Uses of a Mood Tracker App and Why It Is Helpful

Writing down our thoughts has always been therapeutic. Be it on journals, diaries or even on online blog sites like this one, we all enjoy documenting our days and treasuring every memory and it is helping us ease our anxieties.

If you are artsy, you can even design and customize your notes. I used to be very interested with arts and stuff but I feel like daily life is sucking all my energy that writing on a tangible diary feels like an additional task instead of it getting to unleash its cathartic effect. In addition, as we are living in a highly modern setup these days, a virtual journal/diary is definitely more convenient for us now.

Another selling point of a virtual journal would be its functionality. Because you can download the app to your phones or tablets, you can update your journals wherever and whenever you want, even when you are lying down in bed with the lights off at night.

That being said, I have been using this virtual bujo (bullet journal) of sorts since 2019 and it’s been of great help to assess my thoughts and feelings especially in the past year where everything is new, bland or exciting depending on your own perspective.

I searched for a nice application on my phone and came upon this app called Daylio. Little did I know that it would change my life (and that is not an exaggeration).

But first, what is Daylio?

Basically, Daylio is a self-care bullet journal that tracks users’ daily mood and activities. Users may choose the mood initially (e.g., rad, good, meh, okay, awful) followed by the activities they did that day (e.g., cook, work, hanging out with family and friends, etc.) and lastly, you can elaborate more on the notes and even upload a photo of said activity to “immortalize” it.

There are pre-set moods and activities already but Daylio is very versatile and you can actually customize it with whatever you want. You can turn your bujo into a fitness goal and mental health tracker. Since there is a feature that would allow you to upload photos, you can also opt to make it as a food or travel log. It could be your gratitude diary. It could also be your rant buddy.

Per their App Store description, Daylio is built in these three major principles:

1. Reach happiness and self-improvement by being mindful of your days.

2. Validate your hunches. How does your new hobby influenced your life?

3. Form a new habit in an obstacle-free environment— no learning curve.

After you’ve written any highlight of your day and once it has gathered enough data, the app will also provide you with statistics to show the patterns in your mood over time varying in weekly, monthly, and yearly reports. You can easily check which mood has governed your month as shown in different formats such as a line graph, bar graph, or even a pie chart. You can also get some emblems once you have unlocked certain achievements like acquiring the longest streak or having the most activities in a day.

Listing down the pros per my experience:

• Daylio is very user-friendly. While there are features that are exclusive for paid contents and there are limited icons that you can use, it won’t be a hindrance to fully get to utilize the app.

• It offers a lot of fun features and the data gathering is accurate and impressive. I particularly loved seeing my yearly mood count/record or the Year in Pixels, like what they are calling it.

• It is minimalistic and you can customise its interface (color themes) as well as mix-and-match the mood using funny and cute emojis

• You can build a habit and collect achievement emblems. However, it isn’t a requirement to write everyday. Always remember the reason why you are doing this and that is to help organize your thoughts and ease your anxiety. So don’t feel too pressured to write down anything. Just do it in your own pace and liking.

• You can set a backup via your Google Drive if you furtherly want to preserve your entries

• You can set a reminder (Mine is set at 8:00PM daily) but you are not limited by that certain time and can keep on putting entries anytime of the day.

• They don’t collect or store your data and you can opt to have it locally stored on your phones.

Further Realisations

Using Daylio helped me be okay with the fact that some days are great and there are days that are not as special as the others but that is also alright. 

I did try to keep up a streak but there are days when I cannot think of a highlight or a moment that would stand out. The days became like a routine that would make you feel like nothing really interesting is happening. But then you will be surprised by the good days full of gratitude and happiness, of the little blessings that you just didn’t get to appreciate when it is still happening at present.

Here are some of my past entries. I even wrote about joining Noise Cash and Read cash too. 

And for the achievements:

Always remember that no achievement is too little for as long as it has made you happy or fulfilled then whatever you have gotten or received deserves to be celebrated.

Lastly, our thoughts can affect our health so let’s aim to find opportunities to unleash our happy hormones and influence others along the way.

Happy virtual bujo-ing!

A

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This isn’t Daylio-sponsored but I just would like to share it because who knows, you might want to try using it too and hopefully it could help you go through your day as well.

Photo/screenshots ©️ by the writer (me)