Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking

Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking - I am biased against these types of books, so my review may not be helpful. Malcolm Gladwell creates a wonderful story in Blink: Sometimes it's better to make a snap judgment and sometimes it's better to deliberately think before you act. Information may actually slow you down when you have too much of it because most of that info is irrelevant. Instead, you should focus on what's important to make your decision. With the story comes problems. Many times Gladwell doesn't use the correct terminology. For example, this "unconcious thinking" that he sometimes refers to as "instincts" or "instinctive reflexes" are not instincts at all. They're actually called heuristics, little rules of thumb or strategies that we have developed over time to quickly make decisions in the world. Stereotypes are a type of heuristic, and we use them a lot more than we care to admit.While Gladwell did do research, I worry that he took the research out of context and gave it a new meaning. It's very easy to do, which is the problem. If you read this book, I also suggest you spend time reading through the journal articles he mentions in the notes sections. It's important for you to form your own opinion on snap judgment thinking based on multiple sources. You shouldn't trust your thin-slicing snap judgment decisions with this book because Gladwell is not a research expert. He is a journalist. If he was a decision-making expert and writing this book, then maybe you could question him just a little less but still question him.Compared to other decision-making books I've read, this is definitely one of the better ones. However, I think Gladwell misses the confounding variables in decision-making. You use heuristics and emotions to make decisions, and the only emotion he talked about in depth was stress. He's definitely right when he says that too much information can overwhelm you, and so that's why you have to narrow down your options and choose what matters to you. Some days you can sit down and write out pros and cons all day and still never make a decision, but in the end, you have to decide based on what's the most important factors for you and your purpose. When it comes to choosing what you like, snap judgments are the best, but when you're making a huge investment, you shouldn't rely on your snap judgments, but on other people's opinions and deeper analysis of a few sections of important information that focus on future possibilities of your decision. As a side note, I think it may have been useful if he added another section of fighting your thin-slicing judgment in another setting besides police work. In the afterword, he kind of includes a section about selecting musicians for orchestras, but doesn't dwell on it too much. Also as another side note, it was annoying how much he plugged his Tipping Point book in the afterword and interview section. Once would've been enough.