This year in review for literature is pretty slim for me. I have had a wholly distracted year when it comes to reading or keeping up with print media other than comic books and the occasional news story online. This is somewhat distressing to me as I have been an avid reader all my life. Books are what I have turned to in my darkest times. Hell, I have even slept in a bed with a pile of books to not feel so alone. But in the last three years, with Michael in my life, the need to escape into the pages of a book has been reduced to next to nothing. While this is exciting news (I'm happy!) it is also saddening because I miss books.
Our recent work schedules find me spending more time alone and therefore more likely to pick up a book and actually finish it. I mentioned my lack of reading to a Forked Road cohort and she simply said..."look at all the writing you are doing". I do blog a fair amount and I suppose I am doing a fair amount of reading to research for these blogs, but it isn't the same as a worn book in the hand. I digress. You get it.
Another amazing factor about being with Michael is that he has, over the years, given me a new love for non-fiction reading. This summer I found a copy of Malcolm Gladwell's "The Tipping Point" at the Salvation Army store. I only knew something about the book from my Barnes & Noble Literary Desk Planner which had a blurb in one of the corners about it. For 49 cents, I'm game for just about any book.
This book started out as my "bathroom book"....yes, you all have them. A book that isn't quite interesting enough to carry around or read in bed, but interesting enough to read while pooping. The first half of the book was spent like this and now this second half finds the book in the living room where it is likely to get read with a cup of coffee on mornings when Michael is at work.
"The Tipping Point" looks at the world from a sociological/psychological point of view. It cracks open seemingly insignificant factors about individuals and groups of people that go unnoticed to the average person. In reading this book I have felt like a foreign government receiving inside secrets. It is like a Wiki Leak happened in my brain. The ideas in this book are relevant to my life because I work in an industry where there is a great mix of personalities, psychological conditions, and different types of people. It would be a travesty for me to NOT read this book.
This book came out in 2000 and yes, it is nearly 2015, but I don't think it renders the information obselete with time. I think the basics of the formula are pretty concrete in its understanding to last. It is a book about how epidemics get started and grow and how they can be altered with simple, small changes. It has three rules: The Law of the Few, The Stickiness Factor, and The Power of Context. I won't rewrite the book here for you. It's interesting and you should read it but I will give you a little idea.
Malcolm Gladwell
The Law of the Few
"The success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts"-Malcolm Gladwell
Supposedly there are three main types of people that get things done. There are Connectors who are people that know a large population of people and tend to make connections between these people. They do a lot of introducing of one group of folks to another. They are a network hub not unlike Facebook.
Mavens are people who connect us to knowledge and information. They are gifted in spreading this information around and would be the type of person behind the driving force of "word of mouth" type epidemics.
Salesmen are just that, salesmen. They have charismatic attitudes and can get you to buy the information they are selling or negotiate terms of an agreement. They have a powerful use of body language and non-verbal cues that subconsciously make you want to do what they want.
The Stickiness Factor
This is the theory of how well a message or idea stays with a person. How well does it stick? Will it be memorable enough to change a person's habit without them realizing it? Does it enhance retention of an idea?
The Power of Context
"Epidemics are sensitive to the conditions and circumstances of the times and places in which they occur"-Malcolm Gladwell
The idea of context is that the environment around us will greatly influence our set of behaviors despite how we may or may not have been raised or how our values lie. The world immediately around us can change the structure of behavior and minute, seemingly insignificant changes in this environment can make bad situations better.
I have not finished this book yet, but I am on the last section, The Power of Context, and I started thinking about how this can relate to my own little environment in the ER where it is a world within a world. The staff is its own tribe of people and each department a new tribe. We have to "trade" with each other and work together despite our differences in habits, rules, and work ethics. In addition to this, there is the tribe of people that come to us for healthcare. Each time we enter a patient's room, we step into their world. They bring with them a different set of political ethics, education, social value, moral value, and life experience. These may clash with ours, but I think that some of Gladwell's ideas could prevail in making the healthcare experience better. It could make all of us understand where each of us is coming from and how to better deal with the community on a social level that we had not considered before.
I am not sure I have been this excited about a non-fiction book in a long time. It isn't a difficult read despite it being wholly about sociology and epidemics. Gladwell uses real life events that happened in our country to detail and explain the theories or laws of his tipping point idea. Pick up a copy, throw it in the bathroom. Give it a try.
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