A while ago, I was conducting focus groups on new frozen food products. Of 12 concepts, participants consistently called two interesting, but said they probably wouldn’t try them, as their freezers were overfull.

My instinct was to be skeptical of the ‘no-room-in-the-freezer’ justification. Between groups I thought about why, and recalled that the ‘no room’ rationale was often code for ‘this product offers no benefit’ – something I learned early in my career from friend and researcher-extraordinaire, Phil Glowatz.

Meanwhile, the clients in attendance were encouraged by the feedback on those ideas, and planned to put resources toward further development. I continued to probe reactions to these concepts, pushing participants to explain the basis for their professed interest.

Ultimately, we learned this: for the younger, apartment-dwelling participants, my intuition was wrong. They were genuinely interested, but were strapped for space in their tiny apartment freezers. However, I was right about the older suburbanites, who couldn’t articulate a coherent case for their interest. Eventually, some admitted that they were just trying to be nice. As a result, the client turned development efforts toward a smaller package and a formulation that didn’t need to be frozen.

The point of all this: intuition is valuable, but you must be careful about trusting it. Knowing when and how much to rely on intuition is an important skill, no matter what you do.

There are two kinds of intuition:

1. Rapid, subconscious analysis of information informed by prior experience.

2. Impulsive judgements shaped by your desires and biases. So sometimes intuition is your brain working incredibly fast, and sometimes it’s your brain just being lazy.

As a result, sometimes intuition can get you to a well-founded POV with blinding speed, and sometimes it can lead you astray.

Here are two principles I follow regarding intuition:

Be suspicious of your first, instinctive reactions. Pause, examine those reactions, and figure out where they came from – are they coming from bias or from experience? In other words, before questioning the information you’ve just encountered, first interrogate your own response. This is particularly helpful when somebody expresses a POV with which you intuitively disagree. By examining your initial reaction, you might be able to avoid a pointless, emotional argument and instead have a friendly, respectful conversation.

Realize that intuition is where you start, not where you finish. Intuition gives you an initial impression to follow up upon, not a final answer. Treat it as a hypothesis to be disproven.

Like any powerful tool, intuition must be used with care. It’s like a table saw – when treated with care, it can save time and deliver a high-quality product. But, if you’re not careful, it can cut your thumb off. So, respect your intuition, but don’t trust it. At least, not too much.