Year in pixels explained, and how to start one mid-year

A year in pixels is a mood tracker that fits a whole year on a single page. Each day gets one small square, and you colour it to match how that day felt. By December you have a grid of colour that shows the shape of your year at a glance: the heavy weeks, the bright stretches, the seasons.

It takes seconds, there's no writing, and it's surprisingly lovely to look at. Whatever month it is right now, you can start today. It's one of the simplest mood tracker ideas that need no bullet journal.

How does a year in pixels work?

The classic layout is a grid with twelve columns, one for each month, and thirty-one rows, one for each day of the month. Some people turn it round, with months as rows. Either works.

You choose a small set of colours, one for each mood, and each evening you fill that day's square. That's all. Some people add a tiny dot or symbol for days that stood out, but you don't have to.

Choosing your colours

This is the part people enjoy most, and it's worth a little thought.

• Use five to eight moods. Too few and every day looks the same. Too many and you'll spend the evening deciding between two shades of blue.
• Use words, not numbers. "Drained", "steady" and "hopeful" are easier to choose honestly than "4 out of 10".
• Include different kinds of hard. Anxious, sad and angry are very different days, and it helps to tell them apart when you look back.
• Pick colours you can tell apart easily, in dim light and in pencil as well as on screen.
• Write your key at the top. By March you'll have forgotten which yellow meant what.

A simple starting set might be overwhelmed, anxious, low, steady, good, calm and happy. Then adjust it to the words that actually fit your days.

How to make a year in pixels on paper

1. Draw a grid of twelve columns and thirty-one rows, or print a blank one.
2. Label the months across the top and the days down the side.
3. Shade out the days that don't exist, like 30 and 31 February, so they don't puzzle you later.
4. Write your colour key somewhere you can see it.
5. Keep the page and your pencils together, somewhere you pass every evening.

If you'd rather work a month at a time, our free printable mood tracker makes a monthly page with a key already on it.

Making one in a spreadsheet

If you prefer a screen to paper, any spreadsheet will do. Put the months across the top row and the numbers 1 to 31 down the first column. Make the cells small and square, then fill each day's cell with the colour for its mood, and keep your key in a few cells off to the side. It's not as satisfying as pencils, but it lives on your phone and you can't lose the page.

Starting one partway through the year

Lots of people find the year in pixels in July or October and assume they've missed their chance. You haven't. There are three good ways to begin mid-year.

Option 1: Start today, and leave the rest blank

Colour today's square and carry on from here. The empty squares before it aren't a failure. They simply show when you began. Next year you'll have a full grid, and this year's shows the start of something.

Option 2: Run your own twelve months

Instead of January to December, let your year run from this month to the same month next year, and label the columns starting from now. It's still twelve months, just yours.

Option 3: Begin on the first of next month

If you like a clean beginning, set everything up now and start on the first. Just don't let "next month" quietly become "next year". A short two-minute evening check-in each night is an easy way to make sure the square gets coloured.

One thing to avoid: filling in the months you missed from memory. Mood memories are unreliable, and colouring in March from September tends to paint it with how you feel now. If you kept a diary or notes, you could use those. Otherwise, leave the past blank and honest.

Reading your year back

The best part of a year in pixels is seeing many days at once. After a couple of months, look at it from a little distance and notice:

• Seasons. Do some months run darker or lighter than others?
• Runs. Stretches of similar days, and what was happening in your life at the time.
• Recovery. How long hard stretches tend to last, and what helped you out of them.
• Surprises. A month you remember as awful that was actually mixed, or the other way round.

One limit to know: in the classic grid, each row is a date, not a weekday, so patterns like "Mondays are hard" are easier to spot on a monthly calendar.

Be gentle with whatever you find. A year in pixels shows how the days felt, not how well you did. For a fuller way to read back your record and act on it, see how to track your mood, and what to do with what you find.

Year in pixels in Softly Noted

In Softly Noted, our mood diary app, the year in pixels colours itself in. Each time you check in with one of the 15 moods, the Year in Pixels view paints that day's square in the mood's colour. If you check in more than once in a day, the square shows the mood you picked most often. Tap a month to open its calendar and read the entries behind the colours.

If you're starting mid-year and kept notes elsewhere, you can open an earlier day on the calendar and add a check-in for it. This year's map is free; maps for past years are part of Premium.

This guide is general information, not medical or mental health advice.