Blink - Malcolm Gladwell

The second of Gladwell's books, and the second one I've read as I work my way back through them in reverse order.

ISBN: 978-0316010665

format: Paperback

pages: 320

publisher: Little, Brown and Company
pub. date: 2006-12-04

started reading: 2009-01-10

finished reading: 2009-01-15

Blink was, to me, in many ways a more enjoyable read than Outliers.

I still maintain my skeptisim for the book and it's presentation of observations as scientific fact. And yes, I'm aware of the scientific principle and how what I just said is the worst sort of contradiction (experimentation and observation being key to the scientific process). However, once again, the book presents a lopsided view in an attempt to prove its thesis.

That said, the principles in this book were much easier for me to buy into in some areas. Especially in the small micro-mannerisms and ways that we pick up on things without being aware of it.

One of the things I like best about Gladwell's books is that he manages to find connections between disparate fields of study.

The idea of Blink is that we make snap judgements based on a lot of factors that we may not be aware of consciously, but that do exist. The more we are aware of them, and of the biases we hold, the more we can actually train ourselves to understand and respect our own 'gut' feeling.

As someone who relys on his gut to make a lot of decisions in life this book was a great fun look at how my own internal processes might work and I did feel that I took something away from it. Additionally, Gladwell does often quote his sources so that interested readers (like me) can go and look up the studies that he quote... and find other discussions around them, both to support them and to counter them.

One of the best take aways for me though personally was the idea of 'less is more' when making decisions. How we are overwhelmed with information in this day in age and sometimes all that additionally analysis and data gets in the way of the right solution. This is something I can personally relate to in my ability to overthink problems in my life at times, and in how I am most effective when I trust my judgement to zero in on the key two or three factors and make decisions based on that.

Gladwell's own joy in discovering the hidden connections and commonalities between fields is evident in the writing and is ultimately what leads to the success of this book however.