The notebook thing started because I couldn’t tell if the fragrance-free body wash was actually helping or if I’d just had a calmer stretch at work, and I was tired of going back and forth on it in my head.
So for 14 days I wrote down three things every night before bed – what I ate, how many hours I actually slept, and how the patches on my hands and neck looked that morning versus that night.
The pattern got obvious fast once it was on paper instead of floating around in my head. My hands were worse on 4 of the 5 days I had a deadline running late into the evening, and it had nothing to do with the detergent switch I’d been quietly blaming for weeks.
The neck patches lag behind by a day or so, which is its own puzzle I haven’t figured out yet.
I still catch myself wanting to blame whatever changed most recently instead of what’s actually consistent. But writing it down instead of trying to remember it cut out a lot of the guessing.
Most of the logging happens on my phone during the 90 minute train ride home, so it turned into less of a chore than I expected 🙂