Mood tracking and Year in Pixels

Not medical advice. This is a research summary for a journaling system. Mood charts can support care, but they don't diagnose anything. If a chart shows a pattern that worries you (weeks of low mood, a run of "wired" days with little sleep, thoughts of self-harm), take it to a clinician, and use the Safety plan at the back of the book.

Research checked 2026-09-28. Uncertain points are marked (uncertain). Sources are in section 28.

---

1. At a glance

2. Summary

Mood tracking means giving each day (or each few hours) a rating on a fixed scale and keeping those ratings where you can see them together. The clinical form is the NIMH Life Chart Method: a daily rating of mood from severe depression to severe mania, scored by how much the mood got in the way of normal life, charted alongside sleep, medication and life events, so a clinician and patient can see the shape of an illness over months. Research tools like ecological momentary assessment (EMA) push the same idea further: several short ratings a day, in the moment, to beat the distortions of memory. The Year in Pixels is the friendly, visual cousin: a 12 × 31 grid, one square per day, coloured by how the day felt as a whole. Camille of Passion Carnets drew the first one in December 2015 and bullet journallers made it one of the most copied layouts of the decade. The evidence is honest but modest: daily ratings are a reliable way to measure mood, and they help people notice feelings, but tracking alone has not been shown to improve mood, and for some people staring at a column of bad days feeds rumination. The craft is in small choices: a scale with clear anchors, a zero that means "steady", a pattern key that works without colour, and a review habit that looks for shape (cycles, seasons, sleep before a dip) instead of grading yourself.

3. History and origin

Clinical mood charting

• Kraepelin and earlier. Psychiatrists drew illness "courses" by hand long before apps: a line above and below a baseline for manic and depressive episodes. This is the root of every mood graph (uncertain on exact firsts; common history, not opened as a primary source).
• Late 1980s: the NIMH life chart. Robert M. Post and colleagues at the NIMH Biological Psychiatry Branch developed a graphic method for mapping the life course of affective illness (Post and colleagues, late 1980s (uncertain: exact citation not verified)). Gabriele Leverich and Post then developed retrospective and prospective versions (LCM-r, LCM-p).
• 1997: first reliability data. Denicoff and colleagues reported preliminary reliability and validity for the prospective life chart in 30 outpatients with bipolar I and II in a lithium/carbamazepine trial (Journal of Psychiatric Research 31(5):593–603).
• 2000: validation. Denicoff et al. validated the clinician and patient versions: daily ratings based on functional impairment correlated highly with standard cross-sectional mood scales (Psychological Medicine 30(6):1391–1397).
• 2014: self-rating confirmed. Born et al. (BMC Psychiatry) showed in 108 German bipolar patients that the patient self-rated life chart had "highly significant correlation and good concordance" with clinician ratings, so a paper chart kept at home is a valid, cheap way to track bipolar illness.
• 1990s–2000s: EMA. Saul Shiffman, Arthur Stone and Michael Hufford named and organised ecological momentary assessment (Shiffman, Stone & Hufford, 2008, Annual Review of Clinical Psychology; the paper was referenced but its publisher page blocked access). Burke et al. (2017, JMIR) give the working definition used here: EMA "assesses individuals' current experiences, behaviors, and moods as they occur in real time and in their natural environment."
• 2010s: phones. Mood apps arrive. eMoods (Yottaram LLC) grew out of bipolar charting; Daylio (Habitics s.r.o., EU) launched in 2015 with a 5-face scale and later added its own "Year in Pixels" view. Trials test whether phone self-monitoring treats anything (MONARCA I 2015, MONARCA II 2019; Kauer 2012).
• 2016–2017: premenstrual charting gets rules. The Carolina Premenstrual Assessment Scoring System (C-PASS; Eisenlohr-Moul et al., Am J Psychiatry 2017) turned two cycles of daily ratings into a standard way to diagnose PMDD.

Year in Pixels

• Who: Camille, French, of the blog and Instagram account Passion Carnets (@passion.carnets / @passioncarnets). The Bullet Journal blog describes her as a community manager and faculty teacher.
• When: She started bullet journalling in July 2015. In December 2015, trackers were the big trend in the community; she drew a 12-column × 31-row grid for 2016, one small square ("pixel") per day, and coloured each by the day as a whole.
• Inspiration: Tim Urban's "Your Life in Weeks" (Wait But Why, 7 May 2014), a poster of the ~4,680 weeks of a 90-year life as small boxes.
• Spread: The idea went viral through Instagram, Pinterest and Tumblr in 2016–2017. Ryder Carroll's official Bullet Journal blog ran a "Deep dive: Year in Pixels" interview with Camille on 1 July 2017. Planner companies (Passion Planner's free printable in three sizes) and apps (Daylio) later adopted the name.
• Cultural context: Mid-2010s bullet journalling moved from task lists to trackers (habit, sleep, water, mood). The Year in Pixels fit that mood perfectly: one mark a day, very little writing, and a big satisfying picture by December.

