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IWP!, flagship product is Chicago's premiere real estate Investment
magazine. Entitled Invest With Passion!, it is the tool for investors and professionals in the
Mid-West. The publication seeks to grow it's market share by providing
powerful information designed to build the reader both as an investor and a
person.
Since it's release in January of 2006, the magazine has been well received and
continues to gain momentum and support. The education, information, and
networking opportunities for the real estate investor has been long neglected.
No More!
The time is now and the momentum is building.
It's Happening!
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BOOK REVIEW: BLINK
By Krystal
Taylor
How do we make
decisions? Why do we make decisions? Many people feel that the best
decisions are derived from long, thought out contemplations. Malcolm
Gladwell sought out to disprove this theory by showing how people can come
to the same conclusions whether pondering for 5 or 45 minutes. He shows
how it doesn't matter how long we think about the information, but what we
think about. This same point is made throughout the book by using
multiple examples. The examples range from speed dating to pop music, but
all offer the same conclusion.
Gladwell supports his
theory by discussing rapid cognition, or knowing things quickly and almost
instantly. Part of rapid cognition is “thin slicing”. Thin slicing is
the ability of our unconscious mind to find patterns in situations and
behavior based on narrow slices of experiences. To put it in simple
terms, the ability to make snap decisions. Gladwell feels that a little
knowledge goes a long way and that the unconscious has the ability to sift
through information and zero in on what is important. However, he also
found that people have a hard time accepting their snap judgments and feel
the need to explain their answers or beliefs. It's hard for them to
accept knowing without knowing that they know. To prove this point, he
referenced speed dating. Prior to the speed dating event, the women were
asked to write down what they wanted in a mate. However, he found that
the description of what the women said that they wanted was different from
what they were attracted to when they met. It wasn't that the women were
wrong in their descriptions, they were just incomplete because having to
explain something so seemingly simple automatically makes it more
complex. To take thin slicing seriously, you must accept that you may
know more about someone or something in the blink of an eye than from
months of study.
An interesting point that
was made was the difference between recalling information and having to
describe that same information. It's easier to recall information or
someone's face because you use the right hemisphere of your brain which
allows you to think in pictures. However, having to describe that same
person impairs your ability to recognize it because of verbal
overshadowing. The left hemisphere of the brain allows you to think in
words. So when you begin to think in words to try to explain that
person's face, those words displace the visual memory and bumps it to the
left hemisphere where it shouldn't be. This was also proven to be true
when asking people to answer puzzles. Those who were asked to describe
how they came to their answers completed 30% less than those who just went
with what they knew.
Although the book was
written to prove how the same decisions can be made in an instant or by
deliberation, Gladwell acknowledges that successful decision making relies
on a balance of deliberate and instinctive decision making. You have to
be able to edit through the information that you are given. Spontaneity
isn't random and good decisions are a function of rules, training, and
rehearsal. Our unconscious thinking in some respect is no different from
our conscious since they allow us to develop our rapid decision making
with training and experience. |
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