The Creative Year: Trying Something New
Testing out a new change to my morning routine.
I’ve decided to change up how I do part of my morning routine. I’ve been thinking for awhile now that I needed to change things up. My routine is feeling a bit stale.
Mostly in my journaling. I have been sticking to a very tiny box in either my bullet journal or Happy Planner where I can only write two or three sentences. Most days, this is fine, but there are some days where I need more space to dump my brain.
So I tried morning pages. I had heard about the concept from the Authortuber community and had to look it up.
The premise is simple: first thing every morning you write three pages to dump out your brain so you can think clearer. If you can’t think of what to write, just write that you don’t know what to write. The point is to not edit yourself. No one is going to see what you write.
Sounds easy, right?
Wrong. For me, this killed my motivation to do my morning journaling. Which then killed my motivation to do my morning routine.
So what happened?
I chose a notebook that wasn’t a regular spiral bound notebook but wasn’t an A5 because that seemed like it was too small. I picked out one that had been sitting in my collection for years.
Writing three pages is hard. More so when it’s an arbitrary amount of pages. Some days, I flew through the three pages and it did help solves some problems for me.
But most days, it just felt like a hinderance on getting through my morning.
I quickly came to realize that I didn’t need that many pages to dump out my brain because I also have my commonplace notebook where I write all of my lists and random thoughts. I don’t need to put that much thought into my days.
While I technically failed the challenge I set for myself (three pages a day for thirty days), I don’t feel like the experiment was a total failure. I’ve come to the realization that if I need to vent my thoughts, I can always return to that notebook, but most days, I just need a few sentences about the day before or what I hope the day will bring. I feel like I have a better understanding of my process and what I need to function.
An arbitrary number of pages is not what I need. I do need the ability to flex as my day demands it.
And that means hopping from planner to journal as needed.
Have you tried morning pages? How did they work for you?
