Most mornings start with a screen. The alarm is on the phone, so the phone is in your hand, and by the time you are out of bed you have read three headlines and someone else’s opinion. The morning page is a small way to take the first two minutes back.
What goes on the page
Anything. Write the first thing in your head and keep the pen moving for two minutes. A list of what you can hear, the dream you half remember, the thing you are dreading at ten o'clock. Spelling and sense do not count.
The point is not the writing. It is noticing what your mind is already doing before the day tells it what to do.
“You are not writing for anyone. You are just finding out what is there.”
Why two minutes
Two minutes is short enough that you will actually do it, even on the morning you overslept. People who promise themselves twenty minutes tend to manage three days and then stop.
Most students find that two minutes quietly becomes five on the days they have time. Let it. The habit is the page, not the length.
Try it tomorrow
One page before the phone
1
Leave a notebook and pen on top of your phone the night before.
2
Sit up in bed and set a two-minute timer on a watch, not the phone.
3
Write without stopping until it rings.
4
Close the notebook. Do not read it back.
Keeping it going
Miss a day and simply start again the next morning. There is no streak to break. Some students keep the same notebook for a year and never read a page of it.
If you would like company for the habit, our Sunday morning class opens with five minutes of writing before we sit.
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