Blink

I really enjoyed the Tipping Point. That’s the main reason I just went ahead and picked up Blink yesterday.

I read this interesting exchange between two authors here, “Blink and The Wisdom of Crowds: How to improve the decision-making environment.”, first. so I might get the other book. Apart from more theological, pastoral, and spirituality related stuff. I enjoy books on leadership, learning and thinking – in short stuff about our humanity!

So far the Intro is pretty captivating, such as the following:

“We believe that we are always better off gathering as much information as possible and spending as much time as possible in deliberation. We really only trust conscious decision making. But there are moments, particularly in times of stress, when haste does not make waste, when our snap judgements and first impressions can offer a much better means of making sense of the world.”(p.14)

My mind was thrown into multiple flashbacks after reading this and just having a fresh look and some of the decisions I made – from buying books to major transitional decisions. I landed up falling asleep and had a nap. But, it was an insightful exercise!

“When our powers of rapid cognition go awry, they go awry for a very specific and consistent set of reasons, and those reasons can be identified and understood.” (p.15)

I couldn’t help but think of one case where I had an “intuitive” feel that something was amiss. But then rationally, I justified in making a decision or at least enter into so called “analysis” that at the end was wrong. Hmm…. can we really indentify and understand the set of reasons that caused this mistake? will read on and see.

“When it comes to the task of understanding ourselves and our world, I think we pay too much attention to those grand themes and too little to the participation of those fleeting moments. But what would happen if we took our instincts more seriously? What if we stopped scaning the horizon with our binoculars and began instead examining our own decision making and behaviour through the most powerful of mircroscopes? I think that would change the way was are fought, the kinds of products we see on the shelves, the kinds of movies that get made, the way police officers are trained, the way couples are counseled, the way job interviews are conducted, and on and on. And if we were able to combine all of those little changes, we would end up with a different and better world.”(p.16-17)

I think it’s a parallel process – i.e. the grand thems and the fleeting moments. But, anything that gives value to little changes, the so called mundane, or the micro aspects of our lives helps me to keep things personal and not jump off into impersonal sounding ramblings on big picture concepts and ideas and thus lose the important concrete stuff right before my eyes.

So, for now .. at least. This book brings some balance. At least another perspective and in good Malcolm Gladwell style some interesting new language to use to process ideas. It does open up possibilities – I like possibilities!