A few years ago, I read Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist’s Way, with a group of 10 women. In this book, Cameron emphasizes the importance of what she calls “morning pages”— three pages of journaling on paper, completed first thing after you rise. Before coffee, before checking messages, before anything.

The rules surrounding morning pages are loose. You can write anything that crosses your mind: a dream you just had, your fears about the day, gratitude, or even “I don’t know what to write” over and over again. While the practice was originally designed to help artists break out of a creative rut, it’s a technique that proves valuable for every aspect of life. After committing to it for several months, I realized it was positively influencing how I organized my thoughts and helping me make better, more thoughtful decisions at work.

At the time, there were some things going on at my former office that I felt both uncomfortable with and uncomfortable talking about. There was confusion on the team because people were making accusations of others to leadership, and leadership was taking action without proper communication. The result was a major hit to company morale. Many of us wondered: Will I be put on disciplinary action? Will I be fired for something I didn’t do?

One day, our HR manager invited me to a meeting without sharing the agenda. I was anxious and had no idea what to expect. Would I be next in line for an unfounded layoff?

I needed courage. When I hit the pages that morning, I confronted the fears I had about how this meeting would go. I had some decisions to make about how I would respond if things went south.

During the meeting, I spoke clearly, calmly, and with confidence. I did not ramble on out of nervousness. I had already decided who I was going to be that day, regardless of how the conversation went. After leaving the meeting, I was actually shocked at how easy it had been to advocate for myself. I quickly connected this pleasant surprise with the day’s writing practice. Because I had taken the time to check in with myself about what I thought, and commit to it by writing it on paper, it transformed how I felt about the conversation and how I handled it in the moment.

Without writing through my thoughts that day, it’s likely that I would have “caved” and simply agreed with everything the other person said. My natural propensity toward wanting to be liked would have taken over. My other natural propensity toward over-talking would have come out, and my words would have sounded apologetic rather than confident about what I knew to be true. Because I had decided how I was going to confront my colleague ahead of time, I was able to better manage the situation.

I still write my morning pages daily, and it has changed my life. My pages contain everything from the mundane to the existential. They keep my ADHD in check by giving me an opportunity to organize my schedule and carve out the space to ask myself: Who am I today? Where am I going? And why?

Having designated time to explore those questions has had a profound effect on my decision-making. I’m less impulsive because I start the day with a plan. I’m more confident, not constantly looking around for the approval of others because I’ve recently revisited who I am in my own eyes. I’m more intentional about how I spend my time, and my decisions, both pre-planned and improvisational, are less driven by emotions like anger or fear.

Why You Should Make Journaling a Daily Practice

Various sources suggest that the average adult makes 33,000 to 35,000 total decisions each day, including what we will eat, what we will wear, what we will say, and how we’ll say it. These happen automatically and simultaneously through the information we’ve subconsciously stored about what is “good” or “bad.” Gerald Zaltman, a Harvard Business School professor, suggests that 95% of our cognition occurs in the subconscious mind. This is by necessity — our brains would short-circuit if we had to weigh more than 30,000 decisions one by one.

Some of the decisions we’re making, of course, are heavier than others: how we’ll do our jobs, spend our time, treat our loved ones, or invest our money. When we leave too many choices to our subconscious — simply because we’re doing things the way we’ve always done them — we miss out on opportunities to do better. The practice of daily writing interrupts this “autopilot mode” and invites us to live our lives more intentionally.

I have benefited greatly from my morning pages routine. But if my story isn’t enough to convince you, here’s some research on how writing can help you, too.

You’ll make more balanced decisions.

The act of physically writing employs both the right and left sides of the brain. Both sides need to work together to externally express the contents of the mind. This benefits you in two ways: your logical, rational side is employed so that your feelings can’t exclusively run the show, and your creative and imaginative side is employed so that you can see beyond black-and-white, limiting thinking.

You’ll be able to break down complex decisions.

