Blink decisions

"What the heart knows today, the head will understand tomorrow." I came across this early in my teens and have remembered it often over the years. It's a one-line case for following one's instinct, which - as research has borne out - is the sum and culmination of our learning, experience, memory and survival skills.

The instinctive reaction is often dubbed "first impression" and sometimes ignored on that basis, but it shouldn't be. Last night I read a book that makes the same case - Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. I read Gladwell's The Tipping Point and Outliers a couple of months ago, when Blink was being read by someone else in the family. Quite simply it says what we know but don't often follow up on - that our instinct is usually right. We need to learn to recognise and listen to it, however, and know how to make it work to our best advantage. Marketing "professionals" - unfortunately - may never see the case for Blink, because there are usually no pie charts and statistics to bear it out. Still, it works.

I've had a Blink moment in the very recent past, when I learnt that my brother in Bombay was seriously ill. I was thousands of miles away in Singapore, and of course hotfooted it to Bombay. At the same time I decided, pretty much in the blink of an eye, that I would move back and live in Bombay near my brother and his family. I didn't stop to evaluate this decision - I just proceeded more or less headlong to put it into action. There was no question about it in my mind. If I had stopped to "think" about it, there would probably have emerged a compelling case for me not to relocate, but my Blink "reasoning" - as it were - puts up an equally compelling argument for relocation.

So here I am, I've stepped out into space and can only see about as far as the beam of my non-Union-Carbide-powered flashlight can reach. Still, somehow, it all finds me unafraid. I think I've done the right thing, Blink-wise.