A useful daily planner template answers three questions on one page: what matters most today, when you will do it, and what actually happened. The template below covers all three with three priorities, an hour-by-hour schedule, and space for notes and wins. Copy it into any notes app or print it, fill it in within about 5 minutes, and keep it open all day.

The daily planner template

Copy the block below. It uses plain Markdown, so apps that read Markdown show the headings and checkboxes properly. Other apps show it as clean plain text.

# Daily plan: [date]

## Top 3
- [ ] 1.
- [ ] 2.
- [ ] 3.

## Schedule
- 8:00
- 9:00
- 10:00
- 11:00
- 12:00
- 1:00
- 2:00
- 3:00
- 4:00
- 5:00

## If there's time
- [ ]
- [ ]

## Notes

## Wins
-

## Tomorrow
-

Change the hours to match your day. If you start at 7 or work until 7 p.m., add or remove lines. People stop using a plan that doesn't match their real hours.

A filled-in example

Here is the template filled in for an ordinary workday. Most lines need only a few words.

# Daily plan: Thursday

## Top 3
- [x] 1. Send the Q4 budget draft to Dana
- [ ] 2. Write the onboarding email sequence (first two emails)
- [ ] 3. Book the dentist

## Schedule
- 8:00 Email and messages, 30 min max
- 9:00 Budget draft (top 1)
- 10:00 Budget draft, send by 10:45
- 11:00 Team call
- 12:00 Lunch
- 1:00 Onboarding emails (top 2)
- 2:00 Onboarding emails
- 3:00 Buffer: whatever ran over
- 4:00 Admin, dentist call (top 3)
- 5:00 Plan tomorrow

## If there's time
- [ ] Tidy the shared drive folder
- [ ] Reply to the conference invite

## Notes
- Dana wants the travel line split by quarter
- Idea: add a FAQ link to email 2

## Wins
- Budget out before the team call

## Tomorrow
- Finish onboarding email 2

How to choose your top 3 priorities

If you fill in only one section, make it the top 3.

  • Pick outcomes, not activities. "Send the budget draft to Dana" has a clear finish. "Work on budget" does not.
  • Make the first one the task you'd regret skipping. The other two can be smaller. Item 3 is often a 5-minute errand that keeps getting pushed back.
  • Keep it to three. Everything else goes under "If there's time." Those tasks still get done, but they don't compete with the important ones.
  • Size them to fit the day. With four hours of meetings, your top 3 has to fit in the hours left. Check the schedule before you commit.

If you can't tell what's important from what's merely urgent, sort your list with the Eisenhower matrix before you pick three.

How to plan your hour blocks

The schedule puts the top 3 on the clock. Fill it in this order:

  1. Write in fixed commitments first: meetings, calls, lunch, school pickup.
  2. Put priority 1 in your best open block. For most people that's the first uninterrupted stretch of the morning.
  3. Place priorities 2 and 3 in the remaining open blocks.
  4. Leave one block empty as a buffer. Something always runs over, and the buffer keeps it from pushing back the rest of the afternoon.
  5. Group small jobs like email, messages and admin into one or two blocks instead of scattering them.

One-hour blocks suit most days. If your calendar is full of 30-minute meetings, use half-hour lines (9:00, 9:30, and so on). For a stricter version of this method, see our time blocking template.

You don't need to fill every line. An empty hour is fine. An hour with three tasks crammed into it means the plan is too full.

Notes, wins and tomorrow

The bottom half of the page records the day as it happens.

  • Notes: anything that comes up, such as a decision from a call, a phone number or an idea for later. If it's written here, you don't have to search five apps for it at 5 p.m.
  • Wins: one to three things you finished or moved forward. On a bad day this line shows the day still counted. It also gives you something ready to say at a standup or weekly review.
  • Tomorrow: anything from the top 3 you didn't finish, plus anything you promised someone. Tomorrow's plan starts from this line, so nothing gets lost overnight.

Spend the last 5 minutes of the day on these three sections. That's easier than piecing the day back together the next morning.

Using the template in Gubb

Paper or any notes app works for this template. We make Gubb, a small desktop app for Mac and Windows, and it suits a daily plan because checklists and a countdown timer sit in the same window. You can tick off priorities and time each block without switching apps.

Set up the day's note

You type this skeleton at the start of each day. It only takes a few lines.

  1. Hover over the title bar and click + (Create New Note).
  2. Type the date on the first line. Gubb names a note after the first 30 characters of its first line, and the Search notes... field checks titles and the first 50 characters of each note, so a date at the top makes any day's plan easy to find.
  3. Type ## and press Space to start a heading, then type "Top 3".
  4. Type [ ] and press Space at the start of a line to create a checkbox. Leave out the - you see in the copyable template. Press Return to add the next item, and press Return on an empty item to end the list.
  5. For the schedule, type - and press Space to start a bulleted list, then add one line per hour.

Click a checkbox to tick it, and the item is struck through. Gubb saves as you type, so you never have to save. Notes History in the title bar lists notes newest first, which puts yesterday's plan and its "Tomorrow" line near the top.

To keep the plan visible while you work in other apps, hover over the right edge of the note and click Pin window on top.

Time your blocks with the timer

  1. Hover over the right edge of the note and click Timer.
  2. Choose Countdown and set min to the length of the block, for example 50.
  3. Click Start, then click − in the timer's header to shrink it to a small floating pill.

The timer keeps running while the dialog is closed or minimized. If you work in short focus rounds, the Pomodoro technique fits inside hour blocks. To decide how many rounds to plan, see how many pomodoros a day.

Gubb can also remind you to step away from the screen:

  1. Click Settings (the gear in the right-edge buttons).
  2. Choose Break Time.
  3. Switch on Enable Break Timer.
  4. Click Save Break Settings.

By default you get a 20-second eye break after 60 minutes of work. During a break the Gubb window goes full screen with a countdown, and you can click +1 Minute or Skip Break.

What Gubb won't do for a daily plan

  • The timer makes no sound when it finishes. Keep the minimized pill where you can see it. Pomodoro mode is a plain countdown and doesn't switch between work and break rounds on its own, so you start each round yourself. Quitting Gubb also stops the timer.
  • No due-date reminders. A gubb@todo block, typed alone on its own line, lets you add due dates and priorities and sorts tasks into sections such as Overdue, Today and Tomorrow. It won't notify you. A note that contains a to-do block is titled "Todo List" rather than taking its name from your date line.
  • Breaks turn pinning off. After a break, click Pin window on top again to bring the plan back above other windows.
  • No sync. Your plans stay on the computer where you wrote them.

To share your plan in a chat or at a standup, press ⌘⇧C (Command-Shift-C) in the note. Gubb copies the whole note as plain text. Control works in place of Command for Gubb's shortcuts.

Gubb costs $59 as a one-time purchase (as of November 2026), and the Mac version has a 7-day free trial.