How to keep a mood journal: a simple template and how to use it
Short answer: a mood journal is a short daily note of how you felt and what was going on. Each entry needs three things: the date, a word for your mood, and one line about what happened. Write it at the same time each day and keep it short. After two or three weeks, read it back and look for patterns. You can start tonight in any notebook or notes app.
A regular diary tells the story of your day. A mood journal is narrower. It records how the day felt, in roughly the same format every time, so you can line the days up later and compare them.
That fixed format is what makes it useful. Something like “Tired, flat, long meeting” is easy to skim in a list of thirty days. Thirty pages of free writing aren’t.
What goes in a mood journal
There’s no single right format. A 2021 paper from UC Irvine, based on interviews with 22 people who used mood-tracking apps, sums up the usual ways of logging a mood: picking a labeled face or emoji (“happy,” “content”), rating it on a scale, choosing from a list of words, or describing it in your own words. A paper journal can do any of these.
Here’s a template that works on paper or in a phone note. Only the first three lines are required.
| Line | What to write | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Date | The day, and the time if you check in more than once | Tue, 9 pm |
| Mood | One or two words | tense, then relieved |
| What happened | One concrete line | Presentation got moved to Thursday |
| Energy (optional) | High or low | Low by the evening |
| Body (optional) | Anything you noticed physically | Tight shoulders all afternoon |
| One extra (optional) | Something you’re curious about, such as sleep or who you saw | Lunch with Sam |
Keep the optional lines only if you’ll actually use them. A three-line entry you write every day is worth more than a ten-line one you give up on by Thursday.
Sample entries
These are made-up examples, not anyone’s real journal:
Mon. Flat. Rainy commute, nothing went wrong, nothing went right.
Tue. Tense, then relieved. The presentation got moved to Thursday. Tight shoulders all afternoon.
Wed. Content. Walked home instead of taking the bus. Low energy but in a good way.
Each one takes under a minute, and three days in you can already see the week taking shape.
How to pick the mood word
The hardest line is usually the mood itself. “Fine” and “bad” come out first, but they don’t tell you much when you read back.
The University of New Hampshire’s wellness center uses the Mood Meter, developed by the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. It sorts moods by two things: how pleasant they are and how much energy they carry. A few of the words UNH lists in each corner:
| Lower energy | Higher energy | |
|---|---|---|
| More pleasant | calm, content, relaxed | excited, happy, proud |
| Less pleasant | sad, lonely, drained | angry, nervous, worried |
UNH points out that “good, bad, fine, okay” don’t appear anywhere on it, because they aren’t emotional states. So when “fine” is the first word that comes, ask two questions. Was it pleasant or unpleasant? High energy or low? That usually narrows it to a more exact word. If you want a longer list to pick from, see words to describe feelings.
UNH’s instructions also suggest noticing the bodily sensations that come with a mood. That’s why the template has a “body” line. On days when no word fits, “jaw tight, wired but tired” is still a useful entry.
Is it worth the extra few seconds? There’s some lab research behind naming feelings. In a 2007 brain-imaging study led by Matthew Lieberman, labeling the emotion in a negative image dampened the response of the amygdala and other limbic regions. The authors suggest that putting feelings into words may reduce emotional reactivity. It was a single lab study with pictures rather than diaries, so take it as a hint at most.
How to keep it going
- Pick one time and attach it to something you already do. After brushing your teeth, on the train home, while the kettle boils. Once a day is plenty to start with.
- Log the ordinary days and the good ones too. In the UC Irvine study, some participants said they were less inclined to record bad moods and preferred logging good ones. Skipping either kind skews the record. UNH makes the same point from the other side: don’t save check-ins for difficult moments, because noticing pleasant moods counts too.
- Keep the bar low. On a packed day, the date and one word is a complete entry.
- Don’t backfill missed days. Leave the gap and write today’s entry. A gap is information too.
If the habit itself is new to you, how to start journaling goes into finding the time and what to write on blank days.
A sample first week
| Day | Try this |
|---|---|
| Monday | Date, one mood word, one line |
| Tuesday | Same, plus high or low energy |
| Wednesday | Same, plus one thing you noticed in your body |
| Thursday | Swap a vague word like “fine” or “stressed” for a more exact one |
| Friday | Same three lines, nothing extra |
| Saturday | Write it whenever you remember |
| Sunday | Read the week back. Write one line about what you notice |
How to read it back
This is where a mood journal pays off. Once a week or once a month, read your entries in one sitting. Some questions to bring:
- Which mood words came up most?
- What tended to happen on the days you wrote a low-energy, unpleasant word? What about the calm or content days?
- Is there a day of the week or a time of day that keeps standing out?
- Did anything show up before a good evening more than once?
It’s a small study, but in the UC Irvine interviews participants felt tracking their mood helped them be more self-aware and look back to understand what had been going on. They also liked seeing past moods laid out in a chart or a calendar to spot trends. On paper, you can get the same view by marking each day of a month with a color or a single word.
One thing participants said was missing: the apps didn’t help them work out what their data meant. Doing that part yourself, with questions like the ones above, is most of the point. The health library at the University of Rochester Medical Center notes that keeping a journal can help you identify what’s causing stress. That kind of pattern is hard to see one day at a time and much easier across a few weeks.
Keep the conclusions loose. Three Mondays in a row isn’t a rule about Mondays. It’s a hint worth watching.
Paper, phone note or app
| Format | Suits you if |
|---|---|
| Paper notebook | You like writing by hand or want to stay off screens at night |
| Notes app or spreadsheet | Your phone is always nearby and you’d rather type |
| Mood diary app | You want each entry to take seconds and the calendar view built in |
Use whichever you’ll reach for without thinking. You can switch later.
Questions
Is a mood diary the same as a mood journal?
For the purposes of this guide, yes. Both names describe a short, regular record of how you felt and what was going on, and everything above works the same whichever word you use.
What about an emotion journal or a feelings journal?
Don’t worry much about the label. What matters is how deep you go. A one-line mood entry makes a good daily base. On days when a feeling needs more room, keep writing: what you felt, what set it off, what you did next. If one subject keeps coming back, expressive writing is a structured way to write about it.
How do I keep a mood journal if I forget?
Tie it to something you already do every day, and allow yourself a one-word entry. Forgetting a few days is normal. Pick it up again with today.
Trying it in a tea house
Bium Tea House: Mood Diary is a mood diary app built around this kind of short entry. You pick one of five teacups for how the day felt, add a sticker for what it was about, and write a line, or more if you like. The diary has a calendar marked with each day’s teacup, and a summary of the month counts your moods and the three things that came up most. The next time you come by, May has left a short note in your diary, written with AI.