Friday, June 5, 2009

Is this right or wrong? To know this just BLINK!

I have decided to consciously explore books and topics unfamiliar, uninteresting and abstract. Everyday I will spend sometime reading 50 pages of abstruse data (well, that's how I perceive it) and try to make sense and make notes as well so that I can carry the thought process consciously through different walks of my life.


To kick off this trend is a book by Malcolm Gladwell called "Blink" that teaches you all about intuition and how you be trained to be intuitive.

Lessons from the book so far:
1)To start with I know what kouros are - They are[1] over-life-sized[2] dolomitic marble statues in the form of a late archaic Greek kouro


2)There are two ways of making a decision:
a) A careful logical deduction where you process and collate data to arrive at a conclusion.
b)Adaptive consciousness- At a sub-conscious level to take a call on how to proceed

3)Decisions made on the spur of the moment effortlessly can be as good as decisions that have been taken after quite some deliberation and caution.

4)When our rapid congnitive abilities go awry for some reason, they are always for a same set of specific reasons

5)Lessons for couples:
What do your reactions do you fall under?
Defensiveness
stonewalling
criticism
Contempt
The most dangerous among these is CONTEMPT

6)What are your dominant traits?
Extrovert
Agreeableness
Conscientiousness
Openness to new experiences

7)You don't sue a doctor whom you like!!

8)How well we think and act are a lot more susceptible to outside influence than we think.

9)When people say that they have a nose for it... They actually mean it. Ventromedial prefrontal cortex that lies just behind the nose has a huge role to play in decision making.

10)Warren harding error is a big NO NO.
People say that appearances don't matter. But of course they do. You size up a person within seconds of meeting him/her. If you want to get your point through then be well groomed. It's more likely that the person on the receiving end will be more receptive to your thought than otherwise. I am not saying that if a person is badly turned out his voice will not be heard but it will take longer because he has to pull down the mental barrier that has formed in the receivers head about him. It requires time. But time is not something that you always get...!
The other side of the coin is, be mentally alert to signs when you are sizing up people based on their appearances. The joke might just be on you.