Morning journal prompts: 100 prompts to start your day

Morning journal prompts set a direction for the day before it starts: what you want from it, what has to happen first, how you slept and what's already on your mind. The 100 below are original and grouped by job: intention, planning, a body check-in, gratitude and creative warm-ups, plus a set for particular mornings. Answer one or two in five minutes, ideally before you open email, then close the journal and go.

Evening entries look back at a day that's over. Morning entries look ahead at one you can still change, so these prompts stick to the decisions still open this morning and the state you're starting in, and the best answers end in something you can check tonight. If you'd rather write with no prompt at all, try morning pages. For a page with a morning half and an evening half, use the daily journal template, and for one prompt for every date of the year, the daily journal prompts.

Here is the starter on one Tuesday, written in about five minutes before a writing session, with the line added that evening:

Each answer is something the evening could check. The warm-up line wasn't planned, and it's the one that went into the draft.

Morning intention prompts

An intention is the kind of day you mean to have, which is different from the list of things in it. Answer in a sentence, and make it something you'll recognize at nine tonight.

1. Finish the sentence: Today will have been worth it if…
2. Who do you want to be in today's hardest conversation?
3. If today had a speed, what would it be: slow and careful, steady, or flat out?
4. What are you going to protect today: an hour, a promise, your temper?
5. What would you do today if you trusted yourself a little more?
6. Who do you want to be kind to today, and how, exactly?
7. What's the request you're most likely to get today, and what's your answer?
8. Which part of today are you dreading, and what would doing it well look like?
9. Pick one thing to pay attention to today: a sound, a color, someone's hands. What will it be?
10. What's the most important thing today that won't be on any list?
11. What did yesterday teach you that today should use?
12. What mood do you want to bring home tonight?
13. Who will you see today, and what do you want them to leave with?
14. If today goes wrong, which one part do you still want to get right?
15. What are you ready to try today that you weren't ready for last month?
16. Where will you be braver today: at work, at home or on the page?
17. What do you want to finish today, and what are you happy to leave half-done?
18. Write tonight's first line now: the sentence you'd like to be true about today.
19. What's on your mind that has nothing to do with today? Write it down so it can wait.
20. What would make today feel like yours, and not only your calendar's?

Prompts for planning the day

Planning prompts turn the intention into a first move. Keep the answers concrete enough to check off: a name, a time, a task.

21. If you could do only one task today, which one would make the day a success? On a rushed morning, answer only this one.
22. What's the first thing you'll do after you close this journal?
23. Which task have you moved from one day to the next more than twice? Do it first or drop it.
24. What's the hardest thing on today's list, and when will your energy be best for it?
25. Split today into morning, afternoon and evening, and give each block one thing.
26. What can you hand to someone else today?
27. Who needs an answer from you today? List the names.
28. What would you cut if today got two hours shorter?
29. What are you waiting on from other people, and when will you follow up?
30. What's the next physical action on your biggest project: an email, a page, a call?
31. Where will you be at 3 p.m., and what will you be doing?
32. What can you prepare now that will save time later today?
33. Which meeting or call today needs one sentence of preparation? Write the sentence.
34. What will you do in the first ten minutes at your desk, before email?
35. What's likely to interrupt you today, and what will you do when it does?
36. What did you promise someone yesterday that has to happen today?
37. List three things you'll do today and one you won't.
38. When will you stop working today? Write the time and what comes after.
39. Which errand can you fold into something you're already doing?
40. Look at tomorrow's calendar. What does today need to set up for it?

Morning body check-in prompts

Two minutes on how you actually are, before the day decides for you. Notice, then plan around what you noticed.

41. How did you sleep, in one line? Did you wake up to the alarm or on your own?
42. Rate your energy from 1 to 5. What's behind the number?
43. Where are you holding tension right now: jaw, shoulders, hands, stomach?
44. What does your body want first this morning: water, food, movement or five more minutes?
45. Which part of you feels most awake right now, and which least?
46. Sit still for one minute and list what you can feel: the chair, the air, the cup in your hand.
47. What's the weather doing, and what does it mean for what you'll wear and how you'll get around?
48. When will you move today, and how: a walk, the stairs, a bike ride, a stretch?
49. What is your body asking for that your schedule isn't making room for?
50. Describe how you feel right now in physical words only: heavy, buzzing, stiff, warm.
51. What will you eat for lunch, and when? Decide now.
52. Where in today can you fit ten minutes outside?
53. What did yesterday leave in your body this morning: a run, a late night, a long drive?
54. What would rest look like today, even for five minutes, and when could it happen?
55. What's one thing you'll do tonight so tomorrow morning feels easier than this one?

Morning gratitude prompts

Morning gratitude looks at what's already good about today before it has had a chance to go wrong. For a hundred more, see the gratitude journal prompts.

56. What's the first good thing you noticed this morning?
57. Who will make today easier, and do they know it?
58. What's in your kitchen right now that you're glad to have?
59. What's waiting for you today that you chose?
60. What's the best thing about the place where you're sitting?
61. Who's the first person you'll talk to today, and what do you like about them?
62. What did yesterday's you do that made this morning easier?
63. Which sound this morning are you glad of: a kettle, rain, someone else awake?
64. Which tool will you use today that someone spent years getting right?
65. What did you sleep in, on and under? Who made any of it?
66. Describe the first light you saw this morning and where it fell.
67. Who would be glad to hear from you this morning? Send them a line after this.
68. Which small luxury will you allow yourself today?
69. What's going right this week that today could build on?
70. What would you miss about this exact morning if it were your last one in this home?

