I started writing my morning pages something like three years ago, and it wasn't something I expected to stick, it wasn't something that I was intending to, you know, make some grand changes in my life, but it did.

It absolutely revolutionized the way that I live my life, as hyperbolic as that sounds.

Without the morning pages, I wouldn't have had the clarity and the self-confidence and the drive to get where I am today.

So, what are morning pages?

The morning pages is a technique from a book called The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron.

This book is designed to help artists and creatives get past their mental blocks and into the realm of creativity.

Now, it's actually incredibly simple, and I think that's why it was so effective for me personally.

All you do is you write three pages of stream-of-consciousness writing every day.

That's it.

You can write about anything you want.

The point is to just keep the pen moving and just get whatever's floating around in your head onto paper.

The only caveat to the morning pages is that you need to keep your writing completely private.

No one can read it.

Not your spouse, not your kids, not your best friend.

It's not being written for someone else to be read.

It's being written for the pure act of writing.

That's it.

Three pages a day, long handwriting, stream-of-consciousness, totally private just for your eyes.

That's the entirety of the morning pages.

It's something that literally anyone can pick up and do, as long as you know how to write and hold a pen.

And it can seriously do wonders.

So, here are 15 tips to help you get the most out of your morning pages.

Number one, get up earlier.

This might not be the most fun tip, but I promise you that it is totally worth it.

The morning pages can take anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes.

So try to set your alarm about 30 minutes earlier than you typically get up, and try to imprint it as the morning routine.

Two, don't look at your phone or the internet or the newspaper or anything else before you write.

You might be tempted to wake up and check your phone, but I want you to try to check that impulse and write your morning pages first.

I always find whenever I do my morning pages before I check in on the rest of the world, I find that I'm a lot clearer, more level-headed, and just, I'm able to really process things a lot easier.

When you wake up and immediately bombard yourself with news and text messages and memes and anything else like that, it clogs up your head a little bit.

It makes it a little bit harder to think straight and focus.

Three, make a ritual out of your morning pages.

Make it something enjoyable and comforting so you're excited for it every day.

That can be something like having a cup of coffee or a cup of tea, light a candle, or burn some incense.

You might want to write your morning pages right after you get out of the shower in the morning when you're very relaxed.

Whatever you do, just curate your morning pages ritual to be something that is simple and easy to do, but relaxing, calming, something that helps you just ease into it and write.

Four, buy nice supplies.

You don't need to do this. This is definitely not a requirement, but it's something that I found to be immensely helpful when I started writing my morning pages.

These materials help me feel good every time that I sat down to write.

The thing that I think is kind of the most important is the pen.

You want it to have smooth ink. You want it to feel good in your hand.

Writing three pages longhand, if you're not used to it, can kind of wear on you, especially at first.

You get used to it after a while, but having a pen that flows really nicely and just writes really easily is incredibly helpful to just getting your thoughts out.

I can link the materials that I personally enjoy in the description down below.

Just make sure you're not using materials that you absolutely hate, because if you don't like the pen, if it annoys you, if the paper is crappy, then you're not going to want to write, and you'll avoid it.

So get stuff that you at least are able to tolerate, but preferably get something that you actually enjoy writing with.

Five, go outside or open a window.

It's really nice to just have a breeze, to smell the fresh air, to hear the birds.

There's something about it, at least for me, that just completely takes it to a new level.

I have written while sitting on a loud balcony in Chicago, and I have written while sitting on a rock during a hike.

Both of them are great. They're different, but they're great, and it's just nice to be able to sit outside and listen to the world around you while you write your morning pages.

Tip number six, don't worry about your handwriting.

Remember what I said that the morning pages are for you, you only, no one else can read them, totally private?

Well, part of that means you don't have to make it legible.

No one's going to be reading it, no one's going to be grading it, no one's going to be judging it.

So your handwriting can be complete and total chicken scratch, and it does not matter.

As long as you know what you're saying whenever you're writing it down, you don't even need to be able to read it.

It just needs to be on the page.

Don't write slow because you're trying to make everything all neat and nice and tidy.

Just let it rip, just write as fast as you can.

And on that same note, don't worry about grammar or spelling or anything like that.

Again, no one's going to be reading it, no one's going to be trying to figure out what it is you're saying, so it doesn't matter.

If you misspell something, don't go back to fix it, just plow on.

If you use the improper type of their or your, just move on.

You don't need to fix it, you don't need to have everything be nice and perfect.

Just keep the pen moving, keep it going, and by the time you are done with your three pages, you're not going to remember those mistakes.

So just don't worry about it.

Tip number eight.

This is kind of on the same thread as the last two tips, but it still is worthy mentioning.

Don't worry about having nice, rounded, complete thoughts.

If you're writing something about subject A and then suddenly subject B pops into your head, start writing about subject B.

You can cut off your first thing mid-sentence and just completely start a new thread.

You can do that and change gears and switch entirely, and it's totally fine.

It's stream of consciousness.

Consciousness is not, in fact, in nice, neat little bubbles with nice, neat little conclusions.

So you don't need to worry about doing that on the page.

If something pops into your head, write it down.

Clearly, it's something that's going on in your mind, so you might as well get it down on paper while it's visiting you.

If it interrupts another thought, then so be it.

Not a big deal.

Nine.

Listen to ad-free ambient music.

There is nothing more distracting and annoying than being in the middle of a writing session and really being in the flow, and then an ad pops on.

Mm.

It's just really a—it's a frustrating experience.

So my suggestion is, if you're listening to music, listen to ad-free music, wherever you can get that.

