In one of the anecdotes from Blink, Gladwell recounts his dinner with food experts Gail Vance Civille and Judy Heylmun. In reading this book, two things regarding the Autodesk Labs experience come to mind: 'The task of figuring out how to combine the best of conscious deliberation and instinctive judgment is one of the greatest challenges of our time.' - Blink, page 269. Putting oneself in situations where snap decisions can be practiced is beneficial because, with experience, time slows down, and that provides our minds time to process - resulting in better decisions.Įliminating subconscious biases yields better decisions - like using a white screen to blindly evaluate musicians results in more women being selected for traditionally male positions. Harding, a tall and striking man (which got him elected), was one of America's worst Presidents.Īnalytic and intuitive decision making is neither good nor bad - but what is bad is using one of them in an inappropriate circumstance - like a heavy process inappropriately used in war game exercises.Įxperts are so familiar with a subject matter that they have trained their subconscious, and as a result, their experience and passion change the nature of their first impressions. People are subtly influenced by their subconscious but are unaware of this fact - as if the subconscious is behind a locked door.įirst impressions, a result of experience and environment, can be deceiving as Warren G. Thin slicing is our ability to find patterns based on very narrow slices of experience - like determining whether or not to hire job applicants by spending 15 minutes examining where they live.

Our bodies act on conscious and unconscious levels, and it is to our detriment to ignore our gut instinct, our initial impression - like being able to detect that a statue is a fake at first glance. For fun, I thought I would try to share what I learned from each part of the book in just one sentence.

I recently finished Blink by Malcolm Gladwell who is famous for his book The Tipping Point.

Blink the tipping point