Sleep and Influence
Three interesting topics that I came across recently:
As you might have noted if you have read my earlier pieces, sleep is a topic that I read quite a bit about. On sleep, I came across this new podcast by Andrew Huberman, whose lab researches how the brain works, and how it can change through experience. This podcast goes into the details of sleep science, and Huberman follows it up with a series of other podcasts where he answers questions on this topic — altogether these episodes make for an encyclopaedic study of sleep. After Walker’s Why We Sleep (which Huberman also refers to several times during the podcast), I would recommend this podcast as a good place to start if you want to understand the science of sleep and improve yours. For me, the single most important takeaway from it has been on natural light exposure, and as a result I try to squeeze in 10 minutes of natural light during day break. Next would be to include dusk light as well, however, that has so far turned out to be more challenging to include.
Staying on the topic of sleep, and speaking of Matt Walker, he recently did an interview with Rangan Chatterjee on, yes, sleep. This is their second interview on the topic, and while most of the things that Walker speaks about are the same as in his other interviews, the one new insight that I gathered is that Walker has changed his mind on caffeine. Let me explain. No, not that caffeine is less damaging to sleep, and no change on the half life of caffeine as well, which remains woefully at 5-6 hours, but that given the correlation several studies have shown between caffeine consumption and good health, Walker thinks that a cup or two before ten in the morning may not be so bad after all. However, is it caffeine that’s leading to this positive health impact? We may not be sure as both Chatterjee and Walker hypothesise that the benefits may be coming from the high amount of antioxidants found in coffee. Given that modern day diet is so poor in nutrients that most people seem to get their antioxidants from coffee, and that probably explains the correlation between health benefits and caffeine consumption.
A fantastic book that I finished reading is Influence by Robert Cialdini. First published in 2006, this book was highly recommended to me by many but for one reason or another, I had been delaying reading it. Turns out that the book is not only an easy read but is a highly educative study on human behaviour. Cialdini details out six weapons of influence, which include reciprocation, commitment and consistency, social proof, liking, authority and scarcity. I have heavily underlined different passages of the book. Still two passages that stand out for me are about how in order to make a sale for instance, it’s at times handy to argue against your own case to develop a liking from the potential buyer, and the second one is about how parents who explore discipline inconsistently (i.e. flaunting the principles they had themselves laid out in the first place) produce generally rebellious kids.
