Mood diary: a one-line log for two weeks.
A mood diary here means one line every evening for fourteen days, taking under a minute. First, you rate the day out of ten and note its worst moment in a few words. Then you mark each worst thing J for job or L for life, and finally you count the L column.
How to keep the log.
First, rate each day out of ten. Then write the single worst thing in a few words, not a paragraph. Otherwise, if it becomes writing, you will stop. Finally, after two weeks, mark each entry J if it came from the job, or L if from life.
In this case, life means health, family, money, sleep, relationships and the thing you have been avoiding.
Why this mood diary is an intervention.
This exercise is not neutral measurement. Instead, it deliberately moves your attention off work, because attention drives judgement. In fact, it has an ancestor in the Day Reconstruction Method, published by Daniel Kahneman and colleagues in Science in 2004. For example, one study of over nine hundred working women found commuting had the lowest positive feeling of sixteen activities.
Also, seven days is roughly the minimum, and fourteen is better. However, logging itself can change mood.
Reading what the log tells you.
A longer L column is common, because most of what hurts would follow you out. However, a J column with the same word each time points to one fixable thing. Similarly, every day a six means nothing is wrong and nothing is happening. Finally, if you stop on day four, restart on Monday and tell someone.
Start your mood diary tonight.
First, before bed, write today's score out of ten and its worst moment in under a minute.
Then tell one person you are keeping the log for fourteen days.
From the book.
Your J column is longer, and it's the same word every time. A person, a meeting, a commute. Then you haven't learned that you should start a business. You've learned that one identifiable thing is costing you a great deal, and you've now got to ask whether it's cheaper to remove that thing than to remove the whole job.
I Want to Start a Business but I Can't Quit My Job, chapter 6: You are guessing how it will feel, and the guess is wrong
Questions about mood diary.
How long should I keep a mood diary?
Fourteen days is best. However, seven is roughly the minimum for it to mean anything.
What if my L column is longer?
Then most of what makes your weeks hard would follow you, so a business will not fix it.
How do I keep the log honest?
First, write each line before deciding what it means. Also, never go back to improve an earlier day.
Read the whole chapter.
This lesson covers one section of chapter 6, “You are guessing how it will feel, and the guess is wrong”. The book goes further, with the full evidence, the stories and every exercise.
Lessons in this chapter.
- 01 Impact bias: why you misjudge future feelings.
- 02 Focusing illusion: why your job gets too much weight.
- 03 Self employed life satisfaction: the five-year gap.
- 04 Job satisfaction vs life satisfaction: two scores.
- 05 Hedonic adaptation: why autonomy does not wear off.
- 06 Impact bias criticism: what the research can claim.
- 07 Mood diary: a one-line log for two weeks.
- 08 Arrival fallacy: what reaching a goal really felt like.