I didn't plan this ritual. It started because I had a new kettle — the Fellow Stagg EKG — and it took exactly four minutes to heat water to the right temperature, and I didn't have anything useful to do in those four minutes, so I sat down. I didn't check my phone because I'd left it in the bedroom. And then I just kept sitting there after the kettle finished.
What it looks like
The kettle goes on at 6:45. I make a pourover into the Hasami Porcelain mug — the wide one with the flat base that keeps heat longer than it has any right to. I sit in the chair by the window. I don't open anything. I don't listen to anything. I look out the window, or I look at the room, or I just hold the mug and think about nothing in particular for twenty minutes. Then the day starts.
“Twenty minutes of doing nothing productive turns out to be the most useful part of the day.
What changed when I tried to skip it
The first time I tried to skip it — a Tuesday with an early call — I noticed by 9am that I felt like I'd started the day mid-sentence. There's something about the transition that the ritual provides that I'd underestimated until it was absent. It's not about the coffee. The coffee is good, but it's a prop.
The discipline of not checking anything
This is the part that took longest to stick. The phone is in the bedroom. I used to bring it out of habit and then feel the pull to check it while the water heated. Now I don't bring it. The rule is simple: nothing with a notification. The twenty minutes are the only part of the day that belong entirely to me before I give them to everything else. I guard them now in a way I don't guard much else.
Elena Marchetti
Writer, slow-living enthusiast, and perpetual re-arranger of couch cushions. I share honest reviews of the things I actually live with.
