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"Just Trust..."
Hello
Don’t know if it’s the time of year or time of
mind but these days I seem to be hungrier than ever before.
You see...
I’ve been consuming at least a book each week
for the last few months and my appetite still isn’t sated.
There’ve been books on persuasion, books on
success, books on marketing, books on effectiveness and books on making
decisions. And it’s the ideas in this last category which have been weaving
their spells into my subconscious storage files of late.
The fascinating thing about...
Decision making; in the words of the various
authors; has been the concept of ‘thin-slicing’. Now this is such a vast subject
I just know I’ll have to write a longer piece about in the next few weeks or so.
It’s because...
You and I have had so many experiences of
‘thin-slicing’ – I thought it might be well worthwhile bringing it back to our
conscious minds so we can be thrilled when we experience the frisson of
excitement at our correctly predicted brilliance.
Now this...
Might start to seem a little confusing so let
me twelk the cloud of grey confusion aside and let’s see what’s lying beneath:
As sentient beings you and I have a remarkable
skill not often discussed in polite company –and it is – our ability to make
decisions, often life-critical decisions; based on the slightest, the minutest,
the leastest of information.
Yes! We are brilliant because...
We have this ability to know; really know – at
a deeper level-what is going on around us and how we should react.
Lehrer in his brilliant book: The Decisive
Moment: recounts the sticky wicket on which Lieutenant Commander Riley found
himself batting – when he had to decide if a blip on
the radar was a returning friendly or an incoming problem.
Riley ‘guessed’ correctly and saved 100s of
lives.
He was – ‘thin-slicing’
Gladwell in his 3rd phenomenal work
‘Blink’ explains how John Gottman from just a few moments
of video taped conversation between a married couple – can predict the longevity
of their marriage.
He’s ‘thin-slicing’
You see...
We, you and me and our fellow
spinning-blue-globe travellers are perfectly capable of taking the thinnest of
slices of info and extrapolating what we’ve garnered to ‘know’ the whole
picture.
And so I was wondering just how often we’re
ignoring this fleeting sense of ‘knowing’ -dismissing it when we really should
listen as though our success depended on it – it might.
Enough for now I think – perhaps you’ll have
thin-sliced what you need from this already – you genius you.
You will have fun with this won’t you?
Go on then...
Peter Thomson
Editor and
Thin-Slicing Publisher
tgiMondays
PS: comments, thoughts, ideas, puzzles or
laughter to:
peter@tgimondays.com |
