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Why Your Instincts Matter
The late great Beat poet Allen Ginsburg
advocated a decision-making process he labeled, “First
thought, best thought.” Believing his optimal poetry efforts
invariably came about when he stuck to his initial thought about
how to express them, he worked hard at nixing the inner, nagging
self-doubts that invariably crop up in a writer’s mind. As
such, he rarely re-wrote i first drafts except for minor
tweaking. Rather than agonizing over the merit of his first
conceptualization for a poem, he just went with it, taking his
chances that his readers would react to the work favorably as
well.
How could Ginsburg’s process have
anything to do with business or personal life decisions? Could
“first thought, best thought” survive in our world of
needs assessment studies and endless project meetings? Apparently
yes if research emanating from Southern Methodist University
(SMU) has anything to say about it. In a study of test-taking,
published in the Journal of Educational Psychology, analysts
there have observed that when one gets “help” from a
test in the form of multiple-choice answers, more often than not
such assistance actually leads test-takers astray.
Offered false multiple-choice alternatives,
test-takers were found to be incorrect more often than when given
tests asking for their answers only. Time spent mulling over
suggested alternatives, even false ones, rather than trusting
their own instincts, tended to generate self-doubts among
test-takers. As a result, they frequently chose answers they
hadn’t even considered when first reading the question.
“If you sit and stew, you forget that you
know the right answer,” explains Alan Brown, a psychology
professor at SMU. Lesson learned? “Trusting your impulse is
your best strategy.”
How useful might this be to improving your
prowess as a manager or parent? Ask yourself how often, and for
how long, you “sit and stew” over a problem, especially
at work. How many alternatives and opinions do you typically
consider? Have you ever regretted a big decision? Was it made on
a “first thought” basis or via lengthy deliberation or
rumination?
A creativity experiment I’ve conducted on
occasion for my clients underscores this hypothesis. I give a
problem-solving team two minutes to learn all it can about a
particular problem. But 15-20 minutes is given another team.
Consistently, the two-minute squad comes back every time with an
array of more inventive solutions. The long-deliberating time
tend to ask for more time!
So when you’re next facing a critical
decision, consider attacking the problem the way Allen Ginsburg
used to do. Allow yourself to choose your initial inner response,
and go with (in other words) your gut! You may end up forgoing
the time, expense and agony of more thorough evaluations and
still get the job done right.
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