Mood/colour tracking spreads

A grid or chart where you assign a colour to each day based on how you felt, then fill it in over a week or month. By the end you have a visual map of your moods. The point is not the art. It is spotting patterns you would never notice day to day, like every Sunday running darker, or your mood lifting the week you exercised.

No. The simplest version is a row of boxes, one per day, coloured in. People share elaborate spreads online and that scares beginners off, but those are made by people who enjoy the decorating as a separate pleasure. A ruled grid of squares works exactly as well for the actual tracking.

You decide, and write the key down before you start so you stay consistent. A common setup is five colours running from calm or happy through neutral to low or anxious. Keep it to five or fewer at first. Ten shades of feeling sounds precise but you will hesitate every day trying to pick between teal and turquoise.

Around three to four weeks. A single week tells you almost nothing. The value is cumulative, so the temptation to quit after a few days is the main thing that stops people getting anything useful out of it. Give it a full month before you judge whether it is working.

Treat it as information, not a verdict. Spotting that Sundays run dark or that your mood lifts on days you walked is the whole reward, but the pattern only helps if you let it nudge a small change. The trap is logging diligently for months and never acting on what the colours show. Pick one clear pattern and adjust one thing around it, rather than trying to overhaul everything at once.