Building a Daily Practice · Lesson 2 of 4

Tracking honestly

Three numbers and a word beat a page of prose you will not write.

8 minute read

Tracking fails for the same reason practice fails: over-design. Three quick ratings — mood, energy, clarity — plus one tag and an optional sentence takes twenty seconds and produces data you will actually keep. A page of journalling every night does not survive February.

Rate the day as it was, not as you wish it had been. A log that only records good days is worse than no log, because it teaches you a false pattern. The threes and twos are where the useful information lives.

Log at a consistent time. Evening ratings and morning ratings measure different things, and mixing them makes any pattern you find unreliable.

Key points

  • · Three numbers, one tag, optional sentence
  • · Log the day honestly, including flat ones
  • · Same time daily, or the data means little

Exercise · Seven days

Log for seven consecutive days at the same hour. Do not read the results until day eight.

Open the tracker

Check yourself

Course contents