Get Everything Done

I seem to remember Mark recommending checking your mood at regular intervals and scoring it, so to speak, as a way of actually improving your mood. In that connection, I thought some here might be interested to know about this site:

http://www.moodscope.com/

It's a nice way of tracking on your mood on a daily basis, based on the widely-used PANAS scale, and it adds the option of automatically sharing your daily scores with friends via email.

Thanks for the references, Mark.

One significant difference is that Moodscope makes it easy to share your scores with friends and the like (if you choose to, and they agree to receive them). And there's evidence that that can make a difference.

Anyway, hope you, and others, get something out of it.

Just a couple of quick words in defence of the apparently unpopular Moodscope:

First, there's apparently some empirical evidence that the playing cards approach generates more accurate results than something more like a checkbox approach precisely because it slows you down.

Second, I agree that the list of mood aspects has some odd features (like pairs which seems awfully close to redundant), but again, it's worth noting that the list is a very widely-used scale for measuring mood which has been subjected to significant empirical testing by research psychologists. I'm not suggesting that this means it must be unproblematic, but I do think it means that it's too hasty to write it off on the basis of one's own intuitions—our intuitions can be very unreliable in this sort of area.

Third, one of the main features of Moodscope is the way it automates the process of sharing your daily scores with a friend; and again, there's apparently empirical evidence that that in itself can be beneficial. So this should be taken into account when comparing it to other methods.

Finally, note that they've just announced that in a couple of months they'll be making a more sophisticated version available which will enable you to track things more closely. I'm guessing that this means you'll be able to keep track of more fine-grained data than simply your overall daily score. (The catch, of course, is that that'll be something you'll have to pay for.)

Martin


P.S. I agree that the daily comments are a bit annoying. I just ignore them.