Doing Things With Intent: Coffee, Music, Writing and the Art of Slowing Down

Most holiday apartments are set up so that you can do things. There is a kettle, so you can make a coffee. There is a television, so there is something on. There is a table, so you can put things down. Everything works, and nothing asks anything of you.

We wanted something else. Not more things — the same ordinary things, set up so they can be done properly. We have written before about where things happen in our apartments. This is about how, and why it mattered so much to us.

In short: every small daily activity here is set up to be done with intent rather than in passing — coffee as the main event, music with a place to listen, a surface worth writing on, a proper screen for planning the day, and somewhere to read in the evening. Nothing is compulsory. The place is simply arranged so that the slow, enjoyable version of each thing is the easiest one to reach for.

Coffee, as the main event

Coffee is the clearest example, so start there. You can make it in thirty seconds with a capsule and drink it standing up while answering messages, and that is what most mornings look like for most of us. Or you can do it the way it deserves: coffee from a local roaster, roasted within days and vacuum-sealed, a gooseneck kettle, the scales, the V60, the slow spiral pour, four minutes of nothing but water and smell and timing.

Those four minutes are the point. Everything you need to make coffee properly is laid out in the kitchen, not to impress anyone but so that the good version is right there in front of you. Guests who have never done it before tend to discover, by the third morning, that it has become the part of the day they look forward to most.

Music, with somewhere to listen

Music in most rentals is background: a phone speaker somewhere, half-heard. Here it has a place. The Marshall speaker sits in the living room beside the record cabinet, so when you put something on, you can sit down and actually listen to it, front to back, the way albums were made to be heard. For longer stays there are records and a turntable on request.

If you would rather your own headphones, take them into the second room, lie full length on the day bed with the door closed, and let an album play out in the dark. It is the closest thing to a listening room most people will ever have, and it is there for exactly that.

Writing by hand

Plenty of our guests keep a journal, or would like to. So the desk is set up for it: slide the wireless keyboard under the monitor riser and the desk is clear, at the right height, with a desk mat underneath that gives just slightly under a pen, so writing on it feels good rather than scratchy. A notebook, a quiet room, a cup of something you made properly ten minutes ago. Half an hour of that does more for a trip than another attraction.

Planning the day, without the phone

Some guests tell us, a little defensively, that they did not come here to work. Fair enough — nor should you. But almost everyone spends some of a holiday planning it: where to eat, which boat, which bus, whether Gozo is a day or two. Doing that on a phone is a small, cramped misery of tabs and pinch-zoom.

Doing it on a 27-inch screen, with a proper keyboard and mouse, at a desk, is a different activity entirely. Twenty unhurried minutes the evening before, and tomorrow is organised and the phone can go back in the drawer. That is not work. It is taking control of your own time, which is most of what a good holiday is.

Reading in the evening

We leave books in every apartment — big illustrated ones, about music, design, Malta, the kind you leaf through rather than finish. In the evening, with the main lights off and a warm light on by the sofa, there is nothing better to do with an hour. It is an old-fashioned thing to design a living room around, and we did it deliberately.

Why intent matters to us

Daily life has a way of turning everything into something to get through. Coffee becomes fuel, music becomes noise, meals happen at the desk, and the phone is in every hand, doing six things at once and none of them well. Most of us only notice how far we have drifted from enjoying things when we stop.

A stay somewhere is one of the few chances to stop. And we have found, in ourselves and in our guests, that the stopping does not need to be dramatic. It happens in small moments: the four minutes of the pour, the last track of an album, a page of handwriting. Doing one thing at a time, fully, turns out to be a kind of meditation, whether or not you call it that. It leaves room for a little clarity — maybe not a revelation, just the quiet realisation that slowing down gives you back a great deal, because for once you are actually where you are.

That is what we were designing for, under all the details. Not a look. A pace.

What this is not

It is not a retreat, and there are no rules. Nobody will take your phone, the wifi is fast, and the television works perfectly well. We have not tried to make anyone slow down. We have only tried to make the slow version of each thing the most inviting one in the room — which is the same principle that runs through everything else here, and the idea of Quality that started it.

Frequently asked questions

What does it mean to design a holiday apartment for intent?

It means setting up each everyday activity so it can be done properly rather than squeezed in: a full pour-over coffee kit instead of a capsule machine, a dedicated place to listen to music, a real surface to write on, a large screen for planning the day, and somewhere comfortable and well lit to read. The aim is that the slow, enjoyable version of each thing becomes the easy version.

Is Morrison Court a wellness or digital detox retreat?

No. There are no rules, programmes or schedules, and the wifi is fast. The apartments are simply set up so that doing one thing at a time, unhurried, is the most natural option in the room.

What is there to do in the apartment on a slow day?

Make a proper pour-over coffee with the Hario V60 kit, listen to music on the Marshall speaker or your own headphones on the day bed, write or journal at the desk, plan the next day on the 27-inch screen, or read one of the books left in the apartment on the sofa in the evening.

Morrison Court is five self-contained apartments in a reimagined 1920s townhouse in Gzira, set up for doing ordinary things properly. morrisoncourt.com.