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Currently viewing the tag: "consequences"
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ohnosecond: (humorous)
The fraction of time between making a mistake and realizing it.
Fiction Writing Prompt: Use the word of the week in whatever you write today.
Journaling Prompt: Write about a memorable ohnosecond in your life.
Art Prompt: Ohnosecond
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Use the word of the week in your article or speech.
Photo Credit: DeeMac on Flickr
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… because society trains us not to hurt others’ feelings, we rarely hear the truth about ourselves — even when it’s well deserved. And that can be a problem for overly self-confident people who carry around inaccurate, overly positive perceptions of how others view them…
There are many times when overconfidence carries serious consequences.
“Overconfident doctors and lawyers might offer their patients or clients poor advice,” she said. “There are ways in which overconfidence is dangerous, and it might be important to set aside politeness in the service of helping people avoid the perils of overconfidence.” -Science Daily
Fiction Writing Prompt: Write a scene where an overconfident character provides dangerous advice.
Journaling Prompt: Write about someone you know who is overconfident.
Art Prompt: Fear of Speaking Up
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Find a true example of dangerous overconfidence and weave it into an informative piece about lack of truthful feedback.
Photo Credit: Pegabovine on Flickr
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It is intuitive that most people would be less likely to take risks after an unexpected loss. What happens after a surprising win?
It turns out that the very same trend applies, according to Case Western Reserve University psychologist Heath Demaree. In other words, it’s not whether you win or lose, but whether the outcome is expected. People appear to decrease their risk-taking levels after experiencing any surprising outcome – even positive ones. -Case Western Reserve University press release
Fiction Writing Prompt: Write a story about someone who wins and then becomes afraid to take any more risks.
Journaling Prompt: Does winning make you more or less cautious?
Art Prompt: Surprise Victory
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Write about the relationship of risk to success. Convince your audience that they need to continue taking risks even after experiencing success.
Photo Credit: Daadi on Flickr
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“Descriptions of weight loss, such as those often promoted on television, may significantly worsen obesity stigma. Believing that obese people can easily lose weight may make individuals blame and dislike obese people more.
“The findings demonstrate that residual obesity stigma persists against individuals who have ever been obese, even when they have lost substantial amounts of weight. Obesity stigma is so powerful and enduring that it may even outlast the obesity itself. -Dr. Janet Latner, Science Daily
Fiction Writing Prompt: Write a story about a person who works hard to become skinny, only to find out that it doesn’t solve all his or her problems.
Journaling Prompt: If you’ve experienced any stigma because of your size, write about that. If not, write about your attitudes towards people of a size different than yours.
Art Prompt: Skinny and fat
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Inform your audience about size discrimination.
Photo Credit: Helga Weber on Flickr
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The Streisand Effect: A phenomenon in which attempting to suppress an item of information attracts even more unwanted attention, thus furthering its dissemination. Coined in 2005, after a 2003 incident in which singer Barbra Streisand attempted to have a picture of her house removed from a public collection of 12,000 images documenting coastal erosion in California. -Wikipedia
Fiction Writing Prompt: Write a story about a celebrity who is trying to keep something private but encounters the Streisand Effect.
Journaling Prompt: Would you ever want to be famous? How much of your privacy would you be willing to give up in the process?
Art Prompt: The price of fame
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Write about our culture’s obsession with celebrities.
Photo Credit: JCT(Loves)Streisand* on Flickr
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What do employees think of their boss when he or she makes a mistake? According to a new study, leaders who make mistakes are seen as less competent, less desirable to work for and less effective than leaders who do not. And if the leader is a man making a mistake in a man’s world, he is judged more harshly than a woman making the same mistake in a man’s world… The authors suggest that male leaders may be seen as violating expectations of male performance in this context, whereas women are expected to fail in masculine work settings. -Science Daily
Fiction Writing Prompt: Write a story about a boss who makes a very public mistake.
Journaling Prompt: Write about a time when your boss made a mistake and how you felt about it.
Art Prompt: Mistaken Boss
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Write about the relationship between boss and employee. Cover how bosses should handle their mistakes.
Photo Credit: U.S. Army Alaska on Flickr
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Whenever we do not learn from our mistakes, it is often because we are attacked for those mistakes. We are called names and generally downgraded by other people who discover our mistakes—good old seagull managers. When our self-concept is under attack, we feel the need to defend ourselves and our actions, even to the extent of distorting the facts. When people become defensive, they never hear the feedback they are getting. As a result, little learning takes place. -Ken Blanchard, Leading at a Higher Level
Fiction Writing Prompt: Write a story about an employee at an office run by a seagull manager.
Journaling Prompt: Write about a boss you have not enjoyed working for.
Art Prompt: Seagull Management
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Write about management styles, focusing on seagull management and why it is not effective.
Photo Credit: indiamos on Flickr
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“This begins, like so many things, with a mistake I made.” -T.R. Hummer, The Muse in the Machine: Essays on Poetry and the Anatomy of the Body Politic
Fiction Writing Prompt: Write a story or poem inspired by the first line of the week.
Journaling Prompt: Write about a mistake you made and the consequences you faced.
Art Prompt: Chain of Mistakes
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Write about a mistake you made that set off a humorous or tragic chain of events.
Photo Credit: mr.bmonroe on Flickr
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…scientists wanted to see whether or not people could be scared to death. They looked for a likely belief, and found it in the Chinese and Japanese idea that the number four is unlucky. Obviously, finding a random sampling of subjects and attempting to scare them to death would be unethical, so the scientists reluctantly turned their attention to existing death certificates. The scientists looked and Japanese and Chinese death certificates, and those of white Americans as the control. They found that while white Americans saw no major peak for cardiac deaths, Japanese and Chinese cardiac deaths peaked on the fourth of the month every months.
Why? The stress and worry of approaching an unlucky day actually caused people to have heart attacks. The fourth of every month acted the same way a Sherlock Holmes murderer did, and so the phenomenon was called The Baskerville Effect. Worry actually can kill. So don’t worry, or you will die. -Esther Inglis-Arkell
Fiction Writing Prompt: Write a story or scene about someone who is scared to death.
Journaling Prompt: What are you most afraid of? How do you deal with your fear?
Art Prompt: Scared to Death
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Write about the effect of fear, stress, and worry on your life.
Photo Credit: Silentmind8 on Flickr
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The streets of San Francisco were jammed. A frenzy of cars, trucks, wagons, and every other imaginable form of conveyance crisscrossed the town and battled its steepest hills. Porches, staircase landings, and sidewalks were piled high with boxes and crates delivered on the last possible day before transporting their contents would become illegal. The next morning, the Chronicle reported that people whose beer, liquor, and wine had not arrived by midnight were left to stand in their doorways ‘with haggard faces and glittering eyes.’ Just two weeks earlier, on the last New Year’s Eve before Prohibition, frantic celebrations had convulsed the city’s hotels and private clubs, its neighborhood taverns and wharfside saloons. It was a spasm of desperate joy fueled, said the Chronicle, by great quantities of ‘bottled sunshine’ liberated from ‘cellars, club lockers, bank vaults, safety deposit boxes and other hiding places.’ Now, on January 16, the sunshine was surrendering to darkness. … -Daniel Okrent, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition
Fiction Writing Prompt: Write a story set on the eve of Prohibition.
Journaling Prompt: How do you feel about drinking alcohol?
Art Prompt: Prohibition
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Write about a political decision made during your lifetime that you believe will turn out to backfire. Compare and contrast with Prohibition.
Photo Credit: dewarsrepealday on Flickr
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