When it comes to tech, I tend to think of myself as an early adopter. I had my first iPhone nearly a decade ago, before it became the norm for high school students up and down the land, our first DVD player cost at least ten times more than a basic model today (and it worked fractionally worse too!) and I’m eagerly awaiting the “paper tablet” from reMarkable. (Mine’s due to land late August. I cannot wait!)

But I realised this week that I can also be incredibly slow!

Because this week, for the first time ever, I started writing ‘morning pages’. (Okay, the very first one was ‘afternoon pages’ but eh, details!) You’ve probably come across this before but, just in case not, the idea is to put pen to paper (or fingers to keys if you prefer. The die hard fans might suggest otherwise but I’m more of the ‘whatever method means you’ll actually do it’ kind of girl) ideally first thing in the morning before you start your day proper, and just write whatever comes to mind. No editing, no censoring – and no need to show it to anyone else.

And that last bit was why it took me until now to play with this.

The idea of putting words on a page that would never see light of day sounded totally crazy to me. Why would I waste even just fifteen minutes every day writing something that I’ll never use?!? That’s madness! On a good day I can write half a chapter in fifteen minutes. Repeat that process every day  for a year and that’s one hundred and eighty two chapters gone to waste. That’s nearly three full novels! See? Total lunacy!

Total lunacy yes, until I actually tried it.

In just three days and a little over 1500 words I’ve somehow found myself having problems I didn’t even know were properly bugging me. I was vaguely aware of them yes, niggles and itches, but that was all. Better than that, contained within those 1500 words are some solutions. Sweet!

I still need to take those half-formed solutions and play with them a little, yes there’s work to be done, but the sense of clarity and enthusiasm is crazy. (Good crazy!)

And so I wanted to take a moment today to encourage you to consider those things you might have, until now, rejected or discounted as not being right for you.

(And yes, if you, like me, thought ‘morning pages’ was a total waste of time, a self-indulgent practice for people with too much time on their hands maybe, I’d challenge you to face that head on by giving it a try for a week.)

You might be right in your initial assessment but you might find yourself stunned by the difference and wondering why you never tried it before. But here’s the thing – you won’t know unless you try! ?