Key quotes

• Camille, on what she rates: "I don't track my different emotions, but rather how I perceive the day in its entirety: emotions, feelings and events." (Bullet Journal blog, 2017)
• Tim Urban, on the grid that inspired it: "Those are your weeks and they're all you've got." (2014)
• Born et al. on self-rated life charts: a "time and cost-effective alternative" to clinician ratings (paraphrase of their conclusion, 2014).

4. Philosophy and principles

Stated goals

• Clinical charting: catch the start of an episode early; see whether a treatment helps; replace "how have you been?" at a 15-minute appointment with a picture of the last three months.
• Year in Pixels: notice the year you actually had, not the one memory edits; enjoy a small ritual; see that bad stretches end.

Core beliefs

1. Memory is a bad historian. Retrospective recall is biased by today's mood and by peaks and endings. Rating in the moment (or at least the same evening) beats remembering on Sunday.
2. Rate the day, not your worth. A number is weather, not a grade. Camille rates "the day in its entirety."
3. Anchor the scale to something you can observe. The NIMH-LCM scores severity by how much mood got in the way of usual roles, not by how intense it felt. That makes ratings more consistent from day to day.
4. Shape over single points. One bad day tells you almost nothing. Four weeks show a cycle; a year shows a season.
5. Context makes the chart readable. Sleep, meds, cycle day, work shifts and big events on the same row turn a coloured grid into something you can reason about.

Problems it solves

• "I can't remember how the last month was" at a prescriber visit.
• Not noticing a slow slide (winter, a med wearing off, burnout building).
• For bipolar disorder: missing early warning signs of mania or depression.
• For premenstrual and hormone-linked mood: showing (or ruling out) a link to cycle days.

5. Core components

Daily rating

One mark, same time each day. Evening works for most people because the day is done. Shift workers should rate at the end of their day, not at midnight (see section 19). Life charts ask for the worst impairment of the day; Year in Pixels asks for the overall feel. Pick one and write it on the key, because mixing them makes the year unreadable.

Scale and anchors

Three common designs:

Design rules that the research and practice agree on:

• Anchor the ends and the middle with words, not just faces. Faces are culture- and alexithymia-dependent.
• Keep the scale fixed for the whole year. Changing it in June breaks every comparison.
• Say what "high" means. In a bipolar scale, +3 is a warning (little sleep, racing), not a great day. In a wellbeing scale, 5 is a great day. The Studio's default key says "+3 very high/wired", which is the bipolar meaning; if you want "great day", use a separate "good things" line, not +3.
• Separate dimensions when they diverge. Mood, anxiety and irritability move separately. eMoods rates depressed, elevated, irritable and anxious on their own rows. The Studio already separates mood (on paper) from anxiety (on the X4 companion, or a Scale block on paper).
• Allow a range. On mixed or up-and-down days, mark the low and the high (split cell, or two dots joined by a line).

Pattern and colour key

Colour is the classic Year in Pixels look, but Journalwright Studio books print black-and-white, and about 1 in 12 men (fewer women) have colour-vision deficiency, mostly red-green (National Eye Institute). Three B&W encodings that work:

1. Fill density (best for 5 levels): empty □ · one dot ⊡ · one diagonal ▨ · cross-hatch ▩ · solid ■.
2. Numbers in the cell (best for 7 levels or −3..+3): write −2, 0, +1. Readable, scannable, zero ambiguity.
3. Position in the cell (life-chart style): a short tick high in the cell for up, low for down, middle for steady.

Rule of thumb: darker = further from steady. For a signed scale, use hatch direction for sign (/ for low, \ for high) and density for size, so −1 is one light slash and +3 is dense back-slashes. Test it: a stranger should read the key in 10 seconds.

Range and split cells

The NIMH-LCM lets a day carry both a depressive and a manic rating and tracks "ultradian" (within-day) cycling. On paper, draw a diagonal through the cell: top-left triangle = the day's high, bottom-right = the day's low.

Context rows

The life chart plots medication doses, sleep hours, life events, substance use, irritability and menstrual cycle beside mood (Born et al., 2014). You don't need all of them. Pick the two or three that you suspect matter: sleep almost always; cycle day if you menstruate; HRT dose day if you inject; work shift if you work nights.

Anxiety and irritability rows

A single mood line hides a lot. Anxiety 0–3 (the X4 companion's check-in), irritability 0–3 (eMoods-style) are cheap to add.

Notes

A single word ("argument", "sun!", "no sleep") is enough. Notes make the pattern readable in December.

EMA pings

Research EMA uses random prompts several times a day. Burke et al. found 8 prompts a day too many; 5 was acceptable. Kauer et al. used 4 a day for 2–4 weeks. For a journal, one to three check-ins a day is realistic (morning, after work, bedtime). The X4 check-in is a gentle, pull-only version: you open it; it never pings.

