The first book I read in English was Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell. I was in my first year at university and saw this book lying on my friend’s front car seat. I grabbed it and skimmed the book for a few minutes, and got interested in reading more. A few days later, I went to the nearest bookstore and bought myself a copy.
At first, when I found unfamiliar words, I highlighted them with my pencil, opened my phone, and searched for the definitions on the internet. As I found more unfamiliar words along the way, I decided to just keep reading and look for the definitions later or never at all. I realized that when words form a sentence, they could have a thousand meanings. Sentences form paragraphs, then sections, then chapters. That’s when I found the idea that when looking at a problem, I need to understand the bigger picture first, then look into the details, and see how everything is connected to one another. This practice changed how I see the world, and I started understanding it in a different way.
“There can be as much value in the blink of an eye as in months of rational analysis,” Malcolm wrote. “Through experience and expertise, we can learn to instinctively sort through the barrage of details to identify those that really matter.”