This morning, I just finished 54 days of a writing technique called “morning pages”. (For those of you who don’t know, morning pages is the process of writing three pages every morning in a free flow format. For more information, see Julia Cameron”s book – The Artist’s Way.)
After 54 days, I think it’s safe to say that I have now developed a new habit.
Now, this particular habit happens to be quite valuable. For example, this morning my morning pages effort has resulted in the capture of four ideas and/or possible projects:
- A blog post on habit linking (which I am dictating now on my morning walk).
- Using morning pages as an “ikigai” discovery tool.
- Creating an ikigai workbook.
- Creating a physician half-day creativity retreat with morning pages as a key step.
Not bad for 20 minutes work!
However, this blog post is not about the value of morning pages. Rather, I want to discuss specifically how I created this new habit.
So how did I?
First and foremost, I consciously decided to create a morning pages habit. This was not a random decision. I truly believe that either you create your habits, or your habits create you, and you don’t want to leave your ‘self” to the whims of random habits which you inadvertently adopt. Bottom line – select the habits you want to incorporate in your life.
Second, I identified my strongest, most enjoyable, pre-is preexisting morning habit: In my particular case it’s making a simple cup of French pressed brewed coffee which takes about me seven minutes to make every morning. This is my new habit’s anchor.
Third, I place my two favorite writing tools out and available on my desk. In my case this is a moleskin notebook and a Mont Blanc pencil (see above photo).
Of note, the moleskin notebook has heavy beautifully lined paper. The Mont Blanc pencil – which I’ve had for over a decade – is simply a joy to write with. (Although simple tools they are both items which give me intrinsic pleasure.)
Finally comes the habit link:
Immediately after I start to boil the water for my French press coffee, I sit down write today’s date and start writing!
Seven minutes later, when I’m pouring my 1st cup of coffee, I already have my first two paragraphs of morning pages complete. The rest of the morning pages are nearly automatically written as I sip my lovely cup of coffee.
That’s it.
Now, there are some subtleties to this.
For example, I believe the key moment is that first line of writing after I put on the boiling water. Once I’ve done that, my writing has a momentum of its own.
Another element is the quality of tools which I’m working with. I actually want to get that pencil in my hand and I want to touch and open up my notebook.
A final thing to consider is to recognize when is a habit is actually successfully formed. As a rule of thumb, forty consecutive days is a good time frame to give a new habit some roots. (If you forget this number just think of the Bible, Noah, and Jesus.)
Anyway this habit is strongly linked to my coffee routine, and I can’t see it changing for the surf foreseeable future. In fact, if for some reason I didn’t write my morning pages, I believe it would cause me a certain level of distress – which also is a good reference to see whether or not a new habit has taken root.
The next question is where do I go from here?
Perhaps it’s my morning blog walk after my morning pages? A 5-mile walk with my Sony Dictaphone creating my morning blog post, and linking this to start right after my morning pages?
Wouldn’t that be something!
Anyway, perhaps fifty or hundred days from now my habit link will become a habit chain.
I’ll let you know.