A Weekly Tick Sheet for a 90-Day Supplement Trial

A long trial window sounds generous. For a busy owner it is easy to lose between quotes, invoices, van repairs and chasing payments. You start on day one, forget about it, and when the deadline arrives you can't say whether the product did anything.

A daily log is the ideal fix, but some people won't keep one. A weekly tick sheet is a lighter version. It takes a few minutes, it sits in a routine you already have, and it gives you a short run of notes to read back at the end.

Day one: three things before the first week

Do these before you take anything.

• Find the deadline. Read the seller's terms yourself, work out the last day of the guarantee, and put it in your phone calendar with a reminder set well ahead.
• Pick one or two things to watch. Make them specific. "How my legs feel at the end of a day on site" is useful. "Feel better" is not.
• Keep the paperwork. Store the order confirmation and packaging together in one place, in case you want to ask for a refund.

If you take prescribed medication or have a health condition, ask your pharmacist or GP before adding any supplement. Do that before the product arrives, not after.

The weekly sheet

Rule up a page, or set up a note on your phone, with the same few lines every week. Pick one fixed time to fill it in, such as Friday afternoon when you do your invoicing.

1. Week number and date.
2. Days taken. Tick a box for each day, or write "most", "about half" or "few". Honest gaps are useful information.
3. Score for the thing you're watching. Give it a mark out of five, using the same scale every week.
4. Type of week. One line: heavy physical work, mostly desk, short week, bad sleep, holiday.
5. Anything else that changed. A new routine, a different diet, a change of boots, a cold. Anything that could muddy the result.
6. Keep going? Yes, no or unsure. This takes two seconds and gives you a pattern to read later.

The "type of week" line carries the most weight. A rough score after a run of long loft jobs means something different from a rough score in a quotes-and-paperwork week. Without that line you are guessing at the cause.

Get a baseline if you can

If you can, fill in the sheet for a week or two before you start. That gives you something to compare against, rather than a half-remembered version of yourself. If you've already started, write down where you were at the beginning and mark it clearly as a guess.

Tie it to something you already do

Whatever you're trying, a habit attached to an existing routine beats good intentions. Take the product with the first brew of the morning, and fill in the sheet at the same point each week. The fewer separate things you have to remember, the more likely the notes will actually exist at the end. For a broader walkthrough of the same idea, see this guide on keeping simple notes during a 90-day trial.

Read it back at fixed points

Don't leave the review for the last week. Put a few check-ins in your calendar spread across the trial, and at each one read the sheets in a row rather than relying on memory. Look for:

• Whether the score has moved, and whether it moved in weeks of similar workload.
• Whether the weeks you took it most consistently look different from the patchy ones.
• Whether your "keep going?" column is trending one way.

If the notes show nothing clear, that is a result too. You can decide with the deadline still ahead of you, rather than finding out it has passed.

Before the window closes

A few days before the last day, sit down with the sheets and make the call. If you want a refund, check the seller's terms again for how to claim and what they ask for, then gather the confirmation and packaging. If you decide to continue, you will know why. And if you had any health concerns along the way, take them to your pharmacist or GP rather than waiting for the trial to end.

A tick sheet will not prove anything scientifically. It just replaces a vague feeling with a page you can read, and that is enough for a sensible decision.