This time around we’re talking with Alison Jones, a writing coach, business book publisher and author of Exploratory Writing: Everyday Magic For Life And Work.

Hey, Alison! If you could recommend One Good Thing everyone can do to improve their mental health, what would it be?

Set a timer for six minutes, ask yourself a question, and write in response to that with a pen or pencil on a scruffy pad of paper without stopping. Oddly specific, right?

That is very specific… why is this your One Good Thing?

Usually when you’re writing you’re performing, trying to influence or inform or impress the reader. This kind of free-wheeling, speed-of-thought, private writing is the exact opposite: instead of trying to communicate what you know as convincingly as possible, you’re giving yourself a safe space to explore what you don’t know.

Interesting. How does it work?

We all have a fascinating mental reflex known as ‘instinctive elaboration’, which means that if someone asks us a question we can’t help but try answering it. But we don’t usually ask ourselves good questions. For example, ‘what’s most important here?’ is a really good question; ‘why are you so pathetic?’ not so much. And even more rarely do we give ourselves time to explore some answers.

The reason that writing so fast without stopping is so important is that it allows us to blast past our carefully constructed rules about what’s ‘acceptable’ to think and what’s not, and find out what’s really going on between our ears.

One Good Thing: how writing for 6 minutes a day could change your life for the better