My Daily Ritual (Part 1)

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. - Annie Dillard

I am a passionate believer that what we hold truly important in life can not be left to chance or at the mercy of the unimportant. Therefore it is crucial you stake your claim on your days by putting first what is important. I refuse to resign myself to allowing life goals to fall into the some day bucket, which may never come.

Time is your most precious resource, so don’t let it be stolen by the minutia of life or fall through your fingertips. I choose to ensure my daily systems are setup to help align my day to my life goals. This article aims to explain why I believe a daily ritual can help you live more intentionally and allow you to get what you want out of life.

What is a daily ritual?

A ritual is a deliberate set of tasks or activities you accomplish at some frequency (daily, weekly, monthly etc). Don’t let the word ritual throw you off and make you think of voodoo, instead think of it like a word that captures all the things you deem important.

What you place into your ritual is a great way of systematically forming habits you wish to continue or establish. And because books like Atomic Habits and Grit have evidenced that systems and habits are inextricably linked with success and satisfaction in life, my daily ritual has become if not one of but the most important aspects of my life.

I love the concept of daily rituals mainly due to its simplicity. All you need is a list of things you wish to complete daily and see it through. Through repetition comes establishing habits, which leads to mastery and unlocks new paths you never could previously imagine. So I deliberately review, refine and structure my daily rituals to align to my life’s goals and overall way I want to live.

Why am I writing about this?

Over the past few years I’ve been drawn towards YouTube clips or articles about highly successful people or people I admire who share their daily habits or rituals. I’m sure you know the ones I’m referring to if you’re reading this now eg “Billionaire’s Morning Routines”.

In watching such videos on other's rituals, I found that whilst I do not resonate with everything they share like waking at up 3am, I invariably end up liking at least one or two things which I end up incorporating into my own rituals.

So below is a breakdown of my rituals, in the hopes that whomever is reading this gives you inspiration to try or start your own daily rituals.

What’s my daily ritual consist of?

• Gratitude journaling
• Morning pages journaling
• Reading
• Learning a new word
• Meditation
• Exercise
• Writing

In today’s blog post I will cover the first 3 (Gratitude journaling, morning pages and reading) and will post another blog to allow me to cover the rest in sufficient detail. I cover each through the following aspects:

1. What is it
2. How I do it
3. Outlining immediate and long term benefits I've observed

Gratitude Journaling

What is it?

Gratitude Journaling is a process whereby you journal based on prompts centred in gratitude. Typically journals will ask questions such as what you are grateful for now, in the future and what has just gone by.

How I do it

Every morning, I pickup my hard cover gratitude journal (The Five Minute Journal) and my favourite Parker pen that my late grandfather gifted.

Each page of this journal gifts me 4 questions each morning:

1. A short prompt or inspirational quote of the day,
2. Write 3 things I am grateful for
3. Write 3 things which would make the day great
4. A affirmation about myself

Then in the evening or just before I sleep, I pickup the book once more to answer 2 more questions:

1. What 3 amazing things that happened today
2. What could I have done better?

Morning Pages

What is it?

This is an open ended form of journaling with no prompts other writing at least 3 pages each morning. This can take the form of a stream of consciousness onto the page, coming up with your own prompts, taking inspiration from a daily prompt or memory. It’s really up to you how you slice and dice it.

How I do it

All you need is a pen and paper, or a keyboard and a notepad app. I use an app called Day One on my iPad and I generally find myself at least 15 minutes of uninterrupted time. At first I was fairly particular about doing it with some nice Chill Hop music or in certain spots, but I have grown to be able to do this anywhere. Now, 3 pages is hard to measure on an endlessly scrolling app, so instead I just guesstimate. And really the point of it all is to transfer your thoughts onto paper and in doing so you process them.

1. Launch Day One App
2. Start a new entry
3. I generally think of a title that summarises my mood or key thought front of mind
4. I also insert a photo that feels right
5. I simply spend time writing as much as I feel I can.

Examples of things I write about:

• How I’m feeling
• How yesterday went
• Any ideas I might have floating in my head
• Quizzing myself on why I hadn’t done certain things

Reading

What is it? Why is this on my list?

I'm not going to insult you explaining wha reading is. Instead I am covering this because this is a critical part of my journey of writing my first novel but also it’s my way of travelling the world or living new experiences through written stories. So I place this firmly within my daily ritual to ensure that I read more and read well.

How I Read and Remember Almost Everything

Prior to learning and implementing the concept of a second brain, I found myself taking structured notes and capturing quotes for books I really wanted to absorb using Google Keep. Since then I discovered Notion which is basically a note taking app on steroids and when you combine the inbuilt capabilities of relational databases and lookups (which took me a while to wrap my head around) it shows you how powerful linking ideas can be.

I watched a few videos on how to read more and the one which stuck was Ali Abdaal’s video. See below

It covers reading looks like a bit of a process funnel and it’s broken down into 4 stage

1. Fill the Funnel with books and then refine the short list by reading a summary
2. Make it effortless and remove friction from reading
3. The Blog Post Mindset - treat books like blogposts
4. Go Deep - Read with focus, intent and a learners mindset

Wrap Up

That concludes Part 1 of My Daily Rituals and I hope it's been helpful in sharing why I believe cultivating your own daily rituals is important and can help you spend time on the things you hold important.

Keep an eye out for Part 2!

For those reading from email - here's a link to the full article on the web.