Jamie Dimon, Chief Executive Officer of JPMorgan Chase & Co., speaks at the National Retirement Summit 2025 in Washington, DC, U.S., Wednesday, March 12, 2025.
Al Drago | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, recently opened up about his phone habits at work, including never reading text messages and turning off his phone’s notifications.
“I don’t have any notifications,” the CFO told CNN’s Erin Burnett in an interview. “If you texted me during the day, I probably won’t read it.”
He added: “The only notifications I get are from my kids. That’s it. When they text me, I get it.”
The 69-year-old revealed that he doesn’t carry his phone with him all the time and prioritizes deep concentration at work.
“When I walk around the building and go to meetings, I don’t have it with me. It’s in my office,” he said. “When I go to my meetings, I’ve done the pre-readings and I’m 100% focused on us, what you’re talking about, why you’re talking about it, instead of being distracted and thinking about other things.”
Dimon has previously voiced her gripes about poor meeting etiquette and said at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit in October that using phones in meetings was “disrespectful” and “wasted time.”
“If you have an iPad in front of me and it looks like you’re reading your emails or you’re getting notifications, I’ll tell you to shut the damn thing down,” he said at the time.
He explained that meetings should have a purpose and that checking email and getting distracted are red flags.
Work from home
Dimon remains critical of some of the more recent changes in the workplace brought about by the youngest generation in the workplace: Generation Z. Dimon has adhered to more traditional ways of working, often expecting his employees to do the same.
Earlier this year, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase went on a rant in a leaked audio recording to JPMorgan employees about working from home and using phones during meetings after workers complained about having to return to the office five days a week.
Dimon told them to stop, saying he was concerned about the “damage” working from home was causing young recruits.
“Don’t tell me working from home on Friday works…I call a lot of people on Friday, and there’s no one you can get through…I’m sick of this stuff,” he said in the recording.
“They are there, they are there, the Zooms [Gen Z]and the zoomers don’t appear… That’s not how you run a big company.
He even criticized managers on the call, saying they were abusing the privilege of working from home to relax. On Zoom, managers were looking at their mail, sending text messages and not paying attention, Dimon said. “And if you don’t think it slows down efficiency, slows down creativity, creates rudeness, it actually does,” he added.
Work etiquette
Digital wellness expert Anastasia Dedyukhina previously told CNBC Make It that frequently checking your smartphone reduces the quality of your conversations with friends and colleagues. A 2023 survey by Reviews.org found that Americans check their phones an average of 144 times per day.
She explained that just having a phone close to home can be extremely distracting. Using a phone can also leave a bad impression on managers and co-workers and is poor work etiquette.
“I would also think about it because for our mind, a smartphone and the sound of a smartphone are very attractive stimuli. So when I hear my phone ring and I make a notification, for my mind it’s like you’re calling my name,” Dedyukhina said.
That’s why Alison Wood Brooks, an associate professor at Harvard University, told CNBC Make It that it’s important to focus in meetings because it makes you appear smarter and more likeable. This involves asking follow-up questions, paraphrasing, and repeating what the other person answered.
