Sunday, February 20, 2005

*blink*

i just finished reading Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink". personally, i liked it even more than tipping point - and tipping point is already on my list of favorite books. i guess i'm just simply fascinated with thinking about human interactions and communication.

over the past few weeks, i've been meeting a ton of people and going through a lot of interviews. i've always had a "gut feel" about people i meet and now that i've read blink, i'm actually conscious of where that feeling comes from. i'm also weary of scenarios where it might go wrong. hopefully, i can fine tune my abilities and become cognizant of all the snap judgments i make everyday. thin slicing... very cool stuff.

it also made me think about the hundreds of thousands (maybe millions :O) of people who have blinked me. hundreds of people's impressions can be found in my blog's comments and even more across the blogosphere. it's really interesting how certain people focus on some things while others pick up something completely different. the real kicker is, people are so used to making snap judgments about others around the internet that it seems to be almost an involuntary reaction. if you're in any sort of profession where you need to interact with a large number of people, i would say this book is a crucial read - if you can't tell, i'm a huge gladwell evangelist now :)

next up is "Guns, Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond. this book has been heavily recommended to me by both colleagues at microsoft and people around the blogosphere. i'm not much of a history nut, but everyone assures me i'll enjoy this book anyways.

someone also recommended "Disciplined Minds", a book about how the corporate system affects its employees. sounds like an interesting read given the events i've gone through, but i'm curious as to whether it really applies in the internet/tech industry. anyone have opinions on this book?

3 Comments:

Blogger Franklin said...

Another now-famous person who got fired for blogging is Queen of Sky, a former Delta flight attendant. Her "crime"? She posted some mildly flirtatious pictures taken in an empty plane while she was in uniform.

It's sad to see employers so driven by fear that they fire people who they feel might tarnish their reputation. It feels to me the US is becoming ever more a hypocritical culture where we're all supposed to pretend to be so pure -- but we're not (remember Nixon's deleted expletives? And why are "red" states less "moral" on many measures than "blue" states?)

Good luck, Mark! Glad you've taken this as a learning experience; I'm impressed with your grace and equanimity.

--Franklin

2/20/2005 04:50:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

now if only mark turns his snap judgments into snap decision-makings... :-O

2/21/2005 05:01:00 PM  
Blogger Stephen Covey Fan said...

I at least, am a fan of Covey. (see comment of one of the other commenters). In fact I have my own blog trying to suss out what he is getting at: http://stephen-covey-seven-habits-effective.blogspot.com

6/07/2005 02:12:00 PM  

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