Another gratitude journal? I guess someone thinks iPhone users could use a little more happiness in their lives.
This one's from happier.com, which helps users measure and track their gratitude to improve their level of happiness. Not to be confused with Happy Tapper's Gratitude Journal (in initial caps), happier.com's gratitude journal (in all lower case) takes a more scientific approach to charting and increasing happiness.
(Geez. Let's see if I can get through the rest of this post without writing "happiness" a million times!)
Experts have long pointed to the link between gratitude and - um ... well-being. (Phew!) "The way humans are wired, when things go well, we tend to forget them. When things go badly we remember them," says Dr. Martin Seligman, the renowned expert and University of Pennsylvania professor who provided the intro that's included in the app. "The more you pay attention to things going well, by writing them down as in the gratitude journal, the more positive emotions you'll experience."
Users enter three positive events each day, to chart their happ- ahem - emotional state over time. They answer a 24-question assessment to receive their score. That may seem like a lot, but the makers promise that the questions are simple and quick. (And perhaps that much info is required for better accuracy.) The app measures a user's current state, displays the six most recent scores and provides a journal space for recording milestones and achievements.
The UI is pretty straightforward and definitely not as cute as the other Gratitude Journal's. Then again, it definitely lends itself to a more empirical kind of data tracking, which seems to be the whole point of this app.
The exercises and assessments included here, as well as on the website are based on more than 20 years of scientific research on happiness. (Oh, shoot!)
gratitude journal is 99 cents and is currently available in the App Store.
