Blink the power of thinking without thinking sparknotes

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking — Book Summary

By Malcolm Gladwell

What happens when you listen to your gut feeling during crucial moments? Why are these snap judgments sometimes much more effective than conscious deliberate thinking and analysis?

When should we trust our gut feeling and intuition & when should we ignore those feelings and rely on hard data and analysis? How can we make better decisions and what influences our decisions?

In what ways can we avoid having our intuition lead us down the wrong rabbit hole?

There are many things that influence our decisions, and if we know these factors; we have the potential to make better decisions. When we make split-second decisions, we become vulnerable to being Primed by our own beliefs and prenotions & Guided by our stereotypes and prejudices.

By understanding how these split-second decisions are made from a psychological perspective, we have a better chance at understanding the human psyche and develop ways to better navigate through the labyrinth of these tough situations.

Here are 6 factors that influence our decisions:

1. Rationalization: Making snap decisions and rationalizing them later is hard to explain.
2. Understanding: Our intuition is often right (most of the time), but we don’t understand why.
3. Time Restrictions: Decisions that are time-bound (big decisions vs. simple decisions) often affect the quality of the decision being made.
4. Stress Levels: Stress impacts our decisions because it causes tunnel vision.
5. Focus: Learning how to ignore irrelevant information and focus on what matters.
6. Large Data: Information overload (too much information) would lead to decision paralysis.

Gut feeling decisions is a function of the following parameters:

1. Rules of engagement.
2. Training for split-second decision situations.
3. Mental Rehearsal of situations where split-second decisions are crucial.

Types of Thinking

There are two prominent types of thinking that dominate our brains:

1. Rational: Conscious Thinking (rational decision-making) is when we use logic to weigh the pros & cons of each choice and make a conscious decision (effective process, but takes a long time).
2. Emotional: Unconscious Thinking (adaptive unconscious thinking, intuition, and snap judgments) is when we make decisions without understanding why, or even realizing that we’ve made them (quick process, but sometimes primed by biases).

We tend to think that conscious thinking is better than unconscious thinking, but both have their own merits and a time and place when and where to use them reliably.

Thinking without Thinking!

Snap decisions happen inside a locked room inside of our minds, so we can never piece together how that process plays-out in real life ahead of time. Snap decisions can also be clouded by factors like our own biases, so we need to put in place a systems to filter-out any biases from our thought processes that might lead us down the wrong path. That’s where becoming an expert in your field comes into play, whether it’s in medicine, engineering, business, or in whatever field of profession you’re in. Learn how to think without thinking by balancing between Intuition & Cautious Deliberation, which can only happen with deliberate practice and conscious thinking when the waters are calm.

First Impressions & Snap Decisions

People have the capacity to make snap decisions based on first impressions, which often happens at an unconscious level of cognition, so a lot of our thought processes happens in our unconscious mind. Conversely, our brains have two distinct sides; the rational-dominant and analytical-dominant sides, and the side that forms impressions acts without any logical process. In fact, the rational-dominant side of our brain seems to know some shortcuts to arrive to judgments quickly.

Decision Paralysis can be defined as the stagnation of thought in our mind by flipping from side-to-side in our cognition as we try to make snap decisions (when under time pressure). The wrong first impression can have tragic consequences, which is why companies test their products, services, and marketing strategies so that they can create a favorable first impression with their customers. You don’t get a second chance to make a good first impression!

Thin-Slicing

This is the ability of the subconscious mind to quickly find patterns in situations or behaviors based on very limited information, where experience helps us draw conclusions using a combination of Expertise and Intuition. In essence, we can read complex situations quickly as long as we identify the underlying pattern in those situations. This ability stems from both our intuition and our experience which could be reliable at times, but be aware of the Expert’s Trap!

Expert’s Trap

Expertise can steer us down the wrong path in two important ways:

1. Stopping us from being curious about new developments in our field of expertise.
2. Becoming overconfident about our ability to solve problems in different areas & in different ways.

To become an effective communicator, you need to be more aware of these traps and seek ways to become more humble and open-minded about when you’re about to fall into these traps.

Our brains are like a computer that processes all the knowledge instantly to give the first impression, so thin-slicing allows us to make decisions quickly. This technique can be learned through deliberate practice and controlled to the point where we know that we can trust our own instincts.

When we thin-slice, our unconscious mind cherry-picks the information that is relevant and ignores the rest, which allows us to ignore distracting, superficial details, and get to the heart of the problem.

One of the results of thin-slicing is that you develop the ability to make quicker and correct decisions, and this marks you a better leader! However, not all snap judgments are correct, so thin-slicing carries an inherent risk that you could be wrong! This is where a history of experience comes into play, since those who have data to reference at the unconscious level stand a higher chance of making better snap decisions.

