Since the only fixed demand is that you fill three pages, Morning Pages demonstrates the principle that quality is often a function of quantity: there's no time or incentive to judge each idea, to get it right before getting it down, and the result is that ideas flow more freely, unimpeded by the clenched grip of perfectionism.

there's something transformative about achieving a third-person perspective on the contents of your mind by externalizing them on paper. You know how it's often easy to see what someone else needs to do about their problems? Externalising your thoughts can trigger similar insights on your own behalf. And even when it doesn't, the shift in... See more

Morning Pages is another tactic for getting out of your own way like this – a ritual, in a deep sense of that word, because what's key is the observance, not harnessing that observance for some particular outcome. Everyone should have one or two such rituals, if you ask me, to help unclench one's agitated grip on the world and to encounter reality

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