No phone in the bathroom

It comes down to two things.

1. Using the phone on the toilet. I don't need to dive deeper into that — it's just unhealthy for your ass.
2. Using your phone in the shower — listening to music, a podcast, or a video. I'm against that, for a couple of reasons.

In the modern world, we're connected 24/7. Our attention is being captured, bought, sold, and fought over every moment. When you walk down the street, you might see an ad while waiting for the bus. If you're scrolling on your phone, it's even worse — you can count the seconds until you go without receiving some external piece of information, whether it's a notification, an ad, or your social media feed.

This is not entirely a bad thing — we're more connected than ever, with access to more information than our ancestors could ever have dreamed of. And with LLMs, that's been 10x'd, 100x'd. But a new problem has arisen: we no longer stay with our own thoughts. We're not comfortable with them anymore. At the slightest moment of boredom, we reach for our phone. We've lost the ability to be alone with our own thoughts.

That's where the shower comes in. For me — and I think many of you will relate — the shower is one of the few moments of the day where you're completely alone and undisturbed. Just you and your thoughts. That's very nourishing. Many of my best ideas come to me in the shower, because I'm so immersed in my own thought process, my own imagination, my own creative thinking. It lets me access branches of reasoning that, under normal conditions, would just get interrupted.

That's why the rule is no phone in the bathroom: if I have my phone in the shower, I'm tempted to put on music or a podcast, and that process never happens.

Being alone with your thoughts is a genuinely important and good thing. When was the last time you sat in silence, just you and your thoughts?