How to Be a Real Critical Thinking Maverick in the Digital Age

We’ve seen a pattern emerging in recent years, attention spans shrinking, headlines hooking us in, and facts taking a backseat. The result? Real-world consequences.

Whether it’s Pizzagate, where a viral conspiracy swiftly led to an armed man storming a pizzeria, or the Bondi Junction stabbings, where a University of Technology Sydney student was falsely identified as the attacker. Then there was the rapid string of DOGE claims in its early days, like the $8 billion dollars of apparent cancelled government contracts, later downgraded more accurately to $8 million, of legitimate contracts, then abruptly, silently, removed. But not before the inaccurate ‘waste, fraud and abuse’ slogan had been repetitiously peddled with persistence.

Misleading narratives shape public perception and action. And the cycle repeats. We’re now in an age of ‘blinkist-style’ shortcuts.

Blinkist, founded in Berlin in 2012, is an app designed to condense key ideas from expert books into short 15-minute reads. It’s a great idea. Yet, as both an author and behavioural analyst, I’m torn.

Writing an expert book takes years of lived experience and deep research. It’s not a short process, nor should it be. How expert would a book be if it were written over a weekend using ChatGPT, plagiarizing an internet of others’ experiences along the way?

My second book, Add Value, published globally by Wiley, was the result of years of creative inputs, research, writing, and multiple manuscript iterations, followed by rigorous editing. The best advice I received came from my editor and friend, Nicola McDougall, author of multiple books, who told me: “Be willing to let go of your babies!”

Sandra Balonyi, an editing specialist, skilfully cut about 10,000 words from my original manuscript while preserving my voice, bringing the final count to around 60,000 words. Yet, a ‘Blinkist’ summary touch would likely condense it to just 3,000–4,000 words. So which 56,000 do you cut?

Imagine asking your favourite musician to trim their hit song by the same ratio. A radio edit of three to four minutes, already likely a creative compromise, would be reduced to just 15 seconds. You’d likely end up with the guitar wrapped around your head.

Do you know the suffix ‘ist’ is indicative of a tribe? Blinkist is no longer just an app; it has become a global tribe of blinkist-styled thinkers, racing through headlines and shortcuts as if speed equals understanding or integration.

This trend of acceleration and abridgment is everywhere. In sports, five-day games (think cricket) have shrunk to 50 overs, then 20, and even perhaps just 100 balls. While the commercial appeal grows, some fans still prefer the sacrality of days on the couch, even without a decisive winner.

For travellers, modern sightseeing often means sprinting between locations, smartphones in hand, taking rapid fire photos of a landmark rather than fully experiencing it.

Even the legal world isn’t immune. One lawyer, relying on ChatGPT for research, had to plead for mercy in U.S. federal court when at least six cited precedents turned out to be fictitious.

Dating, too. Who would have thought finding a life partner would be reduced to a swipe? Women deliberate for an average of 3.19 seconds, men for 5.7 seconds, before deciding to swipe right.

For blinkist-styled academics, a weekend power seminar does not make you an expert. While formal education isn’t a guaranteed path to intelligence or success, the cumulative time spent mastering a discipline still outpaces the two-day turbo-talented competition.

Social media is a playground for blinkist-styled extremists, influencers and dopamine-addicted users. According to HubSpot, 73% of social content consumers prefer videos lasting 60 seconds or less.

Not surprising when studies like Microsoft’s tell us that human attention spans are now shorter than a goldfish’s nine seconds, we tune out after just eight. If you’ve read this far, congratulations; you’re already ahead of the curve.

Beyond attention spans, this phenomenon, a lost art of concentration, impacts sleep and mental health. The modern world fosters behavioural shifts toward headline skimming, clickbait culture, and surface-level understanding.

Even multitasking, often praised as efficient, is an illusion. Constantly switching tasks makes us less productive due to the ‘switch-cost effect’, being the loss of momentum in micro-moments between transitions.

Some may even outsource their thinking, deep conversations, critical analysis, or fact-checking to bots, AI and ‘suggested for you’ articles from self-proclaimed, experts and algorithmic learning. Some of those bad actors, including elected officials, are banking on you having a blinkist-styled approach and brain.

In 2014, Elon Musk stated the Tesla car by the following year would be 90% auto pilot. In 2015, he claimed they were probably only a month away from autonomous driving at least for highways and relatively simple roads. In 2016 he was adamant the model S and model X Tesla cars would drive safer than a person does right now. In 2017, they were still on track to go cross country, LA parking lot to New York parking lot, fully autonomous, no controls touched. In 2019 he claimed that by the next year, for sure, we will have over 1 million robo taxis on the road. By 2020, when that didn’t eventuate, he was still extremely confident of achieving full autonomy and releasing it to the Tesla base by the following year. In 2021, when asked again when the problem would be solved, it was looking quite likely the next year.

It’s likely a very hard problem to solve. That’s cool. In 2025, Musk, Tesla, and many other companies playing the same game, aren’t as concerned about any past actions or claims. They rely on your blinkist-styled  brain to forget all the above ever took place and instead excitedly buy into their latest sound bite headline. As entrepreneurs, that’s to be expected.

Rapid gathering of information has its benefits, sure, provided sources are credible. But quick judgments and snap decisions, unchecked by default? That’s playing with fire. Not all actors in this accelerating world of blinkist-style AI are good. We need independent, human problem solvers now more than ever and not rely on turning over our inherent superpowers purely to AI, technology and the echo chambers of content riddled with bias popularity rewarding algorithms.

If you want to be a critical thinking thought leader, go against the tide of the blinkist-style masses. To be a ground-breaking Maverick in the digital age, take a counterintuitive approach somewhat opposite to Top Gun style. When it comes to critical thinking, unless you’re in the final seconds of a countdown, if you really feel the need, feel the need for less speed!

Written by Mark Carter. Have you read?
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The Chief Economists magazine, UGGP News, and the CEO Policy Institute.