Free Writing

Sometimes you get a sense when you are coaching that a client needs a tool – something to unblock their thinking or get them to see something from a new perspective. Often a good question can do then, but sometimes not. If a client is quite open-minded and trusts my judgement, I will suggest we do a free-writing activity.

If you google it, you will probably find links to all sorts of spiritual practices – people think that it was a way to connect with the spirit world. The first time I tried, not going to lie, it felt a bit ‘woo-woo’. 15 minutes later I was converted.

Free writing is really simple. You set your timer for 10 minutes, longer if you like, and write without stopping for all of that time. You might have a set title or topic – My It’s Not Bloody Rocket Science Journal has 2 activities – one about ‘My Ideal Life’ and one about ‘Frustrations’.

The idea is to write so quickly and instinctively that you hardly take your pen off the paper, other than when you are spacing. You don’t worry about spelling, grammar or in fact making any sense at all. No one will ever see what you write, so you just keep writing on the page whatever comes into your head, without stopping or worrying if it sounds like nonsense.

My first version had lots of actual ‘blah blah, blah…’ written down. That’s great. All words count, even made-up ones or single words repeated over and over.

I have written recently about the Default Mode Network (DMN) – the state of mind we need to get into to be innovative, think about new paradigms and solve difficult problems. I call it the ‘Why You Get Your Best Ideas in the Shower Mode’ – your brain is just busy enough with a routine and pleasurable task so that your mind can wander, but not so busy ticking off jobs that you feel you need a rest at the end of it. It makes sense that this type of writing, with no rules and knowing that no-one will ever read what you have written.

This first part of free-writing would seem to take us into that DMN mode.

You then spend 5 minutes reviewing what you have written, editing, highlighting repeated words, noting how you respond to particular sections – what emotions are evoked when you read it back? I sometimes suggest you read it back as if a friend had done it. What would you want to ask them?

You may remember that we sometimes struggle to get into the DMN zone because we spend so much time in our Task Positive Network or TPN (I call this our ‘To-Do List-Mode’). People often find this editing bit easier than they did the free-writing and I suspect that is because it is a TPN activity – something we are more used to that has a clear purpose, set of rules, a clearer start and finish.

When you have your edit you can look at it and see clear patterns. It distils what is most important for us. It can help us see the wood for the trees in a way that was obscured to us. It can help simplify very big concepts into a smaller set of options. You can then either work through those things on your own, or a coach, or in a group setting if you do this together.

I recently did some free-writing with a no nonsense corporate client in a session on Company Values with the fabulous Dr Amanda Potter CPsychol, the founder of Zircon (do look them up if you want some brilliant tools for teams and businesses created by occupational psychologists who translate science into practical work-place tools you can use in real life.) I could see by some of the faces in the room that initially people were sceptical. But because people trust Dr Amanda, they went along with it. When reviewing the day, about a third of the room said it had been the most powerful activity and the group created a set of values they were 80% in agreement on in under 30 minutes.

The science behind free-writing isn’t well documented but a little knowledge makes sense of it. It’s a bit like coaching. We get things out of our brains that were in our subconscious – they weren’t so obvious to us that we could think them out straight away.

In coaching we may a question once and get an initial answer that is simplified or superficial. Keep asking, “And what else…” and leave a silence for someone to fill and the brain keeps digging to fill it. Soon we say things out loud that you have perhaps not even consciously thought about before – things that are bothering us or holding us back that were in our subconscious.

These deeper observations are what we want to get to in coaching. What do you really think? What would you do if no-one was watching? What’s really stopping you – a fully functioning and maybe very senior grown up – from moving onwards and upwards?

Free-writing does the same thing. By setting an expectation that we will just write and write and not leaving any room for reflection or self-editing we are getting all our cards on the table.

It’s why I am a fan of my new tag-line!

When you have all your cards on the table with someone you trust, you can look at the hand you have been dealt. We can decide which cards we want to keep, and which we want to get rid of.

Like a simple game of cards, there’s some risk – we can’t know if the choice we make when we play each hand is the right one. We might have a straight 50:50 situation – and we can’t know if Hearts is better than Clubs, or whether the 2 of Diamonds is actually still in the pack or if someone is holding onto it… Only time will tell. But choice is movement. It moves the game on and we get to play another hand.

Any choice is better than holding up the whole game indefinitely whilst you weigh up your options and the other players in the game give up and go and play at another table…

So if you feel stuck, have a go at free-writing. Worst case you feel a bit ‘woo-woo’ for 10 minutes and find your editing boring. Best case you might just get a bit of DMN inspiration and find out something you can use immediately to make a difference to your day, week, year or even life. Has to be worth a 15 minute experiment with an open mind to see if the brain-magic works for you?