Continuing the theme of low energy, I had an idea about taking a macro photograph of a thimble and putting some kind of cathartic wording around it. I went thimble shopping yesterday, busted out my 50mm macro lens, and took a picture with extremely shallow depth-of-field. Then I winged it.
Design Thoughts
A few days ago I was feeling SO LOW ON ENERGY that I grumped to myself, “I have less than a thimble-full of energy and I’m not giving it to ANYONE.” This got me thinking about just how much energy was in a thimble, which in turn gave me enough energy to want to BUY a thimble and some needle threaders, as I had discovered I didn’t have these items when I was attaching MicroUSB thumb drives to cards the other day.
It occurred to me that if I took a really close-up picture of a thimble, its holding capacity becomes much more subjective. We know that thimbles are small and wouldn’t hold a lot of anything, but when confronted with a macro (“extreme closeup”) photo of it, we physically see something much larger. How can you tell how much it can hold without any other reference for scale? And isn’t it the same for how much energy we think we have? A thimble-full of energy could be just a little, or it could actually be a lot.
The design of this 3×5″ card plays around with this idea. On the surface, it may appear to be another tool for venting like the Annoyed Task Planner, but like that tool it may help channel positive energies without actually telling you to cheer-up.
Download
I’m providing a low-resolution printout that you can cut-out yourself. With the ability to do some custom short-run products emerging from my other Thing-a-Day process explorations, I’m hoping to offer these sometime in the future for purchase in some kind of variety pack. We shall see!
- DOWNLOAD patience-card-dr01.pdf
This is another experiment, so let me know if it sparks any ideas in the comments! Enjoy!
About this Article Series
I'm challenging myself to create something new every day for the month of November 2014! The November Challenge Page lists everything in one place...check it out!
2 Comments
I’m experimenting with (actually stalling over, but we won’t get into that) some other tools to find patterns.
The Now Habit suggests a procrastination log. Every time you notice yourself procrastinating, record time and context, activity you intended to do, thoughts and feelings (that might be holding you back), justification, attempted solution, and resultant thoughts and feelings.
Thrive with ADHD suggests an intention log, used for one task each day. From imperfect memory of the podcast: What you intend to do and when (to the minute), what you need to do first to make it successful (eg buy something), did you succeed, if not then why not, and when or if you finally got around to it.
My own idea, a “planned vs actual” log. Plan half day (or longer, but with less detail), maybe accurate to 5 minutes. Then compare actual to plan and look at the discrepancies. Why didn’t I. How do I feel about what I actually did? How do/did I feel before/during/after each activity? Looking back at day/week/month? I suspect I’ll find patterns, such reading blogs while rehydrating after exercise is a bad idea, stick to paper books. I already know that I feel more positive about everything the days I exercise, but actually do more work the day after, and on the third day it’s back to blah.
Yeah, way too much for a single form. Hence the stall. Having trouble saying “experiment” instead of “want to do it right and collect all the data so I can see and leverage all the patterns.”
Love it. But I’ve been thinking in a cheerful version, whith some space to register the improvement of your mood along the day. (I write in this funny way because I dont really know how to write in english). Sorry I can’t give a more complete feedback. Maybe someday, in spanish. Bye.