In 2024, I found myself using mood tracking apps like Daylio and Bearable to monitor my emotional well-being. The year started off great—I felt incredibly good during the first three months. However, a prolonged illness struck, and for the next five months, I felt miserable. This drastic shift in my mood made me question the very essence of my happiness. Was it worth living if such periods of happiness were so fleeting?

As a professional poker player, I’m accustomed to tracking my wins and losses meticulously. Even during losing streaks, I can see my overall progress and know that I’m up in the long run. This got me thinking—could I apply the same principle to track my happiness? I wanted to see if I was “up” in terms of happiness over the year despite my illness.

I turned to Daylio, hoping to find answers. However, I quickly realized that these apps only showed a snapshot of my happiness: happy for the first three months, unhappy for the next five. I needed more detailed insights to understand the bigger picture. I downloaded over 30 mood tracking apps, but none could answer my burning question: Was I net positive in happiness for the year?

In many areas of life, it’s essential to track both gains and losses to get a full picture of progress. Similarly, many track steps, calories, sleep hours, and other metrics. Yet, the most crucial metric—happiness—remained elusive. This realization led me to create my system using Excel and Notion. I assigned points to every activity, both positive and negative, and tracked my progress over time.

To my surprise, this method was not only insightful but also enjoyable. Thinking in points made me more aware of my actions. For instance, I realized I enjoyed sweets but never gave them any points. Next time, when I wanted to eat sweets, I didn’t crave them as much because I knew they didn’t contribute positively to my overall happiness. Unlike emojis, which offered a limited emotional snapshot, assigning a numerical value to my feelings created a detailed emotional picture. As I scrolled through the feed of numbers representing my emotions, I felt like Cypher from The Matrix, able to see the code behind my experiences and relive those emotions with clarity.

This journey led me to realize that there should be an app dedicated to this comprehensive form of emotional tracking. And so, MyQualia was born.