Blink : The Power of Thinking Without Thinking Book Review
When Gordon mentioned this book in a post of his a while ago, it really intrigued me. So I decided to read it of course!
I usually stay away from these philosophical books but this one surprised me by its great readability. Gladwell argues his points not with theory but with stories and examples from real people. That is what makes it a very easy book to read.
And what is Gladwell trying to prove exactly? Well, he argues that our subconscious mind is more powerful and more important than our conscious mind. The only problem is that we can't access and change our subconscious mind. It literally has a mind of its own.
Often times we do something and we don't even know why we did it. Gladwell argues that this is our subconscious mind in action.
OK, that's nice but what does this have to do with investing? Well Gladwell includes a great quote by George Soros' son regarding his trading techniques:
"My father will sit down and give you theories to explain why he does this or that, but I remember seeing it as a kid and thinking, at least half of this is bull. I mean, you know the reason he changes his position on the market or whatever is because he back starts killing him. He literally goes into spasm, and it's an early warning sign.
Gladwell then explains this quote like this: "Clearly this is part of the reason why George Soros is so good at what he does, he is someone who is aware of the value of the products of his unconscious reasoning. But if you I were to invest our money with Soros we'd feel nervous if the only reason he could give for a decision was that his back hurt."
So perhaps instead of overanalyzing any buys or sells we do, maybe we should instead be using our gut to pick stocks.
I don't know if this is the right philosophy but that's what Gladwell argues.
Gladwell also argues that "less is more." He cites many examples where having less information is actually beneficial to good decision making. He comes to the conclusion that "what screws up doctors when they are trying to predict heart attacks is that they take too much information into account."
This is just a brief review of this great book, but if you want to learn more about how your subconscious mind works, don't hesitate to buy it from Amazon right away using the link below!