Nairobi does not ease into the day. By six the matatus are already hooting along the main road, someone's radio is playing gospel two floors down, and the hawkers are setting out their mandazi and boiled eggs at the stage. For years I let that noise decide how my mornings went. I woke up already behind.

Somewhere in the last year I started doing something different. Not a grand routine, not a five a.m. club. Just one hour that belongs to nobody but me.

The kettle comes first

Before the phone, before the news, I put the kettle on. I make chai the way my mother does — milk and water together in the sufuria, a pinch of masala, tea leaves added only when it rises. It takes ten minutes, and I have stopped trying to do anything else while it boils. I stand at the window and watch the light come up over the rooftops.

It sounds like nothing. It is not nothing. Ten minutes of not reaching for anything changes the temperature of the whole day.

Pages, not screens

With the chai I write three pages by hand. Some days it is a list of worries. Some days it is the beginning of a story. Most days it is rubbish, and that is fine — the point is to empty my head onto paper before the city starts filling it up again.

The morning is the only part of the day that hasn't been promised to anyone yet.

What I gave up

• Checking WhatsApp in bed. The group chats will still be there at eight.
• The idea that a good morning has to be productive.
• Rushing out of the house without eating. A boiled egg and a slice of pawpaw takes four minutes.

What I gained

I am less snappy in traffic. I notice things — the jacaranda that blooms purple on our street in October, the old man who feeds the pigeons outside the kiosk every day at the same time. I write more, because the habit of writing is already warm by the time I sit down to work.

If your mornings feel like they belong to everyone else, try taking back just one small piece. Start with the kettle. See what happens.

[Ayeesha — add a line here about your own morning: what you see from your window, what's in your cup.]