A Slow Morning at My Desk

I have a rule for weekday mornings: nothing with a notification gets my attention until the first cup of coffee is gone. It sounds small, but it changes the whole tone of the day.

The routine is simple. Kettle on. Beans ground. A pour-over that takes longer than it needs to. While it drips, I open the sketchbook to a blank page and draw whatever is in front of me — the window, the plant that refuses to die, the steam coming off the mug.

Why the sketchbook comes before the laptop

Client work is about solving someone else's problem. The morning page is about noticing things for myself. Ten minutes of drawing with no goal is the best warm-up I've found for the hours of focused work that follow.

Most of those sketches go nowhere. A few become something bigger. The mountain on my favorite mug started exactly like this — a doodle next to a coffee ring.

Keeping it slow

Slow doesn't mean late. It means the first hour of the day belongs to me, and the rest of the day can have whatever is left. Usually that's more than enough.