PROFILE
Dr. Sahar Yousef is a cognitive neuroscientist and faculty at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. After spending 15 years doing research on neuroplasticity and how to improve memory, focus, and overall human performance in as little as 7 weeks, she is considered one of the world’s leading experts on cognitive training and the science of productivity.
Dr. Sahar runs the Becoming Superhuman Lab and her work and ideas have been featured in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, CNBC, and The New York Times. She also teaches one of Berkeley’s most popular MBA courses called “Becoming Superhuman: The Science of Productivity and Performance”, which trains busy professionals who think for a living how to get their most important work done, in less time, and with less stress.
In 2024, she was recognized as one of the top 30 management thinkers by Thinkers50—in collaboration with Deloitte—which recognizes those who are making an impact with their ideas, research, and commitment to making the world a better place.
As part of her mission to make neuroscience accessible and actionable to millions of humans, Dr. Sahar has:
- Given over 750 talks and keynotes to knowledge workers in over 50 countries
- Advised executive teams at Fortune 100 companies like Google, Visa, and NVIDIA
- Been invited to speak to the US Congress and the Saudi Arabian government
- Been a featured scientist in the Headspace wellbeing app, which has been seen by over 100 million people globally
- Produced a multi-part video series with John Legend on the science of music and its impact on our focus, sleep, and emotions
- Taught one of the most highly rated online courses on Scott Galloway’s education platform Section, which is an intensive version of her Becoming Superhuman MBA course.
Dr. Sahar earned her Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience from UC Berkeley, where she studied and developed cognitive training protocols to improve executive function in both healthy high-performers and traumatically brain-injured individuals. Sahar’s research areas and background include the neuroscience of focus, meditation, executive function, prioritization, procrastination, and goal management, digital dependence / smartphone addiction, psychophysics, energy management and biological chronotypes, psychopharmacology, clinical burnout risk and prevention.
SPEAKING TOPICS
Becoming Superhuman: The Science of Optimizing Productivity and Performance
Key Learnings:
- Leading research on the three biggest mistakes of productivity and performance and the scientific reasons WHY people commonly make these mistakes
- Unnecessary daily drains on our cognitive capacity and how to optimize your digital hygiene
- How to prioritize your most important and valuable tasks, even in the face of urgent demands, by using “Daily MIT Setting”
- Training on Focus Sprints®, a research-backed way of working that helps individuals get more done, in less time, with less energy expended
The Science of Burnout Prevention and Maintaining Mental Wellbeing
Key Learnings:
- Why burnout became officially classified as an occupational syndrome in 2019 by the World Health Organization
- Leading indicators and what distinguishes burnout clinically from excess stress and exhaustion
- How to reverse the slow damage burnout does to the brain and body
- An opportunity to take a 3-minute assessment (The Burnout Risk Index, BRI®) to determine your individual or team’s burnout risk
- Practical frameworks for psychologically detaching from work and life stressors (including the 3M Framework for preventing burnout)
The Science of Energy Management: Understand Your Biological Chronotype and Increase Your Daily Stamina
Key Learnings:
- New research on the four primary causes of “video fatigue” and their simple fixes
- Discover your biological chronotype and how to optimally schedule your day for peak productivity and creativity
- The most effective “brain breaks” according to science and strategies for avoiding the afternoon dip
- How you can use light, temperature, or short breathing exercises to quickly increase your energy levels
- Caffeine myths and practical strategies to optimize caffeine’s effects
Training the Brain for Innovation: The Neuroscience of Creativity and Accelerated Insight
Key Learnings:
- Busting the myth of “left-brained” vs. “right-brained” and the real neurological underpinnings of creativity
- How to reliably get into a creative brain state to increase the likelihood of new insights
- Acquire the tools and principles to consistently generate, prioritize, and implement new ideas
- How to create and nurture a culture of risk-tasking/experimentation to make a more innovative business
- Research-based best practices for effective individual and team brainstorming
The Science of Influence and Persuasion
Key Learnings:
- How to reliably regulate yourself into an ideal brain-state to communicate effectively and maximize executive presence
- The neurobiological basis of trust and human connection and how to maximize psychological safety
- The factors that influence how, why, and when people say “yes”
- The science of verbal and non-verbal communication: new research on mirroring, gestures, eye contact, virtual backgrounds, humor, and what changes when influencing remotely vs. in-person
- Counterintuitive tactics from former intelligence and hostage negotiators
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