Here’s the thing: no phones.
In order for The Morning Pages to be effective, you have to be fully present. Especially since one of the rules is not stopping. For full concentration, a cell phone has to be put away and there can’t be any interruption.
A recent article in The New York Times talked about what I’ve been feeling for some time: a sense of loss for the way we once lived. We simply walked down a street. We wrote letters. We spoke face to face. It’s a late 20th century custom that has turned into a vintage phenomenon.
“There are lots of ideas for how to break phone addiction, but not as many for how to regain the romance of what I’m coming to think of as the slow-comms era, the second half of the 20th century when the phone and the mail were our main means of long-distance communication. The ache at the sight of an empty mailbox was, in my memory, more than balanced out by the ecstasy at the letter that finally arrived.” – The New York Times
One way I got through this long and dreary winter was by leaving the house and working at the library. I visited multiple New York and Brooklyn branches and found my perfect, happy place: sitting in silence, reading and writing.
Phone off, filed away, far out of reach.