The whole architecture of formal education conditions you to believe that the point is to finish — that there's a destination, and that the destination is the degree. You spend years optimizing for the finish line, and then you cross it, and there's nothing on the other side except the sudden, uncomfortable silence of a life that's now entirely your problem.

At its simplest, Morning Pages is a daily “brain dump”—a way to sweep the cobwebs out of your mind before you start your day. I used to write in a notebook as a kid. Slowly, though, I became guilty of being influenced by digitization—of wanting to be cool enough to write in apps like Notion.