For years the first thing I touched in the morning was my phone. I told myself I was checking the weather. I was not.
Last spring I started leaving it in the kitchen overnight. The first three mornings were strange. I did not know what to do with my hands. By the fourth I was making coffee and looking out of the window like a person in an advert.
Here is the part I did not expect. It was not the extra time that mattered. It was that I got to decide what the day was about before anyone else did. When you open your phone first, you are handed a list of other people’s priorities and you spend the rest of the day negotiating with it.
Five minutes is enough. You do not need a morning routine or a sunrise. You need a short gap between waking up and being reachable.
Try it tomorrow. Leave the phone in another room tonight and see what your head does with the quiet.
The longer argument, and what to do when the gap keeps closing, is in Flow State on Gumroad.
