The following may sound familiar (at least they do to me): Things are going well in your (insert dating life, new job, relationship) and so you think it’s “meant to be.”

One thing goes wrong (smash a plate, crash your car, miss the bus) and you wait for two more things to go tits up because “bad things happen in three.” You’ve spent ten minutes with your sister’s new boyfriend and you know he’s not right. You’re practising gratitude daily to change your fortunes.

To be clear, these are all things I do or have done in my life.Most of us do. Still, if you’re like me, and look for higher meaning in small occurrences or tune into follow your gut when it comes to decision-making… it may just help to think about your thinking, because cognitive scientists believe this approach can lead to poor decision-making. 

Here’s the problem: by writing things off as being ‘meant-to-be’ or in some way guided by greater forces in the universe… or going with a feeling of what’s right when you decide on big or small things… we don’t delve into more critical thinking. And this can prevent us from extracting essential learnings or observations that could set us up for better decision-making down the road. 

A lot of this thinking comes from our inherent trust in our intuition. In other words, when we just spontaneously know something. For women, it’s understandable. Our gut keep us safe. It’s when we know a man across the street should be avoided at all costs. Or that dark car park. A primitive part of us knows we should listen, and so we allow our inner-compass to guide us. But we can get comfortable with this kind of sharp-shooter assumption-making… and forget to kick the tyres before we follow through on a decision that isn’t about our immediate safety. Turns out, what makes us perceptive… can sometimes cloud our vision. 

A quick dive in Google Scholar reveals Daniel Kahneman, who won a Nobel prize for his work on human judgment and decision-making, says we have two different thought systems: the first is fast and intuitive; the second is slower and relies on reasoning. And simply reading this totally explains why my husband and I are endlessly frustrated by the others decision-making. I make snap-judgements, believing them to come from some place deep within me. I may have called this ability psychic in heated arguments (please don’t judge, it may have been after vino). He takes his time, analysing the information and pouring over outcomes. 

Turns out the fast system, according to Kahneman (the one with the Nobel prize), is more prone to error. And while he concedes that intuitive thinking may increase our chance of survival by enabling us to anticipate serious threats (hell dark carpark), the slower thought system—which involves critical thinking and analysis—is less susceptible to producing bad decisions. 

Honestly, I’m not sure I believe this… but I do know that there have been times where my snap-judgments and lightening-fast decisions have not served me. It’s gotten me into tricky financial situations and socials ones too. 

So where does it leave those of us leading from this gut-led place? How do we use this unconscious intelligence, as some researchers call it, while still ensuring we are more think more critically too?

One way is to simply question our assumptions. If a new job just doesn’t feel right… dig a little deeper. Knowing the ‘why’ is what many coaches will tell you helps prevent a similar situation down the track. If you decide you don’t like a colleague, dig into it. The part of our brain that makes these gut-led decisions also relies on “heuristics” or “simple rules of thumb” that we have created for ourselves to edit out information and make faster decisions. But they can be flawed… not all direct people lack warmth, for instance, and yet one experience with someone who did might cause you to shy away from others too quickly.  

In reality, we do usually recruit both brain systems to make our decisions. Researcher Kamila Malewska of the Poznán University of Economics and Business in Poland, who has studied the role that intuition plays in real world decision-making, says harnessing our intuition plumbs the many deep resources of experience and knowledge that we have gathered over the course of their lives and makes for a more efficient thought process. And while I love the sound of this and believe it to be true, I’m going to trust my gut… but confirm with a few more data points. You know, just in case my all-knowing gut missed something important.