Ernesto Ramirez

November 13, 2014

“How can I define what makes me happy and what makes me sad, what is good for me?”

In 2012 Benjamin Bolland was finishing up his undergraduate degree and working on a new start-up. He found that his moods were constantly changing and wondered if there was something he could do to make sense of them as they moved “up and down.” He began tracking his mood with an simple self-designed Google Form. Each day at 11AM and 6PM he reported his mood on a 1-10 scale and wrote a quick descriptive note. After 1.5 years of doing this nearly every day he realized that he didn’t really know what was making him happy or sad so he decided to update his Google Form to include a variety of different categories that he thought might affect his mood including physical health, sport participation, and many others. In this talk, presented at the Berlin QS meetup group, Benjamin describes his process and how he’s used this mood tracking process to be more reflective and mindful during his daily life.