500+ Days of Mood Tracking

Introduction

In the summer of 2020, after a curtailed backpacking trip to South America and 4 months of pandemic-induced lockdown, my mental health was at a low. I was in the midst of a 101 book year, and in August I read Permission to Feel by Marc Brackett.

The book that focuses on teaching and training emotional intelligence: being able to recognise, understand, label, express and regulate your emotions. The method that Brackett and his research team have developed divides emotions into four quadrants along two axis: low and high energy, and unpleasant and pleasant. They also developed a mobile app, called Mood Meter, where you can report your emotions using this matrix, allowing you to track your mood over time.

Mood tracking is something that I've tried a few times over the years and never managed to get to stick, so I was eager to see whether I could report my moods using this process. Brackett suggests that emotions should be reported as and when they arise. However, when I read the book, I wasn't in a headspace where I really wanted to explore what I was feeling. I ended up trying it for a few days and found it very uncomfortable, so stopped.

The Breakthrough

Fast forward several months to late January 2021 and I had just finished When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi, a heart-breaking memoir written by a 36-year-old neurosurgeon who was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer and is coming to terms with his own morality. What I took from his story was the importance of awareness, understanding yourself, and not letting life pass you by. It was then that I took the tentative step to go back to reporting my moods, but instead of doing it when particularly strong emotions arise (I would never think to do it if this was the case), I would attempt to log my mood in the morning, lunchtime and evening, every day. As with diet and exercise, the best routine is one that you can stick to!

It is now late 2022, and I've logged my mood on Mood Meter 3 times every day since the 31st January 2021, 662 days at the time of writing. The rest of this post will explain how I've kept this up, what I've learnt and most importantly, how it's made me feel.

A quick note, I'll use the terms 'emotions', 'feelings' and 'moods' interchangeably throughout this article.

Questions and Answers

How do you keep it up?

As I discussed in my blog post on meditation, I use Todoist to keep track of what I need to do during the day. I then have the widget on my phone's home screen, so this list is visible every time I unlock it. I have had days where the widget has broken, and I forget to do most of the things on the list... but it works for me most of the time! For anyone who struggles to remember to do menial tasks during the day, this approach has done wonders for me.

On Todoist, I have three items for Morning, Lunch and Evening Mood Meter. I then tick them off when I've reported my mood in the app.

How do you pick a mood?

The app works by first selecting a quadrant, then choosing a mood within that quadrant. I'll first reflect on if I'm feeling high or low energy and then if the emotion is unpleasant or pleasant. This helps narrow down what my prevailing feeling is at the time. It's worth noting that it's not an exact science, and it doesn't matter if you get it wrong - it's about building awareness over time. I also tend not to answer the follow up questions on Mood Meter when reporting my mood, mainly out of laziness.

Side note, these same skills of recognising (and letting go of) thoughts and feelings is often employed in meditation, a practice known as noting.

What impact has it made to your life?

Along with daily meditation, tracking my mood has had a huge positive impact on my self-awareness and emotional intelligence. It hasn't stopped me going through difficult patches, but recognising that it will pass and that it's okay to feel that way has done wonders for me. The biggest takeaway has been that most of the time I experience pleasant feelings, because when I'm down in the dumps it definitely doesn't feel that way.

It has also helped me reflect on what is going on in my life, how that impacts my mood and possible changes I can make to get myself back at baseline. For example, there was a lot of uncertainty in August this year in both my work and personal life, as you can see below.

Doing it at a set point each day (kind of, there are sometimes hours of variance as you can see in the image above) has forced me to think about how I'm feeling. This is something that I now find myself doing at other points throughout the day.

Would you recommend others doing it?

Self-awareness is an interesting topic, I've always been interested in understanding more about myself, but I know that not everyone is comfortable doing that. I do think that understanding your mood, however you do it, is an important part of being able to regulate your own emotions - ultimately leading to a healthier existence.

The book itself is well worth a read if you're interested in more of the science behind the model. Brackett also covers how to introduce these skills into the classroom and workplace, which is a fascinating idea.

Will you carry on?

Yes! For as long as I can. There is now a new app, called How We Feel, that builds upon Mood Meter. Brackett has written a short article about it. I'll most likely transition over to that at the start of December.