I’ve spent twenty years in newsrooms where the coffee is burnt, the deadlines are “yesterday,” and the ambient noise sounds like a chorus of clicking keys and quiet desperation. For a long time, I bought into the hustle. I woke up at 5:00 AM, checked the wires before my eyes were fully open, and answered emails while the shower was still warming up.
I thought I was winning. I was actually just vibrating with anxiety.
The “Urgency Trap”
In the media world, we call it “reactive mode.” If you start your day by checking your phone, you are letting the world’s priorities colonize your brain before you’ve even had a piece of toast. You are reacting to news, reacting to bosses, and reacting to social media trolls.
When you react, you cannot create.
The Three-Step Detox
If you want to actually produce work that matters—whether you’re a lawyer, a baker, or a CEO—you need to reclaim the first sixty minutes of your day. Here is how I rewritten my morning “lead”:
The Analog Hour: No screens. None. If you use your phone as an alarm, buy a $10 plastic clock. The goal is to keep your brain in that “alpha wave” state—the hazy, creative borderland between sleep and work.
The Single Task: We’ve been lied to about multitasking. It’s just “task-switching,” and it costs you IQ points. Do one thing. Read a physical book, write three sentences in a journal, or stare at a bird. Just one.
The Frictionless Start: Don’t decide what to do in the morning. Decide the night before. If I’m editing a 3,000-word feature, I leave the file open on my desk with the cursor exactly where I need to start. No searching, no friction.
Why “Boredom” is Your Best Editor
We are terrified of being bored. But for a writer, boredom is the soil where ideas grow. When you fill every silent gap with a podcast or a scroll, you’re suffocating your subconscious.
Some of my best headlines didn’t come from brainstorming sessions in a glass-walled conference room in Soho. They came while I was staring at the rain on a bus window, with no phone to distract me from my own thoughts.
