How to jump start your day with Notion 🔆

✋ Raise your hand if you can't make yourself do the very simple everyday things that make your life better.

I put in this category actions like reading, meditating, exercising or whatever makes your day better with the simplest effort, and today I would like to try to push myself doing more of those every single day.

A while ago I started thinking how could I use Notion to help me, that’s where Day Starter comes in.

Day starter is a simple Notion page that is always there on my phone, especially in early mornings.

Yes, it’s a simple list of actions, but those actions are the core of what makes a day worth to live by, and definitely part of a productive day.

Actions that are part of Day Starter 🔆 follow the same prerequisites:

1. Simplicity.
2. Actionability.
3. Feasibility.

Another requisite is to be at your fingertip all the time, especially in the morning. Having it as a Notion Widget is actually helpful to remind you to do those actions. If you want to be a little more “nerdy”, you can use an NFC tag, like I explained in another article or an example showcased in this video:

Simplicity ▶️

An action is simple when you understand exactly what it means. You read it, and you know what to do, without any extra-step.  Imagine you waking up in the morning with little energy, you can’t put more effort to even know what that means. In addition to be understandable, simple actions are explainable in few sentences.

Actionability ⏭️

Actionability means the easiest task or habit that I can put into action.

Again: I struggle to do anything productive in the morning, I'm too lazy to get to start to work or care about myself. I do stuff like checking emails, answer messages, play some videogames.

When creating this page, I thought: what's the easiest thing that I can actually do? What I can actually put into action that makes my day better?

Feasibility ✅

We are at the third step: the action is simple, the action is actionable, now we check if the environment and health situation allow that action to happen.

An action is Feasible if environment, health, and work condition allow that to be.

For example, if I live in a freezing environment, maybe it's not good to go out for a run. Or if I'm not used to exercise in the morning before breakfast, don't push yourself to do so. Even if you actually physically can.

Start with the minimum, since this is intended to get “the ball rolling”.

Good habits can make rational sense, but if they conflict with your identity, you will fail to put them into action.

James Clear—Atomic Habits

The actual Notion Page

Now let’s dive into the actual page, pictured below:

1. Create a page for my journal, so it's there to track everything that I'm doing. 📘 It takes 5 seconds and removes a big friction in my day.
2. Meditation: being mindful is a great mindset to start the day, you’re present in every action you partake.🧘‍♂️
3. I'm taking L-thyroxine, that in short is a hormone from my thyroid since I've an autoimmune condition that doesn't make my thyroid works well. As soon as I take that, I need to wait minimum 30 minutes, so that's why I have 30 minutes to spend in the morning.

The cover image is not there casually: that's a picture of the place where I was born. It is one of the goal that my fiancé and I have right now: be able to travel where we want or need whenever we want or need to. And these little actions are helping us to get to that goal.

Even if it’s a simple list of actions, it’s something makes my day better. Complex databases are not always needed when trying to do something.

If you’re an average Notion user, you’re able to make this page in 25 seconds. If you really want to download it, you can scan this qr-code or go to this page to download for free (if you’re subscribed to my newsletter) the template.

I hope you could find useful information in here, let me know in the comments! Have a nice day!