Story Week Monday: How did Obama do?

Some of you have been asking about Story Week. Well, our team of researchers have been combing the data and here are some initial results. You may remember Monday's story - as told by a little-known former junior senator from Illinois.

We got about 66 responses for to our questions for this story. Here are some early results. Here is a Wordle cloud made from the responses people gave to the question: "What was memorable about the story?" - note "little", "old" and "lady".

And here is the Wordle cloud of keywords that people added to the story (more words like "motivation" and "inspiration").

And here are the numerical results for each of the criteria.

Most people found it memorable and most seemed to like it - although a significant minority of people thought that it sounded manufactured or slow. How did Obama compare with the others? Well, you'll have to wait and see.

One noticeable difference in responses could be seen in the reactions of people by their country of origin.

Americans found it highly memorable - less so for the Brits and the Aussies. Some possible explanations (and bear in mind that this is a small sample size so it may just be chance):

• Americans are more familiar with Obama;
• Americans are more emotionally invested in Obama (and I suspect a bias towards liberals among Anecdote/Sparknow/EngineerswithoutFears blog readers);
• Obama's mode of storytelling is more appealing to Americans.
• Any other suggestions/speculations?

More to come soon.

mixed states

Now let me start off this post by saying I like Dave Armano's writing and have a lot of respect for his visual thinking talents but I want to take issue with one of his recent diagrams.

I don't know much about Dave's background or experiences so I'm purely responding to this image. To me, it embodies a certain romanticisation of mental illness. Mania + Depression = Creativity?

Well, maybe. But sometimes mania + depression = higher suicide risk. A mixed state (or dysphoric mania) is a very dangerous state to be in. If you're depressed then you may not want to live but frankly suicide is too active an option. Dysphoric mania unfortunately gives you the energy just at the time that it can most do you harm.

Do these results imply that creativity and psychopathology are intimately connected? Are genius and madness tantamount to the same thing? The answer to the first question is affirmative, but the response to the second is negative. DK Simonton

There is evidence of a link between mental illness and creativity but there are some issues here:

• In linking creativity to mental illness, we mystify the creative, we make it alien to ourselves. Creativity is for those wacky, crazy people - not for us, no siree. We're normal.
• It seems as though we cannot handle mental illness unless we demonise or romanticise it. Monsters or heroes please.
• Many people with mental illness are no more geniuses than the rest of us. What happens to them? Where do they fit in?
  

uppers

Although "severely elevated mood" sounds somewhat desirable and enjoyable, the experience of mania is often quite unpleasant and sometimes disturbing,

People know that depression is bad. "Mania" on the other hand is often viewed as being a bit "cool". And it is "cool" - in the same way that going on a 3-week crystal meth binge is "cool".

Yes you have lots of energy. And yes you get lots of ideas. However many of these ideas are twaddle but you struggle to tell the difference between twaddle & genius (see megalomania below) The insomnia can be a bit of problem tho. As can the poor impulse control. It can often make you a little aggressive - YES, AGGRESSIVE - YOU MUTHAF****S!!!

Arrogance is also a problem - you basically feel like you're God, all-powerful, all-controlling. Of course, you aren't - but it feels that way. DON'T INTERRUPT ME!!!

If it sounds like being on drugs then it is - except these drug are homebrewed by your nervous system. My episodes are hypomanic - I don't tend to get the full-blown delusions or psychoses. I'm just really, really annoying.

downer

So depression is very hard to write about in a way that others want to read.

"Oooh, I feel like spending the whole week in bed. In fact scratch that whole 'life' thing, I'd really like that to end in the near future but I don't have the energy to do anything about it right now. Hmmm, maybe I'll cry for a bit."

It's hardly up there fun-wise is it? And yet it's also distressingly common. In any one month, about 4% of Australians (that's about 800,000 people) will suffer from a depressive episode. And I'm guessing that thise figures are similar across the developed world.

At its worst, depression is like being hollowed out with a spoon. All the ice cream in the tub of self is gone, there's just the packaging left. And the packaging is cardboard - thin, soggy & weak. It is like being already dead - which is presumably why depression leaves people feeling suicidal. Ending your existence does not seem like such a big leap, such an unthinkable act. It just feels like finishing the job. The pain is like phantom limb pain, except that this is phantom self pain. "You" have been amputated - what do you do next in the grieving process?

For some people, this is all they have. For many of us, these feelings come and go. Sometimes we just get profound lethargy. We've been left stuck in neutral. Cut adrift. No drive. Frustrating yes, but not fatal.

It's not cancer but it can kill. All of us hit a blue note.

Take a moment to hear that echo in others.

way down in a hole

Thoughts triggered by watching The Wire: When I started in the world of work, I regularly assumed that everyone above me was competent and that decisions were made with the purpose of the organisation in mind. Admittedly I had grown up listening to my parents' complaints about incompetent colleagues & superiors but they were also keen for me to join a large, powerful organisation that offered a decent salary. There seemed no disconnect between these two positions.

