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Good morning, and welcome to Better With Time.

Once a week for the next eight weeks, this email will appear in your inbox at a time of day that could likely use a zhuzh: the bleary-eyed morning, the mid-afternoon doldrums, that vanishing slice of post-work free time, all the way until you head off to bed. Each edition will give you a single to-do to improve that bit of the day, drawn from The Atlantic’s coverage.

This newsletter is not going to tell you to meditate, or to try to reduce screen time, although you probably should. What about suggesting more gratitude? No, thank you! And if it advises you to be more active (which it will—Week 3), it will be very specific about it.

All of those habits are great. They are also vague and daunting. The suggestions in Better With Time are concrete and achievable; for the sake of this exercise—hey, you signed up for it—let’s say they are nonnegotiable, too.

Try them. They will not change your life, or at least not right away. But they will change your day and, when done right, probably occasion other changes, too. And what is life but a great bunch of changing days dominoed together?

It’s 7 a.m. Your better day begins, as the good things of this world so often do, with red sauce.

To do: Eat chicken parmigiana for breakfast.

It’s been a while since health experts have agreed that breakfast is the most important meal of the day for your nutrition; it is indisputably, however, the most important meal for asserting control over your life.

That is what then–staff writer Amanda Mull realized in 2019, when she woke up craving the Italian American alchemy of cutlet, cheese, and marinara. “Hungover and ravenous,” she wrote, she suddenly felt that the restrictive category of “breakfast food” was akin to a middle-school dress code: “unnecessarily prim and preordained by people whose rules I should no longer heed.”

So she went out and got a bodega hoagie that she “wolfed down” with “unrestrained joy.”

It is possible that you really love your bowl of 2 percent and bran flakes, or that you eat it because it’s quick and easy. It’s also possible that you eat it just because you’ve been told it’s the right thing to eat. Amanda’s essay examines how the modern American breakfast canon crystallized, and—surprise!—it’s largely thanks to decades of work by marketers.

Amanda’s transgression inspired a bunch of readers to write in with other heterodox breakfasts: pâté with horseradish cheese, salads, soups, a daily slice of peach pie dribbled with milk. These are the enlightened.

Breakfast, it turns out, can be anything you want it to be. In fact, many cultures across the world just eat, you know, whatever they eat the rest of the day. But you should start with the chicken parm (eggplant will do, too). It’s hard to imagine a food that flies more extravagantly in the face of bran flakes and the advertisers who presume to plan your morning. Think of it as your launchpad to breakfast freedom.

I tried the chicken-parm start one weekend, and it unlocked heretofore unknown measures of breakfast innovation. Fine: The day after, I had the remaining two-fifths of a chicken parm for breakfast. But the day after that, I ate shrimp in green mole, and the next, a piece of pita with hummus and some carrots. When I finally had cereal, it was because I wanted to.

Quantifying creativity, let alone agency, is hard, but on those days, as the post-breakfast hours passed, I swear I felt myself thinking a bit more outside the bowl.

Let me know how it goes, and I’ll see you next week at 9 a.m. in your time zone.

To consider: Eat the same thing for lunch for a week.

If the newfound breakfast freedom has spent your decision-making energy, choose uniformity for lunch, a meal where society pushes you to variety.

In 2019, then–staff writer Joe Pinsker profiled the people who repeat their daily lunch—one for as long as a quarter century. They credit the practice for bringing simplicity and thrift into their lives.

• “I Broke Breakfast,” by Amanda Mull (From 2019)
• “The Most Contentious Meal of the Day,” by Megan Garber (From 2016)
• Letters From Readers: “I Had Minestrone Soup for Breakfast” (From 2019)
• “The People Who Eat the Same Meal Every Day,” by Joe Pinsker (From 2019)