Priming

Apart from stressful situations, sometimes associations are forged so deeply in our brain that it’s hard to turn them off; even though we might know they’re wrong! Priming (also known as Anchoring) is when our behavior is formed or altered in measurable ways due to certain external stimuli; such as images, words, belief, or culture, which begs the question; are people defined by their beliefs or their actions? That’s quite the conundrum!

The psychological phenomenon of priming affects a number of mental processes in our brains. In other words, priming is like an advanced notification system, however, a person is receiving notifications that affect what they think and how they feel about it, and the trick is knowing what to consider and what to ignore. Priming comes into play through the words we hear and see, and the messages we are surrounded by (environment). Unfortunately, in a high stress environments, a person’s ability to read a situation will be compromised and decline rapidly. Come to think of it; freewill is an illusion, where outside influences are extremely potent and sway our decisions down a certain path, which might be right or wrong. That’s why we need to be consciously aware of our priming and how it historically affected our decision-making process.

Information Overload

We often believe that we need a lot of information to make accurate decisions and judgment calls (symptom of decision paralysis), but the more information we get, the more we become prone to making mistakes, which is compounded by our confidence in having the data to back-up our decision!

Decision Paralysis is a real detriment to a lot of our daily live decisions, where sometimes the best decisions are made with instinct, intuition, and trusting that our guts are right. A Rule of Thumb is that Decision-Making should occur when we have between 40% and 70% of the relevant information on a given situation! Therefore, we don’t need all of the information to make a decision, and sometimes our best guess will actually be the best choice!

On average, 90% of the decisions we make in our daily lives takes place in our Subconscious Mind, where only 10% takes place in our Conscious Mind. If I were to place a bet, I’d wager for the Subconscious Mind in most cases! Therefore, the trick is knowing when we should consider what our Conscious Mind is telling us.

Our minds can make better decisions with limited information when we adequately train for such situations beforehand. This is not to say that you need to throw away valuable analysis and considerations in favor of snap decisions alone! The gut feeling of an amateur is likely to be wrong when compared to the snap decision of an expert who has thousands of hours of similar experiences to draw upon before making a decision. Therefore, you need to take your first impression with a grain of salt and allow the data to guide your effort and be aware of the Expert’s Trap!

Decision-Making Process

Decision-making is the process of making choices by identifying a decision that needs to be made, information that needs to be gathered, and assessing alternative resolutions based on data or intuition. By understanding the decision-making process, we could make more deliberate and thoughtful decisions by organizing relevant information and defining alternatives in a rapid fashion so that we could eventually make decisions at a blink on an eye!

The 7-step decision-making approach increases our chances of choosing the most satisfying possible option:

1. Identifying the Decision: Define the nature of the decision you must take.
2. Gathering Relevant Information: What information is the best sources of information, and how to get it (internally: expertise & externally: environment)?
3. Identify the Alternatives: Use your imagination to develop possible alternatives.
4. Weigh the Evidence: Draw on the information in front of you and your emotions to imagine what it would be like if you took on each of the possible options.
5. Choose Among Alternatives: After weighing all the options, select the option that seems to best address the issue at hand.
6. Take Action: Implement the choice you’ve made without looking back (don’t hesitate)!
7. Review the Decision & It’s Consequences: Consider the results of your decision and evaluate whether or not it has resolved the issue and in what ways could you improve your decision-making process in the future.

The way it works is that inexperienced people would need to move slowly and methodically through these 7 decision-making steps until they build enough experience and feel conformable making snap decisions (mental muscle memory) by shifting it form the conscious to the unconscious side of their brain. Experts on the other hand would go through these 7 steps in a matter of seconds! Although snap judgments are often more accurate than well thought-out ones, they can also be a result of subconscious racial, socioeconomic, or appearance-based biases that we need to be aware of and careful when making decisions at a blink of an eye!

Become an Expert

People are not experts in most things; especially those who claim to be experts! In fact, people make-up reasons for why they prefer one thing over another (emotional thinking), and then adjust their preferences to match those reasons to justify their actions (rational thinking). People cannot examine the mechanism behind these snap judgments and first impressions, but with experience people can become expert at using their training and behavior to determine what lies behind them and justify the reasoning for the choices made.

Just as important as trusting our intuition in making snap decisions, it’s also important to question them!

An easy way for us to spot a Fake-Experts (fraud) is by examining how they describe themselves, how they tend to talk about their fame, fortune, and glory and their use of puffery and big words that don’t seem to make a whole lot of sense. Fraudulent experts will make you believe that they’re the best thing since sliced cheese!

What isn’t being mentioned by an alleged experts is just as important as what isn’t being mentioned.

Real-Experts on the other hand don’t need to brag about themselves or their achievements because they’re confident enough in their abilities and don’t need to prove anything to themselves or others. Real-Experts focus their narrative on people they’ve helped, problems they’ve solved, and speak collectively rather than individualistically. Also, real experts credit luck, their family’s support, serendipity for their achievements rather than their personal effort, intelligence, and leadership skills.

