When to use intuition as a creator (and habits to cultivate it when you don't have it)
A quick overview of the science and habits of intuition.
Quick note:
This one is coming a bit late in the day. As I was polishing off this post about intuition, I happened upon an emerging body of research on intuition as it relates to creativity and entrepreneurship in particular. This research is much messier, but also endlessly interesting, so this is a topic I’m going to have to come back to again!
This week I cover the science behind intuition. Creators (and entrepreneurs for that matter) talk about following their gut all the time. It can be a basic tool in decision making, but also in recognizing opportunities, seeing novel ways to combine ideas, and much more.
But as a chronic over thinker, the advice to follow my gut has often made me feel like there's something wrong with me. How do I know whether it's my gut or just self doubt, insight or just plain bias? And as a self-proclaimed non-intuitive person, is it possible to cultivate a gut instinct? Finally, more specific to this newsletter, is there a habit that could help you cultivate this instinct?
Intuition: What Is it?
So first things first, what even is intuition? Specialists (aka psychologists, philosophers, sociologists, etc) define the word differently, but at its core, most agree that intuition involves a sense of knowing without conscious, rational deliberation.
And this knowing has a few features that various researchers talk about. Intuition can be:
Associative and holistic (hence the idea of intuitively seeing connections or novel solutions)
Impacted by emotions (more about this below)
Related to expertise. Basically intuition is a kind of pattern recognition based on previous experience & domain-specific knowledge 1
Intuition: Is It Really Worth Listening To?
Every coach, leadership expert, and self-help guru seems to talk about the power of intuition. But in psychology circles, there’s some disagreement about whether intuition is worth trusting in the first place (and when to do so!). The two main players in this debate are psychologists Daniel Kahneman (you might recognize his famous book Thinking, Fast & Slow) and Gary Klein (Sources of Power & The Power of Intuition). Both recognize that intuition plays a role in decision-making.
But Kahneman sees intuition as something that often leads to bias and overconfidence. While he doesn’t go so far as to say it’s unhelpful, he does advocate for postponing intuitive hunches as long as possible until you gather additional sources of information.
Klein, on the other hand, admits that intuition can be a way of reinforcing bias, but suggests that in certain conditions (more about these below), and taken as one data point among many, intuition can be a beneficial tool in making decisions. In fact, he’s a proponent of strengthening your intuition so that it becomes more accurate and you can utilize it in situations where analytical reasoning breaks down.
So When Is Intuition Useful?
Intuitive decision making is the ability to make decisions by using patterns to recognize what is going on in a situation and to recognize which actions to react with. This only works, according to Klein, if a situation meets 2 conditions:
The situation is predictable/ has patterns that you can rely on
For example, stockbrokers working are in a volatile environment shouldn’t rely on intuition because there are simply too many variables (hence why most stockbrokers don’t outperform index funds). Whereas a specialist surgeon or a chess player will have a fairly predictable scenario they are working in, where outside variables are limited.
Decision makers have acquired previous expertise relevant to the situation.
It’s not just that the person making a decision has been doing something for a long time, but they have to have been deliberately practicing and noticing patterns & forming mental models around their performance. 2
It’s important to realize that there are lots of situations where we can’t rely on intuition. Like when we’re depressed or anxious, we’re more likely to struggle with intuitive decision making and trusting our decisions more broadly. Similarly, when our context or jobs change, our intuition is unlikely to point to relevant patterns.3
How Do I Cultivate Intuition? What Habits Help?
Previously I wrote about deliberate practice as part of developing expertise. This involves practicing a specific skill by having a stretch goal and incorporating a system for immediate feedback on your performance in service of iteratively get better.
To get better at intuition, you need to deliberately practice the art of making decisions as well as continuing to build expertise in your domain. In other words, you’ve got to analyze the way you sized up a situation - the cues and patterns you recognized and those that you missed. You need to be keeping track of what was effective and what you didn’t consider. This is how you start developing patterns and mental models for what works.4
Klein even offers a worksheet for analyzing your decisions, that looks something like this:
Doing this kind of exercise seems like a heavy lift, but if you consider this process as part of a regular “post-mortem” or even “pre-mortem” type of weekly activity or habit, you can start to better identify what exactly about a decision worked or didn’t work. In turn, you may find yourself building up more precise patterns for next time a situation comes up and your brain intuitively draws parallels and patterns.
Applying Intuition To Opportunity Finding & Creative Problem Solving
One thing that struck me as problematic as I was reading many of these studies on intuition, however, was how much they were based on expertise - on clearly defined jobs and skills. But so much of how creators and entrepreneurs talk about intuition relates to skills like generating ideas, seeing new opportunities, connecting the dots between different fields.
Gary Klein sees some of these more integrative forms of intuition through the lens of a lifelong practice/expertise in identifying problems and matching them with previously encountered solutions.
However, there’s more recent research on forms of intuition that doesn’t rely quite so heavily on experience. Instead, it focuses on how our brain intuitively integrates knowledge across different domains. 5 Much of this space has conflicting research, which makes it hard to figure out, how do you practice cultivating intuition as it relates to coming up with new ideas or making decisions in the face of extreme uncertainty?
While I keep searching for this very answer, the only thought I will leave you with is very much anecdotal. It comes from my past life as a product & innovation consultant. I would often be asked to come up with new products, and the more I had to do this, the better, faster, more prolific I became. Sometimes practicing coming up with ideas, reading broadly, equipping yourself with a notebook for capturing observations can get you in the practice of intuitively connecting the dots. The more you do it, the more patterns you see.
Additional Reading
Gary Klein - The Power of Intuition: How to Use Your Gut Feelings to Make Better Decisions at Work
Daniel Kahneman - Thinking, Fast & Slow
Baldacchino, L., Ucbasaran, D., Cabantous, L., & Lockett, A.G. (2015). Entrepreneurship Research on Intuition: A Critical Analysis and Research Agenda. ERPN: Attitudes & Emotions (Sub-Topic).
Klein, Gary., The Power of Intuition: How to Use Your Gut Feelings to Make Better Decisions at Work. 88
Ketteler, Judy. “How to Get Your Intuition Back (When It’s Hijacked by Life)”. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/17/well/intuition-gut-instinct-psychology-midlife-crisis.html
Klein, Gary., The Power of Intuition: How to Use Your Gut Feelings to Make Better Decisions at Work. 78
Baldacchino, L., Ucbasaran, D., Cabantous, L., & Lockett, A.G. (2015). Entrepreneurship Research on Intuition: A Critical Analysis and Research Agenda. ERPN: Attitudes & Emotions (Sub-Topic). 29