Blink: The Power Of Thinking Without Thinking

3.5 stars

Malcolm Gladwell is studying first impressions and our unconscious reactions to our encounters with various people and things. I'm not sure I'm summarizing very well, but I think first impressions and unconscious reactions do mostly sum it up.

I thought this was quite interesting. Some anecdotes that stuck out for me include how the New Coke came about and the reason for its downfall, how some people can just read people... I guess a lot of it is that they are trained, whether for a specific purpose (to watch married couples discuss a point of consternation or just trained in facial expression) or for a job. I also thought the info on facial expressions was fascinating! Overall, good book, very interesting.

Most of my successes have come from acting on my instincts. Blink has given me some insights as to why.

Whether it's a museum curator examining a Greek statue, a military general monitoring a battle field or a tennis coach watching a match, the best ones always have some intangible way of seeing more than the rest of us. It is almost as though they have a sixth sense for what comes next.

In Blink, Gladwell takes us through the process of finding out what makes these people as good as they are. By talking to military men, tennis coaches, neurologists and pyschologists, he finds out that each of us operate mentally at 2 levels: one conscious, the other not. It is this unconscious level that seems to separate people at the core.

This unconscious thought tells us when to talk to a stranger and when to keep to ourselves. It allows me to read a room at a business meeting and know when to offer a joke or stay serious.

And I believe it helps me to suss out the best kernels of information during a market research session...it's not what the subjects say verbatim but what they say unconsciously--through a combination of words, tone, body language and facial tics--that really matters. That's when you find out what they really think (or more importantly, how they really feel) about your product or service.

A consistent aggravation I have with Gladwell, however, is that while he resets the bar to a new level, he doesn't typically offer solutions as to how to get to that new ideal: in this case, the ability to harness the unconscious thought process to improve your performance in life.

Perhaps in just making us aware of these processes, he is helping. It has definitely made me re-examine my environment when intuition checks in and tells me something is about to change."

The first Malcolm Gladwell book I read, The Tipping Point, was full of interesting facts and evidence about human behaviour that one could take away and apply to real life situations. Blink is no different.

Once again Gladwell inspires new schools of thought, this time it's about how to make good decisions. Gladwell astounds readers understanding of how the mind works. He delves into how our mind sifts through the endless bombardment of our senses, how our subconscious affects our thinking, and how our intuition is usually right.

I have used some of the lessons learned from this book to improve my decision making. If you want to do the same or is simply curious how the mind works, this is a must-read!

Another great read by Gladwell which forces you to contemplate.
He writes in manner that is easy to understand and keeps you interested.

I read this book as part of my book club reading list. I was pleasantly surprised. Firstly, it is an engaging book filled with stories and antedotes that make the "points" easy to understand and apply. Secondly, and to me, more importantly, this is not an author who gets on his soapbox and promotes his thesis while ignoring any and all counterpoints. He clearly explains when to trust your first instinct and when to question it.

This book made me think and question some of the quick judgements I tend to make. Whether you choose to agree or not with his principles, reading this book will certainly cause you to reconsider.

Interesting and hard to put down. This is not a novel! It's format is more fact based and is meant to educate. The underlying concept and every day activity explained by Gladwell really makes you think twice about what is going on around you.

I bought "Blink" after a friend recommended it to me. I read a couple chapters each day but I never really had the feeling of "I can't put this book down!" I got about halfway through it and gave up. The book is very repetitive and gets boring. Some of the stories are good though, about certain people who have made quick decisions/judgements and were successful. Overall, I wouldn't recommend it.

The writer has accumulated a lot of interesting psychology experiments to explain to us how our subconscious brain makes decisions in split seconds. how ever some times it does feel like the writer is repeating him self where as he goes so deep into explaining the minutest of details for which repetition becomes important. the book is surely worth reading.

Truthfully when I began the book I found it facinating but throughout reading the ramainder I found I had to force myself to read it. The book is half common sense and half speculation. Some of the tests and studies can be proven false and highly speculative. I do agree that the subconscious plays a great deal on our decisions and how we interact with others but if you know yourself it is easy to identify why you feel or act the way you do.

