In the blink of an eye

One of Malcolm Gladwell’s bestselling books, “Blink,” attempted to change how we trust the way we process information. He asserted that people with many years and countless hours spent studying and working in a discipline could take in massive amounts of data and make surprisingly accurate assessments of the situation in the blink of an eye. He called this ability “rapid cognition” and it has myriad implications.

We use rapid cognition in any number of ways. Everything from dating (love at first sight) to hitting a curveball in baseball allow us to use this hard-wired or hard-won superpower to become an expert.

In the context of financial planning, I ask you this: Can the tools required for rapid cognition be shared with others? More specifically, can the benefits of an advisor’s rapid cognition be put to use for our client’s and our own benefit? After all, thousands of hours invested in studying, analyzing, synthesizing and applying financial principles and strategies give us advisors more “blink-ability” than someone who doesn’t have the same experience.

Here’s how we do it