Blake Schwendiman's Blog and Blook

Have you ever met someone that seemed to be incredibly insightful or just seemed to be able to sense things that other people couldn't. For example, in my work, I've met people who can just look at a problem and find the most elegant solution and all of the potential pitfalls of other solutions in an instance. In some cases, these people are experts in their fields. In some cases, they just tend to be extremely insightful about people or relationships.

The book blink by Malcom Gladwell explores this phenomenon in great detail. It talks about how we can perceive expressions on faces or flavors in beverages and make unconscious judgements about those perceptions in practically no time. It also explores how experts can use their experience in a similar way to excel in their fields.

One of my favorite discussions in the book is why the Pepsi challenge led to the development of New Coke, why New Coke was such a dismal failure and why the whole thing was a series of mistakes made in the analysis of snap judgements and incorrect assumptions. Having real world associations with concepts as deep as those presented by Gladwell helped me to better understand and use the information.

I think that blink is a book that every intelligent person should read. If you understand the concepts, it will literally transform the way that you look at things. I've found myself being much more aware already of my own facial expressions (to the extent that I can) and the expressions of the people around me. I've also been more aware of my snap judgements of a person because I know that there may be something valid about those judgements, but there may also be a lot that's not valid. If you're interested in any of Gladwell's writings, I'd recommend starting with blink.