Alan R. Ackroyd

How you end the day shapes how you sleep — and how you start tomorrow. Try a calm landing: no screens for the last twenty minutes before bed. Let your mind wind down instead of scrolling into the small hours. Your morning will thank you. One of the habits in Mindfulness in the Digital Age.

Let's be honest for a Friday: what phubs you most? The phone at dinner, the mid-conversation glance, the TV-and-scroll combo? We all do it. Name yours below — no judgment here.

Let's be honest for a Friday: what phubs you most? The phone at dinner, the mid-conversation glance, the telly-and-scroll combo? We all do it. Name yours below — no judgement here.

The journey home is a gift we usually waste. Instead of carrying the workday through the front door, use the trip to put it down. Pick a landmark — a bridge, a station, the turn into your road — and let that be the line where work ends. By the time you’re home, you’re actually home. Your family gets the better version of you.

Before you pick your phone up next, take two slow breaths and ask what you actually want from it. Half the time there's no real answer — and that little pause is enough to put it back down. Do it a few times a day and it becomes a habit. The two-minute reset, from Mindfulness in the Digital Age.

'Give the first ten minutes of your day to anything but a screen. It sets the tone for everything after.' — Mindfulness in the Digital Age. Try it tomorrow morning.

A question for the comments: what’s the soundtrack to your commute — podcast, music, or silence? No wrong answer, but it’s worth asking what each one does for you. Some journeys want input; some want quiet. The trick is choosing on purpose rather than reaching for noise out of habit.