What twelve best-selling journals put on a daily page

What almost every daily page has

• A line at the top to write the date.
• A short list of what matters most today, usually three things.
• A longer to-do list, usually with tick boxes.
• An hour column or schedule, usually covering the working day.
• A place at the end to say how the day went.

What about half of them have

• A gratitude line, or three.
• A habit row, ticked across the week.
• A mood or energy score, usually one to five.
• A quote at the top of the page.
• One open space with no label.

Two fields that often go wrong

The habit tracker

A monthly habit grid printed on a daily page gives you sixty tick boxes on a page you fill in once. On a daily page a habit works as a single row. The grid goes on the month.

The hour column

Books that print midnight to midnight give a third of the column to hours nobody writes in. The ones that sell run from about six in the morning to nine at night, in half hours. The column is narrow and the other fields sit beside it.

How to build your own daily page

Start with the five from the first list. Then add two at most from the second list, and only ones you know you’ll use.

Then choose the words

"The three that matter today" and "Top three priorities" are the same field. Pick the wording you’d want to read first thing in the morning. In Astera you click any heading or question on the page and type your own.