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Good morning. This is Laura.

Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's tip is to try going screen-free for 24 hours.

We spend a lot of time on our phones and devices, but consciously taking a break can be eye-opening and kind of, well, fun.

Thanks to Apple's screen time feature, I've realized over the past few months that I've been

spending an increasing number of hours per day on my phone, often mindlessly.

I text with my husband and babysitter and a few friends, and that's all great.

But every time I pick up the phone to look at my texts, I wind up looking at other stuff,

too.

Random comments on an article, Twitter, coronavirus headlines that I don't need to be following.

Even checking the time or the weather are my steps, winds up triggering a cycle of looking through social media feeds.

Looking at the phone also becomes my default for when I'm feeding my baby, and that adds hours too.

The baby feeding time is what it is,

but the rest of the time is harder to justify. It doesn't work to ignore the phone, so instead I've

been trying to leave my phone elsewhere for periods of time when it's okay. For instance, when I went

for a walk recently with my parents and my kids, I couldn't really

imagine that anyone else would desperately need to reach me.

So I left the phone.

On a recent beach vacation, I would leave the phone at the house when I was with my family

on the sand.

I couldn't pick up the phone in a moment of boredom, and so I looked at the waves, and it

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