Being optimistic I tend to focus on the positives. So even when the COVID-19 pandemic struck, I acknowledged it, adjusted our plan for 2020 accordingly, decided to shelter ourselves in Taiwan (best decision ever) and have been moving on with our lives (for now). I am attributing this ability to remain optimistic in life by having a healthy morning routine.
Since there are a lot of things going on in the world, I thought this might be a good time to give people a break from the daily news and share some techniques that might help them also get the most out of their lives. I will be sharing the key elements of my morning routine in a short series of posts. In this first article, I will be talking about my bullet journaling routine, explaining what journaling is all about, what I am journaling about, how much time I spend on journaling, what I am getting out of this activity and provide you with resources to get you started within minutes! Are you ready to learn about new techniques to retake control over your day and life?
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Why a morning routine?
A morning routine primes me for the day. It is the first thing I do after I wake up to keep me excited and happy about life by staying energized, focused, and sharp. Side note: as slow travelers/nomads who like to change location every 4-6 weeks, it is however a challenge to keep our morning routine as we have to build new cues every time we change our environment.
From a high-level here are the core activities of my morning routine (in chronological order) and the value I get from each of them:
- Meditation / Gratitude: start the day away from distractions, get to a mentally clear and emotionally calm and stable taste
- Exercising & Cold shower: start the day away from distractions, wakes you up, keeps the body in shape, gets the blood flow going
- Journaling: start the day away from distractions, gives me focus and makes me feel good by looking back at my past accomplishments. To learn more about this practice check our post: How 5 minutes of bullet journaling can help you focus and turbocharge your day
- Reading: getting new knowledge by reading some life changing books
- Intermittent fasting: bring energy for the day, by letting the gut rest so the brain can be fully available
This morning routine also has an important hidden benefit of keeping me away from my devices (smartphone, laptop) as the first thing I would do in the morning. While smartphone/laptops are wonderful devices to keep us connected with friends and family they disrupt our changes of starting your day with a calm mind as you get bombarded by a lot of notification from all the apps you have installed on your device. Keep in mind that about 80 percent of smartphone users check their mobile phones within 15 minutes of waking up every morning (source).
Journaling is my writing activity and it is the activity that we will be covering in depth in this article.
Why journaling?
Journaling helps me get more out of my day by focusing only on very few things while helping me easily let go of the noise or distraction.
- It helps me start the day undistracted, by being away from any smart devices (phone, laptop, tablet…) as I journal using a pen and a notebook.
- It gives me clarity for the day by tracking what is important for today and acknowledging and parking away other thoughts/ideas that might come up during the day.
- It reminds myself of how grateful I am to be able to live another day.
- It makes me feel better at the end of the day by showing me the meaningful activity I was able to accomplish.
What is bullet journaling?
There are many ways to journal. I am a big proponent of the bullet journaling method, which is described in great details on the video that I’ve included below (source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fm15cmYU0IM)
I love this low tech approach (pen + paper) of journaling a couple to some simple convention that makes it highly customizable and powerful. You will be amazed at how much power you get to organize your thoughts without having to rely on fancy digital apps. If you haven’t tried it before, please give it a try as it might be as life changing for you as it has been for me!
What’s in my journal?
Each journal is different. My journal is divided into multiple sections. In this article we will focus only on the section related to my daily routine. If you are interested, please leave a comment and I will be happy to share the other section of my journal that I update on a less frequent basis.
Note: I am currently using an A5 journal (5”×8.25”) as it is compact, lightweight and perfect for bullet journaling. If you are looking to get out, check out the Premium Bullet Grid Journal from Wordsworth as it is an excellent value.
- Monthly highlights calendar: this monthly view takes a full spread page of my journal. On the left spread I have basically two columns: Personal & Passion that I use to capture any major upcoming events, travel or activities for that specific month. As the month goes through, I also use this to capture the major moments / milestones that have happened during the month.
Habit tracker: the habit tracker is an extension of the monthly calendar. It take place on the right spread of the page. I list any habits I am trying to build or would like to strengthen. For examples, here are some of the habits I am currently tracking: “meditating for 20 minutes”, “updating my gratitude journal daily”. or “hitting my daily move goal”. Pro-tip: Make sure your habits are actionables and specific! (Don’t say meditate but instead say meditate first thing in the morning for at least 10 minutes).
Monthly Master todo list: this contains all the items that I need to keep an eye on. When creating my new monthly view spread, I will carry over todo items from the last month to the current month, after deciding whether or not the item is still relevant.
- Weekly spread: This is where I spend most of my time updating my journal everyday. I use a full spread to track an entire week. I split the two pages into 8 sections. The first seven sections are for one day of the week. At the top of each of these I will capture the top 3 items I would like to accomplish today and then I will then capture the major activity I’ve completed on that day using the bullet journal technique.
Weekly highlight: This is the last section of my weekly journal where I capture the main highlight of the week, that I usually capture at the end of the week by reviewing the other sections.
- Gratitude page: this page has one line per day of the month where I write the three items I am the most grateful for. Usually thinking about both the people I have around me or the things I’m able to experience.
How much time does it take?
Updating my journal is a 5 minutes activity every day.
After waking up (1 minute), I update the gratitude page by calling out 3 things I am grateful for. I like to also remind myself to think about things that money can’t buy me.
Before going to bed (3-4 minutes), I update my weekly journal by filling the section of the current day by writing what I’ve accomplished during the day. I also check on whether or not I completed the 3 main activities I set for that day. And finally, I update my habit tracker. I then write the next 3 three things that I would like to accomplish.
