5-minute AI writing warmup

Yesterday, I told you why your brain needs a warmup before you start writing.

Today, I want to show you how to do it.

More specifically, I’m going to introduce you to a concept that makes your writing warmup effortless.

It’s called Freewriting.

Freewriting is simply writing continuously without stopping to edit or judge anything.

The goal is to explore what’s in your head for a fixed time period (15 minutes) or until you hit a target word count (750 words). This helps you clear your “mental clutter” and ultimately shines a light on ideas you didn’t know you had.

You might be familiar with Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist’s Way, where she talks about “morning pages” - three pages of longhand writing first thing in the morning.

Same concept.

The problem is what comes after.

When you finish, you’ve got 500–1,000 words staring back at you—messy, unfiltered, and hard to make sense of. You went from paralyzed by the blank page to a cobbled mess of words that has no rhyme or reason.

Still, something is better than nothing.

So, what do you do with your raw materials?

Well, first you need to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Read through what you wrote and highlight any phrases, topics, or lines that stand out. If it’s interesting to you, it’s probably interesting to someone else. Then ask yourself, “Who cares?”

You might be thinking, “This sounds like a solution in search of a problem.”

And you’re right.

Freewriting isn’t the most logical way to write educational content. Most of the time, you should start with your audience in mind. But when you’re stuck, this method gets you moving. And the more you do it, the more you’ll understand why it’s so important to know who you’re writing for.

Writing is an art.

And this is a different brush from the same palette.

Traditionally, after you finish freewriting, you’d spend another 10-15 minutes reading through what you wrote, highlighting interesting bits, trying to spot patterns. It’s tedious. And by the time you’re done analyzing, you’re mentally exhausted before you even start your actual writing.

Which is not what you want.

The good news is AI can extract insights from your random thoughts in seconds.

Let me show you what I mean.

A few weeks ago, I sat down to write my newsletter. I’d been thinking about annoying AI’isms. So I set a timer for 5 minutes and just started writing about my frustrations about writing with AI. When the timer went off, I had about 600 words of rambling thoughts.

I pasted it into Claude with this prompt:

I just did a 5-minute freewriting session. 

I want you to read through what I wrote and tell me:

1. What topics you find
2. What’s the most interesting angle here
3. Who might be an ideal audience for this type of content

Here’s what I wrote:

[Pasted my brain dump]

And here’s what Claude came back with:

I hadn’t even realized I kept circling back to one idea. But once AI pointed it out, I knew exactly what to write about.

The newsletter I wrote that day resulted in the highest engagement for the month.

If you’re curious, here it is:

10 Dead Giveaways Your Content Screams "AI Wrote This"

Now, I need to be clear about something.

5-minutes is only the beginning

The real goal here is to develop hypergraphia - writing 60-90 minutes per day minimum. Writing should become your default morning activity.

That’s elite for clear thinking. Elite for building a business. And elite for fixing your attention span.

Any time I feel overwhelmed or lacking clarity, it’s because I’ve stopped writing.

60-90 minutes sounds intimidating when you’re just starting.

So start with 5.

Most people find that once they begin, they end up writing much longer. Because once you get in rhythm, it’s harder to stop.

Which is exactly the point.

Try this 5-minute warm-up tomorrow morning. Keep your fingers moving. If you get stuck, literally write “I’m stuck” until something new comes. Then paste it into ChatGPT or Claude to see what it finds.

That’s it.

Tomorrow, I’ll show you how to take this one step further.

Chat soon,

—Dickie & Cole

Co-Founders of Ship 30 For 30

Co-Founders of Premium Ghostwriting Academy

Co-Founders of Typeshare

Co-Founders of Write With AI