Before the notifications start, before anybody needs you, there’s one quiet hour with nobody’s name on it. Claim it first.

Early in the day there is a window where no one has made a claim on you yet. It is the only stretch that reliably belongs to you, because once the world wakes up your attention gets allocated by other people’s requests instead of your own. Lose that hour and you spend the day responding.

Decide in advance what the first hour is for, even if it is only reading or sitting still. Keep the phone out of it long enough to hear yourself think. And if mornings are genuinely not yours, find the equivalent gap elsewhere and defend that one instead.