When can you Trust your Intuition?

Trust your intuition (gut feeling) when you don’t have much time to think through all the implications of what’s happening around you. Further, you should also trust your intuition when you’ve had a great deal of experience in making similar judgments in the past (qualifying you to be a real subject matter expert) as it helps you see subtle things that a novice might overlook. Your intuitions are right most of the time, and the reason why they’re not always right is because intuition is primed by your own thoughts and emotions, which may only be partially correct or might even completely wrong at times. With deliberate practice, you can learn to assess your intuitive experiences and identify when they are more likely to be right, so you’d be able to bank on your gut feelings and omit the need for analysis.

You’ll know that your intuition is trying to help you make the right snap decision when you feel it; only if you allow yourself to assess feedback without any biases (seeing information as-is). You’ll feel it physically (goosebumps, sweating, dilation of your peoples, etc…) and cognitively (red flags start popping-up in your head) by sending a shiver down your spine, racing of your heart, or rapid successions of short breath. Sometimes it’s even more subtle, so listen to your body because it’s always on your side; no matter what!

Intuition is your immediate understanding of something, so there’s no need to overthink it or get another opinion; you just know! Trusting your intuition is the ultimate act of trusting yourself because listening to your intuition helps you avoid unhealthy situations or getting into something with dire consequences.

Intuition is usually less of a verbal thinking process and more of a deep sense of vibe that you feel in one of your organs and makes its way to your brain to make a quick decisions and take action. Overthinking is less deep and occurs more in your head, and is often characterized as an nonstop chatter in your brain between you and yourself.

Anxious thoughts relate to the past and future, and carry a sense of dread and nervousness. Your intuition, ironically, is often precisely what’s giving you anxiety in the form of a trigger to take action. There are times when your intuition tells you what you need to do, and it’s completely against what you think you should be doing. Choosing to ignore intuitive feelings is likely to lead to your detriment because it’s not great at helping you understand why something doesn’t feel right for you, it just knows that it is, so don’t try to reason with your intuition when the stakes are high and you’re under pressure.

Here are 4 simple steps that are sure to increase your intuitive thinking:

1. Listen to your gut feeling.
2. Observe your energy levels by paying close attention to whenever you’re around someone and how they make you feel (tired, drained, or energetic).
3. Capture your flashes of ideas (don’t completely ignore crazy thoughts).
4. Take a deep breath before reacting (allow your conscious mind to react).

Your intuition helps you identify your purpose in life. Since your intuition is attuned to your subconscious, it can point you in the right direction and help you identify dreams that are aligned with your core values and your true sense of purpose. People who rely on their intuition are more open to new ideas!

If you’re not learning, you’re not living, and if you’re not living; you’re missing-out on realizing your greatest potential (what makes you special & unique), and that would be a tragic waste of life!

Takeaways

1. Your first impression about a situation is often your best indicator of truth.
2. When you find yourself in a stressful situation, it can render you temporarily autistic and you develop a sort of tunnel vision; focusing on only the most imminent, threatening piece of information as form of survival.
3. Your unconscious judgment can decide what is important almost immediately.
4. You only need a little bit of information to make wise decisions if you can determine the right information to guide your decision.
5. Good decisions are the result of balancing between intuition & cautious deliberation.
6. Your unconscious mind is the world’s fastest supercomputer because it filters of information like nothing else in the universe.
7. Your brain reaches conclusions without telling you!
8. What you think that you want and what you actually want are two different things that hardly ever match!
9. Stress can lead your gut feelings astray, which would lead to bad decisions.
10. To control your level of intuition, put-up screens in situations where you can’t trust your intuition.
11. In general, people are innately good at recognizing patterns and reading situations (avoid the expert’s trap!).
12. Thin-slicing allows you to make smart decisions based on limited information with minimal deliberation.
13. Experience is a precondition to effective thin-slicing by rapidly going through the labyrinth of information.
14. Snap judgments are often more accurate than when we take our time to analyze a situation (gut feeling vs. decision paralysis).
15. Your subconscious mind recognizes patterns and connections “gut feeling” long before your conscious brain makes the connection (Consciousness).
16. If you can identify the key elements of a problem and simplify it, you can do a lot more with a little.
17. Untrained intuition leads to bad decisions based on prejudice, bias, beliefs, and stereotypes.
18. In the blink of an eye, an expert can usually tell you more than a mountain of data could ever tell you.
19. Prejudging people or situations is the kiss of death, so you need to give everyone a fair shot at presenting their case (avoid confirmation bias).
20. People hold internal biases that influence their judgment and affects their lives.
21. A sign of expertise is noticing what doesn’t happen!
22. You don’t get a second chance to leave a good first impression.
23. Life goes by in the Blink of an eye, so make every Blink count!