Whatever you grab first in the morning, the phone or the day, sets the whole draft.

The first thing you attend to sets the terms for the hours after it, because attention has momentum. Starting inside other people’s news, requests and comparisons puts you in a reactive position before you have had a single thought of your own. This is a question of order rather than virtue.

Give the first ten minutes to something you chose: water, a window, a page, a walk to the bus. The phone is not the enemy, and it works better once you have decided what the day is for. Try it for a week and judge by how the mornings feel.