Awareness First: One Year of Mental Health Tracking
Published by Muoi Tran on December 31, 2024
Mental health is a cornerstone of overall well-being. Yet, it is often overlooked, especially in high-pressure environments like academia, where the combination of intellectual rigor, long working hours, and frequently uncertain career paths creates unique challenges. Indeed, academia’s culture of productivity and achievement often overshadows the burnout, anxiety, or depression issues that many students, researchers, and faculty alike may have experienced. As always, awareness is the first step to tackling such mental health issues. Analogous to long-term measurements for identifying network threats, I have tracked my mood for an entire year. This blog post tells my stories and lessons learned from this experience.
How it started
During the Christmas holidays in 2023, I stumbled upon a post in the r/DataIsBeautiful subreddit where the OP showed his mood over the year. The records were a very simple grid made with Excel, in which one color-coded per day is recorded for each cell (e.g., red for bad days and green for good days). I was genuinely amazed by how informative this little grid is. Even the OP didn’t realize he had so many green days after a seemingly terrible year. It looked so cool!
Naturally, I wanted to have a similar mood tracking for myself. I was initially reluctant, admittedly with some of the same old excuses (e.g., I won’t have time for this). Moreover, I always consider myself a positive person. (My peers also identified me as such; see Figure 1).
 |
|---|
| Figure 1 — My colleagues see me as positive, upbeat, and enthusiastic (via NSG’s 2024 workshop). |
That said, I also recalled knowing stories from at least k people (k > 3) who are seemingly fun, inspiring, and talkative but actually struggled with mental well-being to different levels. For instance, X always appears beautifully on social media but has suffered from homesickness/loneliness for years. Y was always the first colleague to come up with fun social activities but spent hours playing instruments in the dark to relieve stress. Z had several publications but was also severely anxious when the PhD graduation came closer.
So, all in all, I decided to go for it. I started to record my mood from 01.01.2024. (If you are convinced about doing the same, the New Year is always a good start). I use The Pixels’s mood tracker app on iOS, which is completely free. Alternatively, people have used other mobile apps, Excel, or paper notes. The app is simple: you can rate your day on a scale from 1 to 5 and set a daily reminder to do the report. The app also allows import/export and provides plots to see the trends in weeks, months, or years.
How it turns out
 |
|---|
| Figure 2 — My 2024 mood in a grid: red, orange, off-white, lime, and green mean awful, bad, neutral, good, and great days, respectively. |
Figure 2 shows my recorded mood for 2024 – the labels are quite self-explanatory. Overall, it looks like I had a good year. The green days are dominant, with 55% of days being either good or great! In about one-third of the year, I felt the days were neutral- it was not bad, but it was not good either. These statistics explain why the average score sits tightly at 3.5/5.0.
There are a couple of interesting (and surprising, in a way) points to me.
First, I experienced several forgettable days (i.e., the red ones), spanning at least once per month from May to September. I’m trying not to get into too many details here, but I think I was very stressed with the faculty application process during this period. There was also an exceptional case in January when my deadline clashed with personal duties.
Second, negative days don’t come in streaks, but positive days do. On the one hand, there were no more than three consecutive bad days. On the other hand, the longest streak of good days is eleven in August, and 5-7 straight positive days are quite common.
Third, it doesn’t show in the plot, but when we match the score with the weekdays, Mondays and Wednesdays usually score below average, while Saturdays and Sundays are much higher. Interestingly, most of my meetings are only on Wednesdays, while my Monday calendar is typically empty.
How it will be
Awareness of mental health is just the first step—what truly makes a difference are the actions taken afterward. With that in mind, here are three steps I plan to take moving forward:
First, I will continue tracking my mood throughout 2025. This practice requires minimal effort yet serves as an invaluable tool for self-reflection. For instance, pairing mood tracking with a photo backup app has been a particularly effective combination for me. I encourage readers to try this as well.
 |
|---|
| Figure 3 — Walensee (Switzerland), Spring 2024. |
Second, I will take proactive steps to “engineer” my mood based on insights from my 2024 tracking data. This includes replicating activities historically contributing to good days, such as taking a stroll, enjoying good food, or spending time in nature (e.g., Figure 3 features my favorite spot in Switzerland). It also involves minimizing stressors, like reducing the intensity of busy weekdays by spreading out commitments or planning more effectively. On inevitable bad days, the statistics remind me that such moments are temporary and will pass.
Third, I aim to raise mental health awareness among my family, friends, and colleagues through my own experience. While mental well-being is deeply personal, initiating conversations will always be helpful and can even facilitate early intervention. For example, at NSG (ETH), group members can participate in “date lunches,” where two randomly paired individuals talk freely about anything—including workplace challenges. These sessions have been an effective platform for me to discuss and learn about non-technical aspects of work. In our new Secura Lab, I aim to maintain a similarly open and supportive culture. A key principle of our lab is maintaining a work-life balance, with mental well-being at its core.
In sum, I wish to contribute to a healthier, more balanced environment for myself and those around me moving forward.
Author
