A daily note works when it takes less than a minute to start. Use a short template, write whatever happened, and link the few names and projects you will want to find later. Skip the habit grids, mood trackers and embedded databases until you have kept the plain version going for a month.
Why elaborate daily notes get abandoned
Template galleries are full of beautiful daily dashboards. They are built on a good day, by someone with an hour to spare. On an ordinary Tuesday, a page with twelve empty fields feels like homework, so you skip it, and then the streak is broken.
The value of daily notes comes from having many ordinary entries, not a few perfect ones.
A four-line template
Today's noteFriday, October 3
- Focus
- Finish the kitchen budget
- Notes
- Call with [[Dana]] about [[Kitchen remodel]]; tile quote due Monday
- Done
- Sent the quote back
- Tomorrow
- Order tile samples
The template itself, ready to copy:
# {{date}}
**Focus:**
**Notes:**
**Done:**
**Tomorrow:**
- Focus: one or two things that matter today.
- Notes: anything: meeting points, a phone number, an idea from the shower.
- Done: a few words is enough. Useful when you later wonder when something happened.
- Tomorrow: the first thing to pick up, so the next note starts itself.
Leave any line blank when there is nothing to say. A two-line note is still a note.
One habit that makes notes findable: link names, not topics
When you write about a person or a project, link it, for example "Call with [[Dana]] about [[Kitchen remodel]]". You don't need to build those pages; the link alone gathers every day that mentioned them.
Six months later, opening "Kitchen remodel" shows every daily note where it came up, in order. That is most of what a dashboard promises, without the upkeep.
A two-minute weekly look back
On Friday, skim the week's notes. Move anything still open into Monday's Tomorrow line. That's the whole review.
How Cambium handles daily notes
Cambium has a Daily tab with one note per day; if you start today's note on two devices, they meet in the same note. A calendar lets you jump to any day, and a Today button brings you back.
To use the template above, paste it into a note and set Use as to The daily note template in the note's properties; {{date}} is filled in for each day. Type [[ to link a note, and each note's Backlinks view lists linked mentions, plus unlinked mentions you can turn into links with one tap.
Notes are plain Markdown and can be exported as a ZIP of Markdown files with your attachments. Notes stay private unless you share a specific note, even in a shared Apollo household.
Cambium is $4.99 a month or $39.99 a year, or part of Apollo Suite. Prices are USD, checked October 3, 2026.
When you want more than a notebook
If you need databases, project boards or a team wiki, a workspace tool such as Notion is a better fit. Cambium is for personal writing that should be quick to start and easy to find later.