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by Steven Gillman
Have you ever used your intuition to solve problems? Can you
trust your
intuition? Can you improve it?
What Is Intuition?
Intuition is simply a feeling , sense, or hunch based on
information not available to your conscious mind. Some say this
comes from the ether or wherever, but I'm content to believe that
our minds have a lot more going on in there than we know.
How can Gary Kasparov win a chess game against a computer that
can calculate positions many moves further ahead than he can? By
using his intuitive grasp of the game. His experience allows him to
combine analysis with a "sense" of which move is best.
Intuition can also warn us. My wife and I felt we shoudn't get on
that bus in South America. We knew crowded busses were prime hunting
grounds for pickpockets, and we saw the drunk man bumping into
people. We didn't think about these things consciously, but they
registered in our minds, and warned us. We ignored our intuition,
and I was robbed.
Of course, you can have a hunch for irrelevant reasons too. If
you were hit by a taxi as a child, you might have
"intuitive" hunches not to get into taxis for the rest of
your life. So how do you know when to trust your intuition?
Three Simple Steps To Better Intuition
- Watch for it. You'll have hunches and ideas more often. I
bought a conversion van, and now I see them all over. Have you had a
similar experience? The same process will happen if you watch for
your intuition - you'll start to see more of it.
- Question it. If I had asked myself why I felt bad about that
bus, I might have thought, "Oh yeah, crowded busses are a bad
idea. I know that." Try to see in which areas your intuition
works best, or not at all. If, for example, your hunches about
people are always wrong, don't follow them.
- Give it good information. Your skill, knowledge and experience
determine the potential effectiveness of your intuition. A weak
chess player will never intuitively beat that computer. So learn
enough about a subject, before you expect any good hunches. Remember
the programmer's maxim: garbage in - garbage out.
Do these three things and you'll have more useful intuition more
often.
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