Month overview

31 rows, one per day, with the mood cells and context columns side by side. This is where most patterns show up first.

Year in Pixels

The iconic page: months across the top, days 1–31 down the side, one cell per day. Grey out days that don't exist (Feb 30, Apr 31).

Weekly line

Seven dots joined by a line on a −3..+3 grid. The week spread already prints this "Mood line".

Review ritual

See section 8. The chart only helps if you look at it on purpose, briefly, with a question in mind.

6. Setting it up

First setup (15–20 minutes, once)

1. Decide why. Write one line: "I'm tracking to see whether ___." (sleep affects mood; winter hits me; my new med works; my cycle matters). A reason keeps the chart small.
2. Choose one scale and write its anchors on the key page. If you have (or might have) bipolar disorder, use a signed scale where + means elevated. Otherwise 1–5 is fine.
3. Choose the encoding: patterns for 5 levels, numbers for 7.
4. Pick two context rows at most (sleep plus one).
5. Pick the time: "when I brush my teeth at night" or "end of shift".
6. Draw or find the pages: a month tracker for each month, and one Year in Pixels page if you want the big picture.
7. Write your stop rule. "If I notice I'm checking the chart to beat myself up, I'll switch to words only for two weeks."

First day

• Rate once, at your chosen time. Takes 10 seconds. Add one word if something stood out.
• Don't go back and fill earlier days from memory. Start today.

First week

• Rate every day you remember. Leave misses blank, never guessed. A blank is data ("I was busy or away").
• On day 7, look at the week line for 1 minute. Ask: "Did the anchors fit? Is +3 ever real for me? Is anything missing?"
• Adjust the anchor words now if needed, then freeze the scale for the year.

7. Daily practice

Order of operations (evening, about 60 seconds)

1. Pause, one breath. Ask: "Taking the whole day, where was I, mostly?" (Or, life-chart style: "How much did mood get in the way today?")
2. Mark the number or pattern. On a mixed day, mark low and high.
3. Mark anxiety 0–3 if you track it.
4. Fill context: sleep hours last night, meds taken, cycle day, shift.
5. One word note, optional.
6. Close the page. Don't look back over the month tonight.

Prompts for the note

• What moved the needle today?
• Body first: tired, hungry, in pain, dysphoric?
• One thing that helped even a little.

Timing tips

• Same time daily keeps ratings comparable.
• If you missed the evening, rate the next morning only if you can recall clearly; otherwise leave it blank.
• EMA-style extra check-ins (morning and mid-shift) are optional, and most useful when a clinician asks for them or you're testing a within-day pattern (for example, afternoon crashes).

8. Rhythms

Weekly (5 minutes, weekly review)

• Look at the 7-day line. One question only: "What came before the lowest day?" Often sleep, a hard shift, or a social load.
• Don't calculate averages weekly; the noise is too high.

Monthly (10–15 minutes, Closing the month)

• Count days at each level, or average the numbers (the Closing the month page has an "Avg mood" box filled in from the paper tracker).
• Scan for shapes (see "How to read patterns" below).
• Copy the month average to the Keeper's Year at a glance.
• Write one sentence: "This month the chart showed ___."

Quarterly (20 minutes)

• Compare three months side by side. Look for trend (slowly lower?), and whether a change you made (new med, new schedule) shows up 2–6 weeks later.
• If you see a worrying run, book the appointment and bring the pages.

Yearly (30–60 minutes, Looking back)

• Finish the Year in Pixels. Look from arm's length first: bands of dark (seasons), stripes (weekly or cyclical), dots (one-offs).
• Archive the year: photograph or scan the grid; keep the Keeper.
• Decide whether to track next year, and whether to change the scale (only at year boundaries).

How to read patterns

Menstrual cycle and HRT. For people who menstruate, the DRSP (Daily Record of Severity of Problems) and C-PASS rely on prospective daily ratings across at least two cycles, comparing the week before bleeding with the week after. Track "cycle day" (day 1 = first day of bleeding) in a context column. For trans people on injectable estradiol or testosterone, community reports describe mood shifts near the trough before the next dose; a "dose day" tick in the tracker lets you test that for yourself (anecdotal; not a researched finding in this doc).

9. Page anatomy

All sketches are for 5.5×8.5 inside the 9pt scan frame. Proportions scale to 8.5×11.

