The Billion Dollar Protocol You Can Copy

Teach & Learn Better With A “Neuroplasticity Super Protocol”

How many times have you wished to learn something fast? And how many times did you teach people something and you wished just to open their brain and do this fast?

Andrew Huberman, a neuroscientist, and teacher at Standford, created a protocol that helps you learn and teach better.

Which steps are in this protocol and how to apply them in workshops/trainings?

🎲 Get alert: Find ways to get yourself alerted. You can simply use breathing for this with 25-30 deep breaths (inhales through the nose, and exhales through the mouth (short). Movement, of course, especially cardio can also support this. Alertness wakes up your brain and creates more activity there.

• What could you use in workshops/trainings (some examples):

  • You can raise a question related to the topic of your session and ask participants to stand in a circle and give them a ball; they will answer the question and then throw the ball to the next one who will catch it and so on

  • Boing clap game

  • Corridor of trust game

🎲 Get focused: Mental focus follows visual focus. To increase your level of focus on the task you are about to do, stare at a point on a wall or screen, or object for 30-60 seconds before starting (You can blink as needed). The above games with a ball also help in this case.

🎲 Generate repetitions and limit learning sessions to 90 minutes: Perform the maximum number of repetitions you safely can in a given learning bout. Take breaks after 90 minutes or less. Researches said that most people can’t do more than 270 minutes of intense learning bouts per day. 

• What could you use in workshops/trainings (some examples):

  • Use a half-life game: repeat the outcome of an exercise / concept you just learned in 60 seconds, then another person summarizes it in 30 seconds, another one in 15 seconds, and another one in 7 seconds. repeat with one or another concepts / ideas until the time is up. You can add a small group reflection after this in order to check which concepts could be better memorized for example, were there details missed or anything that comes out of this.

  • Plan your sessions to allow for breaks and calculate how much focus time the participants need. If you squeeze all of their energy in one day they will be drained and will be not a pleasant experience for them.

🎲 Expect & embrace errors: Provided they don’t comprise safety, errors during learning are terrific because they increase activation of the neural circuits that increase alertness. It makes sense, right? Computational modeling data suggest that an error rate of ~15% may be optimal and can help determine how difficult we should make a task.

• What could you use in workshops/trainings:

  • In workshops or trainings it is all about trying in a safe environment in my opinion. Because doing mistakes in an environment that accepts them and learning to reflect on them makes a huge difference in any other environment. So I would recommend creating a space to offer this for your participants.

🎲 Insert random micro-rest intervals --> 10 x faster learning: studies (in humans) have shown that when we are trying to learn something, if we pause every so often for 10seconds and do nothing during the pause, neurons in the hippocampus and cortex—areas of the brain involved in learning and memory, engage the same patterns of neural activity that occurred during the actual activity of reading, musical practice, skill training, etc. but 10X faster—meaning you get 10X neural repetitions completed during the pause.

• What could you use in workshops/trainings:

  • Plan as a facilitator these mini rest intervals for your participants. Explain them why you are doing them, set up the environment that people are not talking during this, checking phones or have to think upon something.

🎲 Use rendom intermitent reward: random because people shall not expect them, they are not predictable

• What could you use in workshops/trainings:

  • Could be a present after finishing an exercise like giving them balloons to write an idea and through them around the room

  • Could be small chocolate in a treasure box, could be a celebration in the middle of the training to celebrate what was already achieved and so on

🎲 Sleep & non-sleep : get quality sleep before learning ; make a 20 min nap break while learning or do non-sleep deep rest for 10-30 min deep relaxation

• What could you use in workshops/trainings:

  • You can not influence the sleep of your participants before the session but if there is a one day training and you think the participants would be open to, you can try a deep relaxation meditation or a guided non sleep deep rest

One-phrase summary:

Most people thing that learning must be stressful and make you tired when it happens. There are methods to make it enjoyable and very efficient. This learning protocol will help you either learn or teach faster. And I would add on all of this to listen to your body, it will guide you very good through everything!

Resources:

• “Teach & Learn Better With A “Neuroplasticity Super Protocol”

• Andrew Huberman protocol on YouTube 10min video

• Mind Snack Romanian Podcast about this protocol Mindarchitect.ro

I am “cooking” a new on-demand training:

Facilitation - neuroscience behind - a 3h online session where I would explain some neuroscience principles I use in most of my workshops in order to create brain-based workshops that are universally applied independent of culture, industry, etc.