Gladwell himself defined this book as an "intellectual adventure". This is the perfect description of the book. In the nutshell, this is the book about how and why we can make best-informed (!) decisions in two seconds - before any additional information overwhelms us. However, the book is much more than that . Gladwell also tries to answer another part of the question: when can we trust our immediate judgement, and when the traditional "think about it" approach is more effcient. Even though the subject is very serious, the book is real fun to read - I have learned about war games developed by Pentagon, reading facial expressions in two seconds and predicting the future of marriages after listening to couple's two-minutes conversation... As an added bonus, I eventually understood why me, being long-time fan of Coke, always preferred Pepsi in sip-tests... Do you know why? Because in real world nobody sips Cola. If this still doesn't make sense to you, read the book - and you'll find out!

I expected to be intrigued and entertained by Blink, and for about the first four pages, I was. Then I realized how repetitive, disorganized, and shallow it is. I was hoping for a science book; what I got was an extended magazine article. Who cares if a researcher has a moustache or not? If I'm planning to date him, maybe, but not if I want to know the conclusions of his research.

This book is all about your subconscious and how we make snap decisions. To be honest, I found some of the stuff to contradict other parts in the book. That could be because I didn't quite understand what Gladwell was setting out to prove until the very end of the book. Or maybe I knew at the beginning, then forgot about it until the end. Though one point he did drive home well with me was the fact that we can take actions to prevent us from making snap decisions that are bad.
There were many little points in this book that were fascinating. I would tell people at work or my family about points in the book just randomly because they were so intriguing. I thought the bit about professor ratings was very interesting. Being able to judge a professor in 2 minutes with no sound similar to someone that takes an entire course with them is quite unbelievable.
I find that with books like this, it is really important for the author to get his tone correct with the reader. You don't want to read something that is over you head, but you also don't want the author to take a condescending tone. The tone of this book was perfect. It was like someone talking to you that is excited about their findings in research and want to share all the interesting bits with you.
It's too bad that we can't unlock our subconscious to help us out more. But if anything, this book should tell you to trust your gut (or should that be subconscious?) more than you normally would.

Wow! Finally I get to read a book that shows the other side of this coin. M. Gladwell makes a superb work at giving a different idea of how we make judgements and therefore, how we can manage under certain circumstances those belly messages (according to his book, perhaps, only perhaps, we should give more credit to them than we do...). Each reader can make his / her own interpretation of the cases presented and then, understand and apply to every particular experience. Every case presented in this book is (to say the least) fascinating... one of those books you can't stop reading once you opened it!

It isn't anything that we don't already know. If you want to read about stats and controlled experiments than this is a book for you. However, it falls short on any practical ways to apply his technique. It is nothing more than a story of one man's life and the experiments he conducted or witnessed, and a dull story at that. I have bought many books and this is the first one I have ever returned.

Reading this book was a very mind opening experience. A must read for anyone wanting to help improve the world that we live in.

This author is a very interesting person. He put on a different perspective, and achieved something that we all knew, just didn't look at it in the same way. He began dissecting his ideas, and using stories, clever wording, and his overall personality, do distinguish himself as not just-another-author, but a person with a intellectual presence.

The book itself is excellent. It's a good read, which won't take too long to read, and if you like different perspectives of the world, this is the book for you. It examines the Pepsi Challenge, and shows how quick decision making, is better than slow, thoughtful examination. Sounds crazy, but it just works.

My first book for this author and I must say I was impressed. Recommended this book to many friends and even purchased the Tipping Point. I did not find the Tipping Point as good as this book.

Noting that is book is fully of social observations more many anything - it was still a good read.

Loved this book. Quick read as the author has a fluid and direct writing style. Just by scanning the first page you can tell if you are going to like this book or not in the blink of an eye.

Interesting analysis and observations on the strange workings of the human subconscience. I wouldn't quite call it reolutionary. True to its thene you really pick up the point of the whole book in the first few pages.

As someone who likes to take her time making decisions, I first thought this book was laughable as it seemed to suggest that taking any significant length of time to make a decision was unnecessary given our instincts. In the end, I found the book highlighted certain indicators that already exist when looking for an answer, and though it doesn't provide scientifically proven examples for every situation, it served as a reminder for me that you need to look at all the little things and often the answer becomes that much clearer. A refreshing, interesting read.