Tag: prompts

Not leaving it to chance: Christine plans her own exercise dice
ADHD · equipment · fitness · gadgets · play · Tools

Not leaving it to chance: Christine plans her own exercise dice

Christine Hennebury1 Comment

I love a good set of prompts. I have dice, cards, apps, and prompt sheets for writing, improv, storytelling, drawing, and all kinds of creative activities.

Prompts help me to avoid getting stuck in decision mode (a huge pitfall for my ADHD brain), and they offer just the sort of constraint that helps creativity to thrive.

Since I also have a bit of a decision challenge with exercise (trying to strike a balance between consistency and avoiding boredom makes for a tricky endeavour a lot of the time) I was intrigued when the all-knowing algorithm served up this set of exercise prompt dice on Monday afternoon.

Product image of a set of four exercise dice, displayed in the carrying bag and set out in a line, plus the instruction manual.
Image description: Amazon product photo for Wadeo exercise dice. In the upper left the dice are displayed in a black mesh bag, on the upper right is a white paper instruction manual, and across the bottom are four dice (yellow, green, blue, teal) with various exercises printed on them.

I usually have to decide things in advance – knowing the what and the when and the timeframe helps remove the ‘Ugh, I will be doing this for the REST OF MY LIFE, I don’t even want to start.’ feeling that my brain automatically generates. But, when I use prompts, I usually only have to decide when and how long. (I guess the prompts only offer a certain range of ‘what’ so my brain is ok with that.)

I couldn’t help but wonder whether my brain would be ok with choosing a time and the length of my exercise session but leaving the exercises themselves up to the dice.

Then I looked closer at these particular dice.

I won’t do burpees. I know they are a great exercise but they make my head spin so I already know I won’t do them.

I’m not quite ready for pistol squats or ‘jackknifes’ so I would need to adjust or substitute something else for those…

And I don’t even know what is on the other side of those dice. There could be far worse things in store for me.

So I won’t be ordering those.

BUT

I am still intrigued by the IDEA of exercise dice.

And I just so happen to have a set of wooden cubes like these…

A pile of wooden cubes
Image description: a photo of a pile of about 20 plain, unfinished wooden cubes on a white background.

So, I am going to create my own exercise dice.

And this will probably work better for me because instead of having to roll one die over and over, I could roll a whole set of exercises at a time and have a very clear end point for my set or for my session.

Now I just have to decide what exercises to write on each die.

Any suggestions?

Christine is letting an app boss her around
health · mindfulness · motivation · self care

Christine is letting an app boss her around

Christine Hennebury

I have been receiving the Action for Happiness newsletter for years. I usually read it at the beginning of the month, glance at the included calendar, and occasionally I refer back to it a few times over the following weeks.

Here’s the ‘Self-Care September’ calendar:

a multi-coloured Action for Happiness calendar with cartoon drawings of a clock, a person looking at photos, two people hugging, and a kettle, tea and cookies around the edges. This month's theme is 'Self-Care September' and each block of the calendar has a different prompt for self-care.
Image description: a multi-coloured Action for Happiness calendar with cartoon drawings of a clock, a person looking at photos, two people hugging, and a kettle, tea and cookies around the edges. This month’s theme is ‘Self-Care September’ and each block of the calendar has a different prompt for self-care. An accessible PDF is available here. Image source

This month, though, something made me give it a closer look and I finally noticed that Action for Happiness is on Instagram and that they have an app.

And even though I usually avoid letting apps send me notifications, I impulsively agreed to let them interrupt me. And I am really glad I did.

I am now on my third day of being bossed around by this app and I LOVE it.

It’s such a cool thing to get a reminder of one simple way to be kinder to myself today (I mean, that’s my kind (ha!) of thing anyway but it’s fun to get a prompt that I didn’t come up with.)

For example, here’s yesterday’s prompt:

Image Description: an embedded image from the Action for Happiness Instagram feed. There is a pink background and a simple drawing of a person with beard washing dishes in a sink. There are several dishes on the counter beside the sink. The caption says ‘Notice the things you do well, however small.’ The bottom right corner of the image appears to be folded back so there is a red triangle in that corner. A small white banner at the bottom reads ‘Action for Happiness.’

When I got that on Thursday morning, I actually took a moment to think about the fact that I’m good at remembering everyone’s schedule and that I was happy with the drawing I had made the night before. Without the prompt, I still would have known those things but I probably wouldn’t have taken the moment to consider them and I would have missed out on that feeling of satisfaction.

I’m looking forward to a whole month of being bossed into moments of happiness.

I think it will be really good for my brain and that has to be good for the rest of me too, right?

PS: If this kind of calendar seems vaguely familiar, it’s because I wrote about them before.