Day block: mood and anxiety (already in Care check-in)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ ☹  ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○  ☺     calm ○ ○ ○ ○ anxious│   ← one row, ~0.2 in tall
└────────────────────────────────────────────┘
      −3        0       +3        0       3

Day block: proposed "Day pixel" (a single square plus the key)

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Today  ┌──┐   □ steady  ⊡ −1/+1  ▨ −2/+2      │
│        └──┘   ■ −3/+3   ◸ low / ◿ high (split)│
└──────────────────────────────────────────────┘
  0.35 in square; legend in 7pt; data-zone="pixel"

Week spread: Mood line (already built)

      M  T  W  T  F  S  S
 +3   ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·
 +2   ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·
 +1   ·  ·  ●──●  ·  ·  ·
  0  ─●──●──·──·──●──●──●─   ← zero row heavier
 −1   ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·
 −2   ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·
 −3   ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·

Month page: tracker (already built, mood dots + context)

 d  day ☾   mood −3……+3   sleep meds meals shwr work spoons
 1  W   ◐   ○○○●○○○        7    ✓✓   ✓✓✓   ✓   9-5   6
 2  T   ◐   ○○●○○○○        5    ✓✓   ✓✓    ·   9-5   4
 …
31  F   ●   ○○○○●○○        8    ✓✓   ✓✓✓   ✓   off   9

Year in Pixels page (proposed, one page)

┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ 2027 · a year in pixels                     key ▢⊡▨▩■ │
│     J  F  M  A  M  J  J  A  S  O  N  D                │
│  1  □  □  □  □  □  □  □  □  □  □  □  □                │
│  2  □  □  □  □  □  □  □  □  □  □  □  □                │
│  …                                                    │
│ 29  □  □  □  □  □  □  □  □  □  □  □  □                │
│ 30  □  ░  □  □  □  □  □  □  □  □  □  □   ░ = no day   │
│ 31  □  ░  □  ░  □  ░  □  □  ░  □  ░  □                │
│ ───────────────────────────────────────────────────── │
│ What I see:  ____________________________________     │
└───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
 Grid: 12 × 31 cells. On 5.5×8.5 inside the frame (~4.7 × 6.2 in
 usable), cells ≈ 0.28 in wide × 0.17 in tall; on 8.5×11 ≈ 0.5 × 0.26 in.
 Day numbers left and right so either hand can find the row.

Life-chart style month (proposed variant, landscape feel on a portrait page)

        1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10 … 31
  +3  │
  +2  │                  ▄
  +1  │        ▄  ▄   ▄  █
   0  ┼──────────────────────────────────
  −1  │  ▀  ▀
  −2  │
  −3  │
 sleep  7  6  7  5  4  4  6 …
 meds   ✓  ✓  ✓  ✓  ✓  ·  ✓ …
 cycle  12 13 14 …
 event        move        ↑new dose

Bars rise for elevation and drop for depression, as the NIMH-LCM draws them. It's the clinician-friendly view.

10. Worked examples

A sample day (signed scale, evening, 45 seconds)

Mood  ○ ○ ○ ● ○ ○ ○   (0, steady)
Anx   ○ ● ○ ○         (1)
Sleep 6 h · meds ✓✓ · shift 7–3:30 · cycle —
Note  "bus late, fine after lunch"
Pixel □ (steady, 0)

A sample week (Mood line)

      M  T  W  T  F  S  S
 +1         ●
  0   ●  ●     ●        ●
 −1               ●  ●
 Note: Fri–Sat low after two closing shifts; Sun ok after 9 h sleep.
 Weekly question: what came before the lowest day? → 5 h, 5 h sleep.

A sample month (tracker summary, October)

Days at each level:  −3:0  −2:2  −1:7  0:15  +1:5  +2:2  +3:0   (31 days logged)
Average: −0.1     Sleep avg: 6.6 h     Blank days: 0
Shapes: dips cluster on days after 5 h sleep (6 of 9 low days).
        Oct 20–26 run of −1/−2 lines up with clocks-back week and first dark evenings.
One sentence: "Sleep under 6 h shows up as a low day next day more often than not."
Action: protect sleep on closing-shift nights; ask about light box in November.

A Year in Pixels, read in December

     J F M A M J J A S O N D
     ▩ ▨ ▨ □ □ □ ⊡ □ □ ⊡ ▨ ▩     ← first row (day 1) of each month
     …
Arm's length: dark band Nov–Feb; stripe every ~4 weeks Mar–Aug (cycle-linked?);
single black pixels = funeral (Apr 12), flu (Sep 3).
Next year: add cycle-day column; start light box Oct 15.

11. Variations and offshoots

12. Community practice

What people actually do

• Pinterest and Instagram: Year in Pixels spreads with elaborate borders, shaped grids (a heart, a tree whose leaves are days), and 5–10 colour keys. Posts peak in late December (setup) and January (first month filled).
• Reddit (r/bulletjournal, r/BipolarReddit, r/PMDD, r/ADHD): practical threads: "I kept forgetting, so I rate at teeth time"; "my pixels were all the same colour so I switched to 1–10"; "tracking made me obsess, I stopped"; clinicians asking for printouts; people with PMDD overlaying cycle days.
• YouTube: "Plan with me" videos build the grid; "year end flip-through" videos show the finished picture and talk about what it revealed (often winter dips).
• Common drop-off: many Year in Pixels grids stop in March. People who finish usually keep it next to something they already open daily.

Common customisations

• Two colours per pixel (split diagonally) for mixed days.
• A second grid for sleep, anxiety or pain, sharing the same layout.
• Words instead of colours ("tired", "calm") with one colour per word.
• Weekly pixels (52 cells) for people who can't do daily.
• Shape grids (circles, hexagons) for the look.

Aesthetic versus minimalist camps

• Aesthetic: colour, themed keys, decorative grids; enjoyment keeps them going; risk is setup fatigue.
• Minimalist: pencil numbers in a plain 31-row column; fast and durable; risk is boredom. Journalwright Studio books sit firmly here: black and white, numbers or hatching, no ornament.

13. Official products and formats

Year in Pixels has no official product; it is a free community layout. Related formats:

Release cycle: printables and planners follow the calendar year; apps update continuously.

14. Tools and supplies

• Pencil (HB or 2B): erasable, never bleeds, scans well. The best default.
• Fine liner 0.3–0.5 mm: for hatch patterns. Test for bleed on the book's paper.
• Colour (optional): coloured pencils don't bleed; highlighters and alcohol markers ghost or bleed on 60–80 gsm paper.
• Ruler: only if you draw your own grid.
• Stamps: a small square stamp or a set of pattern stamps can make pixels quick and even.
• Paper: KDP paperback white paper is about 55 lb (~90 gsm) (uncertain; check KDP spec); solid fills with markers can show through. Hatching shows through less than solid fills.

15. Digital and hybrid versions

Apps and templates

• Daylio: 5-level scale (rad, good, meh, bad, awful by default, customisable), activity tags, correlations, Year in Pixels. Entries stay on the device unless you turn on encrypted backup.
• eMoods: rows for depression, elevation, irritability and anxiety, plus sleep and meds; PDF reports for clinicians.
• Spreadsheets: conditional formatting turns numbers into pixels instantly.
• Research EMA apps: random pings; mostly used in studies.

E-ink

• reMarkable, Kindle Scribe, Boox: import a PDF grid and fill with the pen; no colour on most, so use hatch or numbers.
• The X4 companion (Journalwright Studio firmware): logs anxiety 0–3 as a built-in button check-in (mood is kept on paper; older X4 logs that hold mood still read). A Scale block set to Signed (−3…+3) exports to it as a custom check-in.

Scanning

• The Studio's scan zones let a scanning app read filled bubbles. Circles and numbers are more reliable to machine-read than hatch patterns. A pixel grid is easy for a human to read in a photo, harder for a bubble reader.

What's lost or gained

16. Evidence and research

Measurement: good

Self-monitoring as an intervention: mixed

Claimed versus supported

• Supported: daily self-ratings are a valid way to record mood (especially bipolar); tracking raises emotional self-awareness; charts help conversations with clinicians.
• Plausible, weakly supported: seeing patterns leads to useful changes (sleep, light, timing of meds).
• Not supported: that tracking by itself lifts mood or prevents episodes.
• Real risk: rumination and distress for some people with depression; burden with too many prompts.

17. Benefits

• Replaces fuzzy recall with a record. Evidenced (life-chart validation; EMA rationale).
• Raises emotional self-awareness. Evidenced (Kauer 2012; Dubad 2018).
• Improves conversations with prescribers and therapists. Evidenced (qualitative; Dubad 2018; Wright 2025).
• Shows early warning signs of bipolar episodes (sleep drops, rising scores). Claimed/clinical practice; trials don't show that monitoring alone prevents episodes.
• Reveals seasonal and cycle patterns. Claimed for individuals; the conditions are evidenced (NIMH on SAD; C-PASS for PMDD).
• Shows that bad stretches end ("the dark band stopped in March"). Claimed.
• Quality of life and stress improved with monitoring in MONARCA II. Evidenced (one trial).
• A calming 10-second ritual. Claimed.
• A beautiful artefact at year's end. Claimed (and obvious).

18. Pitfalls

19. Accessibility and adaptations

• ADHD: Put the rating where you already look (day page top, or an X4 check-in). Use a physical anchor habit (teeth). Accept gaps. Numbers are faster than colouring. See adhd-journaling.
• Autism and sensory needs: Alexithymia makes "how do you feel?" hard. Rate observable things instead: energy, sensory load, sleep, how much you could do. Use word lists (Words to circle). Keep the grid visually quiet. See autistic-sensory-journaling.
• Chronic illness and low spoons: One mark is enough. Pair mood with spoons to separate "sad" from "depleted". See spoon-theory-energy-accounting and symptom-tracking.
• Depression and anxiety: The biggest risk group for rumination (Wright 2025). Use a "rate and close" rule, avoid looking at the year grid during a low patch, add one "small good thing" line so the page isn't only a score. If you notice suicidal thoughts, go to the Safety plan, not the tracker.
• Trauma: Anniversaries show up as dark pixels; that is expected, not failure. Neutral anchors ("low energy" rather than "terrible") feel safer. Allow a "skip" mark.
• Dyslexia and dysgraphia: Circles and patterns, no writing required. Large cells.
• Low vision: 8.5×11 trim, large cells, numbers instead of fine hatching, high contrast; the X4 font can be large.
• Motor or hand pain: One tick or dot, not colouring a whole cell; pixel stamps; the X4's buttons.
• Trans and gender-diverse people: Add a "dose day" tick for HRT and a separate dysphoria scale (the editor has a Dysphoria scale preset and a "Cycle & dose" checkbox preset) so gender stress doesn't vanish inside a general mood number. Cycle tracking for people who menstruate, without gendered labels.
• Shift workers: Rate at the end of your waking day; add a shift column; expect weekday patterns to follow the rota, not the calendar.
• Low income: Pencil and any paper. Free printables. No app subscription needed.

20. Comparison

21. Combining

• With passion-planner: Passion Planner distributes a free Year in Pixels printable; its monthly reflection pages are a natural place to read the grid.
• With habit-tracking: Put mood as the last column of the habit grid. Then you can eyeball "outside days vs mood days" without extra pages.
• With symptom-tracking: Pain, fatigue and mood on the same row separate physical from emotional lows.
• With dbt-diary-card: The diary card already rates emotions daily; a Year in Pixels can summarise its "overall" rating over the year.
• With spoon-theory-energy-accounting: Mood and spoons together answer "am I sad or just spent?" The Studio keeps mood on paper and spoons left on the X4 companion, so the two are logged side by side.
• With adhd-journaling and autistic-sensory-journaling: use observable anchors and word lists; see section 19.
• With gratitude or "small good things": balances a score with one concrete positive; lowers rumination risk (reasonable, not directly tested here).

22. Ready-to-use bank

Scales and anchors

1. Signed 7: −3 can't function · −2 basics are hard · −1 low but managing · 0 steady · +1 bright · +2 revved · +3 wired, little sleep.
2. Wellbeing 5: 1 awful · 2 rough · 3 okay · 4 good · 5 great.
3. Energy 5: 1 empty · 2 low · 3 enough · 4 good · 5 full.
4. Anxiety 0–3: 0 calm · 1 buzzing · 2 hard to settle · 3 can't settle.
5. Irritability 0–3: 0 easy · 1 short fuse · 2 snapping · 3 can't be around people.
6. Life-chart impairment: none · mild (effort, no loss) · moderate (some tasks dropped) · severe (couldn't do usual role).

Trackers and grids

1. Year in Pixels, 12 × 31, five-pattern key.
2. Year in Pixels split cells (low/high) for mixed days.
3. 52-week pixels (one per week) for people who can't do daily.
4. Month column with mood + sleep + one context (cycle day, dose day, shift).
5. Weekly mood line −3..+3.
6. Two-grid year: mood and sleep side by side.
7. Anxiety pixels on the same year page (a second, smaller grid).
8. Seasonal overlay: shade the grid rows by daylight hours from the Sky page.
9. Mood × spoons scatter at month end: plot each day as a dot (x = spoons left, y = mood).

Prompts

1. "Taking the whole day, where was I, mostly?"
2. "What came before the lowest day this week?"
3. "What did the dark days have in common? The light ones?"
4. "Is there a stripe, a band or a dot?"
5. "Did anything I changed show up 2–6 weeks later?"
6. "What would I show my prescriber from this month?"
7. "One sentence for my future self about this month's chart."
8. "When did I last feel steady (0)? What was different?"

Headings and collections

1. "Early warning signs I've seen in my own charts" (list, kept with the safety plan).
2. "What helps on a −2 day" (list you write on a 0 day).
3. "My chart rules" (when I rate, what +3 means, when I stop).

23. Glossary

• Affect: the feeling tone of experience; in research, often split into valence (pleasant–unpleasant) and arousal (calm–activated).
• Anchor: the words tied to a scale point so the number means the same thing each day.
• Alexithymia: difficulty identifying and describing one's own emotions.
• Bipolar I / II: mood disorders with episodes of mania (I) or hypomania (II) and depression.
• C-PASS: Carolina Premenstrual Assessment Scoring System; scores two cycles of daily ratings to diagnose PMDD.
• Cycle day: days since the first day of menstrual bleeding (day 1).
• DRSP: Daily Record of Severity of Problems; a daily premenstrual symptom form.
• EMA (ecological momentary assessment): repeated, in-the-moment ratings in everyday life.
• Emotional self-awareness (ESA): noticing and naming one's emotions; raised by mood monitoring in Kauer 2012.
• Euthymia: steady, neither depressed nor elevated (0 on a signed scale).
• Experience sampling: an older name for EMA-style random prompting.
• Hypomania / mania: elevated or irritable mood with more energy and less need for sleep; mania is more severe.
• Life chart (NIMH-LCM): a daily chart of mood severity (by impairment), with meds, sleep and events.
• Luteal phase: the part of the menstrual cycle after ovulation, before bleeding; premenstrual symptoms cluster here.
• Mixed state: depressive and elevated features at once.
• Pixel: one day's cell in a Year in Pixels.
• PMDD: premenstrual dysphoric disorder.
• Reactivity: when the act of measuring changes the thing measured.
• Rumination: repetitive, passive dwelling on distress and its causes.
• SAD: seasonal affective disorder; winter pattern or summer pattern.
• Signed scale: a scale with a zero in the middle and negative and positive values.
• Split cell: a pixel divided diagonally to show a day's low and high.
• Ultradian cycling: mood shifts within a single day.

24. FAQ

1. Is 1–5 or −3..+3 better? For general wellbeing, 1–5 is fine. If elevated mood is a risk for you (bipolar, some meds), use a signed scale where + means revved, not great. The Studio's default mood scale is −3..+3.
2. Morning or evening? Evening, for "the day as a whole." Morning ratings mostly capture sleep.
3. I missed three days. Should I fill them in? No. Leave them blank. Blanks keep the rest honest.
4. Can I do Year in Pixels without colour? Yes: hatch patterns for 5 levels, numbers for 7. It's easier to read and scan.
5. Will tracking make me feel better? Maybe more aware, not necessarily better. Trials show no average improvement in mood from tracking alone.
6. It's making me feel worse. What now? Stop looking back; rate and close; try words only for two weeks; or stop. Tell your clinician. That's a known effect, not a personal failure (Wright 2025).
7. How long before I can trust a pattern? Weekly: 3–4 weeks. Cycle: 2–3 cycles. Seasonal: 2 years.
8. Should my doctor see it? If you have a mood condition, a monthly summary is often welcome. Bring the month page and one sentence.
9. What about mixed days? Split the cell, or mark both low and high.
10. Does the moon matter? Evidence is weak. The Studio prints the moon for interest; treat any link as a personal hunch.
11. Can I track mood on the X4 companion and on paper? The built-in X4 check-ins keep mood on paper, but a Scale block set to Signed (−3…+3) also exports to the X4 as a custom check-in. Use 7 steps on paper so both are −3..+3.

25. For Journalwright Studio

Journalwright Studio makes printed journals and planners designed in a block editor, with an optional e-ink companion (the X4 companion). This section turns the research above into day page blocks, X4 items and a method layout.

a. Printed book

b. X4 companion

c. Editor blocks

d. Proposed method layout: "Mood chart"

This layout is not among the built-in method layouts yet (today: original, Bullet Journal daily, Hobonichi, Five Minute, Theme System). One-click layout, keeps the default's header, frame and writing space:

1. sky (Moon, sun & season), for the seasonal and moon columns people want to compare.
2. care with rows: meds, meals, sleep & work, checkin (7 steps), anxiety.
3. spoons (shares the care box).
4. sleeptimes (quality on).
5. range Low and high (off by default, on for bipolar users).
6. checks Cycle & dose (off by default).
7. words Feeling (the default word list).
8. good Small good things, 2 lines, to balance the score.
9. body Writing space (dots).
10. review Went well · Was hard · Tomorrow.

e. Don't adopt

• Colour-only keys. The book is B&W and 1 in 12 men can't tell red from green.
• Streaks, badges, "you logged 30 days!" Gamifies feelings; the firmware scope forbids badges.
• Automatic mood insights or correlations on the device. Out of scope (no AI) and risks telling someone what they feel.
• Reminder pings. No notifications. The chart must be pull-only.
• Mood on the sleep screen. Waking to yesterday's −2 is a rumination trigger.
• Emoji faces as the only anchors. Hard for alexithymia and in B&W; also Type 3 font risk unless drawn as SVG.
• Shaped decorative grids (hearts, trees). Busy ornament; breaks the calm design and makes scan reading harder.
• Many mood rows by default. One mood and one anxiety is the default; the rest are opt-in.

26. Open questions

• Does a paper chart carry the same rumination risk as an app? The harms evidence (Wright 2025) is mostly from apps and EMA.
• Is daily mood tracking helpful for autistic people with alexithymia, or does energy/sensory tracking work better? Little direct research found.
• Evidence on mood cycles linked to injectable HRT troughs in trans people: not reviewed here; community reports only.
• Lunar effects: not reviewed in depth; widely believed, weakly supported (uncertain).
• Best number of scale points for paper self-rating: no strong answer; 5 vs 7 trade speed for detail.
• Whether the MONARCA finding (more depressive episodes with monitoring) generalises beyond one Danish clinic.
• The official home for NIMH-LCM forms today: not found.

