The question of whether morning pages brain fog relief is real or merely aspirational wellness theatre has been circling for years, so when Stylist writer Harriet Curzon committed to the practice for a fortnight, the result was a quietly persuasive case for an old idea that refuses to go away.
The premise is disarmingly simple. Before you reach for your phone, before coffee, before your inner critic has properly assembled itself, you pick up a pen and write three pages of A4 longhand on whatever surfaces in your mind first. You do not stop. You do not edit. You do not concern yourself with whether any of it makes sense. One study, cited in Curzon’s account, puts the average daily thought count at close to 50,000. Morning pages are, in effect, a pressure valve.
Where the practice comes from
Morning pages were formalised by Julia Cameron in her 1992 book The Artist’s Way, conceived initially as a tool for creatives needing to clear the mental undergrowth before the working day began. The book has since sold over 5 million copies in more than 40 languages, according to the Life Note blog, which suggests the idea has migrated well beyond its original audience of blocked novelists and painters. The practice typically asks for between 30 and 45 minutes each morning, a not-insignificant ask for anyone whose alarm is already set earlier than they would like.
Curzon, who describes herself as emphatically not a morning person, set her alarm back by 30 minutes for 14 days and sat at her desk before her first coffee to fill pages of A4 with unfiltered waking thought. She noted what she had to do, what she was anxious about, what she was anticipating. On one day, she wrote about why rain sounds different in the morning. On another, three pages on her favourite place, Cornwall. No self-consciousness required, and none permitted.
The cognitive case for morning pages brain fog relief
Psychologist Dr Ravi Gill offers a grounding for why the practice might work beyond simple sentiment. ‘Morning pages can act as cognitive off-loading,’ she explains, ‘helping move worries, unfinished tasks and competing thoughts out of working memory and onto paper. Our working memory has limited capacity, so writing down what is taking up space in our minds can reduce mental clutter and make it easier to prioritise, concentrate and make decisions.’
The mechanism Dr Gill describes goes further than simple unburdening. Writing, she notes, encourages metacognition: the practice of thinking about one’s own thinking. Repeated worries, emotional triggers and behavioural patterns that might otherwise operate below conscious notice begin to surface and become legible when committed to the page. ‘Putting thoughts and emotions into words can create psychological distance from them,’ she says. ‘Instead of immediately reacting to frustration, anxiety or pressure, writing creates a small space to notice, process and then choose a response.’
There is also, Dr Gill suggests, a longer-term benefit. Regular reflective practice of this kind can support what she calls ‘a greater sense of clarity, control and psychological balance’ by building self-awareness and emotional regulation over time rather than simply offering a single morning’s release.
What two weeks actually produced
Curzon’s verdict is honest rather than evangelical. The brain fog clearing effect of morning pages was real but partial: she describes the initial brain dump as cathartic and credits the practice with giving her mornings a focus and a creative momentum that carried through the day. Anxieties that felt sprawling inside her head looked, she writes, considerably smaller when laid out on paper beside more positive thoughts.
What the experiment did not do was dramatically reduce overall mental noise, and Curzon is clear that she would not sustain the practice every day. On a hangover morning, she says, an extra half-hour in bed would win decisively. But on the days when 30 minutes can be carved out before the day properly begins, she intends to use them this way.
The distinction she draws between morning pages and journaling is worth noting. The cultural romanticisation of journaling, she argues, creates pressure for the writing to be polished, emotionally intelligent and poetic, which makes the whole exercise feel performative rather than useful. Morning pages discard that expectation entirely. The prose is unintelligible, unstructured and private, and that is precisely the point. Reframing the same act under a different name turned out to matter. The Julia Cameron method, it seems, is still earning its keep more than three decades after it was first set down.
