For the past week, I've committed to writing 750 words every morning. This practice, which I've first heard from my friend Brandon Zhang, is called morning pages.
Julia Cameron, who popularized morning pages, describes it as "three pages of longhand, stream of consciousness writing, done first thing in the morning."
The reason why morning pages are so useful to me is that I treat it as a pre-workout for my brain (thanks to Kyle for the analogy). Before starting my workday, I enjoy writing up my morning pages so that I can get my brain working. I try to time my writing when I start drinking my coffee such that when I'm done my morning pages, I'm also done with my coffee just in time for the caffeine to hit my brain so that I can dedicate my peak working hours to my biggest task of the day. It obviously doesn't always happen like this, but when it does, it's magical.
In a previous edition of my newsletter, I mentioned how I also did a morning journal every day and had a section dedicated to "what I'm thinking of". Morning pages are pretty much a similar concept, but just way longer. I write 750 words, which is around the equivalent of three pages per day. Although just writing down a few bullet points of what you're thinking about is a good start, because you need to write many more words, oftentimes, I usually enter a "flow state" which almost feels like I'm meditating. Similarly to meditation, you observe every thought that is passing through your head, but instead of letting it go, you capture it by typing it out.
Often times, I realize that I use my morning pages as a form of introspection. I usually ask myself questions such as "what problems are you currently facing" or "what's bothering you right now" and I try to write them all down and go through potential solutions at the same time. It's a bit weird, but oftentimes I'm almost having a conversation with myself. I often start my morning pages with "alright, so what am I thinking about now?" which opens up my thoughts and I can start writing. Here's a good example of how you can see how it seems like I’m having a conversation with myself.
I also use my morning pages as a sandbox for ideas. As Packy, a fellow writer, mentioned in his latest webinar, writing is one of the best ways for testing out your ideas and I believe that morning pages are a great way to test out your own ideas before committing to writing them out in public. I often have a hard time publishing my ideas, so I use my morning pages as a safe way to write about what I'm thinking knowing that I won't have any judgment (except myself).
One roadblock that might emerge when writing your morning pages is that sometimes you just don't know what to write about anymore. Thankfully, we had a discussion in my writing community, Writer's Bloc, so I have some suggestions to help you with (note that most of these ideas are not mine, but from other smart people in my group).
Write unfiltered - don't worry about grammar and sentences that don't make sense
Literally type out sentences such as "I actually have no idea what to write about..." or "What am I thinking about now?" to prompt you.
Timebox yourself and keep writing until the timer runs out.
Think about what's upcoming in your day/week and write about that.
For the daredevils, you can also try this app where if you stop writing, all of your progress will be lost.
I would say that more than 50% of what I write in my morning pages never sees the light ever again, but there are often little nuggets that can be served either as a Tweet or as a potential future essay, so it's definitely been worth it for me. This might be a bit meta, but the idea of writing about morning pages actually came from one of my morning pages.
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