Subjective energy score is a structured 1–10 self-rating of how energetic a user feels, captured at a fixed time each day and paired with a short context tag. It is a deliberately simple proxy for the state most people are actually trying to move when they start a nootropic, adaptogen, B-vitamin, iron, or thyroid-adjacent stack.
Why it matters
Wearables do not measure energy. They measure correlates — HRV, RHR, sleep — that sometimes track with felt energy and sometimes do not. A user with a 90 readiness score can still feel drained at 2pm, and a user on four hours of sleep can still have a great morning. For stacks aimed at fatigue, afternoon crashes, adaptogenic load tolerance, or thyroid-adjacent support, the primary outcome is what the user feels, not what the ring says. Tracked rigorously, subjective energy is one of the most useful outcomes in the whole glossary.
Anchored 1–10 scale
A Likert scale drifts unless anchors are explicit. A practical default energy rubric:
| Rating | Anchor |
|---|---|
| 1 | Cannot function. Canceled plans, minimal output. |
| 2 | Pushed through one task, then had to stop. |
| 3 | Below my norm. Morning felt heavy; no afternoon block. |
| 4 | Slightly below average. Shorter work blocks than usual. |
| 5 | Average day. Work got done; no unusual lift or drag. |
| 6 | Clearly above average. Two strong work blocks. |
| 7 | Sustained energy through the afternoon without a crash. |
| 8 | Noticeably better than usual. Extra capacity for workouts or long sessions. |
| 9 | Top 10% of my year. People commented. |
| 10 | Best I feel all quarter. Rare, memorable. |
Re-anchor every 4–6 weeks. Without it the scale silently compresses and the ranked output starts reading noise as signal.
Context tags to log alongside the score
Energy ratings without context are misleading, the same failure mode covered in focus score. Pair each score with a short tag:
| Tag | What it captures | When it lands |
|---|---|---|
| short-sleep | Fewer than 6.5 hours the prior night | Any sleep-shortened day |
| travel-day | Flight, timezone shift, disrupted morning routine | Travel and the day after |
| hard-training | Session at threshold or above | Training days |
| light-training | Easy movement only | Recovery days |
| high-stress | Deadline, conflict, or unusual emotional load | Any day with a known stressor |
| sick | Flu, cold, GI, recovery from illness | Illness windows |
| late-caffeine | Caffeine after the user's configured cutoff | Interpretation of evening scores |
| fasted-morning | Skipped breakfast | Fasted-protocol interactions |
| first-dose-day | First day on a new compound | Onset watching |
Tag-based logging lets the review cycle discount confounded days and credit the clean ones correctly, so a stressful week does not poison a two-week compound trial.
How to log it well
- Log at the same time each day. Morning energy at 9am is a good default; afternoon energy at 3pm is the second most useful.
- Use the explicit anchors from the table above rather than "what feels like a 7."
- Add one context tag, or two if the day was unusual. Three or more is overfitting.
- Pair with one objective proxy such as resting heart rate so you can tell a placebo lift from a real one.
A numeric example
Fourteen-day pilot on methylated B-complex, 9am logging:
- Baseline 14-day mean (pre-stack) = 5.8.
- Intervention 14-day mean = 6.9.
- Days tagged `short-sleep` or `travel-day` (excluded from comparison) = 3 of 14.
- Clean-day intervention mean = 7.1.
A 1.3-point lift on clean days is meaningful and worth continuing. Without the tag exclusion, the raw delta would have been a softer 1.1 and easier to dismiss as noise. This is why the context tag is not optional in a serious self-experiment.
Common pitfalls
Self-ratings are vulnerable to placebo expectancy, to mood state leaking into energy ratings (halo effect), and to ceiling effects after a few weeks on any scale. The first-logging rule is simple: do not change the stack the first time the score lifts. Wait two weeks and check whether the lift is a sustained trend, consistent with understanding dose windows and cycles.
How this appears in Unfair
Subjective energy score is a default subjective proxy and the most commonly enabled outcome at onboarding. It is charted next to each supplement's adherence record on the review screen, and context tags render as pinned chips next to the score, so confounder patterns become visible without scrolling. This is one of Unfair's fast entry paths — score plus tag in under five seconds.
Clinical safety note
Persistent low energy scores that do not respond to sleep, caffeine adjustment, or stress reduction are a medical question, not a supplement one. Thyroid function, iron and ferritin status, sleep apnea, and depression each reliably present as "low energy" and should be ruled out by a clinician before stacking.