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Year in Pixels Ideas: 12 Things to Track Besides Mood
Most Year in Pixels grids start with how the day felt. It’s a good place to start. But by March, a lot of people look at their squares and wonder what else a year of color could hold: the books, the money, the evenings spent on the thing they actually love.
The grid doesn’t care what you track. It only asks that you can answer once a day, quickly, and that the answer fits a handful of colors.
More colors are not more meaning
It’s tempting to track everything at once: five grids, a key of twelve shades, a rule for every kind of day. That version rarely survives February. A tracker that takes thought every night becomes homework, and homework is easy to skip.
So the better question isn’t what you could track. It’s what you would like to see, a year from now, laid out in one picture.
What a Year in Pixels is
A Year in Pixels is one grid for one year: twelve columns for the months, 31 rows for the days, one square for each day. You give every color a meaning, the key, and color each square when the day is done. By December the grid shows the shape of the year at a glance, in whatever you chose to track.
Twelve things to track besides mood
Each of these is a yearly page you can add in DayBloq, with its own key already set. The first ten are free; the last two carry a crown.
- Reading, in pages a day: 0-30, 31-60, 61-90, 91-120, and 121 or more.
- Audiobooks, in time listened: from 0 minutes up to 3 hours or more.
- Podcasts: Yes or No. Did you listen today?
- Spending, in six bands from 0 to 201 or more. The bands are yours to rename.
- Productivity, in steps of 20 percent, from 0% to 100%.
- Plant Care: Complete or Incomplete. Watered, or not yet.
- Screen Time, from less than 1 hour to 7 hours or more. It shows the year as it was; it doesn’t set you a limit.
- A hobby: Yes or No. Rename the page to the hobby itself, “Piano” or “Sketching”, and it reads like yours.
- Work Feelings: five words for a working day, from enjoyable and accomplished to annoying.
- Your own, on a blank page with 2, 3 or 5 colors and no names. You write the title and the labels: called home, cooked dinner, learned a word of Spanish. All three blank pages are free.
- Gaming (VIP): less than 1 hour, 1-3 hours, or 3 hours and more.
- Social (VIP): Alone, Chat, Hangout or Party. A year of who you spent your evenings with.
And if you came for the classic, Rate My Day is free too: 1 to 5 stars for how the day went, and None for a day you’d rather not rate.
How to choose one
Pick the one you’d be curious about in December. Reading, if you’ve ever wondered how much you actually read. Spending, if the month always seems to end sooner than the money. A hobby, if you want proof that you kept at it.
Every page has an Edit switch. With it on, you can rename the page title and the labels in the key, and change a label’s color. So the Spending bands can match your own currency and your own idea of a lot, and the hobby page can say what the hobby is.
Where the grid stops
A Year in Pixels holds one answer a day. It won’t add up what you spent, or count the pages into a total; it shows a band, a color, a shape across the months. If you need exact numbers, a spreadsheet does that better. The grid is for seeing, not sums.
Start with one grid
- In DayBloq, open Supplies, then Pages, and tap the Yearly chip.
- Preview a page, then tap Use this page and pick a journal.
- Tonight, pick a color in the key on the right, tap today’s square, and rub your finger over it.
- Missed a day? Tap it later and color it, or leave it empty. Empty squares are part of the year too.
More on how the grid began, and why it works, is on the Year in Pixels page. If you’d rather keep yours on paper, there are free printable sheets for 2027.
Next in this series: the books get a page of their own. A reading journal on your phone, for every book you finish, star by star and block by block.