Daily note

A daily note is one page per day that does four jobs: it says what matters most today, shows the fixed commitments, catches everything that comes up, and closes the day so nothing carries over by accident. It works because there is always exactly one obvious place to write something down: today's note.

The top three is the core. A long to-do list hides the important work among the easy work; three items forces a choice. The shutdown at the end turns a pile of captures into tomorrow's plan, so the next note starts clean.

When to use it

• Starting the day and wanting a plan.
• Wanting a daily template to reuse.
• Logging what happened during the day, as it happens or at the end.
• Running an end-of-day shutdown to close loops and plan tomorrow.