Honing Your Intuition (So You Can Make Better Decisions)

This is the 4^th part of the AngPere­grino Series on Decision-Making and Dis­cern­ment. For the other parts to this Series, fol­low the links below:

1. Liv­ing in the Ten­sions: The Para­doxes of Life
2. Liv­ing in the Ten­sions: On Discernment
3. Notes on Deci­sion Making
4. Hon­ing Your Intuition
5. Steps in Deci­sion Making

If you’ve ever said, “I just knew it was a good thing” or “I can not explain why, but I just had to do it” or “It just felt right” or “I had a really bad feel­ing about it”, then you’ve expe­ri­enced what some peo­ple would call “intu­ition” or “gut feel”.

It’s that pri­mary, basic, instinc­tive sys­tem meant to keep us out of harm’s way, even pro­tect­ing us from acci­dents, or from mar­ry­ing the wrong per­son. We’ve heard sto­ries of peo­ple decid­ing at the last minute to can­cel their flights on air­planes that even­tu­ally crash, or mak­ing choices that years down the line make per­fect sense even when they didn’t when they first made it. Our gut instinct allow us to “know” more than we can ever explain logically.

Thomas Stew­art of For­tune Mag­a­zine fame, has observed that “Peo­ple who make deci­sions for a liv­ing are com­ing to real­ize that in com­plex or chaotic sit­u­a­tions — a bat­tle­field, a trad­ing floor, or today’s bru­tally com­pet­i­tive busi­ness envi­ron­ment — intu­ition usu­ally beats ratio­nal analysis.”

This was proven in a exper­i­ment with the US Marine Corps in the 90s.*

Research sug­gests that nei­ther intel­lec­tual ratio­nal­ity nor pure gut inspi­ra­tion is right all the time. The best approach lies some­where between the extremes, the exact point depend­ing on the sit­u­a­tion.

If we can just har­ness this gut instinct more, then we’ll be able to make bet­ter decisions—decisions that are in har­mony with our most basic desires while tak­ing into con­sid­er­a­tion all pos­si­ble angles from a ratio­nal point of view. Because when we talk about life and its com­plex­i­ties, we don’t usu­ally “cal­cu­late” a deci­sion; we arrive at one.

But how do we hone this instinc­tive feel of things and peo­ple? How do we help our­selves develop an “informed gut” (some­thing called a GUT IQ by some)? Here are some spe­cific tips. The list is not exhaus­tive, but I have tried my best to include the more salient points.

1. Prac­tice makes per­fect sense. Howard Gard­ner, Har­vard pro­fes­sor and psy­chol­o­gist, points out that “Gut instinct is basi­cally a form of pat­tern recog­ni­tion.” Com­pared to com­put­ers, peo­ple are lousy num­ber crunch­ers but are great pat­tern rec­og­niz­ers. So that the more you prac­tice, the more pat­terns you will intu­itively recognize.

List deci­sions you’ve made that turned out right — and also the mis­takes. Then recon­struct the think­ing. Where did intu­ition come in? Was it right or wrong? Are there pat­terns? Write down your first impres­sions of col­leagues, cus­tomers, friends, etc. Check whether you’ve been right or wrong about these.

2. Learn to lis­ten to your felt knowl­edge. There are some things you just feel you know but can’t artic­u­late or can’t artic­u­late fully. Give these moments the ben­e­fit of the doubt and act on your hunches.

3. Do the Review. At the end of every day, before you sleep, try to look back at the events that hap­pened that par­tic­u­lar day. Just go through the day’s events and recall the dif­fer­ent feel­ings you had while you went through it. This exer­cise helps you become more attuned to your own feel­ings, to how events affect you, and to pat­terns that emerge in your day. And if intu­ition is pat­tern recog­ni­tion, then dis­cern­ing pat­terns is a good exer­cise to do. Ignatius of Loy­ola calls this THE EXAMEN.

4. Find soli­tude.The best way is med­i­ta­tion. Find at least thirty min­utes a day to spend alone with your thoughts. Learn­ing to lis­ten to your­self in soli­tude will train you to lis­ten to your inner voice when you aren’t alone and will lead to catch­ing pow­er­ful intu­itive ideas right when you need them.

5. Empa­thy is the name of the game. By imag­in­ing your­selves in some­one else’s shoes, and by actu­ally expe­ri­enc­ing what other peo­ple expe­ri­ence, you are actu­ally giv­ing your­self the oppor­tu­nity to think and feel from a wider per­spec­tive. Great bat­tle­field gen­er­als know this. They know that it is always good to get down and dirty and fight in the front­lines, or at least get the feel of the front­line in order to make bet­ter deci­sions. Get out of your own bunker and ride up to the front line and see it, feel it, and act on it. You will be a bet­ter per­son because of the experience.

6. Ask ques­tions – lots of them. This is what I call intu­itive body­build­ing. Ques­tion­ing is the best way to cre­ate stronger intu­itions. The most pow­er­ful cre­ative intu­itions will come to you after long ques­tion and answer ses­sions. Get together with a group of curi­ous peo­ple and dis­cuss com­plex issues – philo­soph­i­cal, sci­en­tific, soci­o­log­i­cal, the­o­log­i­cal top­ics. The most power comes not from the answers but from ques­tions, bring­ing you down paths you hadn’t con­sid­ered, spurring fur­ther ques­tions and more answers.

By prac­tic­ing now, and by fol­low­ing through on your every­day hunches now, you are tak­ing “test dri­ves” that hone your lis­ten­ing and intu­itive skills. These prac­tice ses­sions will serve you well when the big­ger, more impor­tant deci­sions have to be made.

*Paul Van Riper, a retired Marine Corps lieu­tenant gen­eral, was taught that ratio­nal think­ing is what wins bat­tles, and he drilled this to his stu­dents when he ran the Marines’ lead­er­ship and com­bat devel­op­ment pro­gram in the ‘90s.

But Van Riper noticed that in the swirl and con­fu­sion of war sim­u­la­tions — let alone actual com­bat — ratio­nal deci­sions always seemed to come up short. “We used the clas­si­cal check­list sys­tem,” he says. “But it never seemed to work. Then we’d crit­i­cize our­selves for not using the sys­tem well enough. But it still never seemed to work, because it’s the wrong sys­tem.” Frus­trated, Van Riper sought out cog­ni­tive psy­chol­o­gist Gary Klein. At the time, Klein was study­ing fire­fight­ers, who oper­ate under con­di­tions quite like war. Klein learned that fire­fight­ers don’t weigh alter­na­tives: They sim­ply grab the first idea that seems good enough, then the next, and the next after that. To them it doesn’t even feel like “deciding.”