So I just finished blink, Malcolm Gladwell’s book about the power of thinking without thinking. It is about how we make snap judgments and how those influence our behavior. This is my 2nd Gladwell book. I read The Tipping Point a couple of years ago when I was taking some time between college and looking for a job. I had actually had the book for a few years before I finally got around to reading it but I highly recommend it to anyone who likes to try and gain a new understanding about the world around them.
So what blink really boils down to is our own judgment. How can we know when to trust our gut and when do we need to gather more information. What I found most interesting was that Gladwell actually argues that more often than not we try and use too much information to make our decisions. He uses a series of stories that if not for the common theme of snap second decisions are otherwise unrelated.
The book opens with a story about a historical statue that supposedly dated back to 6,000 BC. The museum in question spent years trying to verify its authenticity, brought in all kinds of experts to run numbers and statistics to prove it was real. Then they brought in 2 statue experts and based on seeing the statue for a split second they knew it was a fake.
If I was to see this statue I probably wouldn’t know any better then all of the other experts’ whose numbers were wrong. The main issue is that these types of decisions are made by people with a very extensive knowledge of the subject matter they are being asked about. For example one man who spent years working with couples could tell based on a 5 minute conversation if that couple will stay together with 90% accuracy.
One of the most interesting chapters was about being able to read emotions on people’s faces. Not just being able to understand how someone feels without them ever speaking, but that everyone’s real emotions are worn on their face, if only for a split second, weather or not they know it. As I have a left a few open items on my list I might use one of them to learn how to read faces.
Being able to train ourselves to trust our instincts knowing that more times then not they will be correct is a big leap. There are many different examples of snap judgments, right and wrong, illustrating how our mind can know something before we are even cognitively aware of it in this book. As this isn’t a topic I have ever thought about before I hope I am able to continue to develop my judgment abilities as they could be very valuable over the course of my life and career.
I wasn’t sure how to record the books that I read in this blog so I decided to go with this kind of format, as I just finished this book, I immediately came in and got some thoughts down. In the interest of full disclosure I started to write this blog before I read the afterword. In retrospect that was a mistake as I changed quite a bit of this blog after finishing the book. I could probably have used more of the examples from the book but I didn’t want to ruin it for anyone who is interested in it.
In the end I would highly recommend either of the Gladwell books talked about here. At some point I will get to Outliers then I can let you about that as well.
PS. Once I gather the pic’s I need to blog about Phish & Michael Domsky, crossing things off left and right
So what blink really boils down to is our own judgment. How can we know when to trust our gut and when do we need to gather more information. What I found most interesting was that Gladwell actually argues that more often than not we try and use too much information to make our decisions. He uses a series of stories that if not for the common theme of snap second decisions are otherwise unrelated.
The book opens with a story about a historical statue that supposedly dated back to 6,000 BC. The museum in question spent years trying to verify its authenticity, brought in all kinds of experts to run numbers and statistics to prove it was real. Then they brought in 2 statue experts and based on seeing the statue for a split second they knew it was a fake.
If I was to see this statue I probably wouldn’t know any better then all of the other experts’ whose numbers were wrong. The main issue is that these types of decisions are made by people with a very extensive knowledge of the subject matter they are being asked about. For example one man who spent years working with couples could tell based on a 5 minute conversation if that couple will stay together with 90% accuracy.
One of the most interesting chapters was about being able to read emotions on people’s faces. Not just being able to understand how someone feels without them ever speaking, but that everyone’s real emotions are worn on their face, if only for a split second, weather or not they know it. As I have a left a few open items on my list I might use one of them to learn how to read faces.
Being able to train ourselves to trust our instincts knowing that more times then not they will be correct is a big leap. There are many different examples of snap judgments, right and wrong, illustrating how our mind can know something before we are even cognitively aware of it in this book. As this isn’t a topic I have ever thought about before I hope I am able to continue to develop my judgment abilities as they could be very valuable over the course of my life and career.
I wasn’t sure how to record the books that I read in this blog so I decided to go with this kind of format, as I just finished this book, I immediately came in and got some thoughts down. In the interest of full disclosure I started to write this blog before I read the afterword. In retrospect that was a mistake as I changed quite a bit of this blog after finishing the book. I could probably have used more of the examples from the book but I didn’t want to ruin it for anyone who is interested in it.
In the end I would highly recommend either of the Gladwell books talked about here. At some point I will get to Outliers then I can let you about that as well.
PS. Once I gather the pic’s I need to blog about Phish & Michael Domsky, crossing things off left and right
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