I first started creating my own trackers 8 years ago while looking for correlations of symptom flare ups with foods, exercises, chores, and activities. Since then it has evolved as I’ve made packs for others and taken in their feedback!

Having trackers in your planner, along with journaling sections, can help you track flare ups more accurately while reducing the amount of resources you have to bring to your doctor’s appointments.

Figuring out the right trackers for your personal needs can be difficult and at first we have the idea that we need to track everything, and yes having a few things we track together will help you to better compare and look for correlations. However, having so much to track that you feel overwhelmed and aren’t consistent is counterproductive. So, let’s make it simple shall we?

Keeping Your Flare Up Tracker in Your Planner is a Best Practice

Keeping your trackers inside your planner insures a few things:

• It’s always with you!

If you’re someone who uses their planner to beat the brain fog, keep attention management on point, and it acts like your life command center, then you probably keep it with you majority of the time. What better way to document your symptoms and activities than at that very moment or onset of a symptom?

• Reduce your load!

Keeping your trackers in your planner reduces the amount of notebooks needed to carry. This may reduce the length of the planner from 18 or 12 months to 6 months but if you have your planner, trackers, and journal notes all in one the benefits outweigh. 

It reduces the weight you’re carrying around, the odds of forgetting to bring one and needing it is cut by ⅔, and may help with your focus because everything is in one spot so you’re less likely to get distracted as you’re moving between notebooks.

Tracking Multiple Areas and Finding Correlations

By tracking different areas of life consistently, it’s easier to answer a doctor’s question about months previously and even your own understanding of what a flare looks like for you and how you react to your symptoms.

• Do you typically take more pain medication and keep going or pause activities, enjoy a hot bath and get sleep? 
• Did I really drink plenty of water yesterday?
• Was it really only 15 minutes in the sun last week?
• When did the nausea start before the migraine?
• What about that stressful work project, did it start before or after the flare?
  • Was it stressful because of the flare or did the flare start after experiencing the higher stress?
• Did I have an aura this migraine?
• Was that during or before my menstrual cycle?

And then there is food, exercise/stretching/movement, mood, weather, cold/flu, etc. lol

Don’t try to track all the things…at least not at once lol. It’s perfectly fine to change your tracked activities, environmental factors, and nutrition.

But be sure you’ve tracked long enough to get an accurate data sheet. (Ask your doctor what’s right for you depending on the topic to be tracked and your current health situation)

Finding correlations can help us reduce the frequency and/or intensity of flare ups. It can also show us warning signs we never noticed and provide an insight to our daily lives for our medical team!

It’s really a WIN WIN reason to track multiple areas (but not so many it’s overwhelming and consistency is lost!)

Which Tracker Format Should I Use

Wow, this is a massive list lol.

There are SO many styles! And it really depends on your need for visuals, analytical, or just a record to refer to.

For the visuals (myself included)

There are geometric designs, circle graphs, line graphs, dot graphs, color in designs, and just so many really!

Things to consider with the visual is your ‘why’ behind using it. 

• For example, you may want a visual to physically see the correlation between an activity level and pain level.
  • Line graphs provide the ability to overlay the two graphs and see the direct correlation. 
• When comparing a mood with a couple of different foods, you could use a spreadsheet style with check marks to note your mood that day and the foods eaten.
  • You may start seeing some check marks line up and others that never really seem to be found together. 

For the analytical (I can be found here too lol)

You might just need to document which days you have certain symptoms, not necessarily the intensity, and then could compare those days to the line graphs of other factors. 

• For this, you could just have a spreadsheet style and place a dot.
  • You could also use a horizontal line, up arrow, or down arrow to express the intensity that day.

For example, I do this with ‘dry eyes’ under “Symptom” and  > or < mark for  ‘X hours of computer/screen time’ under “Factor” or “Activity”. 

I know it correlates most of the time, but it helps me stay aware of the correlation because it’s something I slack on. I’ll also make note sometimes if that screen time was majority phone, computer or tv.

This helps me see the correlation of which symptoms and which devices seem to affect me more during other areas being tracked like flares, menstrual cycles, etc.

What Your Symptom Tracker Should Include

This is best to double check with your health care team for what is most important for your situation, but this section will just serve for giving ideas and grasping the concepts.

You could start with a small mixture of the most intense symptoms and most common symptoms. Symptoms that have been frequent the previous 3-6 months and symptoms that have caused an increase of medications, hospital visits, or doctor appointments are a good place to start.

A few tips I’ve learned:

• Be sure to track things long enough to see a correlation. Maybe even ask your doctor before you stop tracking something.

For example, it took 15 months of tracking to find a correlation in a new symptom I started having. 

• Be sure to also compare your regular schedule inside your planner to your trackers. (toxic relationships and being around abnormal factors are just a couple things that will show up in your planner but not necessarily on your trackers)

Example of this is a friend you only see periodically but they’re a smoker. Though they may not smoke around you, you give each other a hug to greet and before departing. It’s a factor. 

Having these kinds of meetings/plans noted on your planner schedule to compare to your symptom tracker might help reveal correlations.

Deciding on Which Trackers to Incorporate in Your Planner

It’s really going to be personal preference here.

Do you like a page to be full and feeling ‘busy’ is ok or does that get you anxious thinking about it?

Try to picture what the page will look like when it’s half full and how that makes you feel.

This will tell you if you’re more likely to stay consistent or stop just because of the sheer overwhelm you feel looking at it or pure delight/excitement.

There’s also more trackers than just that of chronic illness you can incorporate to help keep life organized!

I used to work in the financial industry and I can personally tell you that those I worked with that had no handle, tracking, or thought to their finances and budget tended to be some of the most stressed. 

I almost always ended up giving them a bill tracker and cost of debt tracker.

Knowing where their money was going and what needed to be paid off first to reduce interest and fees paid always produced a sigh of relief.

Personally, I have a mixture of the 2 lists below in my planner.

A few of the most common trackers I have requested when I’m creating planners are:

• Activities
• Budget
• Bills
• Chores
• Debt Payoff
• Exercises
• Foods
• Goals
• Habits
• Sleep
• Symptoms

The most common types of trackers I have requested when I’m making planners are:

• Spreadsheet style
• Line graph / dot graph

Just keep these couple of things in mind as you decide on your trackers and planner:

• regardless of how you decide to start tracking, just start!  
• keeping your planner, symptom/flare up tracker, other life trackers, and even a journal all together in one will increase your consistency and decrease the amount to keep up with!