A daily mind clearing exercise that’s a productive alternative for those who struggle with meditation.
I just discovered a note I saved in Evernote in 2013. I was doing a quick search about writing habits and boom, three or four great articles I had previously saved showed up in my search. Including the site 750 words.
It wasn’t exactly what I was looking for but I decided to give the 750 Words tool a shot. This is really a tool for people who would like to improve their writing but don’t want to constantly try to publish things on social media or writing sites like Medium.com.
750 words will help you create a healthy writing habit by tracking your daily word count and writing habits. The cool thing is that it’s really a great way to simply clear your mind in the morning by writing any random stuff that’s in your head down on paper. I also think it’s a nice alternative to meditation especially for people that have lots of voices and ideas floating around their heads especially when they’re sitting still with their eyes closed. Here is my first example in the raw. Speech to text flow of consciousness grammatical errors included.
Tuesday, April 09, 2019
Okay, here we go 750 words. I’ve tried the morning pages concept in the past through journaling, I just have horrible handwriting and didn’t work too well. Then I tried using Evernote had some good runs but generally would forget about it and get busy with other things. I also put things on my blog once a month but I need a place to flush out some ideas and concepts.
I like the idea of using morning pages to clear the mind, almost meditative. Helps me get things off my chest in a private environment sort of like visiting a shrink but even better because I can go to back and look at how I was feeling on that day. Even five years later.
Creativity
I think it’s also a great way to flush out some ideas. You know sometimes when you’re just existing and you see things and they pop into your head, almost how things often pop in my head on a walk. So it might even be good to do a quick note after a walk as well as one in the morning. I don’t want to get ahead of myself but just some ideas here.
I have lots of crazy interests. I want to start writing about some of the photographs I’ve taken. I’m not sure really where to start. Hoping this might be a good answer because it gives me a routine. It also gives me a goal. I just noticed that the running word count is at the bottom of the page so I can shoot for that 750 every day. Shit, I am only at 255.
I might even try to do 500 early and then wrap up those last 250s Late in the afternoon primarily because some of my ideas speak to me in the evening or during a walk. How’s that for productive procrastinating?
I just watched the video about morning pages https://juliacameronlive.com/basic-tools/morning-pages/ and I really liked it as a way to remind myself of things I’m thinking about even simple things like taking out the trash or walking the dog.
Like a Second Brian
I think I will also save these to Evernote each time I get to 750 words. That way I get all the benefits of the reminders as well as the word count and having my thoughts and words show up in Evernote searches, sort of like having a second brain.
I can also write about books that I’m reading in an effort to help me remember. This might be a healthy brain exercise. I’m reading a book about habits right now called Atomic Habits and this is a perfect example of habit stacking reading a book, having some ideas, writing them down, saving them to Evernote, turning them into a blog post
Getting Stuff off Your Chest
I’ve been having a rough time lately with minor medical issues. I guess they’re minor in the scheme of things but not so much to me. Looks like I’m going to need another root canal and replacement bridge on my three front teeth and it’s not even guaranteed that it will work after spending thousands of dollars.
I am fortunate that I had a colonoscopy and they removed a pre-cancerous polyp. I want to remind myself to reschedule this in four years for a follow-up the recommended is 2 to 5 years. So maybe I’ll do 3 1/2 maybe they’ll have a better way to do colonoscopies and three and a half years who knows.
Try New Things
If this writing tool works well it would be excellent if you could just export directly to a blog post. I might want to start a blog with lots of grammatical errors and speech to text errors. Hey Siri…..write this down.
750 words is a pretty healthy amount of writing for every day. So I’m going to need some stuff to fill this up. One way of dealing with my down periods is reminding myself of things I’m grateful for. So this way I could think of three things and then expand on them.
So for example, three things I’m grateful for today
We’re going to visit family out in LA next week and I’m grateful to have lots o points I can use for our plane tickets and of our swank LA hotel. I’m also grateful we can stay with friends for a couple of nights. I found a cool way to save on rental cars and parking. There is a car-sharing service called get-around that I used a few years back when I needed a car for only two of the seven days we were on vacation and that worked out well.
I’m grateful that my wife Kelly is around to cheer me up when I’m feeling bad and that I have a nice home and a place to relax.
Finally, I’m grateful that I have the creativity to write and I found this cool tool to remind me to write every day and hopefully I’ll get much better at it. Now I just have to come up with more things I’m grateful for!
The Frug
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