One of the most underrated professional skills is hearing that small voice in the back of your head that says “something’s wrong here”. Often there is no particular logic – just a feeling that all is not right.
I was looking at a draft document recently and whilst it all made apparent sense, one sentence drafted by somebody else did not quite work. I recognised this, but sent it out as a draft ignoring my instinct - and guess which part of the draft was questioned and proved not to be correct. I realised I had not properly understood the intended meaning, and had not properly questioned the contributing author.
It’s reliance on this “gut instinct” that can be really important and should definilty not be ignored like this. See this article Can You Really “Trust Your Gut”? which suggests there is actually some rational justification This “gut feeling” is an instinctual response from your brain to protect you from making what it perceives to be the wrong decision. Your brain creates a mental map based on every experience that you’ve ever had and everything you have ever learned to create the foundation for which your brain makes decisions.
Steve Jobs on a trip to India commented “The people in the Indian countryside don’t use their intellect like we do, they use their intuition instead, and their intuition is far more developed than in the rest of the world. Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect, in my opinion. That’s had a big impact on my work.” See this article. He also said “Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect, in my opinion.”
This Harvard Business Review piece supports the value of intuition, but says there are limitations and you need to apply logic and reason as well Intuition has its place in decision making—you should not ignore your instincts any more than you should ignore your conscience—but anyone who thinks that intuition is a substitute for reason is indulging in a risky delusion.
Actually, I think intuition is a product of practice and experience which hones your senses to when something is wrong – the patient in front of you actually has a serious illness masked by symptoms of something else. See this scientific article which comments In order to trust our intuition, we need to have had enough practice. Our intuitions are only as good as the database of patterns that we draw them from. So we need to have had sufficient experience noticing and revising patterns in order to have built up a database that is both robust and refined.
So the harder you work, the more you learn, the better your instinct is. Listening to that inner voice and emotion is then easier.
As Albert Einstein again, unquestionably a great scientist who used logic and reasoning as the tools of his trade, once said The only real valuable thing is intuition. He also observed “I believe in intuitions and inspirations...I sometimes FEEL that I am right. I do not KNOW that I am.”
I suggest listening untutored, inexperienced instinct may not be so effective, but coupled with logic and reasoning and experience it is incredibly powerful. As the Indian monk, yogi and guru Paramahansa Yogananda advised “Intuition is the discriminate faculty that enables you to decide which of two lines of reasoning is right. Perfect intuition makes you master of all.”
Or put more succinctly by Oprah Winfrey Trust your instincts. Intuition does not lie.
I was looking at a draft document recently and whilst it all made apparent sense, one sentence drafted by somebody else did not quite work. I recognised this, but sent it out as a draft ignoring my instinct - and guess which part of the draft was questioned and proved not to be correct. I realised I had not properly understood the intended meaning, and had not properly questioned the contributing author.
It’s reliance on this “gut instinct” that can be really important and should definilty not be ignored like this. See this article Can You Really “Trust Your Gut”? which suggests there is actually some rational justification This “gut feeling” is an instinctual response from your brain to protect you from making what it perceives to be the wrong decision. Your brain creates a mental map based on every experience that you’ve ever had and everything you have ever learned to create the foundation for which your brain makes decisions.
Steve Jobs on a trip to India commented “The people in the Indian countryside don’t use their intellect like we do, they use their intuition instead, and their intuition is far more developed than in the rest of the world. Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect, in my opinion. That’s had a big impact on my work.” See this article. He also said “Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect, in my opinion.”
This Harvard Business Review piece supports the value of intuition, but says there are limitations and you need to apply logic and reason as well Intuition has its place in decision making—you should not ignore your instincts any more than you should ignore your conscience—but anyone who thinks that intuition is a substitute for reason is indulging in a risky delusion.
Actually, I think intuition is a product of practice and experience which hones your senses to when something is wrong – the patient in front of you actually has a serious illness masked by symptoms of something else. See this scientific article which comments In order to trust our intuition, we need to have had enough practice. Our intuitions are only as good as the database of patterns that we draw them from. So we need to have had sufficient experience noticing and revising patterns in order to have built up a database that is both robust and refined.
So the harder you work, the more you learn, the better your instinct is. Listening to that inner voice and emotion is then easier.
As Albert Einstein again, unquestionably a great scientist who used logic and reasoning as the tools of his trade, once said The only real valuable thing is intuition. He also observed “I believe in intuitions and inspirations...I sometimes FEEL that I am right. I do not KNOW that I am.”
I suggest listening untutored, inexperienced instinct may not be so effective, but coupled with logic and reasoning and experience it is incredibly powerful. As the Indian monk, yogi and guru Paramahansa Yogananda advised “Intuition is the discriminate faculty that enables you to decide which of two lines of reasoning is right. Perfect intuition makes you master of all.”
Or put more succinctly by Oprah Winfrey Trust your instincts. Intuition does not lie.
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