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Malcolm Gladwell, author of the best seller, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (Boston: Little Brown, and Company, 2000) shared this advice on snap judgments in an interview in BottomLine Personal (May 15, 2005):

"[Snap judgments] started out as an evolutionary necessity. Cavemen had to decide immediately who or what was a threat. This phenomenon is called 'thin-slicing.' In about two seconds, the brain grabs information from our environment, then slices it intuitively to determine what is most essential and pertinent so we can decide how best to react.

"What fascinates me is that thin-slicing is important not only in basic survival situations, but also in very complex situations.....

"The decision-making model we all were taught is that the quality of our decisions is directly related to the time and effort we put into them. The more data we have, the better.

"But that is not always true. The Internet is an amazing information-gathering tool -- but has it improved our decision-making? In many instances, it just confuses or overwhelms us. We're forced to waste a lot of time sorting through data that has only minimal value.

"The key is to figure out what information is most important. Several years ago, Chicago's Cook County Hospital, the real-life inspiration for the TV show, ER, was known for its long emergency room waits. The root of the problem was that many patients who came in each day worried that they were having heart attacks. The ER doctors took medical histories and ordered tests before deciding which patients to admit. Despite this, the ER's record was terrible -- only one out of 10 patients diagnosed with a heart attack actually was having one.

"The hospital created a radically new protocol to zero in on just a few critical pieces of information -- including blood pressure and electrocardigram results -- while ignoring everything else, such as the patient's age, weight, and medical history. Guess what? Following the fast protocol produced proper diagnoses 95% of the time."

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