1. Focused on a single topic such as sleep time, sleep routine, etc.
2. Worked in 15-day cycles. So for example, 15 days of going to bed at 21:00, 15 days of staying up late, and then another 15 days of going to bed at 21:00. The test-step away-test again approach helped me discover what works and have confidence that I am learning something meaningful.
3. Moved in increments. After testing the start time, I next tested no screen time just before or as I went to bed. Then I tested audiobooks rather than traditional paper books, and so on.
4. Sought expert information about sleep through high-quality resources such as Why We Sleep by Dr. Matthew Walker or The Huberman Lab podcast. I generally skip the majority of newspaper articles (not all, just most) and most LinkedIn posts. 90% of the time I treat news articles and LI posts as nothing more than a trigger that points me toward an original source — then I read the original myself.

I love you Homer, but there are limits.

One newspaper article that I did find useful as a thought starter, not as hard science, was this NYT self-test on your sleep style. I did not treat it as definitive, but merely as a provocation as I started my journey. Go to What Kind of Sleeper are You?

I had never seriously thought that I was somebody who could feel wonderful by going to bed at 9pm and getting up at 4am. But, I have since learned that I am one of those people.

Next, I will experiment with sleep meditation.

Run Small Tests on Any Aspect of Brain Health

You do not need to change your life in a single, Herculean effort; take the entire year and run one small test after another.

• Exercise: jogging, swimming, cycling, skulling, or something else? Within jogging, does a solid power walk deliver the results you want? Run-walk protocol? Running with a partner? Do you have more energy when running 14 hours into an intermittent fast? You get the idea.
• Nutrition: what will you focus on? Losing weight? Anti-inflammatory diet? Brain-healthy foods? You could start by eliminating all processed sugar that you add to anything. Stop caffeine at 2pm. Increase green leafy vegetables. Test a switch to brown rice or wholemeal pasta.
• Learning: Are you seeking to learn factual, procedural, conceptual or metacognitive knowledge? What outcome do you seek? Do you achieve that outcome better when learning at 6am or 8pm? Do you learn better if you sleep better? Do you learn better by immediately reflecting in a journal or seeking out an immediate application?

Whatever you decide to apply your experiment to, just remember to keep it small, keep it simple, test — step away — retest, and then move on to your next experiment. Keep learning your way forward.

I am happy to report that I am now consistently sleeping more than 7 hours per night whereas before I struggled to achieve 5.5 to 6 hours of sleep. My amount of deep sleep is also increasing. I feel better, think clearer, and have the capacity to plough through the deep science required to design and build our Ai engine.

I now drink Italian coffee not because I need it (in fact some days I simply forget that I didn’t make my coffee!), but because I truly love Italian coffee.

I am happy with the results.

Now I am experimenting with exercise regiments. Let’s see at the end of this year what I have to report.