About the book

I recently read Malcom Gladwell’s Tipping Point. Blink was a random chance. The choice was easy to make based on the previous experience. I was betting that the book would be worth having as a paper book. So I bought it as in paper format again.  

What was the book like?

Malcom Gladwell is de-mystifying important psychological process. The topic was already familiar to me as a concept and so it was easy to reflect his ideas.

This book is about the “first impression”. They call it also as adaptive unconscious. It is the part of our thinking that blinks. Blink is the crucial two seconds that will make or brake things in your mind. But it’s not only about the two seconds. The book is about how to use blink. Secondly he wants to help readers to understand the benefits and the disadvantages of blinking. He also took a challenge to describe how you can train your blinking.

In a way Blink is not novel book. I could find from the book similar ideas that I have from the previous books that I have read. For example in Daniel Kahneman’s “Thinking, fast and slow” or Lauri Järvilehto’s Mestariajattelija book about becoming a master in thinking. But the evidence behind his ideas are less than you would find from other books.

What are the key learnings of the book? 

Obvious key learning is that what are our blinks? Our blinks are combination of thin slicing, locked door and priming. Thin slicing is our ability to find unconsiously find patterns on very narrow slices of experience. Locked door is the unconsious where we can’t see. Priming is something that our environment creates into us.

Second learning would be the Warren Harding error. We need to accept our ignorance. We are too quick to come up with explanation for things that we don’t have explanation. The Warren Harding error is about the worst president that USA has had so far. What did happen? Gladwell’s explanation is that voters didn’t dig under the surface. Warren Harding was handsome person. For voters he looked like a president. Gladwell calls Harding as the dark side of rapid cognition.

Similarities can be found from his analysis of American CEO’s. Certain factors can lead into decisions which are superficial. One is that height correlates to the possibility to for leadership positions. He has statistical data that shows that more people who are long people are nominated to leadership positions compared to people who are short. Another Warren Harding error?

How should we change according to the book?

Gladwell has many suggestions how to become aware of your blinks, how to make best out of those and how to educate.

·     Testing.

o  You can test your blinking at www.implicit.harvard.edu

·     Fight against the Warren Harding error.

o  It starts by acknowledging the effect of our environment and experience into our blinking. One can guide blinking with ones values. If racial equality should develop and you personally recognize that you need to shape your attitudes. A simple way to start the fight is for example to expose to minorities.

·     Re-educate your instincts and “find a underlying signature of a complex phenomenon”.

o  For example doctors who treated people who are having heart attack did not have unified way to recognize potential patients coming into to ER. After intensive research doctors were able to diminish factors leading to heart attacks into three risk factors. With the help of these three risk factors doctors were able to started to train their instincts on making proper analysis on people suffering from heart attack.  

·     Less is more.

o  Make better decisions with less information. The key to this advice is in editing. Journalists are good on making decisions, because their profession trains them to make decisions with less information. For example in case of the Japanese attack the journalist were making better analysis about the intentions of Japanese armed forces than the army. Journalist knew less. Seeing forest from the trees.

·     Start reading people.

o  Educate yourself to read peoples emotions. Emotion is automatically expressed via muscles of the face. Face has a mind of it’s own. Microexpressions. Reading people from their faces and make decisions based on that.

·     Start editing.

o  By editing the information and making decisions based on the edit 80 % of information available should lead into 100% decision.  from the edit .

What should I personally do? 

Blink as a book is like a Danish smorgasbord. There is plenty of advice and great many of his advise are fairly action oriented. I would suggest to myself the testing www.implicit.harvard.edu.

Summary

Gladwell promised in the beginning of the book that he will tell us that how to use blink. He also promised to tell when to trust and when not to trust blink. And how to educate your blinking. Besides that he used vivid examples of real life cases to highlight blink. Examples such as Warren Harding, New Coke, Pearl Harbor and many more. He did deliver all the promises. Still the advise that he gives stay at the high-level. Lauri Järvilehto made more compact roadmap for anyone who wants to develop their behaviour.

I enjoyed reading mr. Gladwell’s book. He is an excellent writer. And the book was almost entertaining. But Blink does not cross the chasm like Tipping Point did.  

The book in six words: Use this book as an introduction to rapid cognition.