Blink

Blink explains what happens when you listen to your gut feeling, why these snap judgments are often much more efficient than conscious deliberating, and how to avoid your intuition leading you to wrong assumptions.

There’s a rule, which says you should only make decisions when you have at least 40% of the relevant information, but never wait until you have more than 70%.

It’s called the 40-70 rule and it describes the ideal relationship between time and information, ensuring you act fast, but not uninformed, without waiting until making a decision eventually becomes moot.

The funny thing is that in most situations, focusing on very few, but crucially important facts, while blocking out all the rest, is enough to do so.

For example when deciding whether to move to apartment A or apartment B, knowing location, price and having a few pictures is usually all you need. Once you over-analyze every detail, such as where the plugs are more conveniently placed, it becomes impossible to make a good call, because the little puzzle pieces of information start to hide the much more important ones.

Lucky for you, your unconscious is the best and fastest information filtering system in the world.

When first confronted with new information, it sifts through all of it, instantly tossing out the less important factors, judging the few big ones in a split second, and presenting you with the solution.

However, even your unconscious gets it wrong sometimes.

For example in a high-stress environment, your ability to read other people’s facial expressions rapidly declines. When your boss completely loses it, gets a big, fat, red head, and screams at you from the top of his lungs, you might end up punching him in the face. Just because you fear a physical attack, as that’s what his emotional state triggers in you. Similarly, a police officer will sometimes shoot an unarmed man, just because he holds a black leather wallet. This inability to read nonverbal cues is very common among autistic people. They can’t instinctively judge a person’s intentions and emotional state based on gestures, facial expressions, and behavior. That is why they have to rely on what information is communicated. When you find yourself in a stressful situation, this can put you into a mental state where you’ll face similar challenges. You develop a sort of tunnel vision, focusing on only the most imminent, threatening piece of information. This will lead your gut to make the wrong call often times, so it should be prevented whenever possible. If in a stressful situation, you should try to reduce the stress as quickly as possible. Take a walk to cool off, hide and breathe for a few minutes,…