Bullet journaling for better morning routines in 2026

I invested in a new journal for this year. Why? I've learned the hard way that how we start the day matters.

Doom-scrolling is guaranteed to kill my productivity. With my neurodiverse-leaning brain, a pen-to-paper journal is good medicine. As soon as my kids have left the house for school, I have a golden window of time to wake up fully without outside influence or comparison. And, if I don't start by setting a few key intentions, I'll inevitably give the rest of the day to work and family demands.

So I aim to start each day in 2026 with coffee, my A5-size 6-ring binder, and a few writing tools. Once I've listed my key tasks, I compare them against Sunsama. This helps with time-boxing, in a less intensive way.

My Bullet Journal Layout in 2026: Learning the 1-Day Method by Antonio Neves

Here's what I used to do in the year 2025:

1. I list my key priorities, about 3 to 5 of them. Usually this is a brainstorm.
2. I always struggle with "when will I get time to exercise?" or "how many people do I need to meet with today?" (Usually the answer is: I didn't work out enough and I had too many meetings)
3. I always try to make a note of what went well or didn't go well that day.
4. I use Sunsama to visualize my time blocks around meetings on my calendar.

This month, I met Antonio Neves, the author of The 1-Day Method at a talk hosted by Lex Roman. Neves' 1 Day Method helped me fine tune my morning routine with these two key questions:

1. What will make today / this season / this year a success? I know about the importance of visualizing your successes, as well as quarterly or year-end planning. But, I hadn't thought about how this might apply to me everyday, where it is possible to habit-stack day by day.
2. What are your top 5 for the day? These are essentially Neves' top atomic habits for work-life balance for every single day (Sweat, Connect, Grow, No Tech, Finish). This template from Neves highlights what each of these mean and how to use it if you're curious! I keep a printed copy of his template in the back of my bullet journal binder.

I've been doing OK with tracking essential tasks and aiming to work out, read, sit with my kids, etc, everyday. The difference is that by naming it as the Top 5, it lifts my cognitive load, and that's important!

It will be fun to look back on this article in the future and see what I've learned about productivity this year. I expect that the layouts will evolve as the year goes on and as the seasons change, too.

The Tool Setup

📝 The tools that I use for my bullet journal are the welcome mat for my day.

I plan for my next day by setting out my tools and my journal. I also limit the number of writing tools I use. Based on cognitive science, I'm helping myself out by limiting the number of decisions I make first thing in the morning. The focus is on the writing, not the tools. I mainly use the 0.5 Unipin fineliner for writing.

But! I can't live without color, because color is joy.

I have two sets of Zebra Mildliners, again, with the goal of limiting my decisions. The first set is a pre-coordinated set of 5 colors, with a traditional yellow highlighter color. And recently, I made my own monochromatic palette: blue, orchid, purple and mint.

Then, there's the paper. I print my own dot-grid pages on high quality copy paper and hole-punch them myself. I prefer the blank dot-grid pages, because I'm not interested in habit tracking or adding anything extra to my mental load. I will keep it minimal, with just one or two layouts. I can vary my choice of layouts, doodles or colors to uplift my mood each day.

Doodling in the margins

I've been enjoying the work of Johanna Basford's How to Draw Inky Wonderlands. I imagine that throughout this year, I'll spend a few more "grow" days to timebox about 15 minutes or so, and ink a few more doodles in the margins of my bullet journal.

What are your favorite morning routines? How does creativity show up in your day? Reply to let me know 😃