Mental health · a life skill
Advanced Mood Tracking
you, compared with you
After a month of check-ins, the log can start answering questions. Does a bad night change the next day, or does a bad day change the night? Which tags lift your mood above your own average, and which pull it down? The advanced version logs mood, sleep and a few tags, then reads them against each other, always comparing you with you. What it finds is a clue to test, not a verdict.
- Challenging
- Life-Changing impact
- Learn it: 30 days
- A minute a day for a month
Days tagged moved ran 0.9 above Sam's average. But they also followed better nights (4.1 against 3.1), so the log alone can't say which did it.
The method
Log a month, then compare you with you.
-
Log three things at the same time each day
Mood from 1 to 5, how well you slept last night from 1 to 5, and up to three tags. Same time each day, so the days compare.
-
Keep going for 30 days
A week can't tell a pattern from a coincidence. A month gives most tags enough days to say something, and shows which ones still have too few.
-
Compare against your own average
Not against other people, and not against how you think you should feel. Ask both ways round: last night against today, and today against tonight.
-
Treat a pattern as a clue to test
Pick one change, try it for two weeks, and keep logging. Groups with fewer than four days don't count yet.
Log, wait, compare, then test one change.
Example: Sam logged 28 of 30 days. After nights rated 1 or 2, mood averaged 2.4 over 8 days; after the rest, 3.8. The other way round was smaller: after low-mood days the next night rated 2.8, against 3.2. Sam's test for the next two weeks: phone out of the bedroom in deadline weeks.
This is for noticing, not diagnosing. If low mood lasts most of the day, nearly every day, for two weeks or more, talk to a doctor (NHS, NIMH). If thoughts of harming yourself come up, talk to someone today: in the US call or text 988, in the UK call Samaritans on 116 123, and elsewhere find a free line near you.
The log and what it shows
Log a month, then read it both ways round.
1 · Which day
Sleep means the night before that day: Wednesday's entry holds Tuesday night.
2 · Mood that day, 1 to 5
3 · Sleep the night before, 1 to 5
4 · Up to three tags
5 · What your log says
Nothing logged yet
Tags against your own average
One change to test
A pattern in one person's log is a clue, not a cause, and never a diagnosis. Two things that move together may both follow a third, like a busy week.
Everything here is kept only in this browser. Nothing is sent anywhere, and clearing your browser's site data removes it. New to this? Start with a once-a-day check-in or mood and energy.
The research behind it
Last night shapes today more than today shapes tonight.
Sofia Triantafillou, Konrad Kording and colleagues asked 208 adults to rate their mood and their sleep on their phones every day for six weeks. About three quarters had depression, anxiety or both; the rest had neither.
The link ran both ways, but not evenly. Within each person, how well they slept had a much larger effect on the next day's mood than the day's mood had on that night's sleep. Past mood and sleep, stress, physical activity and the weather did not appear to explain it away.
One more finding is the reason this page compares you with you. Allowing for the differences between people changed the results a great deal: someone who sleeps badly and feels low most of the time tells you little about what one bad night does to you. Your own log, read against your own average, is the closer question. It is still a log of everyday life, not an experiment, which is why a pattern is something to test.
The idea
Why it works.
Memory is a poor record of mood. A bad week colours the good days in it, and the reasons we give afterwards are often the ones we expected. A daily log made at the time is harder to argue with.
Your own average is the fairest yardstick. Comparing a tag's days with your usual day takes out everything about you that stays the same, and asking the question both ways round shows which way the link mostly runs. What is left is small enough to try changing.
When it goes wrong
Habits that help.
- Every tag looks meaningful. With three or four days, chance alone moves an average a long way. Wait for four days or more, and look for the same pattern a month later.
- Two tags always come together. Moving and sleeping well, deadlines and late nights: the log can't separate them. Change one on purpose and see what follows.
- Poor nights keep turning up. Start with the hour before bed: a wind-down routine is the smallest change to test.
- The log starts to feel like surveillance. Drop back to one number a day, or map your triggers instead. If low mood is most days, bring the log to a doctor; prep notes help.
Practise this in HourLife.
In Mood: Five-face check-in. Log how you feel on a five-face scale, add a note and triggers, and see your days on a calendar, a year grid, and a 30-day trend.
