Hey there!
Welcome to another edition of my newsletter, this time revolving around the best tool I have in my productivity belt!
Today, I am sharing my daily notebook template! Yep, buckle down! I have engineered this template over the past 6 months. It is built with the specific aim to be as straightforward to fill as possible. I have tailored it to my needs, but it can be applied to anyone.
It's one page, and I've been filling it out daily for the past 5 months (not a typo; I started thinking about it a month before I started filling it out). This makes me think I now have sufficient data to discuss the impact.
Importance of Daily Tasks
Before I dive into my template, I want to take a few moments to stress the importance of setting daily tasks and having a to-do list.
Setting daily tasks is essential for many reasons and has many potential benefits. However, I want to briefly focus on the 5 that are most important for me:
Better Focus: Listing our to-do items helps us define clear and achievable daily goals and keeps us from distracting ourselves with less important activities.
Level Up Productivity: Knowing what needs to be done helps us better manage our time and increases overall productivity.
Motivation Boost: There's scientific data that proves checking off completed items is motivating and stimulating for our brains.
Prioritization Aid: Putting our tasks down on a piece of paper (or a screen) helps us identify the crucial things to do and prioritize working on them.
Discipline: Writing down and checking off daily tasks helps us develop a healthy routine of consistency and discipline, which is primarily true for long-term goals, where small steps compound over time.
The Dark Ages
I've always loved to-do lists. Even before I knew about the psychological backing of why they are so appealing, I used to have lists for everything.
But it was never organized. I would often start multiple notepads and try to have task lists for every aspect of my life, just to realize it wasn't sustainable in a few weeks and stop tracking anything altogether.
At some point, I learned moderation and realized the only way to be consistent was to stick to a daily to-do list I would write every morning and work through the day.
This meant many tasks had to be transferred from day to day when I couldn't finish everything I wrote down. I tried various notebook sizes and loved small pocket notebooks, which I then brought everywhere.
I had my list every day, and I was content with it.
Daily Takeaway
At some point, I read a blog post from someone whose name I can't remember where that person talked about writing down a daily takeaway. It resonated with what one of my favorite YouTubers, Ali Abdaal (if you don't watch him, you should!), preaches about, so I added it to the bottom of my daily list.
Every night, before going to bed, I would write one amazing takeaway from the day. This helped me gain more appreciation and perspective around my work and my overall days.
I also started putting important personal tasks in my daily lists, and the takeaways were often drawn from the experiences while performing those individual tasks.
With time, I noticed my daily pages getting more and more structured. I moved the amazing takeaway above the tasks, started noting the week number, day of the week, and date at the top of the page, and began pre-drawing little checkboxes a few days in advance.
I also started preparing my tasks the previous night, instead of every morning, right after I wrote down my last day's amazing takeaway.
Going Digital
A couple of years back, I got sucked into the hype for the upcoming reMarkable 2, and I ended up pre-ordering it. Don't get me wrong; it turned out to be one of the best investments I've ever made in my productivity. Let's face it: it was all about effective marketing back then.
At this point, I was publishing an article weekly for our startup's blog (I am still the CEO and co-founder of Magnimetrics, a cloud-based QuickBooks analytics platform for SMEs and solopreneurs), and I was doing all my article research in a notebook. I would then take the notebook and expand the bullet points into full paragraphs later. So, my idea was that I was going to use the reMarkable for this. And I did, for quite some time, before I stopped writing so often.
I tried using the reMarkable for my daily tasks at some point, but it never quite stuck. I used it so rarely that I almost sold it at some point.
Fast forward to earlier this year, and the reMarkable Type Folio was released (I have a whole video about it on my YouTube channel if you are interested).
I started this newsletter soon after and quickly started doing most of my writing on the reMarkable. This meant I had it with me all the time, so I decided to switch to writing down my daily tasks on it again,
But I decided to be smarter this time around. I found a tool (more on it later in this piece) that allowed me to create a custom page template in Canva and upload it to my reMarkable.
That's how my first digital daily tasks tracker was born, looking like this:
A Hero's Journey & Side Quests
Soon after this, I started to think about improving my template even more. I watched one of Ali's videos, where he discussed having up to three prioritized tasks for each day. He mainly focused on the first one and discussed shifting our minds to think of it as an adventure instead of simply a task.
That's where I got the idea for my What is today's adventure? section. It is my most important task for the day. If I only managed this task, my day would have been a win and wouldn't have been wasted.
Ali also discussed having 1-2 side quests (similar to an RPG) but said this is for more experienced players. I considered it and added 3 side quest slots to my daily planner.
I also made all the lines and boxes smaller, as I realized I was wasting a lot of space, given the decent screen size of the reMarkable.
Lion King cameo & happiness level tracking
My wife's favorite animated movie (and probably her favorite movie overall) is Disney's Lion King. A few years back, I got her a limited Lion King Pandora bracelet as a present, with her favorite quote engraved: Remember who you are!
With the fast pace of my life over the past 2-3 years, I have come to appreciate this quote, so I decided to put it on my daily planner for some additional motivation.
A few weeks after this, I listened to a random podcast on YouTube (btw, YouTube now officially has podcasts), where the guest was sharing how they had an app that tracked their happiness level every day.
I liked the idea, but there was no way I am installing another app, so I simply added happiness level tracking to my daily planner.
This was a few weeks ago and was the latest change to my page template. I think I will probably use the updated version of my daily to-do list for quite some time, as I am pretty happy with how it evolved.
How to do it on the reMarkable 2
First, you’ll need a design for your project. You can build your own in Canva, or use mine.
To actually get it on my reMarkable (as they don’t allow custom stuff out of the box), I had to resort to a completely free 3rd party app that can customize this and a few other aspects of the reMarkable. Keep in mind, I am not affiliated with the developer(s), and I do not suggest you use the app, as it can very realistically break your reMarkable if you don’t know what you’re doing. So, use it at your own risk!
Here’s a link: rM2 Template Helper
They also have a great PDF manual you can download from the website.
I guess that's all for today. Having a daily planner I pre-filled on the previous night when I went to bed has been a complete game-changer. I wanted to share my experience and show you my template. Feel free to make a copy and adjust it to match you perfectly.
I can now check newsletter work off from my to-do for today, and before I go to bed, I will write down a to-do item for tomorrow: edit & schedule newsletter. And that's it!
Thank you for reading my newsletter, especially if you made it to the end. As always, extra brownie points for those of you who share this post with a few friends or colleagues that you think might find it interesting.
Stay minty, and I'll see you next week!
Best,
Dobri