Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking

I read Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink several years ago and at the time I thought it was brilliant. I have since come to realise that his books barely scratch the surface of the complex topics but the style in which they are written is so easily digestible that it is almost effortless to read.

It focuses on the the idea of thinking without thinking, or split second decisions.

“An Art expert sees a ten-million-dollar sculpture and instantly spots it’s a fake.”

“A fire-fighter suddenly senses he has to get out of a blazing building.”

Blink: The power of Thinking without Thinking. - Malcolm Gladwell.

As I said at the start of this post, in most of Gladwell’s books he only manages to scrape the surface of these ideas, but he paints a very colourful picture and makes it easily readable for anyone, hence the glorifying testimonials on the back cover, which I feel maybe gives it more credit than it’s due.

The book introduces us to a number of different scenarios and takes us through each of them step by step, shedding light on particular details in an effort to explain why events unfolded the way they did, or how a person came to the decision they settled on.

The book focuses on scenarios where this rapid cognition has both worked and failed, but I felt that his explanations do help give the reader a wider understanding, or perspective at least, on the situations surrounding their own daily lives. I found this to be very insightful and it helped start my journey into the concepts of objectivity and perception.

The reason I’m recommending this book is because from reading it myself, it served as a springboard into these topics, which I began looking into in more detail. I started reading similar online articles and finding more books, of which The Opposable Mind and The Design of Business have been my personal favourites, since they’re written in a similar style but go into much more detail.

final Words

Malcolm Gladwell has a talent for taking complex issues and explaining them in a way that is enjoyable to read. I’ve read all of his books since and they follow the same style and are relatively easy to read through quickly.

If you’ve read the book then I’d love to hear your thoughts, or if you have any similar recommendations, please leave a comment below.

If you still want to find out more about this book or purchase your own copy, you can head on over to Amazon.

Phil.