Every day, I run a brief daily planning routine. I have two main purposes with it: First, to do a self-reflection for the day; second, to plan the day ahead and adapt the week plan. The process is broken into three steps, as follows.

Review today’s history

I’ve been a big fan of journaling for long. This is the step of my routine when I review past events. This day in my history. It makes me feel good to remember special moments, personal and professional achievements, the development of my children, traveling notes, and so on.

I review both my personal and professional journals. I write that in software. Currently, I use Obsidian as my journal and note-taking app.

Review next activities

This is the step when I review my agenda and next actions from my to-do list and plan what I’ll address during the day. Currently, I use Google Calendar and Todoist as tools for that.

I may also look at the pending activities on my teams’ boards - usually a Kanban board in a tool such as Jira, Trello, etc.

Review communications

The first moment of the day when I check my e-mail and messaging tools. I get up to date with that, follow up on messages, or create tasks in one of my to-do lists.


Reviewing my journals and next actions is usually quick, no more than 10 minutes. Reviewing communications may get a bit longer depending on the needs found there. I have 30 minutes closed in my schedule every morning for this daily planning routine, but I rarely use the whole slot for it.

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