To Think or To Blink - Book Review

Just finished reading Malcolm Gladwell's Blink. I have never been much of a reader of non-fiction and usually make a bee line towards the fiction section rather than Non-Fiction.

Blink was pretty much an exception (I caught someone reading it at an Airport lounge and decided to pick it up later). While it did not blow me away, it was an interesting read.



"Blink" carries the sub-text "The power of thinking without thinking" which is as good a description as you can get about what the book is about.

The book has a number of anecdotes - the first probably being the best told, about the incident of how the Getty museum acquired an ancient Greek statue called the "Kouros", after much deliberation, analysis and millions of dollars. Unfortunately, almost all seasoned experts who saw it could "smell a rat" within just seconds of glancing at it.

Therein, Gladwell sets the field for the duel of which approach is superior - "the unthinking, gut, instinctive reaction" that we get or the "hours of painful analysis and trawling over tonnes of facts".

Gladwell takes us on interesting jaunts across various fields, including the following:

How less is more in predicting & treating heart attacks in ERs

A psychologist's unerring ability to predict marriage success and failure with minutes of observation and years ahead of the problem!

"Mills & Boons" biases such as Tall dark & handsome men, which Gladwell calls the "Warren Harding Error" and also why CEOs tend to be taller men (a bias called Heightism)

The Pentagon war game that was a precursor to the USA's underestimation of the Iraq war

There are many such anecdotes which are interesting and some others that have you wondering what was the big deal! It is also loaded with jargon and concepts such as "thin slicing", "priming" etc and how it impacts decision making!

However, the book remains as nothing more than a promising premise and a bundle of anecdotes. It could easily have surpassed to the next level building on the premise and developing a coherent and path breaking exposition on the power of the brain. However, the author does not strive to make a convincing argument on the how or why or the mechanics of the brain's capability to process in the background and "Hey Presto!" - DO the BLINK act!

Verdict: Blink is a fascinating read and will arm you with a number of interesting anecdotes that make for good conversation topics in social gatherings (i.e., once you are done discussing really important stuff on the lines of Shilpa Shetty's escapades or Lalit Modi's twittergate!). However, I doubt if it will become a game changer in the way important decisions are currently made - something it somewhat aspires to!