My Daily Note System

For a few years now I've been using a system to help me get more stuff done with my days, at the suggestion of a good friend I'm posting it here in case it can be useful to anyone else!

At its core, the system is a notepad of tasks written each night for the following day. This helps me wake up and refresh my memory of what I want to be working on, its especially helpful for me since there are often multiple different strands of projects (as well as various chores) that I need to keep on top of.

Remember, this is just my system, if you think it would be better with some changes, feel free to customize it to your liking!

The System

First you'll need to find a nice small notebook. It should be about A5 in size and ideally spiral bound so you can leave it open on the current day ready for you to look at when you wake up and throughout the day when your wondering what to work on next. My one is a "tall" notebook with about 18 lines per page, I've found this kind of size is a nice sweet spot for me since it is enough to write all the things I want to do without letting me make an overwhelmingly long list that is daunting to tackle.

Now that you have your notepad, each evening turn to a new page and start writing your tasks. Each main task should take up 2 lines so you cant overwhelm yourself. It can either have a square checkbox to indicate it is important or something you really want to get done, or alternatively it can have a circular checkbox to mark it as an optional task. You can also add subtasks or other minor tasks as smaller entries that only take up one line or part of a line - just be careful to size and categorise tasks in accordance to how much work they are to complete.

When you wake up and during the day, take a look at the note to see what you can work on. Whenever you complete a task - or make satisfying progress on a task (such as for bigger projects that would be impossible to complete in just one day), tick off that tasks' box! Then at the end of the day if all your square boxes have been ticked off, reward yourself by writing a "nya!" or whatever you please on that days page to recognise your achievement. Then write the next days' worth of tasks and repeat!

Rules Summary

• One page per day
• Square check boxes for mandatory/important tasks
• Circle check boxes for optional tasks
• Each main task should take up two lines, 1 line for subtasks

Addons

While the above is the core of the system, I've also added a few extra things to the system that you may like to use

• Task times: sometimes there will be tasks that represent events I want to go to, or ones that are due at a specific time in the day. For these ones I write that time inside a circle next to the task (generally in 24 hour format but that's just personal preference)
• Day counters: some tasks need to be done by a certain date, for these ones I keep track of how long I have left by writing the number of days remaining inside brackets next to the task. Each day I'll move these tasks to the next page and decrement the counter until it becomes due or is completed early
• Double sided pages: Since I just use one side of the pages each time I go through a notebook, you can double the amount of pages you have to work with by using both side, I like to do this by flipping the notebook over and going through the other way when I get to the end of the normal side.

So that's the system! If you think it sounds cool give it a go and see if it works for you 😸🐈