A strong hive guards its entrance. Guard yours: your sleep, your mornings, your attention.

A colony survives partly by controlling what gets in, and bees post guards at the single opening for exactly that reason. You have a few openings worth guarding too, and they are the ones everything else depends on: sleep, the first hour of the day, where your attention goes. Those get given away in small pieces until there is nothing left to work with. Protecting them is maintenance rather than selfishness.

Pick one entrance and guard it for a week. Phone out of the bedroom, or the first twenty minutes after waking kept for one thing. Say no to one request that would cost you that time.