How I Keep a Daily Journal in Notion (Journal Template Included)

The gist: Here's how I use a daily journaling template in my Notion bullet journal to create a bullet journal-style daily journaling habit. 

If you subscribe to our YouTube channel, there is a good chance you found it through the episode of Notion Office Hours I did with Marie Poulin and Matt Ragland on how to use Notion for bullet journaling.

In it, I share how my entire Notion bullet journal, all of the different collections and all of the different spreads, are all held together by one daily journaling practice and one daily review template.

And because of how that Notion template for my daily journal is set up, I never need to spend more than a few minutes at a time updating any of the others.

It's like a Notion five-minute journal.

So in this walkthrough, I'm going to show you how that Notion journal setup for daily logs works, so you can see what I mean by that and what the process looks like.

The Notion Bullet Journal Index

Here's the home page of my Notion review dashboard, which is the equivalent of my digital bullet journal index:

It's where anything that is also (or formally would have been) in my physical bullet journal goes, inside of my overall Notion set up.

Because I also use a physical bullet journal, I use a lot of bullet journal terms like logs, spreads, and collections.

I've got daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly reflection databases at the top.

The stuff below it, in a traditional bullet journal, would be considered collections or trackers. They're all databases that then have linked views inside of my daily note.

Notion Daily Journal Setup

The views of this database that I look at the most are my scorecards and the gallery.

Here's the scorecard view:

My scorecard database view uses a formula based on different stats and rollups in my habit and health trackers that I'll explain later.

And here's the gallery view:

The photo gallery database view shows any journal entry that has a photo attached, with that photo as the preview. 

I normally fill out my daily entry as part of my evening routine, and it's quick and easy because of the templates and linked database views.

It just takes 5 minutes, and once I'm done, I set up the entry for the next day.

My go-to, default daily journal template is the one called daily dashboard, but I also have two less detailed templates for days that I don't have the energy a full daily review.

Once I apply the database page template, the only things that I need to do manually are:

• Fill out the page title and date fields, both with the date (I use both so that titles are clear, but I can still use the calendar database view). I use a TextExpander snippet to streamline this even more.
• Attach the week from the weekly spread.
• Create new pages in the embedded database views.

Then I'll start filling out my reflection, starting with the habit tracker and health tracker, which are the first two linked databases embedded in the page.

I like to keep these things separate instead of combining all the properties into one database so that I can fill them out separately or skip one if I want to.

Morning Routine Section

Next, there's a morning routine section for when I start my Notion daily log earlier in the day. And it's easily hide-able under a toggle for days I don't reference it.

I can even choose whether I want to use the checklist template for a shorter, more abbreviated morning routine, or the one for a slower, more leisurely morning routine.

Then I would press the applicable template button to create a checklist and then go about my business.

Interstitial Journaling in Notion

After that section are the linked databases for my health and habit trackers mentioned before.

Following that is a section where I braindump throughout the day using interstitial journaling techniques.

As thoughts come up throughout the day, I put a timestamp in the bullet point using a TextExpander shortcut and then jot down the note.

Notion Linked Databases

Pretty much everything after the braindumping journaling section is a linked database from the other Notion trackers.

In addition to the databases already mentioned, I've got a writing word count tracker, a work journal, and a wins progress log.

(These are all available in the Work Brighter With Notion bundle, by the by.)

Notion Evening Review

Finally, in between the linked databases is a checklist for my evening review.

This is basically GTD processing and digital decluttering catchup that I want to do before I go screen-free for the rest of the night.

The first step of that is updating stats I'm tracking both here in this spread and in my physical bullet journal.

Then I look at my two Notion inboxes, the two different places that I clip new content to throughout the day:

• A regular inbox for random tasks and thoughts
• A content consumption queue for videos and blog posts I want to check out

Then the final thing that I do is to plan for the next day by looking over my tasks database for anything due tomorrow, and looking at my calendar.

Other Notion Bullet Journal Collections

If a collection from my overall digital bullet journal index isn't included in this daily review template, it's because I don't update it enough to warrant it being built into my daily template.

But during this daily review section, in addition to filling out this daily journaling template, I'll also go into any other dashboards or collections that I have in my Notion dashboard and review them when needed.

Daily Habit Scorecard

Now, based on all the information that I inputted into those different areas and linked databases, I can scroll to the top and see that habit score card that I mentioned earlier, all filled out and beautiful.

It pulls in my sleep score from my health tracker, my productivity score from RescueTime, my word count from my writing tracker, and a habit rating based on the habit tracker.

Then there are also some other fields in here, connected to things like what entertaining or educational content I consumed that day, a highlight, and a photo if I took one.

This all makes the top section an amazing overview of my day.

And it's not only useful in this daily context, it also then gets pulled into my weekly and monthly spreads as well, through the connection to my weekly spreads.

It makes having a consistent daily, weekly, and monthly review habit so much easier.

Building a Consistent Review Habit

I was always someone that struggled with remembering to just kind of look over things on a regular basis, even though I knew that I felt less stressed when I did.

But this practice really has me consistently looking over important in the areas of my life once a day.

And I love it!

The Notion daily review template in my Notion bullet journal makes it all possible.

If you liked this post, you'll also love:

• The Planning Mindset You Need for 2021
• 4 Reflection Questions for a Brighter Year-End Review
• How I Work Brighter With Notion [Webinar Replay]
• Why Notion is Better Than LEGOs