Our working memory can only hold around three to four items at a time, the same way our hands can only hold a limited number of objects simultaneously. Say, for example, you’re faced with a decision about whether to take a new job in another state. This isn’t a simple decision. To make a thoughtful choice, you need to ask yourself several questions: What will job satisfaction be like? How will money play a part in your decision (considering the cost of moving, the cost of living, and a potentially new salary)? How will the move impact your partner or other people in your life? Faced with this situation, many people would make a pros/cons list. That is a good start, but it is not the kind of writing Julia Cameron talks about with morning pages.

Compelling yourself to sit down and write what you really think is much different than simply making a list. Why do you want this? What fears might be getting in your way? What might be distracting your decision? Are you restless, or running away from something? What kind of confidence will you need to move to an entirely new place, and combat imposter syndrome?

Your writing might look something like this:

I cannot believe I got the job offer in Massachusetts. It’s everything I’ve dreamed about since I graduated. It should be an easy decision, but I guess if I’m honest, there’s something inside that feels like it’s not right. I don’t know what it is. I’ve never been an expert in following my intuition. Everyone around me seems so excited, and it’s hard to find the quiet to figure out why I’m feeling this hesitation.

As the above example shows, the first two sentences you write may be the only thing on your mind. But as soon as they’re on paper, you’ll often realize something deeper. If you continue following that thread and writing about what does or doesn’t feel right, you may be surprised by how naturally a resolution — or at the very least, clarity — arises.

You’ll become more confident in your decisions.

University of Michigan researchers Winston Sieck and Frank Yates explored our level of confidence in the decisions we make when we do and don’t think through them on paper. In a study of 100 undergraduate students at the University of Michigan, participants were given a prompt about what should be done in the case of a potential disease outbreak.

When people are responding to something they’re told, they’re often subject to what’s called the “framing effect.” Essentially, people are more likely to think positively about something that is framed positively, and negatively about something that is framed negatively. Keeping this information in mind, Sieck and Yates intentionally framed the less desirable answer to their prompt in a positive light to see how participants would respond.

In the end, they found that participants who wrote about their decisions before making them were much more confident about the decisions they had made and made less biased choices. Those participants were able to more easily spot the falsely positive answer and thoughtfully weigh their options. As a result, they not only felt more confident, but their decisions were also fairer.

Further research shows that if we don’t pay enough attention to our options, we have less confidence in the decisions we make.

How to Get Started

You may be tempted to put off writing until you have a tough call ahead of you. But making it a daily practice is worth considering. The more you pick up the pen, the more you’ll begin to discover what was hanging out in your subconscious, just because you took the time to explore it.

Whenever you have 20 minutes of quiet to re-calibrate, check in with yourself about what decisions are ahead of you and take full inventory of the emotions or fears that could be impacting how you decide.

This writing doesn’t need to be well thought-out. The whole point of writing is to make the blank pages your thinking space. Complete vulnerability is critical to your success here. You need to be able to write freely without worrying about how anyone will perceive what you’ve written or how you’ve written it.

Some people find vulnerability difficult, even in a private journal, because of past experiences with others reading them. If you find yourself holding back, write on something you can destroy immediately after the exercise. You can use sticky notes, napkins, or a password-protected file. The value is not in the product, but in the process.

If you don’t know how to begin thinking about a decision, here are some questions to fuel your thinking.

• What is the primary emotion I feel about making this decision?
• Is there anything distracting me right now that might impact my ability to make the best decision?
• Have I consulted all stakeholders?
• What information do I still need to make this decision?
• What are potential threats to my confidence about this decision?
• Am I making this decision from the best version of myself?

On the days you’re not working through a decision, it’s still good to continue writing. You could indulge in conscious, long-hand writing about any difficult moments in your life. This has also been strongly connected to better long-term health outcomes. Stress is given a place to “go,” rather than being stored in the body.

Writing can also be revealing. My clients attest that they often write something down and realize, “I didn’t know I felt that way until just now.”

. . .

The thought of having to complete some kind of writing assignment when we’re already pressed beyond measure is something few people have room for in their schedule. But the research is clear that the exponential influence of this practice, even when deployed sparingly, is irreplaceable. Whether or not you take up a daily practice, don’t let any number of skipped days deter you from taking it back up again. You will likely find value every time you do it, however infrequent. Knowing why you’re doing what you’re doing is a critical component of making wise, unbiased, and confident decisions.