Your wearable is good at measuring your body and blind to much of your life. It does not know you had three glasses of wine, were coming down with a cold, or had a sauna. The Journal is where that context goes, so NOYU can move from telling you your recovery is down to finding why.
A Journal day has four parts: your Status, your daily items, your occasional items, and a note. Steps and workouts are filled in automatically.
Status
Status is how you are overall that day: Normal, Sick, Injured, On a break or On holiday. It sits at the top of the day, and it changes how NOYU reads everything else, so a suppressed HRV while you are ill is understood as illness rather than a worrying trend.
Each day is its own answer. A day you do not set reads as Normal, shown with a dashed outline so you can tell it apart from a day you set, and nothing else carries over by itself. Tap the chosen status again to clear it. The day after a status other than Normal, the row offers a one-tap Still sick (or injured, on a break, on holiday) or Better. You can also just tell NOYU in Chat ("I've got a cold") and it sets it for you.
If you are sick, you can say whether it is above the neck (runny nose, sore throat) or below the neck (chest, fever, aches), which matters for whether training is sensible.
Daily items
Daily items are the things you answer every day. Most are a yes or no: did you stretch, eat late, look at a screen in bed. Some are a 1 to 5 rating, like mood, energy and stress. The word for the number you pick, such as Good for a 4 on mood, shows under the item.
Night items, such as a late meal or a screen in bed, are answered the morning after. Today opens with Last night, then the day itself. Check in is for today and asks in the same order: last night's questions first, on a dark screen with a moon and the night spelled out, then today's with a sun. Last night's answers belong to the evening they happened, so a late meal on Tuesday evening counts towards Tuesday.
To fill in an earlier day, open it from the week at the top. An earlier day shows the day first, then its own night, so you can fill in a day and its evening together.
In the week at the top, a ring under a day means it is partly logged and a dot means every daily item on it is answered and your Status is set. For today, that includes last night; for an earlier day, its own night.
Caffeine and alcohol are counts: tap 0, 1 or 2, or type the number. For caffeine, each coffee, tea, energy drink or gel counts as one. For alcohol, one drink is about 2 units: a pint of beer, a medium glass of wine or a double spirit. A large glass of wine is two. NOYU compares your days with each other, never with someone else's or with guidelines. The reminder is also in the item's settings under Edit.
If you have never changed your Journal, you start with eight daily items: caffeine, alcohol, mood, energy, stress, screens in bed, late meals and stretching.
Occasional items
Some things happen on some days rather than most: a sauna, an ice bath, a massage, a travel day. Answering "no" to those every day is a chore, so they live in Occasional, where you log them only on the days they happen: a Yes (and how much, if you set its Detail to With amount), or for a count like alcohol, how many.
On any day you log something else in your Journal, an occasional item you did not tap counts as a no. A day with nothing logged at all stays unknown. That no only applies from the day the item became occasional, so moving an item never changes its earlier days.
Items like sauna and ice bath go into Occasional when you add them. You can move any item between Daily and Occasional whenever you like.
Same as yesterday and No to the rest
Two shortcuts sit under your daily items while there is something for them to fill.
Same as yesterday copies your answers from the last day you logged, up to two weeks back. If that was a few days ago, the button names that day instead, such as Same as Tuesday earlier in the same week or Same as Fri 26 Sep. It copies what you did, such as yes or no answers, drinks and amounts, but not ratings like mood or energy, your note or occasional items.
No to the rest finishes a day in one tap. It answers no for every daily yes or no item you have not touched, 0 for anything you count, such as caffeine and alcohol, and sets Status to Normal if it is empty. It leaves ratings and occasional items alone.
Neither changes an answer you have already given, and both can be undone straight after with Undo.
Quick or detailed
By default every item is Quick: one tap. For caffeine and alcohol you can switch an item to Detailed, which adds how many and when the last one was under a Yes. The timing is often the useful part, since a late coffee is a different thing to a morning one.
