For years, I never wrote anything on the first line of my daily planner. Not once.And for years, I never asked why. (After all, it’s hard to introspect a habit you’re not aware of.)
I’d flip to a new page each morning, jot down my tasks for the day, and skip right over that first little line like it was an electric fence. Every now and then, I’d try using the first line, but it never felt right. Something in the back of my mind revolted. Didn’t I know that line was supposed to be blank?
A Curious Little Quirk
The habit got truly mysterious while I was visiting my parents. I happened to glance at my mother’s planner—and there it was. That same first line, left empty.
I asked her about it. She shrugged. “I’ve always done it that way,” she said. No explanation. No theory. Just habit.
That’s when the question really started to bug me. Why do we both do this? I figured it was something I had picked up from her, but it wasn’t a satisfying answer.
Later, I stumbled on a used copy of The Advanced Day Planner User’s Guide, written by Hyrum W. Smith, back when he was Chairman of the Franklin International Institute (the Franklin in Franklin Covey). In its dusty pages, buried in an illustration, I found a long-forgotten principle that snapped everything into place.
The First Task of the Day
One of the best practices of using the Franklin Planner was to begin each day with something called “Daily Planning and Solitude.”
It wasn’t just a nice idea—it was meant to be your most important task of the day. It was a little ritual: review your goals, get clear on your priorities, and plan your work for the day. It was a quiet, grounding moment before you stepped out to face the chaos of the day.
You were encouraged to write this down as your first task every day—your A1 task. The same task, every day. The first task.
But what happens with a practice like that? What do you do when you need to write down a task you need to do a few days, weeks, or months out? You turn to that page and start on line two, leaving line one open for that sacred morning habit.
Eventually, you get tired of writing down the same “Planning and Solitude” task every day, so you stop writing it altogether. But you leave the line blank, a reminder of every day’s implicit first task.
By this time, your basal ganglia—the part of the brain that runs the autopilot—has learned: leave that line blank. That’s just what we do.
Accidental Habits Run Deep
This is how a lot of habits form, isn’t it? Not with great fanfare, but with quiet repetition. Over time, these little actions carve out neural pathways until they’re as natural as breathing. We do them without question. Without thought.
Sometimes, that works against us. We check email first thing in the morning not because it helps, but because we always have. We skip the gym because we skipped it yesterday. Our defaults become our direction.
But that same mechanism—the brain’s love of patterns—can also be our greatest ally. If we choose a good habit and commit to it long enough, it will eventually become just as second-nature.
What’s On Your Line One?
The mystery of the blank line turned out to be a gentle reminder:We’re always building habits—whether we mean to or not.
The only question is whether those habits are serving us… or just showing up out of momentum.
Question: What’s the first thing you do each day? Is it on purpose? Share your thoughts in the comments, on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook.
