Chronic fatigue — whether from ME/CFS, fibromyalgia, or Long COVID — is one of the most disabling and least understood symptoms there is. A daily diary is both a practical tool for managing your energy and the most credible evidence you can bring to a doctor who has never felt what you feel.
Chronic fatigue is invisible. People look at you and see someone who seems fine. Your bloodwork often looks normal. Your imaging is unremarkable. And yet you can barely get out of bed some days, and you've given up activities you loved because the cost is too high. Without documentation, it's very easy for that reality to go unseen — even by well-meaning doctors.
A daily fatigue diary is documentation. When you log your fatigue severity, what you were able to do, how you slept, and how you felt the next day, you create a record that's hard to dismiss. Showing up to an appointment with six weeks of daily entries showing consistent severe fatigue on 70% of days is different from saying "I've been really tired."
A diary also helps you understand your own energy envelope — the window of activity that keeps you stable versus the threshold that triggers a crash. This is the core concept in pacing for ME/CFS and Long COVID, and you can't find your envelope without data. The diary is how you learn where your limits actually are, rather than finding out after you've already crossed them.
And on a more personal level, there's value in the act of witnessing your own experience. Chronic fatigue can make you doubt yourself — especially when others do too. A log that honestly records every day, good and bad, is a form of self-validation that matters more than it might sound.
Rate your fatigue on a 0–10 scale at the same time each day. A single consistent number builds a trend line that tells a clearer story than any description.
How much were you actually able to do today? Rate your functional capacity — from barely able to leave bed, to managing light tasks, to a relatively normal day. This reveals your baseline and its fluctuations.
Unrefreshing sleep is a hallmark of ME/CFS. Track hours, how rested you felt on waking, and whether you woke during the night. Sleep quality is often one of the strongest predictors of next-day function.
What did you do today? Even rough categories — bedridden / very light / light / moderate — give context to your fatigue rating and reveal how much activity costs you.
Cognitive fatigue often tracks physical fatigue but not always. A separate clarity rating reveals whether your mental and physical symptoms move together or independently.
Flag any day that feels like a crash or significant worsening. This marks the low points in your history, letting you look back at what preceded them and how long recovery took.
It's tempting to only log on bad days, but good days are equally important. They establish your baseline and show the contrast that makes your bad days legible. A "good" day in ME/CFS is still data worth capturing.
When fatigue is severe, even typing is too much. Tap the microphone and say a few sentences: "Today I woke up exhausted, spent most of the day in bed, brain fog is bad, managed to eat lunch and that's about it." The app handles the rest.
When you're in a crash or a bad run, look at your log from 1–3 days before and add a voice note connecting what you did to how you're feeling now. This builds your personal understanding of your triggers and threshold over time.
Check your fatigue and sleep chart once a week. Are things trending up or down? Did anything interrupt an otherwise stable stretch? The weekly review is where the insight happens.
Before any medical appointment — primary care, specialist, disability review — use the Ask tab to generate a summary of the past 4–8 weeks. Fatigue frequency, average severity, crash days, activity capacity. Numbers and patterns, not just your word.
No — and the confusion causes a lot of harm. ME/CFS (myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome) is a serious systemic disease that affects the immune, neurological, and cardiovascular systems. The fatigue doesn't improve with rest, worsens with exertion (post-exertional malaise), and is often accompanied by cognitive symptoms, sleep disruption, and pain. A diary that shows this pattern helps distinguish it from ordinary tiredness.
The symptoms overlap significantly — both can involve severe fatigue, post-exertional malaise, brain fog, and sleep disruption. Long COVID is a newer condition with ongoing research, but many researchers believe it may involve similar mechanisms to ME/CFS. The Good Tracker works for both; the key is consistent daily logging regardless of the underlying cause.
Yes. Fibromyalgia involves fatigue, sleep disruption, cognitive symptoms, and widespread pain — all of which you can log in The Good Tracker. Many people with fibromyalgia also benefit from tracking food, activity, and stress alongside their core symptoms.
No — the app records your experience and surfaces patterns. It doesn't make recommendations about how to manage your energy or condition. That's the role of your care team. What the app does is give you the data to have a much better conversation with them.
Free. Voice-first. Built with people who live with chronic fatigue in mind.
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