My morning pages habit
This is a recent #lockdownlearning that started in the early days of the lockdown with this video.
If I am not wrong I watched this video on the 1st of April in the morning and immediately started to write in a journal that I had lying around nearby.
The idea of morning pages intrigued me and here I am about 45 days later with over 40 days of writing a page every day. I have strived to write something or the other almost every day and almost all of it in the morning, but on a few occasions I have written it down in the evening to make this a habit. I have stuck with keeping the streak of missing the morning pages to 1, which I’m really happy about.
Just to give a brief about what this habit is (if you haven’t already heard/watched videos, etc), every day in the morning after morning duties and you write your mind into 3 pages (I have mostly done at least 1 page per day). Consider this a morning brain dump into the paper just like how we visit the washroom in the morning.
Some of the benefits that I have personally seen are
- A sense of accomplishment, (big boost of confidence especially first thing in the morning)
- A sense of clarity and focus, just like how one would feel after a good meditation session.
- Improvements in managing my thoughts.
- Improvements in writing.
While the lockdown was stressful for everyone, doing the morning pages was a real help to stay a little less stressed and anxious about. After a few weeks, it became something I longed for. It felt really good that I was looking forward to doing some writing the following day in my morning pages. While most of what I have written in my journal is crap, I do feel that my writing has improved and to my surprise, a very few of the journal pages can be turned into blog posts 🙂
While I will recommend putting pen to paper in the morning, you can do a digital morning page as well. Consider something like 750words.com. A private safe place to do your morning pages with a bunch of analytics and motivational badges to keep you engaged. Every time you finish 3 pages/750words You get elaborate metrics like this which is fun to review and learn.
I am not writing on 750 words at the moment as I am rediscovering writing on paper and enjoying the distraction-free analogue experience, but if I were to switch/experiment into digital morning pages, I would really use 750words.com.
To sum it up, I have enjoyed my morning pages so much that I am here writing a post about it. I can’t recommend it enough. If you don’t currently do this, you should give it a try.
Are there any such habits that you love that I should be trying out? Let me know in the comments.