If you have CD, go ahead and listen to that.

If you want to listen to YouTube videos, as long as they're really long and there's no ads popping in halfway through, that's a fine option.

I personally use Amazon Prime Music.

Prime Music is great because I already had Amazon Prime, and I had no idea that it came with a music subscription, but it did, and when I discovered it, it blew my mind.

It's totally ad-free.

You have access to millions of songs, and it's just—it's great.

I really love it.

If you want to try out some ad-free music and see how it fits on you, then I would suggest you give Prime Music a shot because I personally think it's awesome.

I will put a link in the description below if you want to give that a shot.

You can do a 30-day free trial.

There's over 2 million songs available, and it's completely ad-free.

Tip number 10, don't let anyone interrupt your writing.

This one is a particularly important one because it's really easy to feel like writing your morning pages is an indulgence and that you are somehow being selfish for taking 30 minutes to write in a journal, and in reality, you're not.

It's a great thing for you.

If you are happy, if you are more focused and less cluttered in your head, then you're going to be a better person to be around.

It's—it's great to do, and you shouldn't feel selfish.

You shouldn't feel guilty.

This tip is one that is particularly important because I personally struggled with this one, like, a lot for the first year that I wrote my morning pages.

I lived in a small one-bedroom apartment with my husband, John, when I began, and it was really hard to sit at my desk in the living room and write my morning pages without any interruption.

John would regularly ask me questions or want to show me something funny that he saw on Facebook or want to talk to me about something while I was writing, and for the first six months or so, it was just—I didn't feel like I was able to say, like, no, leave me alone, I'm busy.

It felt like it was wrong of me to do that, when in reality, I should have been able to say, this is my time, this is my space, I need to just have this 30 minutes, and you can ask me your question when I'm done.

And there was a little bit of tension, quite a bit of tension at first, because it was hard to find the right, you know, the right boundaries, because I wanted to be able to have this time for myself, and it was hard to say no, and it was hard for John to learn that I was really serious and that I really wanted this time for myself.

But over time, we both adapted, and now it's totally fine. If I sit down and write my morning pages, John knows not to interrupt me.

Like I said with the ads, getting interrupted while you're writing and in the middle of a flow is very frustrating, but it's also not very conducive to proper stream-of-consciousness writing.

If you're getting interrupted with someone else asking you questions or pestering you about something, it's interrupting your stream of thought, it's completely getting in the way of the exercise.

So if you have a spouse, if you have a roommate, if you have kids, try to find some time away from them, try to go to a private space, or find a time before they wake up or after they go to bed, just try to find something where you are totally alone and you're able to just really get into the writing.

And don't be afraid to stand up for yourself and say that, you know, this is my time.

You might be surprised, people might be very receptive and be very willing to give you your space, but it takes communication and you have to be able to say that this is important to you.

So keep that in mind, take it to the bathroom and write in there if you can't get any proper privacy.

Oh, the same goes for also muting your phone. Put your phone in the other room, put it on silent, whatever you gotta do.

That time is for writing and for nothing else.

One thing that I found to be extremely helpful for getting into the mental state for morning pages is meditation.

It's part of my morning pages ritual and I just meditate for like five minutes, nothing super long.

It doesn't have to be a 30-minute meditation session, just five minutes of breathing exercises to center myself and get into the flow of writing, get in touch with my consciousness, as cheesy as that sounds.

Tip number 12. If you are not a morning person, if you loathe the idea of getting up early, if you have tried writing your morning pages in the morning and you failed because you just can't get into it, then try writing your morning pages at night, right before bed.

Morning pages is just the name of the exercise, but it does not strictly mean that it has to be in the morning.

If you're someone who wakes up at 5 a.m. every day, then getting up earlier might not be a great option for you, and I totally understand that.

So, do it at night instead, or do it at any time during the day. It doesn't have to be in the morning, it doesn't have to be at night.

Just find some time to do it.

The reason I suggest nighttime, though, is because I know a lot of people have said that writing their morning pages just before going to sleep helps them get a lot of their worries and anxieties and anything else that's kind of gunking up their brain out of their head so that they can fall asleep faster and feel more relaxed.

Tip number 13. Don't censor yourself.

This tip takes a little bit of practice to really adopt, but it is totally vital for the morning pages being an effective tool for you.

It's easy when you're writing a journal to write as if your great-grandchildren are going to read it, or if your spouse is going to read it, but if you have that in your head, if you're thinking that your spouse is going to read it after you die, or that your kids are going to read it after you die, then you're not going to be honest.

You are going to censor yourself.

If you have a terrible thought, a horrible thought that is just dark and twisted and wrong, but you can't write it down, then it's still in your head.

And even if it's a terrible thought that is never going to show up in any other aspect of your life, you still need to address it and be honest with yourself about these thoughts that you're having.

You might be thinking about doing something crazy, like changing your career.

Or you might be thinking about moving to Peru.

Or you might be thinking about leaving your spouse.

They all are sort of intense thoughts, and you might not necessarily want to give them any credence or give them any airtime, but if you don't have some way to properly vent those feelings, then it's just going to all still remain in your head and fog you up.

You can't address them.

You can't work through them.

You can't tease out any knots.

You just kind of still have them.

So you need to remember to not censor yourself, to not stop yourself from writing down anything that is unpleasant or not the nicest thing in the world.

You can have bad thoughts.

You are a person who is not perfect, and it's okay.

I have bad thoughts all the time that I write down, but the ability to write them down and work through them and address them head-on has been immensely helpful for me.

So I'm telling you from personal experience that you can't censor yourself and expect the morning pages to work for you.