We’ve recently been getting questions about how to come up with ideas. This made me think that one of my favorite ways for generating ideas is actually through my morning routine.
This is not the main purpose of my morning routine, just a lovely unintended side effect! The purpose of this routine is to start my day off on the right foot.
I’m not sure where I came up with it, but there’s a good chance it was from listening to the Tim Ferris Podcast. I highly recommend it for all sorts of reasons, but one is that he delves into the morning routines of successful people.
Here is my morning routine:
STEP 1 - MEDITATION
Before the rest of my house is up I listen to a 20ish minute guided meditation led by a woman named Tara Brach. She’s amazing.
Again, my purpose for meditating is NOT to be more creative. There are all sorts of benefits to meditation, but the main goal is to be still and quiet. Of course, it’s the nature of the human mind to constantly be generating thoughts.
I think the fact that meditation clears the mind of its usual jumble of chaotic thinking that it allows us to register more interesting or useful thoughts when we have them.
STEP 2 - MORNING PAGES
This practice comes from a book called “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron. The rules are simple: keep your hand moving without stopping until you’ve filled three pages of a notebook. That’s it.
It literally does not matter what you write, but you should be writing the first thoughts that come to mind. Because I do this just after meditating, it gives me a chase to capture any great thoughts I had during. Besides that, I usually write what dreams I remember from the night before, what I did the day before and what I plan to do later that day.
The point of morning pages is to clear your head of all the thoughts jumbled up in there. If you trust in the process and stick to it, it’s pretty much guaranteed that you will find yourself writing down ideas you want to explore more!
If you want to come up with ideas, adding some sort of morning routine like meditation and morning pages may help. Of course, if you start a routine that includes things like this, it’ll have all sorts of other benefits too!
If you already have a morning routine you love, please share it with us!
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