Happy Tuesday everyone!
In the world of technology or corporations, there is this idea that you can’t improve something that you can’t measure. So, corporations have this obsession with key metrics or performance indicators, things you can track & improve to skyrocket the company or product’s performance. Famous ways of working like OKRs are derivatives of this core idea.
Inspired by this concept, a few years back, I had this idea of tracking my mood every day. My motivation was simple, I wanted to have a better idea of what activities govern my day-to-day well-being so that I could slowly prioritize things that make me happy & be aware of the things that made me unhappy so I know to minimize them.
How I did it
You should download an app to do this that’s easy to use and can help you run analytics or visualizations. I used the app Daylio on my phone. There are many apps like this out there I am guessing.
At the end of each day, I rated how my mood was for the day in the app. It’s as simple as selecting a happy face emoji vs a sad one. I also tagged some activities that I did for the day. This tagging is crucial.
I also wrote down notes for each day. I used the notes as a gratitude journal since it has been linked to having experienced more gratitude, positive moods, and optimism about the future, as well as better sleep.
How it helped me:
After a month or so of doing this, I could see how my mood was in the past 30 days. If I had a bad day, I could always reflect on my mood over the past 30 days, which can be a hopeful reminder that this is just one bad day & I am usually having good days.
If I have a series of bad days, it becomes visually obvious in the app as you see a series of sad emojis in your calendar & thus that helped me reflect on why that’s the case & allows me to mitigate the core issue.
I could filter for which activity tags were linked to my mood being great for the day. For me, those mood-improving activities were generally working out or playing sports, publishing creative work, or finishing homework/exams. This was a great way of reminding me what activities I should keep up with.
Bad days mostly included arguments/fights with people I truly care about that hadn’t been resolved yet or sleep deprivation.
The notes, or gratitude journal. generally helped me end my days on a positive note. Even if I had a bad day, I knew I had things to be grateful for, which can make even the heaviest days feel a bit lighter.
This mood tracking was helping me a lot. However, after 6 months or so of doing this, I eventually stopped because of my lack of discipline in this regard due to a busy period of commitments. As you might know, it can be hard to pick up a habit that you stopped doing. But the video I shared below has inspired me to start again. I am hoping you will consider trying this out, even if it’s for a month, just to see what activities make you happier.
Stay introspective,
Seeam
Here is an entertaining & insightful video by Matt D’Avella on this exact experiment: