51.6 - Blink (Malcolm Gladwell)
Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink has been quite popular for a while now. I finally got around to reading it recently. Although I have a built-in predisposition to not like things that are popular, I really liked this book.
Blink talks about a phenomenon called "thin slicing" which refers to the decisions that we make without a lot of deliberation. I'm familiar with this, having read a couple of books by Gary Klein. Klein does research in this area and is referred to in Gladwell's book. Blink fleshes this idea out more broadly with many compelling stories that show thin slicing in action.
The stories Gladwell recounts show the power of thin slicing but some also show the limitations. One thing Gladwell also points out is how thin slicing can be made less effective by over analysis. This is something I thought was important to be aware of.
I was talking about blink with a colleague of mine this week and one point he made is that this book doesn't tell you how to get better at thin slicing (perhaps another aspect of over-analysis weakening it?). I didn't really pick up an explicit mention in the book of how to do this but I did notice some similarities among the stories in the book. In all cases, it seems that spending time in the domain gave people thin slicing power. For example, in dissecting the Pepsi challenge, Gladwell notes that when average people are given 3 cola samples they aren't able to identify which are Coke and which are Pepsi. When professional taste testers do the same exercise, they nail it every time.
What I gained from reading this book is an awareness of the power of thin slicing, an appreciation of the importance of context in applying it, and a confirmation of my idea that domain expertise is one aspect of excellence in a particular area.
11:22:26 AM 
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