Journal prompts
Morning journal prompts
These 20 morning journal prompts start the day in three steps: how you slept, what the day has to hold, and the frame of mind you start it in. Answer two or three before you open your messages, while the day is still yours to plan.
Last updated
Reviewed by Mohammed Raqeeb
The prompts
Morning journal prompts.
Morning journal prompts look ahead, so the most useful answers are plans with times attached. “Finish the budget” is a wish. “The budget from nine to eleven” is a plan you can check tonight, because by then you will know whether those two hours went to it.
How you slept
- 1What time did you fall asleep, and what time did you wake up?
- 2How many hours did you sleep, and is that your usual?
- 3What were you doing in the last hour before bed?
- 4How rested do you feel, from one to five?
- 5What woke you up this morning?
The day ahead
- 6What is the one thing today has to hold?
- 7When will you do it, and for how long?
- 8What is already on the calendar, and how many hours does it take?
- 9How many hours are really free today?
- 10What will you do in the first hour after you start?
- 11What are you likely to put off, and when will you do it instead?
- 12What can wait until tomorrow?
- 13Who do you need to talk to today?
The head you start with
- 14What is on your mind as you wake up?
- 15What would make today a good day, in one sentence?
- 16What are you looking forward to today?
- 17What are you worried about, and is any of it in your hands today?
- 18How much time will you keep today just for you?
- 19What did you learn yesterday that you want to use today?
- 20What will you do tonight to make tomorrow morning easier?
A real answer
A morning, written before nine.
The answer below was written at , so it covers only the morning so far. We gave it to the parser in Think in Numbers, the part of the app that reads plain words and adds up the hours, and it counted 6h 30m of sleep since midnight and 2h of the morning after it. The writer says about seven hours of sleep, but the half hour before midnight belongs to the day before, so this day holds only the part after midnight. The rest of the day shows as unaccounted, because it has not happened yet.
“Woke at 6:30 after about 7 hours of sleep. Stretched for 10 minutes, then coffee and the news until 7:15. Walked the dog from 7:15 to 7:45. Shower and breakfast, and at my desk by 8:30.”
The hours it became
- Sleep6h 30m
- Personal Care45m
- Food & Meals35m
- Pet Care30m
- Fitness10m
- Unaccounted15h 30m
8h 30m of 24 hours accounted for. Unaccounted is the time the words never mentioned.
Real output from the part of Think in Numbers that reads your words and adds up the hours (version v21), run on with the app’s starter categories. Stored exactly as it came out, not edited.
How to use them
How to use morning journal prompts.
Morning journal prompts work well paired with a few lines in the evening. In the morning, write what the day should hold. At night, answer one of the evening prompts about what it did hold.
Reading the two entries side by side is where you learn something. If the morning said “the budget from nine to eleven” and the evening says the budget got half an hour after lunch, that gap tells you what to plan differently tomorrow. To plan the hours on paper, use the hourly planner template. On a good morning, add one line from the gratitude prompts.
Notebook or app
Morning prompts in Think in Numbers.
On paper, that evening check is the step that slips. It takes a second entry and some adding up, and by night the morning’s plan is easy to forget.
An app for mornings should hold the plan and then set the day’s real hours beside it, so tomorrow’s plan starts from what happened, not from what you hoped. Most journaling apps keep the morning’s intentions and how you felt writing them. What they lack is the other half: the hours the day really gave each plan.
One app built for this is Think in Numbers, a smart journaling app with time tracking built in.
You write or say your day in your own words, as it happens or all at once. The app reads what you wrote and counts the hours that went to each part of it: sleep, work, the plans you made, your phone, and the time you never mentioned (shown as unaccounted). Then it shows those hours over days and weeks. It has morning and evening journals, a weekly plan, and targets against your real hours.
For iPhone and Android. Try it on your own day before you pay.
Keep reading.
- Journal promptsPrompts by moment and goal, many ending in something you can count.
- Evening promptsPrompts for the end of the day, from what happened to what tomorrow gets.
- Gratitude promptsPrompts for what you are grateful for, and how much time it had.
- Hourly planner templateEvery hour from 6 AM to midnight: the plan beside what happened.
- Where did my week go? calculatorEnter a typical day and see your week accounted and unaccounted.
- Time journalingThe method: write or say your day in your own words, then see it as hours.
Questions
Questions people ask.
What are morning journal prompts?
Morning journal prompts are questions you answer at the start of the day. They look back at how you slept and ahead at what the day has to hold, before the day decides for you.
How long should morning journaling take?
Morning journaling can take five to ten minutes. Answer one prompt about sleep and one about the day ahead. Stop there if the day is busy.
Are morning pages the same as morning journal prompts?
No. Morning pages, an idea from Julia Cameron's book The Artist's Way, are three pages of free writing, done by hand, first thing, without a topic. Morning journal prompts give you one question at a time, and a short answer is enough.
Should I answer morning prompts before looking at my phone?
If you can, yes. Answering before the phone means the plan on the page is your own, written before messages and news put other people's requests in front of you.
Try it on my day.
Write today down in your own words, and see where the hours went.
For iPhone and Android. Try it on your own day before you pay.