Hi there 🙂
In today’s article, I’d like to share several writing techniques that contribute to our mental hygiene and improve our day-to-day wellbeing.
Disclaimer
The author of this article does not advise or prescribe the use of any technique without the guidance of a qualified medical professional, either directly or indirectly.
The purpose of this article is to provide information intended to support overall wellbeing.
If you choose to use any of the information presented, you do so at your own discretion. The author assumes no responsibility for your actions.
The first technique is morning pages¹. There are various approaches to morning pages, and they are often based on freewriting. I personally prefer doing my morning pages in the form of a gratitude journal. Let’s briefly explore both.
Freewriting
The idea is to write down everything that is happening in your mind right now – all of your thoughts, ideas, and maybe even stories or chapters of future adventurous novels or movie scripts. Who knows?
It is helpful to set a timer for 20 minutes and simply release whatever wants to come out in written form. Freewriting is a useful technique for many purposes: working on creative projects, academic assignments, releasing emotions, and understanding yourself and your feelings better.
While working on creative projects or articles, feel free to explore the slightly more guided “3 Words” technique, often used by journalists and writers whenever inspiration seems to fade. The idea is simple: take three words and incorporate them into your story, or even write an entire story around them. You can use dictionaries or word generators².
Gratitude Journal
This practice has become increasingly popular in recent years, and I strongly recommend it. I’ve been keeping a gratitude journal for around a decade now.
At one point, I even tried writing a public, channel-like gratitude diary to help myself stay consistent. I thought the visibility would motivate me more. After some time, though, I switched back to a private, handwritten version. At the same time, some people may feel more comfortable sharing what they are grateful for publicly and inspiring others along the way.
There’s nothing complicated about this practice. Simply write down 20 things you are grateful for every morning. You can also do it every evening to summarise the day in a positive way – whatever feels right for you.
When I finish my morning pages, I sometimes write down a positive statement, quotation, or affirmation to set the tone for the day. Gratitude alone can improve our mood and overall wellbeing. When practised consistently, it gradually becomes a healthy habit.
Bullet Journaling and Brain Dump
The next writing technique I’d like to talk about is the brain dump, which is part of the bullet journaling approach.
So, what is a brain dump?
Similarly to freewriting, a brain dump is about emptying your mind of thoughts, ideas, and tasks. While freewriting can be largely unstructured, brain dumps usually take the form of lists and are designed to organise your thoughts.
By the way, I highly recommend doing a brain dump after meditation. It can add more clarity and intention to the process while saving you both time and energy.
The idea is to write down everything that occupies your mind: to-do lists, ideas, reminders, random thoughts – and then work with the result. The bullet journaling approach suggests a simple way to prioritise these entries, and you can easily read more about it online.
I would only add that switching to analogue planning is a huge relief for many digitally overloaded people. It can also be a joy-generating activity for creative minds who enjoy the more soulful experience of paper books and notebooks.
Besides, handwritten notes engage our muscle memory, so we tend to remember what we write more easily. What’s more, compared with digital planning, we often become more realistic when we see the physically limited space of a page.
Speaking of prioritising tasks, there are also other widely known approaches. For example, you may want to explore Getting Things Done or use the Eisenhower Matrix (the 4 Ds) to gain more clarity.
There is also an element of intuition involved, which reminds me of one workshop where we discussed the Eisenhower Matrix with a group of highly experienced educators. One of them – a lady whose hobby was creating different kinds of handicrafts – strongly disagreed with assigning low importance to some of the non-urgent and non-important tasks.
Her argument was:
“Well, the concept is great, but when these seemingly non-urgent and non-important things make me feel good and give me more energy, I actually find them important.”
I think, deep down, we all agreed with her.
That would be it for today 🙂
Thank you for reading, and stay tuned!
In the next article, I’ll introduce more writing and journaling techniques that you can easily practise yourself and combine with language learning.
Have a wonderful day! ☀️
¹ You can find out more about this method in various books and articles, with The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron being the work that made it widely known. Feel free to also read The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod if you’re looking for an inspiring book on building positive habits.
² During one of workshops, one of my linguistics students suggested replacing dictionaries with random word generators that are easily available online. While some people prefer traditional paper books, these tools can save time and be a great fit for tech-savvy writers. By the way, 3 random words is also a password-generating technique. If you use it, make sure they are truly random.
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