Large organisations tend to be dysfunctional. It's not that they don't do what they're supposed to (and in The Wire that means pushing drugs or catching criminals), it's that they seem to achieve these goals in spite of of themselves. It's really all about individuals getting and retaining material wealth and power over others. We may tell ourselves that the "invisible hand" of the free market makes everything work fine or that some technocratic official knows best but these institutions seem to decrease in effectiveness as the money and effort that we pump into them increases. This can be corporations, government entities, not-for-profits, even entire industries (hello banking sector!).

Institutions both enable and constrain. In engaging with them as individuals we make a trade, I'm not sure how often that trade is worth making. Human institutions will always be flawed but is there a way out of "the game"?

Story Week: Friday

So its Friday and here we are at the end of Story Week. Many thanks to all of you who contributed and here is our final story - something serious...

grief

So I was talking to a tech-head who went green. She was into all this social software stuff - esp. virtual worlds / Second Life. And now she's into sustainability and permaculture. And she's had to give up heavy internet use as part of that - because all these massive server farms probably aren't sustainable. And giving that all that stuff has caused her some grief. I mean literal grief - a sense of profound loss.

This is important because all of us are going to have to go through at some stage in the future. We are going to have to give up a lot and most of us in the developed world really aren't prepared for that.

Think of this recession as a warm up, a test run for the future. How are you going to handle it? What are you going to do?

Story Week: Thursday

Our fourth story for Story Week is from the UK - please tell us what you think.

No red signal when minister plays with train set by Adam Sherwin (From Times UK Online)

All aboard the Adonis Express. Frustrated commuters will get direct access to the Transport Minister next week when Lord Adonis embarks upon a railway voyage to criss-cross Britain in six days.

The Minister will board the Paddington to Truro sleeper service on Easter Monday, just one man, his laptop and a £375 standard class Rail Rover ticket. On Saturday he will arrive in York after a 1,500-mile Michael Palin-style trip, involving 45 trains and extensive knowledge of the timetable. He will speed (hopefully) through Cornwall, East Anglia, the West Midlands and up to Aberdeen, before arriving in North Yorkshire to a hero’s welcome. Any signs of cabin fever will be logged on a Times Online blog.

A spokesman said: “Andrew is travelling solo and is happy for commuters to chat to him.”

Lord Adonis tells us: “My plan is to get to railway lines I have rarely or never used. Nothing beats first-hand experience when you are responsible for a major public service.”

Network Rail is advised to clear the line of engineering works.

A prize for the best picture of Lord Adonis captured on the rattlers.

Story Week: Wednesday

Many thanks to everyone who has contributed to Story Week so far. Continuing with our theme of "leadership", today we are featuring a story from Dr Fiona Wood, who was recognised as "Australian of the Year" for her work after the Bali Bombings. And we'd still like to hear your ideas for Friday's story.

When I saw the burns patients and I saw that we needed something radical to actually cover these large areas, that had to be more... They had to be smarter than traditional split-thickness skin grafting. We had to be able to do this better. And that was, I guess, the gauntlet that I threw down to myself. On the Sunday morning after the Bali bombing I got a call from the registrar, who is a very close friend of my senior registrar, who actually on Saturday had left for his holiday to Bali. Our first patients arrived in the early hours of the morning and they were the most severe patients, the most severely injured. And my overwhelming memory of that is the relief on their faces as they arrived at Royal Perth and spoke to us just before they were incubated for ventilation and for the treatment to commence, that relief on their faces. We were full at the time, so we started putting our disaster plan into action. And as the Sunday developed it became apparent that there was going to be a significant need, not just for the Perth Burns Unit but for the Australian Burns community as a whole. When the Bali bombing situation arose we did in fact deal with 15% of our annual workload in a day, but it's the sort of situation that we've been training for a long period of time and when you're involved in it and actually active in doing things it's a very motivating situation because you are able to influence those lives, not always to a positive outcome but we did our best.

Source: http://www.abc.net.au/talkingheads/txt/s1711934.htm

Story Week: Tuesday

Day 2 of Story Week is here. Yesterday we had a video with a big Story. Today we have a snippet, a small story of a day-to-day interaction in a workplace. Our theme for the week is leadership, so look at the story in this light. Think how you would feel in the same circumstances. And of course, please pass this on to your networks and encourage them to join the fun. The more, the merrier. N.B. We have yet to finalise a story for Friday - is there a video of a story on the theme of leadership (preferably involving a woman) that you'd like to suggest?

... we organised a workshop, it was really high pressure and done at very short notice. It ended up being a success, but the CEO was there, and I thought it was one of those things where the team had all sort of pulled together, and it could of fallen over, but it didn't. At the end of the workshop, it had all gone well, there was a perfect window there for the CEO to come up to the team and say "Good job". I don't know the CEO at all, but it was a perfect opportunity for him to go and get some easy PR, or even at least say good stuff, and pass it on. But he just left. I mean, he may have had a thousand other things to do, but it was one of those things

Story Week: Monday

Blurb: The Story Week is here! Over the next 5 days, we'll be offering you 5 stories - some momentous, some more low-key - and we're inviting you to tell us what you think of them. After you have viewed, read or heard the story,we'd like you to fill out the form below and maybe tell us a story of your own. We will be publishing (under a creative commons license) the aggregate results from this little experiment and also some of the stories that you tell us. So without further ado...