How to use your WHOOP Journal

WHOOP's Journal feature is a powerful tool, if you know how to use it. Here are my best practices and things to avoid to make the most of your data.

Today’s issue is sponsored by WHOOP, the health and fitness wearable that’s been informing my own health decisions for the last four years. You don’t have to be an athlete to benefit from WHOOP’s insights on stress, sleep, recovery, and more. Join WHOOP today using my link and get your first month free—just in time for January 1st!

One of WHOOP’s most powerful features is the daily Journal. It’s highly customizable, automated (it pops up every morning when you open the app), and can reveal powerful insights from your daily data. Still, you have to know where and how to employ it—otherwise, you may find yourself collecting too much data with no obvious trends or actionable results.

I’ve been using my Journal feature to track the impact of self-experiments (like Not Drinking Right Now and cold showers), stressors (like airplane travel and concussion symptoms), and health efforts (like avoiding food before bed). The summary data I’ve been able to pull from effective journaling has been powerful, leading me to permanent behavior shifts and consistently better health metrics.

Here are four things you should be doing with your Journal—and one rookie mistake that will mess with your data, results, and action plan.

Tip 1: Choose the right categories

Choosing your Journal categories is one of the most important steps in ensuring your data and insights are reliable and actionable. Think of the Journal as a science experiment, where you track “experimental” factors (things you don’t do every day) against “control” factors (behaviors you do every day).

If you sleep with a partner every night, drink caffeine every morning, or never drink alcohol, there is no need to track the impact of those behaviors in your Journal. Those are now “control” factors, not experiment. Logging “yes” (or “no”) every day isn’t going to provide you with any new insights, as this is something you’re doing all the time.

If you’re just starting to sleep with a partner (or sleep with a partner occasionally), contemplating a month off caffeine, or drink alcohol once in a while, you would want to track those behaviors in your Journal. These are now experimental factors that you can measure against your baseline, to see how they impact your health metrics. Add Shared Bed, Caffeine, and Alcohol to your Journal (while in the Journal, tap the gear icon in the top right) and start tracking “yes” or “no” for a month or two. Then, use WHOOP’s AI Coach or Insights to evaluate the impact of sharing your bed, giving up caffeine, or having a drink.

You can (and should) have categories you don’t use often, if you want to evaluate how they effect your metrics. For example, I have “travel on a plane” in my journal because even though I only travel once a month, I do want to see how it impacts my HRV and sleep. But that’s only because I care about how travel impacts me. If you don’t travel enough and/or don’t care how it impacts you, you wouldn’t add this category.

Tip 2: Edit your journal categories often

As your health efforts, self-experiments, and context changes, you should also be updating your Journal. Your WHOOP Journal should always reflect what is currently important to you: behaviors you’re testing, new health factors, or changed life circumstances.

I’d give each behavior at least a month to feel confident in the trends and insights. If you start wearing a nasal strip, taking a cold shower, or getting hot flashes, add these factors to your Journal. Track them for a month, and at the end of the month compare the data to the prior month. (WHOOP makes this easy with their Trend Views by category.)

If the nasal strip or sleeping with a partner becomes a daily occurrence, you can stop tracking them after a month or two, and consider your current baseline your new “control.” (If you’re diligent about the behavior, at some point it’s going to be useless to keep tapping “nasal strip”—which means it’s time to retire that Journal category.)

If you continue to get hot flashes (even off and on), keep tracking them! You can show this data to your healthcare provider, or use it to inform new bedtime habits. Once they stop, feel free to retire that Journal category. (And if they return, you can always add it back in.)

Here is another example: I’ve archived “experiencing COVID-19 symptoms” as a Journal entry. After a few rounds with the virus, I know it’s going to tank my sleep, health metrics, and recovery for a few weeks. Though this data was super helpful during my first case of COVID, at this point, I have enough experience that it’s no longer worth tracking.

Tip 3: Be consistent with journaling

The Journal only works if you’re consistent about tracking your experimental factors. WHOOP helps you do this by launching the Journal the first time you open the app each day. Get into a routine of waking, assessing how you think you’re feeling, then checking in with WHOOP and completing your Journal. (I do this after my cold shower, but before I go to the gym.)

If you forget, you can always log into your Journal from the WHOOP home screen (tap the “+” sign at the bottom right, then select “My Journal). It doesn’t matter when you complete it, as long as you complete it for that day, every day. (You can go back a day and complete a missed journal, but it’s better to complete it when the day is fresh in your mind.)

If you’re trying to track the impact of not drinking and you forget to log the day you had two drinks with colleagues after work, WHOOP won’t be able to make the connection between your low HRV and alcohol consumption. (And looking back, you won’t know what made these metrics tank, which isn’t very motivating or helpful for your habits around alcohol.)

The Journal only works if you work it, so get into a routine, and complete it every day.

Bonus: Assign your own Journal category

While WHOOP’s Journal categories are extensive, they can’t cover all of the health efforts, status updates, or life circumstances you’d want to log. For example, there is no category called “Concussion Symptoms,” though I’ve been logging days when my concussion flares for years.

In this instance, I simply choose a category that I know I’m not going to use, and mentally assign it to mean “Concussion Symptoms.” Personally, I’ve assigned the category “Injury” to mean that my concussion is flaring. (I’ve been using WHOOP for four years and have never been injured in any other way, knock on wood. That’s why this category assignment works for me.)

Another example is “doing the Whole30.” As much as I wish WHOOP added this as a category, you can assign another factor, such as “Clean Eating” (I hate the term, but you know what it means) or “Paleo Diet” to mean “I’m doing the Whole30.” Just choose a category you won’t want to test in the future, or you run the risk of convoluting your results.

Join WHOOP today

What good is capturing data from your wearable if you don’t know what to do with it all? WHOOP has so many powerful features to help you make the most of your daily metrics, from their AI Coach to Trend Views to Performance Reports. Join WHOOP today and establish your baseline data just in time for January, whether you’re starting the January Whole30, Dry January, or another health effort.

Get a free month of WHOOP (plus a free WHOOP 4.0 and Black Onyx band) when you join using my link.

XO, MU

P.S. Be sure to check out my extensive list of free WHOOP resources, right here on the blog!