"Blink" and Work

I finally got around to reading Malcolm Gladwel's "Blink". I absolutely loved it. The book is about the subconscious and how the human mind functions to draw complex conclusions from very small amounts of data. This process usually happens quickly, in the blink of an eye, and most of us are not conscious this process. In fact we usually do better with quick reactions to minimal data rather than long processes of deduction.

What most interested me about the subconscious is the way we can consciously condition it. For example Gladwel discussed Harvard's famous test dealing with association between races and positive and negative characteristics. The test studies response time in assigning these attributes and does so on a miniscule level. A breakthrough came when a grad student, who had been taking the test every day with similar results, all of sudden had a more positive association with blacks, remember the test measures miniscule differences, why the change? Because the day before he had watched the Olympics! Since then studies have shown that our subconscious is rather easily conditioned.

One of my principal interest in the subconscious is in how its conditioning is attached to expertise in work. Gladwel cites one example of what I'll call "vocational conditioning" succeeding, the identity of an artistic forgery and one example of it failing, the Amadou Diallo shooting. The question I'm now asking myself is what sort of subtle practices are apart of my current work that will only come to me after years of faithful practice? I ask you the same question.