A feeling you have to summon is unreliable. A record is not.
Every journal we make runs the same four-part mechanic. The methods themselves are explained here in full, for free — the journal is the version that does the arithmetic for you, thirty or forty days running, without a screen.
The four parts
A signed opening page. Before any data exists, you write down where you are starting from and the one thing you will protect. You sign it. It is a commitment device, and it is also the only honest baseline you will get, because it is written before you know how the month goes.
A daily log you score. Not a mood — evidence. What happened, and a number attached to it. Two minutes, at a fixed time of day, in the same place every time.
Checkpoints. Every week or so the days get added up and the total is carried forward, with one rule to act on for the range it lands in. This is where a journal stops being a diary.
A verdict. At the end, the numbers are compared with the page you signed at the start. Sometimes the answer is that it worked. Sometimes it is that it did not, which is also a result, and the journal says so rather than offering an affirmation.
The named mechanics
Each journal is built around one mechanic with a name and a definition. Where a mechanic has an evidence base we describe it and name the source; we do not reproduce clinical instruments or scales, and none of this is medical advice or a diagnosis.
- Sleep efficiency — the share of time in bed actually spent asleep, and the number sleep clinicians work from. Explained in full →
- The Seven-Day Look-Back — scoring a purchase a week after you made it, when the wanting has worn off.
- The 24-Hour Hold — the gap between deciding to buy and buying, and the running total of what stayed in the account. Explained in full →
- The Source Table — logging a comparison against the thing that triggered it rather than the feeling it produced.
- The Evidence Log — scoring how bad you expect an avoided task to feel, then recording what actually happened. Explained in full →
- The Ledger Line — a running balance of what drained you against what gave it back, plotted so a slow drift cannot hide.
More of these are being written up in full. If there is one you want explained before we get to it, write and say so.
Why give the method away
Because the method is not the product. Anyone can read how sleep efficiency is calculated and work it out on the back of an envelope for a night or two. Almost nobody does it for thirty nights running, which is the length at which the number starts to mean anything. The journal is thirty or forty pages of pre-drawn structure whose only job is to make the thing get done daily — and that is worth paying for in a way that a formula is not.