Getting Up Early, Without the Sermon
Most writing about early mornings is either productivity advice or a moral position. This is neither. It is what actually worked and what did not.
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Summer Mornings and Winter Mornings Are Not the Same Activity
Both are called getting up early, but the effort, the reward, and the kind of quiet on offer have almost nothing in common.
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The Park Before the Dog Walkers
There is a window of roughly forty minutes between a park being unusable in the dark and being fully occupied. Learning where it falls in each season is most of the skill.
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Standing Outside a Bakery Before It Opens
A small ritual that costs about twenty minutes and is, as far as I can tell, the single easiest way to make an ordinary morning feel different.
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Riding the First Train of the Day
The first service on most urban lines runs nearly empty for the first twenty minutes. It is the cheapest hour of solitude available in a city.
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The City Before Sunrise Is a Different City
Between about half four and six, most cities are genuinely empty, and the emptiness has a texture that the same streets never have again during the day.
