A mood journal without scores: two axes instead of a number from 1 to 10

Try answering right now: your mood, on a scale of 1 to 10?

You probably hesitated. Not because you do not know how you feel, but because the question is wrong. Say you are calm but a bit sad. Or wound up but broadly content. Where does that go, a six? A four? The number wants everything boiled down to "better or worse," and a state is not built that way.

Most mood trackers ask exactly this. One scale, one emoji, one dot on a chart. Then the chart draws a line, the line goes down, and you look at it feeling you have done something wrong. This post is about keeping a mood journal without that trap.

Why one scale lies

Picture two states. First: you are lying down in the evening after a hard day, no energy, low, wanting nothing. Second: you are about to take an important call, heart going, thoughts jumping, everything irritating. Both unpleasant. On a 1-to-10 scale both get, say, a three.

But they are different states. In the first there is no energy at all; in the second there is far too much. The first asks you to lie down; the second asks you to go for a walk. One number erases that difference, and a month later two incomparable things look identical in the journal.

Same with the pleasant end. Quiet contentment on a Sunday morning and the rush after good news are both "an eight," but they have little in common.

A number answers only one question: good or bad. A state has at least a second one: how much energy is in it.

Two axes: pleasantness and energy

The idea is not new. In 1980 the psychologist James Russell published a paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology proposing that emotions be described as positions on a plane with two axes. One runs from unpleasant to pleasant. The other from sleepy to activated. Any state becomes a point on that plane, and similar states land near each other.

The model is called a circumplex, "circle-shaped," because emotions on that plane arrange themselves in a ring. For a journal, though, two axes and a simple question are enough: is this pleasant or not, and how much energy do I have.

Take the two states from the previous section:

State	Pleasantness	Energy
Evening, drained, low	unpleasant	low
Before the call, everything irritates	unpleasant	high
Sunday morning, quiet	pleasant	low
Good news, elated	pleasant	high

Four different corners, four different states. None is "better" than another by default. Calm with low energy and joy with high energy are both pleasant, but if you have spent two weeks only in the second one, that is worth noticing too.

Anxious and sad are not on the same ruler

This is the main thing the second axis gives you. On a linear scale, anxiety and sadness both sit "at the bottom," and it looks as if they are degrees of one thing. They are not.

Sadness: unpleasant, low energy. Anxiety: unpleasant, high energy. There is no smooth slide from "a little less sad" to "a little more anxious." They are neighbouring corners of a plane, not neighbouring marks on a ruler.

The practical consequence: you handle them differently. When energy is low, what helps is whatever preserves it: an earlier night, a cancelled meeting, lower demands on yourself. When energy is high and unpleasant, what helps is whatever gives it an outlet: a walk, cleaning, a conversation. If the journal only says "bad," you do not know which of the two you need right now.

In Lanternly, mood is recorded as one of six states, each living in its own corner of the plane: sad and anxious are both unpleasant, one with low energy and one with high; calm and good are pleasant and even; joyful is pleasant with high energy; love is pleasant and warm, a touch quieter than joy. Those six labels are the only ones. No "low" and no "medium," because "medium" says nothing.

Why an up-and-down chart weighs on you

Even with two axes there is a temptation to draw a chart from them. Do not, and here is why.

A line on a chart turns a state into a result. It goes up and you did well. It goes down and you failed at something. All you actually did was note that Tuesday was hard, and hard Tuesdays happen.

A chart also nudges you to log "good" so the line looks respectable. People do this without noticing, and a month later the journal holds only their wish to see a nice curve. That journal is useless.

And third, a chart demands comparison. Today against yesterday, this week against last. Self-observation starts from a simpler question, "what is it now," and comparison comes later, on its own, when you reread.

That is why Lanternly has no mood line. The weekly overview there is in words: what repeated, which days looked alike, where it was calm. We left the chart out on purpose.

How to read a mood journal in words

Here is what to do instead of a chart.

Once a week, open the entries and just look at which states were there. Do not count. Look at what jumps out. Usually it is one of three things.

Something repeats on the same days. Anxious every Monday, calm on Saturdays. That already tells you something, mostly about the shape of your week.

One state has crowded out the rest. A week of nothing but "good" usually means you stopped distinguishing. A week of "anxious" deserves a pause and a closer look at those entries before any conclusions.

The state does not match the entry. You marked "calm" and the text is three paragraphs of irritation. These mismatches are the most useful: they show where you are not hearing yourself.

All of this is visible without numbers. In fact it is less visible with numbers, because a number replaces reading with counting.

How to log mood so it does not get old in a week

A few practical things that separate a mood journal kept for a year from one dropped on day eight.

Log when the state is noticeable, not on a schedule. A "how are you feeling?" notification at 9 pm gets "fine" seven days out of seven, because at 9 pm you are tired and do not want to think. But right after a hard conversation, when something tightened inside, two seconds to mark "anxious" are worth more than a week of evening "fine."

One tap, two at most. If logging means opening the app, finding the section, picking the day and scrolling a list of thirty emotions, you will do it exactly as long as the first enthusiasm lasts. Six states on screen, one tap, done.

Do not attach a mandatory explanation. Sometimes it is "anxious" and nothing more, no reason, because there is none or it will not come into words. The mark on its own has value. Text, if it comes, comes by itself.

And allow yourself to be imprecise. The gap between "calm" and "good" is sometimes thinner than you would like to admit. Pick the closer one and do not go back to correct it. A month on, those small inaccuracies do not matter at all, while the habit of stopping to refine kills the whole practice fast.

If you want to keep more than a mood log, see how to start a journal and keep going. Mood sits well next to an ordinary entry: two taps and the day is marked.

What not to do with this data

Do not diagnose. Two axes describe how you feel; they say nothing about what is wrong with you. If "sad, low energy" stretches on for weeks, talk to someone who knows this territory rather than deciding for yourself what it means.

Do not chase the top-right corner. Pleasant with high energy is a good state, but nobody lives there permanently, and trying to quickly lands you in the opposite corner.

Do not log on a schedule if you do not feel like it. A missed day spoils nothing. You keep this for yourself, and you decide when.

And do not keep it somewhere that makes you uneasy. A year of mood entries says more about a person than most questionnaires, so where it goes and who can see it deserves a moment of thought. If that matters to you, read why Lanternly is built the way it is.

Mood today: pleasant or not, high energy or low. Two questions. No number.