Last week I finished the book Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. If you have never heard of it, this book is about how we think. More specifically, it’s about how we think about thinking, how most decisions are made much quicker than we realize, and how our brain makes decisions without us truly recognizing that we have made a decision.

This is one of those books that movers and shakers refer to in almost every conversation. Anyone I know that I would consider a change agent references this book. I have owned this book for a couple years, been a part of dozens of conversations in which it is a topic, I just finally got around to reading it.

If I am being honest, I didn’t LOVE it! This caught me off-guard. Some of the smartest people I know claim Blink as one of their favorite books. Gladwell is a genius, and I love some of his other books. I just didn’t with Blink

The main point of the book when you boil it down is that as humans, we make decisions much quicker and with much less information than we realize. Most of the time it is on a subconscious level though. Gladwell calls this thin-slicing.

He uses numerous examples from real life situations and academic studies to prove the theory. By the end of the book, it is impossible to disagree.

There is a long-term study by an expert on marriages, and he can predict divorce in 3 minutes of observation of a couple within the following 15 years with 90% accuracy. There is an example of a New York city tragedy involving NYPD. There is a study on gambling. Most of the studies follow micro-expressions during human interaction, it is fascinating.

It is a fascinating book. I just did not like it like I thought I would. I agree with everything he writes, I love how he bounces around, and I love all the real world examples, something just leaves me wanting more.

It is probably more of a personality quirk of mine than anything else. I still highly recommend this book, and any book Gladwell. I just can’t promise you will like it…