Try: Counting Bees, Spot Elephants, Discover a Planet
I heard about this idea on my new favorite podcast, The Hilarious World of Depression. On this episode, he talks to someone helps herself get out of slumps by logging onto Zooniverse, joining in on crowd-sourced research for great scientific, literary, historical, and artistic causes.
This is from Zooniverse's Serengeti Wildebeest Count Project
I loved what the interviewee said:
"Makes me feel like a part of the world, even when I'm lying in bed for a few days. They have great guides on how you contribute to the research, even down to how you spot different kinds of rumps on gazelles...It's easy to use and it makes me feel productive, like I'm helping someone do something," says the interviewee.
Be Helpful While Just Hanging Out
"Occasionally you'll be flipping through the slides as you're doing your categorizing work, and all of the sudden you'll get a photo of an African elephant. That always really excited me because I found them really beautiful. Once I was really stuck because I had just done a load of photos. It was all 'wildebeest standing,' 'wildebeest eating,' or 'zebra standing' and then all of the sudden I got this amazing photo of a pack of elephants with babies in the middle of them. It just made my whole day."
You can choose from any number of projects on the Zooniverse site, following your own interests and curiosity.
Do you think that helping out with environmental research in this easy, low-stress way might be a good experiment for you to try today?