27. Further reading

• Born et al. (2014), "Saving time and money: a validation of the self ratings on the prospective NIMH Life-Chart Method." The clearest description of life-chart scoring you can read free.
• Bullet Journal blog (2017), "Deep dive: Year in Pixels." Camille in her own words.
• Tim Urban (2014), "Your Life in Weeks." The inspiration for the pixel grid.
• Dubad et al. (2018), systematic review of mobile mood monitoring in young people. Good summary of benefits and gaps.
• Wright et al. (2025), meta-synthesis of user experience of mood monitoring in depression. The best account of harms.
• Faurholt-Jepsen et al. (2015; 2019), MONARCA I and II. What happened when bipolar monitoring was tested properly.
• UNC Center for Women's Mood Disorders, C-PASS worksheet. How to read cycle-linked mood.
• NIMH, "Seasonal Affective Disorder." Plain-language guide to seasonal patterns.
• Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind (1995, book). A memoir about bipolar disorder that shows why charting matters (not opened here).

28. Sources

All checked 2026-09-28. Each was opened once, except where noted at the end.

1. Born C. et al. "Saving time and money: a validation of the self ratings on the prospective NIMH Life-Chart Method (NIMH-LCM)." BMC Psychiatry, 2014. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4031162/ (checked 2026-09-28)
2. Bullet Journal (Ryder Carroll's site). "Year in Pixels" deep dive with Camille of Passion Carnets, 2017. https://bulletjournal.com/blogs/bulletjournalist/deep-dive-year-in-pixels (checked 2026-09-28)
3. Tim Urban, Wait But Why. "Your Life in Weeks," 7 May 2014. https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/life-weeks.html (checked 2026-09-28)
4. Passion Planner. "Year in Pixels" free printable. https://passionplanner.com/products/year-in-pixels (checked 2026-09-28)
5. Burke L.E. et al. "Ecological Momentary Assessment in Behavioral Research: Addressing Technological and Human Participant Challenges." J Med Internet Res, 2017. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5371716/ (checked 2026-09-28)
6. Kauer S.D. et al. "Self-monitoring Using Mobile Phones in the Early Stages of Adolescent Depression: Randomized Controlled Trial." J Med Internet Res, 2012. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3414872/ (checked 2026-09-28)
7. Faurholt-Jepsen M. et al. "Daily electronic self-monitoring in bipolar disorder using smartphones – the MONARCA I trial." Psychological Medicine, 2015. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medicine/article/abs/daily-electronic-selfmonitoring-in-bipolar-disorder-using-smartphones-the-monarca-i-trial-a-randomized-placebocontrolled-singleblind-parallel-group-trial/C45C6B5F4A25A022155721C61F29E882 (checked 2026-09-28)
8. Faurholt-Jepsen M. et al. "The effect of smartphone-based monitoring on illness activity in bipolar disorder: the MONARCA II randomized controlled single-blinded trial." Psychological Medicine, 2019/2020. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medicine/article/abs/effect-of-smartphonebased-monitoring-on-illness-activity-in-bipolar-disorder-the-monarca-ii-randomized-controlled-singleblinded-trial/FDD01FC31A211390BA82C2DB0886E754 (checked 2026-09-28)
9. Dubad M. et al. "A systematic review of the psychometric properties, usability and clinical impacts of mobile mood-monitoring applications in young people." Psychological Medicine, 2018. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medicine/article/systematic-review-of-the-psychometric-properties-usability-and-clinical-impacts-of-mobile-moodmonitoring-applications-in-young-people/D2C0FF0030752FAA87635C393337A2DB (checked 2026-09-28)
10. Wright et al. "The user experience of ambulatory assessment and mood monitoring in depression: a systematic review & meta-synthesis." npj Digital Medicine, 2025. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12672782/ (checked 2026-09-28)
11. UNC Center for Women's Mood Disorders. "For Clinicians & Researchers" (C-PASS worksheet and macros). https://www.med.unc.edu/psych/wmd/resources/clinicians-researchers/ (checked 2026-09-28)
12. National Institute of Mental Health. "Seasonal Affective Disorder." https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/seasonal-affective-disorder (checked 2026-09-28)
13. National Eye Institute. "Color Blindness" (updated 5 Nov 2025). https://www.nei.nih.gov/learn-about-eye-health/eye-conditions-and-diseases/color-blindness (checked 2026-09-28)
14. Daylio (Habitics s.r.o.). Official site. https://daylio.net/ (checked 2026-09-28)
15. eMoods (Yottaram LLC). Official site. https://emoodtracker.com/ (checked 2026-09-28)
16. Raymaker D.M. et al. "Defining Autistic Burnout." Autism in Adulthood, 2020 (context for energy vs mood in section 19). https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7313636/ (checked 2026-09-28)

Referenced but not opened (publisher blocked or not reachable): Denicoff et al. 1997 (J Psychiatr Res 31:593–603) and 2000 (Psychol Med 30:1391–1397), details taken from search listings and Born 2014; Shiffman, Stone & Hufford 2008 (*Annu Rev Clin Psychol* 4:1–32), publisher page returned 403; Eisenlohr-Moul et al. 2017 (Am J Psychiatry 174:51–59), via the UNC page; Post et al. 1988; Russell et al. 1989; Yale RULER mood meter; DRSP (Endicott et al.).