Blink

I've been reading this book, "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell and although the cases he's presented were all interesting, it is not as impressive as his first book, "The Tipping Point."

It has been a month and I haven't finished this book, which is hundreds of pages short than my usual reading fare --- uh, okay, twenty years ago. But still, it is not as engrossing as the other books I've devoured.

It actually left me confused as to what he was saying. First saying that first impressions, or else, first feelings count. And that sometimes when we analyze things, we negate our preliminary thought about a thing or person, so we make mistakes even though we've thought about our decisions or choices two, three, many times over.

Okay fine. That's good. I can see his point. I mean, during written multiple choice tests, when faced with a problem that I don't know the problem, most often, the right answers were those I've answered without necessarily thinking about it so much. It's when I try to analyze it then it all gets muddled up and I pick the wrong answer anyway.

But then Gladwell says, and this is the confusing part, that we are forever thin-slicing our impressions --- that we make mega-fast analyses based on our experiences everytime. But that doesn't make our choices infallible. So then, what?!!

For me, I want to hone my bullshit radar. And i do that by honing my impressions of situations and people the first time I encounter them. I thought that reading this book will help me with that, or at least explain these thought processes. I am disappointed because it seems that I am not the good judge of character or personality that I fancy me to be.

I say, this book of Gladwell's is an entertaining study in overanalysis. Now, saying that, I may be wrong --- or not.