Routines bookend your day so that planning and recovery aren't afterthoughts. They're configured under Settings → Routines.
They're also the quiet engine behind most of Onward. Energy and mood logged during a routine are what let the adaptive interface pick the right mode and what fill in the charts on Your Wellness. A minute in the morning is what makes the rest of the product work.
Morning routine
Onward prompts you when a morning routine is due. Each step can be turned on or off under Settings → Routines. Skip a step when you don't have an answer. The steps that can appear:
- Last Shutdown — a look at how yesterday closed, when you have a prior log
- Mood and Energy
- Habits, Gratitude, Confidence, Boundaries, Journal
- Daily Learning, when one is scheduled
- Plan shutdown — when you'll shut down, on the days you set
- Plan My Day — the handoff into today's five tasks
Physical context and a yesterday-recap step are not in the routine.
Energy check-in
The energy step uses a 1–5 scale — Very Low, Low, Steady, High, Very High — with an optional note for sleep, stress, caffeine, or anything else relevant.
Two things depend on this answer. Immediately, it sets your adaptive interface tier for the day: low scores open Onward in Rest, showing one task at a time; high scores open in Flow. Longer term, those notes are what make the correlations meaningful — "energy below 3 every day after a late release" is a finding you can act on, and it only exists if you wrote the notes down at the time.
You can always override the resulting mode in the header.
Handoff to Plan My Day
The routine ends by offering Plan your day, which hands you to Plan My Day to pick up to five tasks. Skip plan moves on without it.
Doing them back to back is the intended flow: you've just told Onward how much capacity you have, which is exactly the right moment to decide how much to commit to.
Shutdown routine
Shutdown is how you stop on purpose. Without it, most people quit when they run out of energy and carry the open loops into the evening. A short review of what moved, and an explicit note of what didn't, is what lets you stop thinking about it.
Open it from the header, the same place as the morning routine. Each step can be turned on or off under Settings → Routines, or with Customize Routine inside the flow. The steps:
| Step | What it asks |
|---|---|
| Wins | Celebrate your wins. The prompt rotates — "What went well today?", "What am I proud of today?", and similar. Write in Write a few wins (big or small). |
| Open Loops | Clear your open loops. "Brain dump anything unfinished so your mind can rest." This is a note, not a new task list. |
| Habits | Review today's habits. Check off what you finished or uncheck what you didn't. If you have none, it says No habits to review. |
| Next day plan | Set up your next day. The default is three rows, Task 1 through Task 3, each with What needs to happen? and a Project. Write as freeform notes instead switches to a short list plus First move ("What's the first tiny step for your next day?"). Create tasks instead switches back. |
These notes do not replace Plan My Day. Tomorrow morning you still commit to the five.
The footer asks How are you ending the day? Pick a mood or leave it blank. Save & Finish stores what you wrote. When every enabled step is done, the button reads Complete Shut Down Routine. Remind me in 20 min closes it and brings it back.
That evening mood is the other half of How your days start vs end on Your Wellness.
Keeping them sustainable
- Keep them short. A few minutes. A routine you skip four days a week produces worse data than a shorter one you actually do.
- Start with fewer steps. Enable mood and energy first; add gratitude, journal, and learning once the habit holds.
- Missing a day costs nothing. There's no streak penalty on routines, and the trends tolerate gaps fine.
- Use recurring tasks for operational work. Routines are for check-ins, not for your Monday reporting job — that's a recurring task.
Where routine data shows up
| Where | What it feeds |
|---|---|
| Adaptive interface | Today's Rest / Ready / Flow tier |
| Your Wellness | Mood, energy, and balance trends |
| Onward Guide | Context for its suggestions on My Tasks |
| Weekly snapshot | Routines and Avg mood metrics |
Habit tracking and the habit heatmap live under Your Wellness; routine configuration stays in Settings → Routines.
Common questions
Are routines required?
No. They're optional, and Onward works without them — you'll just have thinner wellness data and the interface won't have an energy score to adapt to.
How long should a routine take?
A few minutes at most. Daily adherence matters far more than depth.
What if I skip a day?
Nothing breaks. There's no penalty, and the charts handle gaps.
Can I do the morning routine in the afternoon?
Yes. It's prompted in the morning but available when you get to it.
Does my energy score lock me into Rest mode?
No. It sets the starting tier, and your manual override in the header always wins. Override is stored per device — see Adaptive interface.
Are my routine answers private?
Yes. Intentions, notes, and reflections are visible only to you. See Privacy and your data.