How much can you tell about me in the first two seconds? Blink by Malcolm Gladwell.
The concept of Blink is in most instances, you can forgo what you learned in school.. “don’t judge a book by its cover. Look before you leap.” Sometimes all you ever need to know is in the first two seconds.
I liken this to job interviewing initially. You get a certain vibe when you walk into an interview for the first time or even on the phone while getting your appt. You already know. Call it your own personal spidey sense. It’s intuition. But you rationalize those doubts or feelings in your mind because you are taught not to make rush judgement. But it’s true. You know as you are interviewing if you want to even work for these people or just walk out but you suppress it because of so many other factors – i.e. You need a job, they may be nice to work for, it’s close to home, etc. But even if you take the job, the feelings that you initially had usually are true and you’ll end up hating your job or quitting.
It happens in relationships. You meet someone and you kinda hit it off but not really. There’s some things about them that you don’t really care for or you just think is weird. But since you like them, you rationalize it. You accept it not knowing that it’ll just become a repeating occurrence for the future relationship.
It gives an example of a girl named Alice. Prior to the blind date, Alice claims the top two qualities she looks for are men who are smart and charming. After meeting Brad [who is confident and worldly] she found extremely attractive and compatible, you can ask her again and she will change her answers to mirror the guy she just fell in infatuation with. It’s not that Alice was lying. Its just that we all like so many things that we can change OUR perceptions to fit any scenario.
The idea behind the book is not to go crazy and just do everything that comes to your head but to REALIZE that you may be right 99.9% of the time and know to trust yourself.
Of course this comes with a down side because of our personal prejudices. Cops often make fatal mistakes relying on their instincts. But in that split second, do you really have a choice?
