There have been a lot of explanations of morning pages out there in the world wide web. But I thought I’d share my personal fascination with them. First, what are morning pages? They’re a journaling technique that comes from the book The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. It basically consists of brain-dumping three pages in a journal first thing every morning. I’ve journaled lots in the past and have wanted to get back into it for the past few years. I even dug up an old journal where I have a handful of entries of morning pages from 2020. I wrote those based on descriptions from YouTube videos and very quickly lost interest.
But then I saw the The Artist’s Way in a used bookstore for super cheap and thought I’d pick it up. I started reading it on a whim thinking I’d probably not be interested, but it gripped me. The first and most important technique for improving creativity and getting ourselves out of ruts the book discusses is morning pages. And it discussed morning pages in a completely novel and interesting way that gripped me and made me want to try them again.
This isn’t meant to explain to you exactly what morning pages are or its benefits. The best way to find that is from the book itself, and not on blogs or YouTube videos.
The main point of this post is to get my thoughts together about why I enjoy it so much, and why I’ve been able to stick with the habit longer than before.
It’s a lot of work! But it has obvious benefits that I saw immediately.
An analogy I heard recently is this: you can’t create the plans for building a bridge in your head. You need to study, work out a bunch of math, do a lot of research, and a lot more than that. Some things are too big to keep in your head. And when we work out big ideas in our lives, that’s the same kind of thing. We can’t solve life’s big problems in our heads. That’s why it’s valuable to get it on paper.
Doing morning pages has helped me more aware of my thought process. It’s helped me see how I make excuses. It’s exposed my on flaws to myself that I didn’t notice before. And it lets me see my unfiltered thoughts play out real time on the page.
Lots of cool benefits.
The key is doing it consistently and realizing it’s a brain dump. It’s not organized, pretty, or even coherent. No one will read them.
But don’t let this post convince you to start writing three pages in your journal every day. Reading about it directly from the book was a lot more beneficial for me, and it probably will be for you too.
