I'm glad I decided to give Malcolm Gladwell another chance. I read Blink a few years ago and though it was a fun read I was left a little unsatisfied- the thesis was (I may be a little off now a few years on) essentially that you can really trust your snap judgments except for when you can't. But this past week or so I've been reading What the Dog Saw and loving it. I keep turning to Michelle and saying "Even if you don't read this book you should just read this one essay," but I say it about all the essays so really she should just read the whole thing. The essays vary widely by topic but they definitely have some commonality- they tend to point out a new way of thinking about something familiar, giving you new insight on a wider world. Gladwell is really really good at pointing out things you might never have noticed but once you're shown, they almost seem obvious. Once I figured out that that was what he did, I learned to adjust my expectations accordingly. So with Blink, I kept waiting to be given some tools to figure out when my first impressions are trustworthy and when not. BUt he never promised to do that, I just assumed he would. Same with many of these essays, and here's an example I spent some time pondering today at work: In the essay The Art of Failure he discussed the subtle but fundamental differences between choking and panicking. I don't want to just repeat what he said but I was completely engaged because it seems to me that having understanding of what's going on in your head when you either choke or panic can be useful for the next time it happens. Again, Gladwell is content to point out that this is what happens without really going into how to prevent it from happening to you. Which is fine because I have 12 hours at work to mull things over. It kind of has a personal stake for me because of my recent motorcycle crash- by Gladwell's definitions I panicked rather than choked in that situation.



Now- I have always prided myself on my coolness under pressure and I honestly can say I don't panic, at least in the sense of getting all excited and doing the chicken-just-met-an-axe thing. But when I realized, going into that corner on my bike, that I was going too fast, I grabbed my brake, and that was my undoing. As my dad pointed out, braking while cornering causes a bike to stand up which is the opposite of what you want. With more experience, that situation woulda been took in stride. But as a newbie, in that moment without tons of experience to draw on, I just did the only thing I could think of- grab the brake. textbook panic, according to Gladwell, because in the stress of panic you lose short term memory. So even though I was totally calm as I flew through the air, I have to say I panicked. At least I didn't choke! But choking is reserved for those who really know what they are doing. So some day I hope to be good enough to choke.