How to Write a Daily Review: A 5-Minute Template That Sticks

If you searched your way here, you’re probably one of two people: someone about to start a daily review, or someone who started one and stopped three days in. Either way the problem is the same — the review got made into too big a thing.

A daily review is not a diary. You’re not narrating the day; you’re salvaging one lesson from today for tomorrow’s sake. Designed around that, five minutes is plenty.

The 5-minute template: three questions

Write down just these three things about the day.

1. What went well? (one thing) Not the list of what you finished — the one thing you’d say “that, I did right.” Add one line about why it worked. This question hunts for patterns worth repeating.

2. What got in the way? (one thing) Not a box for self-blame. A box for finding what blocked you. “Focus fell apart in the afternoon — I tried to jump into the next task straight out of a meeting.” Once the cause is visible, the next answer writes itself.

3. What’s one thing to change tomorrow? One action that follows from question 2. “After meetings, walk ten minutes before starting the next task.” Whether a review ends as a record or becomes an improvement hangs on this line. Writing it in if-then form makes it far more likely to actually happen.

That’s the whole thing. Three lines is a review.

If you know KPT (Keep · Problem · Try) from team retrospectives — same structure. These three questions are KPT for one person.

Keeping the habit

Attach it to a spot, not a time. “Review at 10pm” requires remembering 10pm. Instead, chain it to something you already do daily: after brushing your teeth, after setting the alarm, right before closing the laptop. When an existing action is the trigger, memory isn’t needed.

Don’t let it grow. On good days the review wants to get long. That length becomes tomorrow’s burden. Stopping at three lines even when it’s flowing is what makes it last.

Don’t back-fill missed days. Writing yesterday’s review as makeup homework turns the habit into a chore. Drop the missed day; write today’s only. Total volume beats unbroken streaks.

Look down from above once a week. Once daily reviews accumulate, skimming them on the weekend surfaces patterns — which weekday collapses, what kind of task keeps snagging. If daily reviews are ingredients, the weekly review is the cooking.

Anywhere works — but

A notebook, a notes app, a spreadsheet — all fine. But a review gets stronger when it sits next to what you actually did that day. With the day’s completed tasks in front of you there’s nothing to recall from memory, and when past reviews live beside your tasks, “one thing to change” has a short path into tomorrow’s actual work.

That’s how the daily review works in fecit, the app we’re building: the day’s completed tasks lay themselves out, and you write beneath them. Each task can carry its own retrospect too, so the day’s review and each task’s review pile up in the same place.

Start tonight, three lines: one thing that went well, one thing that got in the way, one thing to change tomorrow.