Many CEOs, such as Apple’s Tim Cook and Pepsi’s Indra Nooyi, boast about their rigorous morning routines. Not so Jeff Bezos. The founder of Amazon is famous for dedicating the first hours of the day to… groping?
In 2018, Jeff Bezos described his usual morning routine in a speech at the Economic Club of Washington. It includes reading the newspaper, drinking coffee and having breakfast with your family. Do you know what their “feeling time” doesn’t include? Look at your phone.
In a recent interview with People, Bezos’ fiancée Lauren Sanchez confirmed that her partner remains committed to slow mornings, adding: «We don’t use our phones. “That’s one of the rules.”
Why has Bezos banned screen time for the first hour after waking up? Your one-hour rule is likely due in part to personal preference. We’re all wired differently when it comes to our fluctuating energy levels and stimulation tolerance, and experts insist that we do better when our routines honor our particular rhythms rather than fighting them.
But Bezos claims that his “feeling” doesn’t just help him enjoy life more. In the same 2018 speech, he insisted that his slow, phone-free mornings improve his energy levels and decision-making abilities throughout the day.
The latest neuroscience suggests he is somewhat right with this claim. Mornings with less online time lead to smarter, healthier days, and new research strongly suggests that more people should steal Bezos’s one-hour rule.
“If you spend an hour looking at your phone in bed just one morning, the negative impacts would be minimal. But if it becomes a habit, day after day, month after month, this behavior can take its toll.”explains Maris Loeffler, of the Stanford Lifestyle Medicine Program, in a recent post on the program’s blog.
Telephones are a ubiquitous part of modern life. You can’t escape them and you can easily overdo it. The Stanford publication summarizes a series of pretty horrifying recent findings from neuroscience about what happens when you spend too much time in front of a screen. They include:
- A study showing that increasing screen use among adults can harm learning, memory and mental health.
- Another study showing that adults who watch television for five hours or more a day have a higher risk of developing brain-related diseases such as dementia or Parkinson’s.
- Even more studies show that adults who spend two or more hours a day in front of screens outside of work have a lower volume of gray matter in their brains.
In addition to the negative effects on the brain, excessive screen time has also been linked to eye problems, poor sleep, and back pain. Overall, it’s a pretty bleak picture of what our collective phone obsession is doing to our minds and bodies.
«Passive screen time is like eating sugar, but for your brain. It ‘tastes’ good and you want it now, but you’re not actually feeding yourself. You are not giving your brain any type of nutrition.summarizes Loeffler.
What is the top recommendation from her and other experts to help us all keep our screen use within healthy limits? Nothing less than Jeff Bezos’s rule of time.
«Stanford lifestyle medicine experts recommend no screens for the first hour of the day“the blog post bluntly recommends, offering a menu of other activities that are better for your brain during the first hour or your day (I’ve added links to more information about the benefits of each):
- Exercise
- Call a friend or family member
- Prepare a healthy breakfast
- Meditate
- listen to music
- Create a gratitude list
- read a book
- Spend time outdoors and get morning light
“How do you want the energy and mood of your day to start?” Loeffler asks. “Intentionally implementing a morning routine that reflects lifestyle medicine choices instead of screen time sets a positive tone for the day and supports brain health and cognitive improvement.”
Which wouldn’t surprise Jeff Bezos. He’s been implementing neuroscience best practices for a brain-boosting morning routine for years. Maybe more of us should put down our phones in the morning and do the same.
