I wrote a post about what I feel is an important way of thinking about decision-making. Give it a read, and if you've got an opinion or just want to chat about it, let me know and I'll add you to the Branch.

howtomakelightning.com

How important are first impressions to decision making? How important is deep thinking? Do you have any tricks to keep your intuition sharp? How can we make the most our of our instinct while at the same time spend time to challenge our assumptions?

I love this-it's on a subject I often think about, and a constantly evolving personal lesson for me.

Reading your thoughts on the feeling versus thinking concept I couldn't help but think about a subject I've studied a lot (especially under the framework of adult learning theory) - neuro linguistic programming. Are you familiar with NLP?

Basically, NLP rests on the idea that we process information, and therefore communicate, in one of 3 ways- auditorily, kinestheticly, visually. We all have the ability to process info in all three, but we each have a strength area. Therefore, if presented information in the method of our area of strength, we are likely to learn, process, and act faster, because it fits with how we process info best...

Back when i was a graphic designer, i would run into a certain problem repeatedly. I would see something in a design of mine, and a little tiny voice would say: "that's not right, it should be different." But for a variety of reasons, I would often think about it and then decide that the issue wasn't worth fixing. And invariably during a crit, someone else would bring up the same issue and I would feel like an idiot. So I eventually learned to pay attention to that voice and fix the things, even if it seemed trivial. But I had to really work at that, it was always so easy to rationalize inaction as the easier path.

Our strength area, or style, then dictates how we communicate about things/ideas, and affects the words we choose. EX: 'I think' vs 'I feel' vs 'the way I see it.'

Using this framework to think about your experience of gut vs thinking, the lesson I took away for your post, was not necessarily that listening to your gut is so much the opposite of thinking through something, but that listening to your gut starts by acknowledging your 'go-to' way of processes, and purposefully expanding your process to include another perspective, thereby allowing you to make a more informed/better decision. And when you make a more informed decision, we feel more confident that it's the 'right' decision...

Thoughts?

@Manlio - I hear you. It's a tough lesson, right?

@Steph - Yeah, I don't really see it as "thinking" *vs* "feeling" either, more that they work together. But I think you're right on that how we take in and process things matters a lot. Good point! I know a little, tiny bit about NLP, but your comment makes me want to learn more. It makes a lot of sense that the way you absorb information would directly match up to how accurate your instincts would react.

To truly be able to answer that question, we must ask what is intuition? Do we truly even understand intuition?

it's too hard.