Hi, anyone used any mood tracking app to chart your ups and downs throughout the week? I feel like there could be some benefit to keeping note of how you feel throughout the day but also think it could lead to overanalyzing things, so curious to see what has/has not worked for people. 

Thanks

J W

How were you feeling when you posted this?

Hmm, I don't remember but if I had to guess, a 3/5 or a 4/5 probably, with 5 being "good" and 1 being "bad". Why do you ask?

It was a rhetorical question. I wondered if you could answer your own question, after all we all have different needs.

If you said '3-4 out of 5' out of consideration for not oversharing with the internet then I applaud you, but I really don't believe that your emotional state can be expressed on a one dimensional scale in 5 increments of 20% between good and bad, however you define those two scoundrels.

So yes, if you can't remember and have to guess then an app may help you (or you could use the back of an envelope and a ball point pen).  Diaries I think have the benefit of providing data for future reference, should it become useful, but you don't need to re-read (overanalyse) them every day.

So the question behind my question was 'what would you hope to gain by recording your (not really one-dimesional) emtional state?', and that's also rhetorical, I don't actually want to possess this info.


Besides, if there was such an App then someome somewhere would wait till you were feeling really good and then hit you with adverts for shit they want to sell you.

Thanks for clarifying. I figured there was some 'question behind the question', but I didn't want to assume to know what that question was.

There are plenty of such apps available. I am usually hesitant to make assumptions like that all apps are solely money-driven and predatory, just because I'm not convinced that way of thinking is what's best for my own mental health.  After all, DhO is an app, of sorts. So is Reddit.

But then again, the one I downloaded just hit me with a 'Free Trial Expired' message so I guess the joke is on me 

I like the idea of this.

A good way to apprectiate change, impermanence. 
Say you feel good.  You feel on top of the world, you can face your fears and feel like nothing can get you down.
Then, inevitably, you crash.  Tracking that change from a more 'positive' mindstate to a 'negative' one is a clear experiential understanding of impermeanence, albiet - more of a gross realization.  Nonetheless it's useful.
Obviously noticing sensate reality moment to moment is far more superior though, but sometimes skillful reflection like this can help in the more difficult times when contracting into a sense of self. 

"Yes, this emotion state will change".

Not sure of any apps, but a good old fashion Evernote Jounralling Document couldn't hurt.  Maybe tracking in the morning, midday and afternoon?

I've been thinking how much I would like to have a product like what you are suggesting. In fact, I've created an account to respond once I saw your thread.

The product I've envisioned was something like this:
* A smartwatch with a small touchscreen.
* At any point, you can click one of the icons representing some basic emotions (happiness, sadness, anxiety).
* Once you do that, you can optionally select intensity of the emotion.
* After that, you can also optionally guess how long that emotion will last.
* If you have registered your guess, the watch will remind you to record how correct/wrong that guess was (it might emit a beep, and then you can state that the emotion has subsided x minutes ago, or that it still persists and you can guess again how long that will last).
* You can also configure other reminders to record your current emotional state.

To be clear, I'm not looking to start working on anything like that. It's simply that this idea has been hunting me for months and I'm glad to unload it from my head anywhere at all.

I tend to stay generally aware of how the POI affects my moods throughout the days, weeks & months.  I find this useful to not get swept up a given pattern of thoughts & emotions, trying to stay more consistent in my approach across the natural expansions & contractions of life.  I think this effort similar to the 6 realms practice that Ken McLeod talks about.