Pain diaries and stamps - view on the website
Keeping a pain diary probably isn't something you discuss with your health practitioner. The idea is as simple as it sounds: When you feel pain, you note down where the pain is, how much you feel, and, if so inclined, what caused it.
In a couple of weeks, you'll have enough data to find patterns and adjust. The person who told me of this idea happened to realise that two days after their hard gym session for the week, they felt pain. They split the hard session up, and that resolved one data point. They slowly worked at their diary over time to find what we'd call correlations in statistics.
You'll need to be diligent and write down every time you feel pain for this to work. You can't try to 'remember' when this happened.
Doing something simple and easy is harder than we appreciate. That's why dieticians struggle to get people to keep a food diary. It's not the data input; it's easier to believe the world is different from what we want it to be. No one wants to weigh out their chocolate after dinner. No one wants to write down their pain every time they feel it. We're reminded of who we are, a version we don't want to be.
Easily accessible and overlooked data is more common than we think. Dennis Altman writes in The Monthly:
"Stamps used to portray the official imagery of government, and even today a new state will proclaim its sovereignty with stamps."
"Anyone wishing to study the imperial pretensions of Mussolini’s Italy might well start with the large multicoloured issues from Somalia or Cyrenaica, favouring desert animals beneath Italian aircraft."
What if your organisation spent less time collecting useless data that no one cares about and instead found something as accessible, interesting, and broad as stamps?
Stamps serve the literal purpose of showing that postage has been paid. As Dennis described in his article, the rich colour and story can't be captured in the simplistic monetary value. Imagine if you collected data that did the same.
Andrew
Want more? Great.
On LinkedIn, I describe why this concept is hard to implement.
Here's a short data bite if you want to hear me expand on the idea.