Every morning I use a basic journaling routine to start my day.
When I fire up my computer, the first thing I do is open my note-taking tool and copy/paste in my daily template.
That template looks like this:
***
Today’s Date – November 30th, 2021
Gratitudes
- The first thing I’m grateful for today. This could be something small like..
- I’m grateful for this hot cup of coffee to start my day, or something bigger like..
- I’m grateful to be able to celebrate the holidays in-person with my friends and family after a lousy year with Covid-19. It doesn’t matter if it’s big or small. This routine just helps to build the gratitude muscle and grounds myself with positivity and healthy perspective to start the day.
To Do List
- What’s the next action I need to do? I update that here
- and here
- and here
- and sometimes, it adds to the to-do list from days before and reminds me that I need to get focused and burn down my to-do list. Sometimes I also realize I had to-dos that weren’t in fact important or just resolved themselves on their own.
Idea Of The Day
- Is there any stroke of genius or ridiculous idea I want to write down and revisit later? If so, I’ll jot it down here.
- Or maybe it’s some quote I heard or read, that just seems like a great idea to ponder and think about.
Notes
- Throughout the day, I’ll just log my notes in this section. If I have a call, I’ll add a bullet point like…
- Call with Batman to discuss the new Gotham City Building
- And then I’ll add notes about that call here
***
I use Roam Research and templates to make it easy to link and group ideas together over time, but really any note-taking tool should work here. You can see a snapshot of that below. Another new one to look at is called Reflect App.
I’ve found this to be a pretty simple and effective way to start my day.