• Lando_@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I use “tired” for any physical stuff that affects my mood, so if I didn’t sleep, or I’m sick, or on my period, those are the days I’m most likely to mark as “tired”

    I can’t remember why I started tracking (I think I was just curious) but I’m going on four years now and it helps a ton with trends and feeling like I’m not just lying to myself when I want to say something like “I’ve been feeling tired a lot lately”

    Like, before tracking, I don’t think I was even comfortable saying I experience depressive episodes because I just straight up didn’t believe it was that bad, but with real data I’m able to see my “happy” levels declining month to month.

    And “tired” is a useful metric in this context because it denotes days that “tiredness” was interceding on my happiness.

    For example, let’s say I didn’t get a lot of sleep. I struggled through the work day. But I went to see a movie with friends in the evening. If I spent a solid portion of my day not aware or caring that I had been tired, I would mark that day as “happy”

    But if I was tired in the morning, went to work, came home, lumped around for a few hours and went straight to bed, I’d mark that as “tired” and if over 50% of my month is days like that, I would want to take action.

    Because I’ve had months with 80%+ happy days, so if I’m noticing my happy levels falling (Ie. 60%, 50%, 40%) I want to do something about it. I want to be doing counselling again, or I want to be going to the gym more, or seeing my friends more often.

    So I guess for me, tracking helps make mood signals more obvious?

    And on a daily level, I think it’s also useful to do that little bit of self-reflection. Like, "yeah, there were some sucky things that happened today, but was it day “bad”? Or was it a good day with bad parts?

    I’d advocate for anyone to try it, with whatever words/ moods make sense to you.

    Thanks for asking too! It’s fun to get to talk about it with someone.