There are apps available online to try as well. I like imood journal (android and iphone, just sounds like iphone) which lets me enter notations as well as my mood. I like it mainly b/c it reminds me to document 3x/day and is easy to use. I also tried daily mood tracker (something like that) but I cycle too much for it to work well. I tried 3 others at the same time (I tried 5 at once to see what worked best for me) but don't remember the names of the others. Optomism gets good reviews but won't work on my iPhone 4.

I realize you are asking about NOT doing this and I will just say I refused to do it for years because it seemed to complicated with rapid cycling and mixed episodes but with the app it has been easier. I'm not doing it as often now as I was when I was feeling bad and cycling all the time but when I was cycling constantly the sharp peaks really showed my pdoc and therapist what I was going through.