Why Is This a Question?: Everything About the Origins and Oddities of Language You Never Thought to Ask

Product Information

The third rung of the ladder of causation is labelled 'Counterfactuals' and involves answering questions which ask what might have been, had circumstances been different. Such reasoning invokes causality to a greater degree than the previous level. An example counterfactual question given in the book is 'Would Kennedy be alive if Oswald had not killed him?' Berger's surprising findings reveal that even though children start out asking hundreds of questions a day, questioning "falls off a cliff" as kids enter school. In an education and business culture devised to reward rote answers over challenging inquiry, questioning isn't encouraged—and, in fact, is sometimes barely tolerated.

Idea: We’ll go over how to explore your idea and make sure you’ve nailed down your central conflict and point.

Responding to simple 'why questions' often begin with 'because" followed by the reason. On the other hand, answers to more abstract 'why questions' may call for more complex thinking. Why is asking these questions, good? In an amazing TED Talk by Ken Robinson (watched 31 million times), he speaks about how schools kill creativity. Schools rate kids on set criteria (sometimes measuring a fish on it’s ability to climb a tree) and frankly prepare them for a world that is long gone. When kids go to school the amount of questions they ask drops radically. Kids are taught to memorize lists, not think critically. The rest of our counting system sits in neatly arithmetical sets of ten, so why do these two rule-breakers seem so at odds with the numbers that follow them?

Snowflake method: With this method, you start by writing a one-sentence summary of your idea. Then, expand it into a paragraph, and then expand it further, continuing to build on your idea and adding elements (plot, setting, characters, etc.) as it grows. (If you’re interested, you can learn more about the snowflake method here).ADAM GRANT, New York Times bestselling author of Give and Take, in “13 Must-Read Business Books in 2014”