Blink

 

By Malcom Gladwell

 

And excellent book on thinking without thinking…too much.  In another word; intuition thinking with your gut, hence the phrase “what does you gut say.”  Another word that comes out in the book: instinct.  Taking a thin slice of the decision to make, and making it.  A very high percentage, it’s the right decision.  In summary, don’t over think.

In the beginning of the book, professors run a test on married young couples and with observation of a 10 minute conversation between the couple, they can predict which marriages will end up in divorce.  Later in the book, the reader learns that “thin slicing” becomes more accurate with age.  This comes with a positive spin on the merit of prejudice.  With age one becomes more proficient in ‘gut’ decisions.

Twice in the book it refers the reader to military situations.  Early on with a Middle East war game and then in the end with a Civil War battle, whereby the losers of the battles were extremally well planned and the winners were commanded by ‘cowboy’ commanders  who made decisions from the gut.  Those gut decisions were instinctive rather than rational.  And the point stressed is the instinctive decision made by the ‘cowboy’ commanders were made without a complete picture of the battlefield.

The message is trust your gut, but don’t stop thinking

 

Notes:

Coming