Moodometer
Depression skews your perspective on everything. A few months ago, I was so frustrated and sad that it seemed I had constantly felt that way, for months, without any relief. I knew this wasn't true, but it felt true. As Stephen Colbert would say, there was a truthiness to it.
So, to prove to myself that I wasn't perpetually at the bottom of an abyss, I started keeping track of my moods. I created a Hipster PDA, and in it, I fashioned a Moodometer.
The Moodometer is just a table that has columns for date, AM, MID, PM and notes on the day. In the AM, MID, and PM columns, I put in a number between 1 and 9 for how I was feeling during that period. 1 for utter hopelessness and 9 for agape. I chose a scale of 1 to 9 because that puts 5 conveniently in the middle.
The tricky thing about the Moodometer, for me, is that there's a relatively short window for entering the values. I don't want to enter an AM value in the AM since what I'm trying to put down a value for the whole morning, not just the moment of my writing. It takes a little reflection, but if I wait more than a couple of days, I don't trust my memory of how I was feeling. Normally, it takes me about a minute to write down yesterday's values.
I've been doing this now pretty regularly for a couple of months. I've even put the table into a spreadsheet and graphed out the numbers. Here's what I've found out about myself:
So, to prove to myself that I wasn't perpetually at the bottom of an abyss, I started keeping track of my moods. I created a Hipster PDA, and in it, I fashioned a Moodometer.
The Moodometer is just a table that has columns for date, AM, MID, PM and notes on the day. In the AM, MID, and PM columns, I put in a number between 1 and 9 for how I was feeling during that period. 1 for utter hopelessness and 9 for agape. I chose a scale of 1 to 9 because that puts 5 conveniently in the middle.
The tricky thing about the Moodometer, for me, is that there's a relatively short window for entering the values. I don't want to enter an AM value in the AM since what I'm trying to put down a value for the whole morning, not just the moment of my writing. It takes a little reflection, but if I wait more than a couple of days, I don't trust my memory of how I was feeling. Normally, it takes me about a minute to write down yesterday's values.
I've been doing this now pretty regularly for a couple of months. I've even put the table into a spreadsheet and graphed out the numbers. Here's what I've found out about myself:
- I average a little above 5 for all three parts of the day. This is very good for me. 5 is my target, not 9. Whatever goes up must come down. I'm setting my goal for the middle path.
- Mornings are the best for my mood, middle of the day is hardest, on average
- There's a definite up-and-down pattern. The graph of my moods looks a lot like an EKG.
- Keeping track of my feelings, which takes only seconds per day, makes me much more mindful of how I am feeling at any given moment. That awareness helps me know what to do and helps me spot other patterns. For example, I could feel my mood change at the end of day on Friday from about a 6 to a 2 between the time I left my desk and made it to the office lobby. Why? I figure it's because weekends were traditionally time I would spend with Wendy.
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