In this column I share articles, books, research, and thoughts related to the science of self-help, along with experiments and random rabbit holes I’ve gone down across the previous month.

This last month has mostly been about me confronting my severe burnout. I took about 2 weeks off to just focus on relaxing. That’s really hard for me to do, and I find very little specific advice on how to actually recover. There were many cases where I knew what I should do, but summoning the energy to do it was beyond me. I also feel there was a kind of map to recovery that I’d like to write about in a later post.

I’ve been digging into some great Youtube channels, like the Huberman Lab and Veritasium. I usually don’t have the time to watch an hour or more video doing deep dives, but time off has given me that opportunity which is great. They both put out fantastic content.

I also had some great conversations. One was on sleep with a friend who takes a very different approach to self help than I do. His background is in Traditional Chinese Medicine, and he had me looking up a different approach to overcoming sleep onset latency than I need to test out (linked below). I’ve appeared as a guest on his podcast and you can check him out here or here.

Interesting Stuff

On eye health (Huberman Lab)
On learning (Veritasium)
Soft fascination (Medium’s Elemental)
Why stopping your thoughts doesn’t work but how one strategy might (Bulletproof Musician)
The four day work week has been an overwhelming success in Iceland (BBC)
42 scientifically proven ways to improve mood (Reddit)
Learning styles are a myth (Veritasium)
The dark side of motivation (The Quintessential Mind)
Does drinking lettuce water really help you sleep (Vice)
The Huberman Lab on sleep - there’s a particularly interesting research on how viewing sunsets can help prevent the negative effects of other forms of light at night. I’ve emailed him and am still trying to track down that research (Huberman Lab)

Research

Personality systems interactions theory
ART (Attention Restoration Therapy) - a systematic review
Transcranial and mastoid stimulation for better sleep - 1 2 3
The effect of rocking movements on sleep
The effect of eye exercises and pranayama on visual reaction time

Social

How to teach yourself things. This is my most popular comment yet, making it onto r/bestof. I briefly go over habits, plateau busting, mental game, accelerated learning, and how to ask experts for advice. (Reddit)
Julia Cameron’s concept of morning pages (Instagram)
A theory on how to consciously force yourself to enjoy something (Reddit)
How some games can improve mindset (Instagram)
Researched methods (at least 16) that allow you to come up with good ideas (Reddit)
How to stop being pessimistic (Reddit)
How to stop staying up so late (Reddit)
How to use meditation to improve discipline (Reddit)

Miscellaneous and Esoteric

A guide to binaural beats

If you’ve got any interesting links, books, comments, or suggestions, shoot me an email at scienceofselfhelp (at) gmail.com. I’d love to hear from you!