Follow your gut ?
When should you trust your gut vs when should you rely on your reason? I explore this difficult topic in this short post.
I consider myself a rational person who prioritises data over emotion to make decisions. This means that when approaching a problem I rely as much as possible on the information available and discard by own biases.
As a software engineer this approach has served me well many times. Indeed, writing and reviewing code requires a methodical approach that rely on one’s knowledge of the broader problem, programming language, libraries used, experience, and sometimes even the underlying system architecture.
Yet in business and in life, this clinical approach doesn’t always produce the best outcomes. Sometimes it’s outright detrimental. For instance, I’ve gone through situations where the information I had access to was inconclusive, while my intuition was firmly favouring a given option. In some of these cases I chose to go against my gut. It turns out often enough my gut was right.
The most recent example of such a situation happened when after dropping my daughter at the nursery, I had to drive somewhere not too far from my house for an appointment. I vaguely knew that I could arrive at the venue by taking the same route as the one that leads me back home, but when I loaded Google Maps it recommended another route which was apparently shorter. I hesitated for a couple of seconds because I had never taken this route before, but I decided to rely on Google instead of trusting my intuition.
As a result I ended up wasting time in traffic and arriving late for my appointment. I am convinced that I would have arrived on time (or even in advance) had I driven through the route I was familiar with. My gut was right, once again.
How to approach decision-making
How should you weigh the suggestions from the rational, methodical mind against those from the visceral and instinctive gut? This question may be even more pertinent in situations where data that informs the rational mind is lacking or inconclusive.
The truth is… I don’t have a foolproof answer to give, but I want to share with you how I now approach this conundrum.
Bezos 1- vs 2-way door decisions
Firstly, I rely on simple to grasp mental models to help my decision-making. The one I’m increasingly employing is Jeff Bezos’ “1-way vs 2-way” door decisions.
It’s a simple yet powerfully effective metaphor: 2-way door decisions are reversible, while 1-way door ones are very hard to reverse. For instance think of a 1-way door decision such as choosing the house to buy for you and your partner. Coming to a decision in such a case requires deliberate thinking, research, viewing, and most likely alignment with your significant other. A 2-way door decision could be deciding to subscribe to a video streaming service or buying a gym-membership. You can get out of these with relative ease in most cases.
In both 1- and 2-way door decisions, you need consider the whispers from the rational and the instinctive dimensions. In the case of 1-way door decisions, you should probably expend a lot of rational energy to understand the ramifications of a given choice. The instinctive layer can help further support the rational case, attaching to it an emotional dimension that reinforces your belief in the decision.
When both of these sides are at odds in a 1-way door situation, I reckon you should follow your gut if it screams in a particular direction, otherwise you should rely on what the rational mind tells you. You may well be wrong, and reversing the situation may be painful, but I suspect you will look back on the decision with fewer regrets.
Decision making for 2-way door decisions carries less gravity so I believe that unless the rational mind in turn strongly opposes one direction, you can go with whichever decision your reason or intuition most strongly favours. If your reason is ferociously against what your gut prescribes (or vice-versa), then it may be worth taking a bit more time to reflect on the problem. However this should not lead to analysis paralysis. At the end of the day a decision must me made. You can always find a way to reverse it in the near future if you are wrong.
Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow
Another more complex set of concepts worth looking into are Daniel Kahneman’s System 1 and System 2, made popular in his book Thinking Fast and Slow. System 1 is intuitive and fast, while System 2 is analytical and slow. System 2 is very meticulous, but it is also very taxing mentally, so it is impractical to use it in all situations that require a decision. Similarly, System 1 should not be solely relied upon for high-stakes decisions. At the end of the day though, one should learn to appropriately calibrate these two faces of the human decision making process.
Interestingly, with experience some of the decisions that required much more involvement and energy from System 2 can be relegated to System 1 or require less energy from System 2. One other useful book that comes to mind to better understand this phenomenon is Sources of Power by Gary Klein. In this book, Klein shares his counter-intuitive findings on how firefighters, pilots, chess masters, and nuclear plant operators make quick high-stakes decisions in situations with time pressure and incomplete information.
Decide - even if you may be wrong
Despite all these mental models and frameworks, we all know that decision making still remains an art. In cases where I am faced with 2-way door situations, I will trust my gut more. I will also give it more consideration in high stakes situations.
Finally, what I’ve realised over the years though is that you should take decisions that align with your values, and oftentimes your gut has a lot to say in this area. Your reason is your trusted advisor, but your gut is your best friend.