Amazon founder, billionaire, and newlywed Jeff Bezos has a morning ritual that he swears by.
Many sites have called it the “one-hour rule,” and research backs it up, although Bezos didn’t put an exact time frame on the practice when he outlined it in interviews. Simply put, in the mornings, he takes it easy, and stays off of electronic devices.
Here’s how it works.
Jeff Bezos Says He Likes to ‘Putter in the Morning’
Bezos gave details about his morning routine while speaking at the Economic Club. In the well-known interview, Bezos detailed his morning routine. He said he doesn’t like meetings before 10 a.m., and he likes to get eight hours of sleep.
“I like to putter in the morning. I get up early. I go to bed early, I get up early. I like to putter in the morning. I like to read the newspaper. I like to have coffee,” he said in the 2018 interview.
“I like to have breakfast with my kids before they go to school. So, I have my kind of puttering time,” he said, indicating that it “is very important to me. So, that’s why I set my first meeting at 10 o’clock. I like to do my high IQ meetings before lunch. Anything that’s going to be really mentally challenging, that’s a 10 o’clock meeting.”
At 5 p.m., Bezos revealed, “I can’t think about that today. Then on sleep, I get eight hours of sleep. I prioritize it… I am very focused on it… I think better; I have more energy. My mood is better. All these things. Think about it, as a senior executive, what do you really get paid to do? As a senior executive, you get paid to make a small number of high-quality decisions.” Bezos indicated that his slower morning ritual makes him better at doing that.
His new wife, before they married, indicated in 2024 that they were both following the process.
“My favorite part of the day is the morning,” Lauren Sanchez told People in 2024.
“I love waking up. I make myself a cup of coffee. I make Jeff a cup of coffee, and we kind of have this magic moment where it’s just us talking,” she explained. “The kids haven’t woken up yet. And we don’t get on our phones. That’s one of the rules.”
Does the One-Hour Rule Really Work?
Experts have weighed in on the negative effects of excessive phone screen time. Putting your phone down makes sense, including in the morning.
“The negative effects of screen time are insidious because you can’t see what’s happening in your brain as you’re staring at the screen,” Maris Loeffler, MA, Family and Marriage Therapist, member of the Stanford Lifestyle Medicine Cognitive Enhancement pillar, said to Stanford Lifestyle Medicine. “If you scrolled on your phone in bed for an hour 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 a toll.”
A research article in Frontiers in Psychiatry, studied excessive smart phone usage in young adults and adolescents and found, “Excessive smartphone use is associated with difficulties in cognitive-emotion regulation, impulsivity, impaired cognitive function, addiction to social networking, shyness and low self-esteem. Medical problems include sleep problems, reduced physical fitness, unhealthy eating habits, pain and migraines, reduced cognitive control and changes in the brain’s gray matter volume.”
