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Key Takeaways When we wake up, we go through a process called “sleep inertia”.
Your actions during this time can impact how your brain functions the rest of the day.
Instead of reaching for your phone, spend a moment thinking and focusing.
The most powerful window of time happens as soon as you open your eyes. And what you decide to do in those first few minutes will set the course for your entire day.
Sleep inertia is the transition we go through from the sleep state to the waking one. As you regain consciousness, parts of your brain slowly come online. Your focus comes online, your alertness, your attention, your awareness, your emotional regulation, and your creativity all are waking up.
At this moment, your short-term working memory is least full. During the day, it holds and toggles between three to five items at once. So you’re remembering to pick up the kids after school, cook dinner, prepare for a meeting, pay a bill, or work on a project simultaneously. But when you wake, it’s like you get a memory reset.
Put these two things together and it means that the window of waking becomes especially potent for attentional priming — guiding your brain toward what to focus on during the day. So what you choose to feed your brain in the first few minutes can disproportionally affect and influence the rest of your day.
Think of it this way: You wouldn’t wake up and feed your body five cupcakes and a liter of soda. But that is what you’re doing when you roll over and reach for your phone. As you scroll, you’re feeding your brain with distraction, despair, social comparison, and fear—and that will disproportionally affect three things:
Mood. What you take in affects your emotions and emotional regulation. Notice how you feel after you watch or read content driven by fear, despair, or anger. You’ll likely feel irritable, annoyed, angry, depressed, or sad. Then reverse this and notice how you feel when you take in material that’s uplifting, inspiring, motivational, empowering, and joyful.
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