1. Journaling

Grapefruit uses a one-entry-per-day system, and it’s already set up for you. To start writing, pick a day on the left hand side and click where it says "Today I..." to start writing.

Your journal entry will save automatically and you can come back to it at any time. You can write as little or as much as you want. The typing area will expand automatically to fit the length of your entries like some sort of magic paper.

The sidebar shows this week and last week, but you can go to any day from the Calendar, which you can select from the bottom of the sidebar.

2. Ratings and Emotions

You can give each day a rating from 1-10, and select whatever emotions you want. You access these by using the two buttons above the writing area.

A 10 is generally one of the best days you will have, and a 1 is one of the worst days you will have. A 5 or 6 is an average day with nothing special.

You can rate a day without writing a journal entry, and vice-versa. On some days it can be particularly hard to write, so picking a number is an easy win to get those days in your journal.

Don’t be afraid to change your rating as your day evolves, or during the following days as your perception of the day changes. (Sometimes things feel way worse in the moment than they actually are. Just realizing this can be a huge benefit itself in dealing with the bad days!)

For emotions, there’s no right answer here. You can pick only one, or as many as you want. You can pick angry and happy in the same day if you feel one, and then the other.

If the list of emotions doesn’t resonate with your experience, or you think there are some missing, you can customize the list in Settings. To customize the list of emotions, click the gear icon at the top, then select Emotions. Don’t forget to hit Save after you make your changes! Unlike your entries, settings don’t autosave.

If you don’t want to track emotions, you can remove them all in the settings.

Note that modifying the emotion list DOES NOT remove old answers, so you may still see old emotions on the stats page.

If you have deleted some emotions and want them back, you will need to re-enter them yourself.

Here is the current default set:
- Happy
- Hopeful
- Ecstatic
- Loved
- Loving
- Confident
- Energetic
- Content
- Calm
- Pensive
- Bored
- Numb
- Tired
- Annoyed
- Sad
- Self-conscious
- Angry
- Afraid
- Exhausted
- Anxious
- Depressed

3. Questions

You can set up some custom questions, which can be questions to ask yourself and/or things you want to track. Then, you can enter your answers each day along with the journal entries and ratings. They will be shown below your journal entry on each day.

Generally, these will come and go as your life evolves, but some may stay consistent. A good example might be how you feel about your job. You may track that for a while, see that it comes out positive over time, then remove the question and accept that your job is actually pretty good.

To customize the questions, go to Settings, then select Questions in the top menu if it is not already selected.

Types Of Questions You Can Set Up:

Number - Enter any number you want.
Range - This is similar to the ratings. You’ll get circles with numbers you can pick one from. They will always start at 1 and go to the limit you enter. If the range is more than 20, or doesn’t start at zero, we suggest using a Number. (Ranges can go all the way up to 99, but that’s a lot of numbers!) If you only several choices of numbers, you can use an Option type.
Freeform Text - Type whatever you want! Good for keeping specfic questions separate from your Journal entries.
Yes or No - Answer a “Yes” or “No” question.
Option Many - Select as many as you want from a list.
Option One - Select only one from the list of options.

Deleting a custom question DOES remove all of the previous answers and there’s no way to get them back so be sure you want to delete one before you do!

4. Reviewing

The book and graph icons in the toolbar help you review and learn.

The book icon gives you a list of all of your entries to date, as if you’re reading your journal backwards. You can filter them using the options at the top, which is where the real power of this section lies. Select some emotions and/or rating ranges to filter the entries to review at different times.

For example, if you’re having a bad day then you can remind yourself of the good times by selecting Good on the right, with Happy or Excited as the emotion. Only days that match both the range and one of the selected emotions will be shown.

Note: you’ll need at least 5 days of data points to see any stats or trends. Also it’s important to know that they get more accurate with time, so don’t rely too heavily on them in the first 30 days. Your experience will be unique to you, but testing has shown us that 60-90 days is often where they start to become really useful.

---

Pressing the graph icon will take you to the Stats and Trends section, where you’ll see a number of, well, numbers! And some charts and graphs and tables.

Along the top, you’ll find the Days Between [Good/Bad] Days, which are the number of days you generally need to wait between good or bad days. This can help you think of your life as a pattern of ups and downs, and as these numbers change, you can see how your life patterns change. (Tip: You can also use the Read section to figure out what makes a good day for you and replicate them to decrease your Days Between Good Days!)

Medium Days is the percentage of days that fall in the middle of your ratings. This can be large, which shows consistency in moods, or small, which can show a lot of volatility. How you might want to adjust that number is up to you. Maybe you want to go for more great days and fewer middle days, or perhaps you want a lot of middle days because that’s a better baseline for you.

Lastly is the Average Rating. Like all of these numbers across the top, you can use this to get a general sense of how you’re doing. They are good ones to keep an eye on over time.

Top Emotions and Ratings are the first two charts that show which emotions you experience frequently, and how your ratings are distributed. Look at them together and you can get an overview of your life. Are you seeing positive emotions and a large amount of good days? Or the opposite?

Ratings Trends and Highs and Lows show you patterns over periods of time. Do you have certain months and weeks that are better? Or are you fairly consistent? You can use the options at the top-right of the graph to switch between views.

The Short-Term and Long-Term graphs won’t be different until you’ve used Grapefruit for over 30 days.

If you have set up custom questions, you’ll also find stats on those. Depending on the question and how much data is available, you’ll find different sorts of stats. Sometimes you’ll see which answers are associated with good or bad days, while others may show which emotions are associated with certain answers.How you interpret these and how you use the results of custom questions is entirely up to you!