Steve Jobs was famous for following his gut. Those gut calls contributed to many Apple success stories.
But when he was diagnosed with a rare neuroendocrine tumour cancer, Jobs’ trust in his intuition led him down a risky path.
He chose to prioritise options other than surgery. That decision initially excluded specialist medical care that could have been integrated with the alternative treatments he chose to follow.
Unfortunately, the reliance on his gut may have contributed to what some doctors described as an unnecessarily early death.
Jobs’ biographer Walter Isaacson said, “I think that he kind of felt that if you ignore something, if you don’t want something to exist, you can have magical thinking…we talked about this a lot.” Isaacson reported Jobs’ told him he came to regret the decision to exclude surgery as an option following his diagnosis.
Tapping into intuition has been known to lead to business success and even save lives. However, Job’s story shows that previous intuitive success doesn’t mean your intuition will always be right.
Intuition and instincts are often confused, but they are not the same.
Instincts are innate, automatic responses like fighting, fleeing or freezing when faced with a threat. These responses are hardwired into our biology and don’t require conscious thought. If you’re like me, your instincts are why you unconsciously react when you see a request to ID a snake on your local Facebook community page.
Intuition can feel like a “gut feeling” or hunch that guides our decisions.
In his book, The Intuition Toolkit: The New Science of Knowing What without Knowing Why, Joel Pearson, a cognitive neuroscientist, says that in situations we know well, intuition can guide us.
His research explores the boundaries of intuition and when it might lead us down the wrong path. According to Pearson, intuition draws on our accumulated knowledge and experiences, often operating below our conscious awareness, influencing our decisions in subtle ways.
However, in new or high-stakes situations—like making personal health decisions—our intuition and instincts might not be enough. We might rely on patterns that don’t apply, leading to decisions that feel right but are wrong.
Warren Buffett once said, “It’s better to be approximately right than precisely wrong.” The key is to know when our intuition is “approximately right” and when it’s leading us astray.
Picture your intuition as a trusted shortcut. In familiar territory, it saves time. But in new areas, you may need a full map to avoid getting lost.
So, how do we know when to trust our gut and how to build better intuition? Context is king!
Joel Pearson’s SMILE model is a guide to understanding whether it’s safe to practice intuition in your specific context:
- Self-Awareness: Be aware of your emotions. Some positive emotion is okay but if your emotions are too high – avoid using your intuition.
- Mastery: If you’re still learning– avoid using your intuition and be aware mastery is influenced by the process through which you learn rather than how many hours you spend learning. For example, you may only need to experience something very negative once rather than spending 10,000 hours learning why it’s negative.
- Impulses and addiction: If what you’re experiencing is an impulse or craving – avoid using your intuition. People living with addiction should always avoid trusting their intuition.
- Low probability: If probabilistic thinking is required – avoid using your intuition. If you ‘know’ this is your week to win Powerball the odds are the price of the Lotto ticket would be better spent paying a bill.
- Environment: If the situation is unfamiliar, unpredictable or producing random patterns – avoid using your intuition.
If ‘No’ is your answer to each of these questions, it’s most likely safe to use your intuition.
If at any point, you answer ‘Yes’ to a question, hold off using your intuition until the situation changes. For example, wait until you’re in a less heightened emotional state.
Or take a leaf out of Daniel Kahneman’s book and think slow, seek out different evidence-based perspectives and follow steps proven to work, including deciding not to act.
When you practice following Pearson’s simple model, you can build your intuitive muscle and make smarter decisions.
