My thoughts (rant??) on Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell.
What’s in it?
I recently read Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. This book was gifted to me, as well as to all my colleagues at work. Fear of missing out drove me into reading this book.
The book being popular was probably one of the first red flags. Page number 64 was already the 172839th red flag. If there ever was a book equivalent to the ‘lame movie’, the kind of movie that you would not have any trouble following even if you dozed off for an hour, this book is it!
If you are contemplating reading this book, discouraging you is none of my business. But I will quickly summarize the book below, in case you are wondering whether this book is worth the time you will end up spending.
- We make split-second decisions unconsciously.
- The split-second decisions are a result of our evolutionary history as well as cultural prejudices and stereotypes.
- Too much information available while making any type of decision (split-second or otherwise) could be detrimental.
- The split-second decisions could be good or bad.
- Through practice, we can train ourselves to make sure our split-second decisions are good.
The book is 0.5 pages of the above claims, and 269.5 pages of cherry-picked examples to suit the author’s claims on such decision-making.
This should not have been a book.
This should have just been distributed as a pamphlet!