Notifications rot the brain.

A tried and true formula to pickle your mind: wake up and check your emails.

We underestimate the power of the morning and the preciousness of our attention. When we bathe our brain in mud, it's going to slow down.

And no, your curated feed with only positive content won't fix it.

It's beyond vulnerability to unwanted content. When we expose ourselves to information beyond ourselves, the brain falls into a reactive mode. A distracted state. A place where reflection and insight cannot live.

This is the part we miss: it's not about what you're consuming. It's the act of consuming itself. Any external input in those early hours hijacks the mind before you've had a chance to orient it yourself.

A morning practice resets the order: meditation, time at the gym, prayer, or even just a coffee with yourself. Something away from screens, blocked from the outside world.

I keep coming back to this: leaving my attention exposed—waking up to emails, texts, Slack, or allowing notifications all day—is a sure path to exhaustion and capped productivity.

Notifications fracture attention. And we don't care enough as a society about this precious resource—the very thing that allows us to dive deeper into ourselves, into deep work, and into a happier state of mind.

Simple steps to help:

• Keep your phone outside your bedroom
• Keep it on airplane mode until you've done your morning ritual
• Set expectations at work that you don't check until you're actually on the clock—not before

These are boundaries worth keeping. It may seem invisible, but your attention is one of your most precious assets.

Protect it as you would a child.