One thing I've been doing for years in my journal is a simple rating of my day. It can be so easy and quick to do (I do it multiple places in both my 5-year journal and my weekly/daily journal!), and is good way to get an at-a-glance view of what your days have been like.
I personally use a 1 to 5 rating for my days:
5/5 = best day ever
4/5 = had a really good day
3/5 = average day
2/5 = tough day
1/5 = really, really bad day
You can easily swap this system out to track your moods or feelings. All of our days contain multitudes of feelings but I tend to look back over the day and ask myself "overall how did this day go?"... this keeps me from going too into the weeds in tracking every single feeling (although if that's something important for you to track, absolutely go for it!).
There are so many ways to track this information; in this post I've outlined five different methods!
1. Colored dots on a yearly overview
If you're looking for something satisfying to look back on, this is it! I personally use this method in my Hobonichi 5 year journal but it can work in any planner that has a yearly overview. I use colored dot stickers for each rating... you can choose any color palette you want!
Each day, I stick a dot on the previous day with the corresponding dot color depending on how my day went. It is SO satisfying to watch this get filled out over the course of a year.
I personally love the semi-tedious act of using sticker tweezers to place the dot stickers in place (the ones shown here are super teeny tiny!), but if you can't be bothered, you can use markers or colored pencils or pens to achieve the same effect! Just color a dot on the day in your color coded key. Easy peasy.
Notebook pictured: Sterling Ink N1 Common Planner
Stickers used: Micro (3mm) Tracking Dot Stickers: Standard Color Palette
2. Using highlighters on quarterly (or yearly/weekly/daily) pages
Here is a peek at the quarterly pages in my Sterling Ink Common planner. Each day I write a super short snippet of a daily highlight or something I want to remember for that day. I also then highlight the day and day of the week to the left of each daily highlight with colors that correspond to my day ratings.
I love these pages because it's really easy to see my days at-a-glance... seeing both a color coded day rating alongside my daily highlight gives a really scannable overview of my months.
Notebook pictured: Sterling Ink A5 Common Planner
Highlighters used: Zebra Mildliners
3. Daily icons/stickers/ratings on a monthly spread
Moving to monthly spreads... I've shown a few different ways here you can use different types of stickers or simple markers to create a fun spread that also gives you an at-a-glance view of your days.
1st row: Weather icon stickers
Weather icon stickers can be such a fun way to capture your mood. Sunny = had a great day, partly sunny = pretty good day, lightning = really bad day, and so on and so on. You can also simply draw in weather icons if you don't want to use stickers.
2nd row: Simple numerical day ratings
Here I used Sharpie acrylic markers to write my rating for the day. So easy, so colorful, and can be really nice and bold or clean and minimal depending on how you style your numbers.
3rd and 5th row: Emotion stickers
There are so many fun stickers you could use to capture your days! This method isn't quite as scannable as some of the others, but it can be so fun to look back on. Just pick a sticker that best represented your day!
4th row: Dot stickers
A simple and effective way to capture your day... similar to the previous examples, just use a dot sticker with the color corresponding to how your day went.
Notebook pictured: Hobonichi Original A6 Japanese
Stickers Used: Small (5mm) Weather Icon Stickers (Colorful). TheCoffeeMonsterzCo Emoti Planner Stickers, Small (5mm) Tracking Dot Stickers: Standard Color Palette, Zzoton My Emotion Die-Cut Sticker Roll
4. Dot stickers and daily highlights in a bullet journal spread
For those of you who like making your own layouts, this is a really easy one to set up! Either use stickers or write the days of the month in a vertical column on the left, and each day fill out your daily highlight and include a corresponding dot sticker for your day rating.
I like these layouts when I need a little more room than a quarterly or traditional month calendar layout to write out my daily highlights.
Notebook pictured: Leuchtturm 1917 A5 Dot Grid
Stickers: 5mm Grid Layout Stickers: Monthly Tracking Kits (Vertical), Small (5mm) Tracking Dot Stickers: Standard Color Palette
5. Daily star ratings on weekly spread
Here, I use rating stickers in my vertical weekly spread. You can just as easily draw your star ratings (or use whatever shape you want! Circles, triangles, etc). I love using star ratings because it's such a recognizable symbol and instantly anchors whatever is on the page to the rating.
Here I used blank star rating stickers that I filled in myself using my own color coding, but you easily use pre-filled stars for even more simplicity.
And of course this isn't limited to weekly spreads... use star ratings on your daily spreads, in your monthly spreads... wherever you want to see your daily rating!
Notebook pictured: Sterling Ink A5 Common planner
Stickers used: Small (5mm) Rating Stickers: Blank Stars
-----
Rating my days is a habit that I've carried over from year to year because it's so nice to look back on. I hope some of these ideas sparked some new ways you might want to capture your own days in your planners and journals!
0 comments