This mostly forgettable book just didn't quite grab me. There were some great stories in this book. I enjoyed learning about the vagus nerve and the variable heart rate. Fascinating.

But mostly, I don't remember much more than that. ( )

I do believe in a lot of the power of slowing some things down and there were some very interesting points and references to studies but it got very preachy near the end and ruined the book. ( )

Wait is a phrase that you will often hear a parent use when dealing with a small child. I know I have used is often enough myself.

In these days of faster communications, instant messages, 24 hour email and the pressure to make instantaneous choices, Partnoy wants us to think slower, to take time to consider those choices and to make the correct decision at the right time.

He describes sports men who have the ability to stretch time and make a better choice of shot, of city traders who have chanced on the optimum time for trades and the art of subliminal advertising. He looks at decisions that have been made wrong in football, the correct length of time to wait until you apologise and the art of procrastination.

This book ties in with other books that I have read and like, such as Thinking Fast and Slow, and The Decisive Moment. He is a great advocate of taking time to make the right decision, and having made that decision sticking with it, and not changing your mind,something that Warren Buffett has proven over years. He also looks how taking a little more time, in conduction with checklists, has meant that surgery has become less risky for patients and how people doing the same tasks feel more pressure when the hourly rate is higher.

If you feel that time today is too precious to waste, then I would recommend reading this. Take note of the suggestions and just wait a little. ( )

I listened to the book on CD version, read by Sean Runnette. He was a good reader, easy to listen to. Interesting concepts brought forth in this book. Sometimes I thought the author belabored the point, and some topics were of more interest to me than others, but overall worth reading. ( )

At least as far as the science goes, it seems solid enough--so a much better book than some of Gladwell's and Iyengar's The Art of Choosing. Partnoy really is a Renaissance man in that he's a lawyer who was a trader for Morgan Stanley, now a professor of some sort and graceful writer. You'd never guess he was a lawyer or former corporate drone from the writing.

The problems arise when he goes on and on with examples based on the thinnest findings. Notably apologies in the wake of sex scandals involving US politicians. No doubt when you flub big-time, you might want to wait a day or two to make your apology sound really sincere. But it's absurd to compare these various men's escapades for a start because their transgressions were so different (Spitzer was tracked to a prostitute because law enforcement thought bank withdrawals suggested he was being blackmailed; a southern governor, having an overseas affair wasn't breaking any law, just worrying a lot of people; some may have/were been breaking laws. Some told public lies before discovery; some didn't. Etc.)

*most of whose names Americans will have forgotten already and foreigners won't know; otherwise, people beyond the US won't be bothered by the other chapters.

That's just the start of my objections to that chapter (What is timing, after all?). But there are better chapters. I liked how views of procrastination have changed through the ages.Often we're going through a cost-benefit process and there's something to be gained by putting off a task. And even when you're not going project A that doesn't mean you're doing *nothing*.

And inevitably we always return to Kahnmann and Tversky and the way people weigh risks and rewards--that people aren't the rational men (and women) or classic economic models. I'd rather take the $1 extra today then wait a month or two for $5. That of course does not mean that I wouldn't wait a month for $5,000 in lieu of $1,000 today. ( )