Monthly setup
Once a month I manually create the new pages for the upcoming month. Check out the timelapse video below to see what the end to end process looks like.
If you are interested to get started on your journaling routine as quickly as possible, I created a PDF file (digital download) of the main pages of the journal that you can download here. (or click the image below)
Special offer: as a reader of our blog, use the promo code NNBLOGONE at checkout to get a sweet discount.
Bottom line
There is so much positivity and negativity in all of humanity that you can spend your entire life dedicated to one side of the coin, without seeing the end of it. Which side are you going to focus your energy on? If you want to focus on the positive, then you should think about building your morning routine. In this article I show you my journaling routine and what I get out of it. In a future article we will cover other activities that are part of my morning routine.
What about you? Do you have a morning routine and if so what are the core activities that it is made of? Have you seen some important changes in your life after starting a morning routine? Let us know by leaving a comment below!
12 Comments
Derek · June 12, 2020 at 1:47 pm
Having a journal is a recent addition for me but I find writing down on a Gratitude page just before bed really helps me remove any stress.
Mr. Nomad Numbers · June 12, 2020 at 2:43 pm
Hi Derek! Glad to know that you are also been enjoying journaling. Isn’t it amazing the benefit we get from going back to and pepper?
Hao · June 25, 2020 at 3:26 pm
Thank you for this article. It helps me start each day with more purpose and spirit. Although I could not reach your high level of organization, I apply the concept in a simple way. I use a small lined notebook, 6 inches by 8 inches. In the morning, I write what I’m grateful for on one page, then I write the tasks to accomplish that day on the next page. Sometimes I dedicate a third page for yearly goals (2020-2021). My daily tasks usually involve physical and mental fitness, investment and financial planning, travel planning and research, education, houseworks, etc. As I finish my tasks for the day, I put check marks in the notebook. The undone unchecked tasks become tasks for the next day or become unnecessary and deleted. I have just started this habit for a week and try to work out the kinks. I feel that I can be grateful for many things, but I must be realistic about the daily task list. Too many tasks may set myself up for failure (I guess that’s why you have weekly and monthly task lists). Just the right amount of daily tasks makes the list doable and rewarding. Once I do this for a few months, then I may progress to incorporating weekly and monthly calendars. All in all, thanks for the great idea.
Mr. Nomad Numbers · June 26, 2020 at 2:30 am
Thank you Hao for spending the time to share your experience! I’m so happy & excited for you because it’s by taking action like you did that you can works toward living a better life!
Journaling isn’t a one size fit all type of practice. Actually I would say that like personal financial, journaling is… personal. So it’s totally okay that your version of your practice looks different than the one I described. Like with any new habit, for it to stick it need to feel natural. Once it start feeling like a checkbox then you are gonna either waste precious time & energy by sticking to it or just stop doing it. Making adjustments as you go as you’ve already done during that first week should help you craft a routine that stuck. So well done in that!
A few comments: we like to only write one line about gratefulness, because why we found a lot to be grateful for as we started, overtime we preferred focusing on just 3 items max and sticking to one line of our journal to force us to keep to the essence of what we want to capture. As for the daily tasks we only stick to 3 max, sometime like when go on a day trip to visit a place the task might just be that. Again over time we have found value in focusing on quality over quantity.
As you’ve noticed, our journal goes just beyond the daily/weekly practices I’m describing in this post and that’s because we like how powerful bullet journaling was for us to structure our thoughts and keep everything in one place. For instance, overtime we added one page for purchases, one for books to read and one places we want to travel to because those are things we care about and that we want to keep track of, without cluttering our mind when these idea came about. Last week I added in my purchase list page « virtual credit card » to describe the idea a credit card that could automatically load multiple credit cards on it. By opening new credit cards every other month, I wish we could use them physically while living overseas. Since we received these card in the USA we only use them online. Such « virtual » card would let us also use our newly opened credit cards at local business while overseas. Now that’s it’s in my journal i don’t have to think about it. I will do more research when we will be back to the USA. By that time I might simply scratch it off because I realized we don’t really need such card or because such card doesn’t exist yet. I already scratch things on that list that I wrote earlier this year. So it’s a great way to really identify what things you really need to add in your life. Love it 🙂
Would you be interested if I write a follow up post with some of our additional pages that we have for people to consider adding to their journal that aren’t part of our morning routine but rather part of bullet journaling in general?
Hao · June 26, 2020 at 2:45 am
Thank you for replying to my comment. I agree with “quality over quantity.” I will try to get my lists more precise and concise. Furthermore, a follow-up post with your additional pages would be wonderful. Thank you for offering that.
Mr. Nomad Numbers · June 26, 2020 at 2:49 am
You are welcome. Also feel free to come back in a few weeks to report how this experiment is working for you. I would personally love to see the additional tweaks you will be making to your journal and the impact this activity will have on your days.
Charles M · January 16, 2023 at 1:27 pm
Thank you for this great post and sharing lots of valuable information and insights on how you spend your day. Very interesting indeed. . On the intermittent fasting. What fast do you do please. Is it 18.6? And how many times a week do you do it. Keep up the great work👍.
Mr. Nomad Numbers · January 20, 2023 at 1:26 am
Hi Charles. We started with 16:8 but are now doing the 18:6. We do it every single day but if there is a good excuse to break our fast (this tend to happen a few times each year) we do not feel bad about it. Have you started IF already? What has your experience been so far?
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