Year in Pixels Mood Grid

Who this is for

A year, one small square per day. Colour each day in from a key you write yourself — as many colours as you like, meaning whatever you decide — and by the end of the year the page shows the shape of it without a single word.

Anyone who has seen a year-in-pixels page and wanted one without buying a journal, people who find colouring a square easier than writing a diary, and anyone who wants to see a whole year at once.

What this helps you track

• Every day of the year in one grid, six months to a page
• A colour key that is yours — your colours, your meanings
• The shape of a month or a season at a glance
• A record that takes ten seconds a day to keep

How to use it

1. Write the year at the top and what the grid records — mood, energy, pain, sleep, a habit — in your own words.
2. Fill in the key at the foot of the second page: choose your colours and write what each one means to you. Three colours is plenty; more is fine.
3. Colour in one square each evening, in the month's column and the day's row. Leave a square blank if you forget; blanks are part of the record.
4. Days that do not exist — the 31st of a short month — are simply left empty.
5. Look at the whole page now and then rather than at single days, and keep it with the previous years' pages.

Formats

• Printable PDF (A4 and US Letter)
• Fillable PDF with form fields
• Fill in online, saved in your browser

The printable is laid out inside a box that fits both A4 and US Letter, so the two files are identical and neither one is scaled. The fillable PDF has real form fields. The online version keeps what you enter in your own browser and builds the completed PDF on your device.

How to print

Download the A4 or US Letter file to match the paper in your printer, open it in a PDF reader and print at 100% — not "fit to page", which shrinks the writing space. Both files leave a 14 mm margin, which clears the unprintable edge on home printers. To print the online version with your entries in it, use the Print this sheet button, which prints only the sheet and none of the page around it. More on printing.

Questions

What do the colours mean?

Whatever you write in the key. The sheet supplies no scale, no set of moods and no idea of what any colour stands for. Some people use three colours for good, fine and hard; some use ten; some track something other than mood entirely.

Why is the year split across two pages?

So the squares are big enough to colour in. Twelve months across one page makes a cell too small for a pen; six months a page keeps each one usable, and the key sits at the foot of the second page.

Can I use it for something other than mood?

Yes. Write what it records at the top. Energy, pain, a habit kept or not, hours of sleep in bands you define — anything that has one answer per day and can be given a colour.

What if the pattern I see worries me?

The grid shows what you coloured; it does not interpret it. If a stretch of the year on the page concerns you, that is worth taking to a professional, who can read it with you.