The first time you add detail, you can tick Make this my usual. From then on, a Yes fills in your usual and you only change what was different. Without a usual, nothing is assumed.
Detail is per item, so you can keep caffeine detailed and leave everything else quick.
The note
Each day has a free-text note. Open it with Add a note at the foot of the day, then type it or dictate it with the microphone. Once written, the note itself shows there. NOYU reads it alongside the rest of your day. Ask NOYU in Chat to add something to your note and it is added to what is already there, never replacing it.
Changing your Journal
Choose Edit from the Journal menu to see the full library of around a hundred items, plus any of your own. Switch an item on to add it to your Journal, or off to take it off; anything you have already logged is kept. Items like sauna and massage are marked Occasional and start that way. Tap any item to choose its Frequency: Every day, or Occasionally (it moves to Occasional). Its Detail starts at Quick, where one tap answers it. 1 to 5 items like energy and mood can be rated Several times a day, where each rating is kept with its time. Counts like caffeine and alcohol can log a Total with when you had the last one, and caffeine and alcohol can also log Each one you had. Items with a duration or dose, like meditation or magnesium, can log With amount.
A rating set to Several times a day shows an Add button rather than the 1 to 5 scale, because each tap adds another rating. On a past day, a new rating or drink starts at a likely time for that day, which you can change.
To change the order, open In Journal in Edit and drag an item by its handle. Your Journal and Check in then follow your order. Until you reorder, items follow the shape of the day.
Removing an item keeps everything you already logged.
Custom items
You can add your own items and choose how they are answered: yes or no, a 1 to 5 rating, or How many in a unit you name (such as glasses). Unless it's a rating, you then choose its Frequency, as for any item: Every day, or Occasionally, which makes it an occasional item you tap only when it happens. You also choose its category, which sets its icon, and whether it belongs to the day or the night, which is asked the next morning. Good ones are specific and repeatable: "physio exercises", "worked from office", "took antihistamine".
Answers from before counts
Before caffeine and alcohol were counts, they were answered None, Some or Lots. Those answers stay exactly as they were. Patterns about whether you had it or not use every day; patterns about how much only use days with a number.
Automatic items
Steps, cardio, strength and time in heart rate zone 2 appear automatically when NOYU has wearable data for that day. Each has a daily target, such as 7,000+ steps, that you can change under Automatic in Edit, where you can also switch an automatic item off. A new target applies to your existing history too. A target you did not reach shows as an empty circle, not a cross, since a rest day is often the plan. Missing wearable data stays unknown rather than being treated as zero.
Backfilling
You can log any past day, and NOYU never locks a date. Anything already calculated from that day, such as a score, reflects the data as it stood when it ran.
How much to log
Fewer items, logged consistently, beat many items logged sporadically. To find whether something affects you, NOYU needs at least five days where you did it and five where you did not. Pick three or four things you suspect matter, log them for a month, and you will have something real.
Summary
Summary, the third tab at the top of the Journal, starts with this year in a few cards: how many days you've logged, the items you've logged most and least (a no counts as logging; Occasional items aren't counted as least), and your most logged month, with a tip when your logging could tilt Insights. Below that it shows a month at a time, paging back to your first. All leads with what stood out that month (the biggest change on the month before, or what happened most), then your ratings and how often each item happened, each next to the month before. While a month is under way, how often is compared with the month before up to the same date. Pick an item to see its month, then a year of it: month by month, how it falls across the week, and every day at a glance. Your days in a row, at the top of Today beside the flame, count any day with something logged. Miss a day and you can catch up on it within the week, from the Catch up card at the top of Today, and the run comes back. It is there because a picture of your consistency is useful, not as a game: missing a day costs you nothing beyond that day's data.
In the app
The iPhone app has the same Journal as the web, including Status, counts, Occasional, Detailed, the note, Edit and Summary. If one of these is missing on your iPhone, update the app. Everything you log in either place is the same Journal.
