Tips for a Morning Journaling Practice

✍️ What if your research productivity hack wasn't another app—but a pen and three blank pages? I’ve been thinking about Morning Pages—a deceptively simple practice from Julia Cameron’s /The Artist’s Way/—through the lens of behavioral science, of course. The idea: write three longhand, stream-of-consciousness pages every morning. No audience. No editing. Just you and your thoughts. You don't even have to go back and re-read them. For academics and researchers, this can feel… indulgent? Chaotic? Just one more thing on the to-do list? But it turns out, the practice quietly harnesses several behavioral insights we already trust in our own science: 🧠 Cognitive offloading reduces working memory demands, freeing up bandwidth for deep thinking. 🔄 Habit stacking (attach it to coffee or your commute) helps make it stick. 🚪 Fresh start effect—morning = natural psychological reset. 🕳️ Default disruption—writing by hand instead of screen interrupts digital autopilot. 🧭 Values alignment—morning pages let us reconnect with why we do this work in the first place. And—because why not?—here are a few behaviorally informed nudges to make a Morning Pages practice more sustainable and impactful: 📌 Set a visible cue: Leave your notebook next to your toothbrush or beside the coffee beans. ⏰ Shrink the commitment: Start with one page instead of three. I've been trying a 12-min timer and writing for time rather than length. 🖼️ Reframe the payoff: It’s not about insight or eloquence. It’s a “mental inbox zero.” 🖋️ Make it frictionless: Choose a notebook and pen you love. Keep them handy. (That's my salmon pink Kaweco fountain pen in the pic below.) 🎯 Name the goal: Are you offloading stress? Surfacing ideas? Getting unstuck? Let that guide your entry. I’ve found Morning Pages to be less about writing—and more about tuning the instrument. As scholars, we often protect our outputs. Morning Pages let us protect our inputs. Have you tried it? What works (or doesn’t) for you? (Also tagging some folks I'd love to hear from on this practice: Lawrence Long Michael Hallsworth Carolyn Cannuscio Carolyn Tate Emily Falk Amy Bucher, Ph.D. Samuel Salzer Aline Holzwarth Elspeth Kirkman Kevin M. F. Platt Katy Milkman) #AcademicWriting #BehavioralScience #MorningPages #Productivity #ResearchLife #Habits #CognitiveOffload #WritingTips

Do you journal? As a neurospicy human I often have a cacophony of thoughts in my head. The trouble is that my grocery list collides with ideas for my team right alongside words or thoughts for content or my book. So every morning I do morning pages (a concept from Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way) so I can write stream of consciousness to process all the noise. THEN I can find the things that need to go on a to-do list or in a note or doc somewhere. And I try to answer three questions: 1. What am I looking forward to today? 2. What, if anything, is worrying me right now? (I’m an anxiety sufferer so there’s always something but putting words to it often makes it less scary) 3. What one thing can I do today that will declutter my brain? Some days it’s as simple as a light chore at home or a walk, others it’s bigger like moving a project forward. It’s only about 20 minutes over my tea in the morning but it really does help the hamster wheel in my head calm down some. Do you do something similar? Or are you one of the lucky people who don’t have a circus in your head at all times? 😂🎪

I’ve journaled just about every morning since 2017.  Journaling has helped me remain grateful, resilient, focused, and striving.  Here's one simple 3-minute journal exercise I use every morning to kickoff my day (before answering email, planning the day, or checking my phone): The Daily 3-Minute Journal: Date: XX/XX/XXXX Grateful: List some of the things you're currently grateful for. It could be the big things like your partner, your family, your job or "small" things like the weather that day, texting a friend, or your morning coffee. Jot down everything that comes to mind in one minute and then stop! Victories: List some of the recent victories in your life. Maybe you did a great job on a project at work, spent time with your parents, or had a killer workout. Again, take one minute to list out everything that comes to mind and then stop. Affirmation: Write down one or two affirmations. These can be something specific like "I am the Founder of a Beautiful New Yoga Studio" or something more broad like "I am happy, healthy, wealthy, and full of energy.” (I use this one all the time!) That's it! In three minutes you've expressed gratitude, counted the victories you normally overlook, and created a positive affirmation for your future. 📓 Give it a try and let me know what you think  📓

Feeling stuck? Give these three actions a try for a week (all backed by science): 1. Daily walks outside (30 mins) Being in nature lowers stress hormones and improves blood pressure and heart rates. Best practice is to do these walks without your cell phone.  __ 2. Morning and evening journaling (10 minutes per session) Morning Protocol: 1-2-3 1 - What is the one thing that will make your day a success? 2 - What are two things you are looking forward to about your day? 3 - What are three things you are grateful for? Evening Protocol: 3-2-1 3 - What are three emotions or experiences you had today?  2 - What are two things you learned today? 1 - What is one area of growth for you to focus on tomorrow? Journaling forces us into metacognition (thinking about thinking). The more we do it the better we get at identifying emotions and patterns in our lives.   __ 3. Reach out and connect to someone you trust and enjoy. Text is good. Phone is better. In person is best. Quality relationships are a key driver in our happiness. Don’t go it alone. __ Simple concepts can sometimes be difficult in execution. Just keep chopping wood. Show up everyday and you’ll be surprised at where you are in a week. ⬳   Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this, please repost ♻️ and follow me for more ideas like this in the future.