Three pages a day

Whether or not this has you rushing for the nearest notebook, there's a general attitude here that's well worth cultivating – a healthy scepticism toward the part of your brain that's so enthusiastic about controlling how things unfold. You just do the pages, and something else does the rest.

Don't trip so hard about your consciousness always being in the drivers' seat in your brain. Sometimes, just let your brain take the wheel and you might be surprised by what you find.

Morning Pages is another tactic for getting out of your own way like this – a ritual, in a deep sense of that word, because what's key is the observance, not harnessing that observance for some particular outcome. Everyone should have one or two such rituals, if you ask me, to help unclench one's agitated grip on the world and to encounter reality as it is.

Whether or not this has you rushing for the nearest notebook, there's a general attitude here that's well worth cultivating – a healthy scepticism toward the part of your brain that's so enthusiastic about controlling how things unfold. You just do the pages, and something else does the rest.