Last night I had to make a decision about my drive home from work. Friday evening before a Bank Holiday weekend obviously means extra traffic. With good weather forecast, it was inevitable that the roads would be busy as thousands of people headed to the coast. I did not want to spend ages in traffic jams. So, I asked my trusty sat nav for advice on alternative routes to avoid the traffic problems.
Satellite navigation systems have millions of data points on which they can base their decisions. The mapping in your car or phone can calculate all kinds of routes, check the road conditions and forecast the traffic levels accurately. Yet, despite the sat nav’s obvious intelligence, I decided to ignore its suggested routes and settled on one of my own. I arrived home 20 minutes faster than the sat nav’s suggested “quickest route”. So much for “intelligent systems”.
I imagine the same has happened to you. Your intuition was more accurate than a digital system based on live data. Strange but true.
Deciding on a route home is not that problematic. Sure, we can get it wrong, and it takes us longer than we would like. But that’s not a significant issue. However, what if your job is Chancellor of the Exchequer and you have to decide on how to fill a £50bn gap in the nation’s finances? The decisions that Rachel Reeves needs to take over the coming few weeks could send the economy spiralling into turmoil, affecting millions of people. Or her decisions could do the precise opposite, rescuing the nation from its current economic woes. To help her, she is surrounded by an army of advisers. None of them is likely to have the same opinion. Indeed, I am sure you are familiar with the old adage that if you have three economists gathered in a room, you will end up with four different opinions.
New research from the University of Waterloo suggests that the Chancellor will ignore all the advice and rely on her intuition. The study reveals that, across a wide variety of cultures worldwide, we tend to disregard advice when making any kind of decision. Our gut instinct is what we use more than anything when making decisions. Danish researchers have recently discovered yet more evidence of a tight connection between the gut and the brain. The two appear to be entirely in sync. We instantly know when something is right or wrong because our brain gets a signal from our gut. Like it or not, your stomach and intestines are part of your mind.
However, the study from the University of Waterloo also reveals another interesting aspect of making decisions. Even though people tend to ignore the advice they are given, the combination of intuition and self-reflection was a clear winner in many instances. Relying solely on gut instinct may not be enough when making a decision. Combining your intuition with a period of reflection is an excellent way of settling on an answer. I expect your mum said to you at some point in your childhood, “Sleep on it; things will look different in the morning.”
Like me, I imagine you have received emails that respond to a situation in less than a positive way. The sender may be angry, even bullying. They have reacted using their gut instinct without a period of reflection. If only they had slept on it, their email might have been different. I will often write an email, leave it in my “drafts” folder for 24 hours and then review it, rewriting parts of it following some reflection. I know several other colleagues who do exactly the same.
Our gut instinct is good and frequently tells us what the right decision is, as it did for my journey home last night. But, just like advisers, our intuition is fallible. That’s why reflection helps. Gut instinct may spark the decision, but reflection is what makes it stick.
Of course, none of this means you should not seek advice. Expert opinion can obviously be helpful. So too can the thoughts of friends and colleagues. Ultimately, though, we will set aside such advice in favour of our intuition. However, this can fail unless you reflect on your thinking and put it into perspective with the advice of others. Advice and intuition are not enough to make good decisions. We need to spend time reflecting on our gut instinct.
