How to use the daily diary in the Purpl PIP & ADP Tracker

The daily diary is the main part of the Purpl PIP & ADP Tracker. Each day, you can record the type of day you had, relevant Daily Living and Mobility activities, how you felt, the help or support you needed and anything else you want to remember.

You do not have to complete everything, and you can go back to previous days to add information you missed. Only record what is relevant to you.

What can I record each day?

When you open a day in your diary, you can work through the different sections at your own pace.

Choose how your day was overall

Start by choosing the option that best describes your day:

Bad day
Better day
Mixed day
Flare-up day
Recovery day

This gives you a quick way to record how your condition changes from day to day and can help you see patterns over time.

Choose whichever description feels most appropriate for that particular day.

Record your Daily Living activities

The tracker includes the 10 Daily Living activities used for PIP and Adult Disability Payment (ADP):

Preparing food
Eating and drinking
Managing medication or treatment
Washing and bathing
Toilet needs or incontinence
Dressing and undressing
Communicating
Reading and understanding
Mixing with people
Managing money

Tap an activity to add an entry.

You can choose Did this, N/A today or Skip, so you do not need to complete activities that were not relevant to you.

Record your Mobility activities

Under Getting around, you can record:

Planning and following journeys
Moving around

Again, only complete these when they are relevant to that day.

What can I record for each activity?

If you select Did this, the tracker lets you record more detail about what actually happened.

How easy was this to do?

Think about the hardest part of completing that activity and choose:

Very easy
Quite easy
Manageable but difficult
Very difficult
Extremely difficult or could not do it

This is a diary difficulty rating, not a PIP or ADP points score.

Did you need help or support?

You can record whether you:

needed help from another person
needed prompting or encouragement
needed someone to supervise you
used an aid or appliance

Select everything that reflects what actually happened.

Could you do it reliably?

For each activity, you can also record whether you could do it:

Safely: without risk of harm to yourself or someone else.

To an acceptable standard: properly and completely, rather than only partly.

Repeatedly: as often as you reasonably needed to during the day.

In a reasonable time: without taking much longer than someone without your condition.

For each question, choose Yes, No or Not sure.

Record what happened afterwards

Completing an activity does not always tell the whole story.

Use What happened afterwards? to record things such as:

needing to rest or sleep afterwards
increased pain or fatigue
the activity taking much longer than usual
needing help afterwards
being unable to do another activity later
symptoms becoming worse

For example:

“I managed to prepare lunch but had to sit down twice. Afterwards my pain and fatigue were worse and I needed to rest for an hour.”

You can also add any other useful information in the notes box.

Record how you felt that day

The How you felt section is separate from the PIP and ADP activities.

This gives you somewhere to record the wider impact of your disability or long term health condition, including:

Pain
Fatigue
Energy
Mood or mental health
Brain fog
Sensory overload
Breathlessness
Mobility
Sleep
Medication side effects
Flare-ups
Recovery time
Missed work, study, appointments or plans
Other real-life impact

Each area can be rated from 1 to 5, where 1 is mild and 5 is very severe.

You do not need to rate everything. Only record the areas that affected you that day.

Add anything else about your day

At the end of the diary, Anything else about today gives you space to record information that does not fit anywhere else.

There is no character limit, so you can write as much or as little as you need.

You might want to record a change in your symptoms, something you had to cancel, an unusual event, additional help you needed or simply something about the day that you want to remember.

If somebody helped you complete your diary

Switch on Someone helped me complete this entry if a carer, family member or someone else helped you fill it in.

The diary should still describe your experiences, even if somebody else helps you record them.

Keeping sensitive notes out of reports

If there is something you want to keep in your diary but do not want included in your reports, select Mark these notes as sensitive (kept out of reports).

This allows you to keep a more complete personal diary while controlling what appears when you create a report.

Can I go back and add information to an earlier day?

Yes. You can go back to previous days and add information that you did not record at the time.

This can be particularly useful if you were too unwell, tired or overwhelmed to complete your diary on the day, or if you later remember something important that you want to add.

When adding information afterwards, record what you genuinely remember rather than feeling you need to fill every section.

Being able to return to earlier days also means missing a diary entry does not mean you have lost it.

Do I have to complete the whole diary every day?

No. The tracker is designed to work around you.

You can skip activities that were not relevant, mark an activity N/A, only rate the areas that affected you and add as much or as little detail as you want.

Some days you may have lots to record. On other days, your entry might be very short.

The aim is to build a useful picture of your experiences over time without turning your diary into another difficult form you have to complete.