Product Description

Intuition is not some magical property that arises unbidden from the depths of our mind. It is a product of long hours and intelligent design, of meaningful work environments and particular rules and principles. This book shows us how we can hone our instinctive ability to know in an instant, helping us to bring out the best in our thinking and become better decision-makers in our homes, offices and in everyday life. Just as he did with his revolutionary theory of the tipping point, Gladwell reveals how the power of ‘blink’ could fundamentally transform our relationships, the way we consume, create and communicate, how we run our businesses and even our societies.You’ll never think about thinking in the same way again.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #391 in Books
• Published on: 2006-02-23
• Released on: 2006-02-23
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Amazon.co.uk
: For Blink, Malcolm Gladwell, author of the bestselling The Tipping Point explores the extraordinarily perceptive and deceptive power of the sub-conscious mind. Gladwell’s major claim is that decisions made very quickly can be every bit as good as a decision made cautiously and deliberately. What we are actually doing is what Gladwell calls ‘thin-slicing’. When we leap to a decision or have a hunch our unconscious is sifting through the situation in front of us looking for a pattern, throwing out the irrelevant information and zeroing in on what really matters. Our unconscious mind is so good at this that it often delivers a better answer than more deliberate and protracted ways of thinking. Much of this is utterly mysterious but some of the most astonishing and useful examples of thin-slicing can be learned.

Gladwell hopes to convince us that our snap judgements and first impressions can be educated and controlled so instead of merely praising the mysterious process of instinct and intuition he is interested in those moments when our instincts betray us, the situations where our powers of rapid cognition can go awry, where we fail to read the signs. Most disturbing of all is the degree to which culturally determined preconceptions and prejudices control us. Without reducing matters to racism and sexism Gladwell shows us that there are facts about people’s appearance—their size or shape or color or sex—that can trigger a very similar set of powerful associations which explains why utter mediocrities (such as U.S. President Warren Harding) can sometimes end up in positions of enormous responsibility; or why tall people earn substantially more than their shorter colleagues; or why car salesmen unconsciously charge prices according to race and gender.

Gladwell’s conversational prose style is concise, informative, accessible and entertaining. The stories, scientific findings and psychological tests are consistently surprising whether he is dealing with speed-dating, record promotions, police shoot-outs, the human face, or the reasons doctors get sued. --Larry Brown END

About the Author
Author, journalist, and cultural commentator Malcolm Gladwell was born in 1963. He has worked for the Washinton Post and the New Yorker. His bestseller, The Tipping Point captured the world’s attention with its theory that a curiously small change can have unforeseen effects, and the phrase has become part of our language, used by writers, politicians and business people everywhere to describe cultural trends and strange phenomena.

Customer Reviews

Enjoyable read
Gladwell's prose is effortlessly readable and the reader is constantly entertained by his anecdotes. I don't think he is a great thinker, but he presents his concepts very clearly and you immediately see how they are reflected in your own life. What the book lacks is a structured argument -by the end you feel as if it hasn't really gone anywhere. Nevertheless it's a very enjoyable read. Along similar lines, I would recommend Steve Taylor's excellent Making Time Making Time: Why Time Seems to Pass at Different Speeds and How to Control It, which 'unpacks' why we perceive time passing at different speeds in different situations and shows how we can become free of it.

Blink! Great reading but not much else...
Firstly this book's a bit pricey for a 250-page paperback. Secondly, you will probably read it in the time it takes to blink. And thirdly, despite the misleading comment on the cover, it does not tell you how to unlock the mysterious subconscious world from where the wonderfully meaty reading comes.

But after all, that is what the book is. A series of compelling anecdotes and socio-psychological experiments revealing how much of our perception is done behind the scenes of our subconscious, and that comprehensively prove that we are not as liberal and easy-going that we think we are.

It hasn't revolutionised my thinking quite yet, but it has helped me to trust the occasional gut-feeling and research further into the clues on people's faces. Pretty useful book, but not an end in itself.

Flexing my intuition muscle!
"Blink" inspires me to listen to my intuition as I pay attention to my initial impulses and not over-think or second-guess myself. Malcolm Gladwell speaks of "thin slicing" - that first, unexamined "intuitive hit" that we experience before we start to analyze situations. Trusting my intuition can be particularly challenging when I have personal agendas that conflict with intuitive information I receive. I find that my intuitive skill set is easy to access when I am present with any given moment and not lost in my thought process, analyzing every little thing.

Another book that has strengthened my intuitive skill-set is Ariel & Shya Kane's Working on Yourself Doesn't Work: The 3 Simple Ideas That Will Instantaneously Transform Your Life. It is a brilliant book that has taught me that choices are always appropriate when I don't reach for conclusions based on my past experiences. With their easy & practical principles, I have found a deep sense of ease in my life as I learn to trust my intuition. Within the realm of wellbeing - intuition blooms!