Creative warm-ups before writing

For writers who journal before a session. Five minutes on one of these gets your hand moving, and the good lines can go straight into the draft. If you wake up mid-dream, prompt 72 is the place to start, and a dream journal will hold what you catch.

71. Describe the view from where you're sitting in three sentences: one for color, one for sound, one for movement.
72. Write down a fragment of last night's dream before it goes, even if it's only one image.
73. Write the first sentence of today's scene three ways, then pick one.
74. Write your main character's morning: the first thing they see when they open their eyes.
75. List five things you noticed between waking up and sitting down here.
76. Write the next line of yesterday's draft without rereading it.
77. Describe your coffee, tea or water as if it were evidence in a mystery.
78. Copy one sentence you admire from what you're reading, then write one in the same rhythm about your kitchen.
79. Write a six-line scene set in the next room, all dialogue.
80. What's one problem in your WIP you'd solve today if you could? Write three possible fixes, badly.
81. Describe the street outside as it might have looked on a morning a hundred years ago.
82. Write a letter from one of your characters to you, complaining about how you treated them yesterday.
83. Write down a phrase you overheard yesterday and give it to a stranger in a story.
84. List ten nouns from your morning. Use four of them in one sentence.
85. What would your narrator notice about this room that you wouldn't?
86. Which scene are you avoiding? Write only its last line.
87. Write today's weather as a line of dialogue spoken by someone who hates it.
88. Set a timer for three minutes and write without stopping, starting with “This morning…”

Prompts for particular mornings

Some mornings come with their own weather: a Monday, a deadline, a first day, the day after news. One prompt for each.

89. Monday: What does this week need to have in it for Friday to feel good?
90. Friday: What will you finish today so it doesn't follow you into the weekend?
91. A day off: What's the first thing you'll do that you'd never fit into a workday?
92. A deadline day: What's the minimum that counts as done, and when will you have it?
93. A first day at a new job, school or place: What do you want to notice today that you'll stop noticing in a month?
94. After a bad night's sleep: What's the one thing that has to happen today, and what can wait?
95. Your birthday: What did you love doing on birthdays as a child that you could do today?
96. The day of a big conversation: What do you want the other person to understand by the end?
97. A travel day: What do you want to have seen by tonight?
98. The morning after good news: How do you want to mark it today, however small?
99. The morning after hard news: What do you need today, and who could you ask for it?
100. Sunday: What will you do this morning that has nothing to do with next week?

How to answer in five minutes

1. Choose the prompt the night before

   Look at tomorrow's calendar and pick the group that fits: a deadline day gets a planning prompt, a writing day a warm-up. Write the number at the top of a fresh page, so the morning starts with an answer instead of a decision.

2. Answer in sentences you can check

   A good morning answer names a task, a person or a time. “Be productive” can't be checked tonight. “Send the Hadley invoice before ten” can.

3. Stop at five minutes

   The morning entry sets up the day; it isn't the day. If you're still writing at minute fifteen, the prompt has turned into something else. Let it, or save the rest for tonight.

4. Check it at night

   Before bed, add one line under the morning entry: did it happen, and what got in the way? A week of those lines tells you more about your mornings than the prompts do.

So the same questions don't wear thin, give each day of the week its own group:

A morning prompt from Marcus Aurelius

Writing a few lines to yourself at the start of the day is an old habit. Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor from 161 to 180, kept private notes in Greek that he probably never meant to publish. We now call them the Meditations, and Book II opens with a morning instruction.

It's a planning prompt in all but name: who will I meet today, and how will I treat them? Book V opens with the other half, for mornings when getting up is the hard part: “I am rising to the work of a human being.” The five-minute starter near the top of this page covers similar ground in modern terms: what the day is for, and what happens first.

Morning prompts or morning pages

Morning pages, from Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way (1992), are three handwritten pages of whatever comes into your head, with no topic and no rereading at first. Prompts work the other way: one question, a short answer, done. Pages are for getting whatever is there onto paper; prompts are for pointing the day somewhere. They combine well. When the pages stall, use a prompt to restart and let the pages wander off it, or finish page three and answer one planning prompt before you close the notebook. The guide to morning pages covers the method and the reason for each rule.

Mistakes that crowd out the morning

• Writing only the to-do list. A list is half a plan. Add a line of intention or a check-in, so the entry covers how you'll do the day as well as what's in it.
• Journaling with notifications on. On a phone, messages arrive mid-sentence and the inbox is one swipe away. Turn notifications off first, or use paper or a computer.
• Answering five prompts. One or two is plenty. A morning entry that takes forty minutes eats the morning it was meant to set up.
• The same intention every day. Write “be patient” for three weeks and it can turn into wallpaper. Change the prompt, or tie the intention to something that happens today.
• Never checking. An intention nobody looks at tonight is closer to a wish than a plan. One line before bed closes the loop.
• Starting with yesterday's failures. Note what carries over and move on to the next step. The morning is for the next move, not the verdict on the last one.

If your mornings live in Strokes, one document per month, you can ask the Strokes Assistant at the end of the month to read it and point out what repeats, such as an intention you wrote twenty mornings running and checked on none of them.