Over-Engineering a Daily Routine
I have a physical binder that I use every single day. It’s ridiculous. It’s over-engineered. It works.
Here’s how I built it using Grimoire (my AI workflow system) and why the complexity is actually the point.
The Problem
I’ve tried every productivity system. GTD. Bullet journals. Notion databases. Obsidian vaults. Apple Reminders. Sticky notes.
They all fail the same way: I stop using them. Either they’re too simple and don’t capture enough, or they’re too complex and I can’t maintain them, or they’re digital and I ignore notifications.
The physical binder solves this. You can’t snooze paper. You can’t minimize it. It sits on my desk and stares at me.
What’s In the Binder
Daily Pages - One page per day. Date at top. Three sections: Morning (what I plan to do), Evening (what actually happened), Reflection (one sentence on what I learned).
Weekly Review - One page per week. What got done. What didn’t. What’s carrying over. What needs to drop.
Goal Trackers - Monthly pages for specific goals. BJJ training sessions. Weight. Project milestones. Binary yes/no checkboxes.
Reference Sheets - Checklists I use repeatedly. Morning routine. Weekly review questions. Packing lists.
How Grimoire Helped
Grimoire is my personal knowledge base optimized for AI workflows. I fed it my notes on every productivity system I’d tried. What worked. What failed. Why.
Then I asked it to help me design something new.
The AI didn’t design the binder—I did. But it helped me think through edge cases. What happens when I travel? What if I miss a day? How do I handle projects vs habits vs one-time tasks?
We iterated on templates. I’d print one, use it for a week, report back what sucked, and we’d refine. Took about six iterations to get something stable.
The Daily Loop
Morning (5 min): Open binder. Review yesterday’s evening notes. Write today’s date. List 3 things that matter. Close binder.
Throughout day: Check boxes as things complete. Add notes if needed.
Evening (5 min): Open binder. Mark what got done. Write what actually happened. One sentence reflection. Close binder.
That’s it. Ten minutes a day. Analog. Impossible to ignore.
Why Over-Engineering Works
Simple systems fail because life isn’t simple. You need enough structure to handle complexity but not so much that maintenance becomes a second job.
The binder is over-engineered upfront so it’s simple in practice. All the thinking happened during design. Now I just follow the template.
This is true for most systems. Spend the time to over-engineer the design. Then execution becomes automatic.
What I’d Change
The weekly review is still too long. Need to trim it. The goal trackers work great for habits but poorly for projects—still figuring that out.
But it’s been six months and I haven’t stopped using it. That’s the only metric that matters.
Drafted by AI