Why You Should Follow Your Instincts
A gut feeling can draw on experience you cannot immediately explain. It can be useful when you know the setting well, but it can also reflect bias or a poor comparison. Treat intuition as a reason to investigate, and check it against evidence before making a major commitment.
THE IDEA
Chapter 8: Why You Should Follow Your Instincts
A familiar situation can prompt a judgment before you can explain how you reached it. You may recognize a promising restaurant, notice that something is wrong with a project, or have an idea for a product without consciously working through every clue. Past experience can contribute to that feeling.
This does not mean that every hunch is sound. Familiarity, preference, and prejudice can also feel like insight. Nor does it mean that emotion and reasoning occupy separate parts of the brain, with all decisions made in a storehouse of habits. The useful question is what experience informed the judgment and whether that experience applies here.
The restaurant example
Imagine walking past a restaurant and thinking, "Gracious this spot looks great, how about we eat here," before going inside. You have not checked the menu, prices, or reviews. But you may still have noticed information: the smell of the food, the atmosphere, or similarities to restaurants you enjoyed before. Your decision has a basis, even if you have not put it into words.
That basis might be helpful or misleading. A familiar style of décor does not establish that the food is good. You can follow a low-stakes hunch while remaining willing to revise it when you learn more.
The account gives other examples of fast impressions: liking a song after three or four seconds, deciding whether to buy something shortly after entering a shop, or judging attraction within 30 seconds of meeting someone. These are claims about how quickly a feeling can arise, not evidence that the feeling accurately predicts what will happen.
The delivery-company example
The business anecdote concerns an unnamed delivery company, called X association in the account. Customers were trying to schedule pickups, so adding a scheduling feature appeared to be the obvious response. The team resisted. Its experience with on-demand services such as Lyft, Instacart, and Luxe Valet suggested that customers might prefer immediate service if they trusted it to be available.
The team continued with on-demand delivery. Later, according to the account, it learned that many customers had wanted scheduling chiefly as reassurance that a driver would be available. As confidence in availability grew, attempts to schedule pickups fell from near 80 percent to under 5 percent.
The useful distinction is between a requested feature and the need behind it. In this story, scheduling was a proposed solution to uncertainty about availability. The team’s hunch suggested another way to address that need. The reported outcome supports that interpretation of this case; it does not establish that ignoring customer requests is a reliable strategy.
Using a hunch
An idea can arrive with the excitement of "Ah-ha! I have a thought that can change the world." That excitement can motivate you to explore it. It cannot tell you whether customers will buy it or whether the business will succeed.
When a hunch matters, try to identify what it rests on. Have you encountered comparable situations? Did you receive useful feedback on your past decisions? What is different this time? Then look for a small test, an independent assessment, or evidence that could show you are mistaken.
Intuition can help you notice possibilities and act quickly. For expensive or difficult-to-reverse choices, use it alongside deliberate analysis rather than treating a strong feeling as the conclusion.
When to use it
Investigating the customer need behind a requested feature before deciding how to meet it.
Checking an intuitive impression of a potential colleague against relevant work evidence and consistent selection criteria.
Using an initial impression of a store location to guide questions about foot traffic, costs, and customer demand.
Drawing on practiced responses in a familiar urgent situation, while checking new information as time permits.
FROM THEORY TO EVERYDAY LIFE
In practice
Choosing a restaurant by instinct
You walk past an unfamiliar restaurant and decide it looks promising. Smell, atmosphere, and similarities to places you enjoyed may inform the hunch, even if you have not consciously listed those clues. The feeling gives you a reason to try it; it does not guarantee a good meal.
Business decision: rejecting a feature based on gut
In the delivery-company anecdote, the team resisted requests for scheduled pickups because it believed reliable on-demand service could meet the underlying need. The account reports that attempts to schedule fell from near 80% to under 5% as customers became confident that drivers would be available. The lesson is to investigate the need behind a request and test the proposed response, rather than assuming that a hunch is sufficient.
A MOMENT TO REFLECT
Put it to work.
Can you recall a time when you followed your gut and it turned out well? What past experiences might have informed that hunch?
How might you balance instinct and rational analysis in your business decisions?
What past experience might support a current hunch? Where might that experience be a poor guide to this situation?
Often confused with
CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION
Source texts
- Thinking in Systems and Mental Models Think Like a Super Thinker (Dawson, Marcus P)