My Morning Routine Worksheet (+ Free Template)

What do you do in your mornings? For me, I have about an hour of a half of regular routine.

In a newsletter I said, its day 14 of Jan, and we are already done with 3% of the year (simple math of 14 / 365 = 3.8%) are you on track for reaching your goals?

A few people liked that little sentence and asked how I keep track. Today I’ll share the breakdown of my morning journal, this included.

It started out from the inspiration I got from Hal Elrod’s morning miracle (read about my post here). I was doing it for a week or so, but had trouble making sure I did each part of it. Then I moved into a checklist that repeated each day (using Tick Tick app) – but still wasn’t “satisfying” enough.

So then I moved into a Google sheet.

So at first it was just:

Over time I added more columns based on what I thought would help motivate me to start my day. One of them was a percentage of how much of the current year was already passed. It is simply

= Number of day we are in the year / total number of days in the year (365), formatted as a percentage

So next to this percentage, I have the # count of days already passed in the year, which I manually type in each day as I can just follow it from the day before.

Now, it is almost overwhelming! Yet I complete it every morning outside. I use Google docs offline so that I don’t need to be on wifi when on the road or in the garden. I also have a shortcut key so I can pull it up without thought or hesitation. Can also bookmark the google sheet URL.

So here is what it has turned into:

The same as mentioned above:

• Date
• Day of the Week
• Day of The Year (a current number out of the 365 days)
• Percentage of Year done (formula of above number divided by 365)
• Days I have lived so far – Today’s date minus my birth date = total years, so when I type this now I have been alive 12,706 days!
• Expected Days Left of My Life – I assume I’ll live until about 84, so that is 30,660 total days. How many of those days are currently left
• Percent of My Life Left – So I subtract today’s total days alive from the expected life expectancy to see how many more days I have left to live.
• Percentage of life to live out of total life – How much of my life is already over, as a percentage.
• Time I woke up – Did I wake up at my target of 5:40am?
• Dream – Did I have a dream? If so, what was the general theme of it?
• Bathroom – Did I brush my teeth and take care of all my hygiene before coming to meditate?
• Silence (Meditation) Quality
• Affirmation – what sentence I was repeating outlaid each day
• Visualization – What I am imagining my future to be, sometimes my day ahead, sometimes further out in the future.
• Exercise – What morning exercise I did that day
• Exercise Length – How long did I work out for? Normally I do 9 – 10 minutes
• Location – Where did I do my morning routine. (This is so I can track which places are better for my morning start)
• Reading – What I read (10 minutes only)
• Reading Length – How long did I read, did I reach my 10 minutes? Did I read longer?
• Read to my Kid(s) – Did I read to my kids, if yes, which book(s)
• Reading to Kids length – How long did I spend reading with them
• Scribing – If I did my 5 minute journal entry or not.
• Chinese Study – Did I study Chinese? What material?
• Chinese study length – how much time did I study Chinese?
• Vitamin – Did I take my vitamin?
• Supplement – Did I take any supplements?
• Eating – Did I eat breakfast? If yes, what?
• Eating Time – How long did I take to eat (normally skip this one)
• Notes – any notes / feedback / reminders I want to put about this process on this day. Was it above average, below average? If either, any ideas why? Not enough sleep, too much, distractions, location, etc.
• Prompt for Tomorrow – Anything I want to remind myself tomorrow about this process.

That is about it. Although I need to admit, I have about 6 other Google sheets I use for details on some of those processes and others. For example I have a sheet tracking my Chinese studies, my writing journal (for this exact blog post), and my network building / relationships.

So, I hope you are motivated by this! Here’s my Google sheet morning routine template – Free! Sure, go ahead and make a copy of it – this is one I removed all my personal information and just have the structure and some example data so you can follow along.

I’d love to see if you make updates and edits yourself. Please keep me posted and share in the comment section below!

For those who use Google docs – make a copy of this public template and use for yourself!

Make a Copy Of the Template

For those who use Google docs – make a copy of this public template and use for yourself!

Download Excel Version

Enjoyed this post? Want to order a print version of a morning routine journal? We put together one for you that you can order directly from Amazon here. Enjoy!

I’d love to hear how others are maximizing their mornings – let’s all share in the comments section below. Cheers to making a more productive and, happy, life!