Is "following your gut" a good idea?

Follow your gut, but back it up with the brain. Gut tells you - quit your job. Brain tells you, yeah sure - plan your finances for the next 2 years, because things don't work out as planned.

Also - as @alexandromg mentioned, find a mentor who's walked the path you wish to walk. It's always wiser to learn from other people's mistakes.

If you have experience in the area and you're under time pressure, yes, go with your gut. If you don't have experience or you're not under any time pressure, then no, take some time to think through things.

Intuition helps us make decisions very quickly and by expending minimal calories on thinking. It works best when we're making decisions in domains where we have a lot of real-life experience. For example, if you've been a fireman for 10 years and you need to know when to stay vs exit a burning house. Or if you've been a social human being your entire life, and you need to judge a new hire's character.

However, intuition is not reliable in situations where we don't have lots of experience. For example, if you're a first-time founder and you're trying to decide whether to build an MVP or build something much bigger, niche down or target everyone, focus on coding or focus on marketing, etc. There are lots of counter-intuitive mistakes in most domains, where it takes lots of experience before doing what's right actually feels intuitively right. So doing research and learning from experts is a better way to go imo.

It depends. Instead of following your gut/mind, etc., I'd frame the approach you should consider like this:

• become used to making quick decisions when those are reversible - so follow your gut/intuition in the absence of data in these areas
• think long and hard for difficult to revert decisions. For these ones you need to collect more information, reflects about a couple of scenarios, and ultimately take a decision with the best information available at the time.

I'd argue for two things:
Train your gut as good as you can: Do a lot of things, experience a lot of different situations and, most importantly, always look for the feedback and results. Make those consequences clear and connect them to what actually caused them. Do this consistently with everything you decide consciously (and unconsciously, if you can).
Then use your gut for quick and 50/50 decisions without clear outcome: Many decisions aren't that important for in-depth analysis. Or need to be taken really quick. Or you simply can't know the outcome and don't have all the information before. For those, use your gut. You trained it, so use it.

For everything else I'd argue for thinking about it. Creating hypotheses and testing them.

When it comes to making important strategic decisions, it's probably not right to just rely on intuition.
But in everyday life it is necessary to listen to it! Especially when it concerns your comfort zone.

Some will say yes, some will say no.

Personally, I think that I should follow my gut, because doing something I like gives me the motivation to go on.

In a way, "following your gut" is actually just "listen to your own logic", it's important not to make long lasting decisions quickly or without research. What I tend to think is "is there a way I can test this out?". If its a feature, A/B test it, if its employing someone, ask them if they will be open to a probation period to make sure its a good fit. Try not to make irreversible decisions, then it becomes less about "gut" feelings as the consequences are tempered.

Following your first impulse is like submitting a first draft as a final work; maybe it’s okay, but it almost definitely isn’t.

If you’re under a time crunch, take five minutes to validate that first impulse with some trusted friends. If you don’t have five minutes, don’t make the decision.

If you are in an unfamiliar situation, trying to solve a complex problem, or need to make an important decision, do a little research or seek advice before letting your intuition take over. Your intuition will work better for you if you use it with practical knowledge, reasonable expectations, and an understanding your options.

I think we need to have a mix of gut & inference from data as an entrepreneur. We definitely need to be optimistic to build something, and gut very much helps in this case.

But analyzing from data grounds us in reality and ensures if the path we're pursuing is viable

Follow your gut, though, backed by data :)

It depends.

I think you need to follow your gut because your mind can trick you due to fear, ego, and all the other human emotions. When you feel the butterflies in the gut then you know you are on to something

Love this question, Mark! Following your gut and learning to trust it is a great idea.

Yes, back it up with validation and data. Without listening to your gut, you'll waste so much time not only on your business and professional development but also on your life.

I've spent so much of my life in analysis paralysis, carefully plotting my next moves only for some unforeseen event to blow them up. When I trust my gut, things also don't go according to plan, but at least the choice came from a place of confidence in myself and my future.

Trusting my gut has brought me nothing but more confidence in myself. To me, that makes it worth it in itself.

Follow your gut.

Following data over your own intuition is a terrible idea. You might make "smart" decisions but you'll be leaving yourself behind. You'll likely soon dislike what you do. It'll feel less and less like your product.

You know what's best for you. Data does not.

yes

Yes always, but use data to back up your rationale :-)

Always this raw intensity if our powerhouse but I think this must be followed by self evaluation and consultation with your most trusted contacts or those who work with you and just do it(if in doubt). To not act is the biggest step back in my opinion.

A reverse check I would use is to look back is what do you have to lose. The more you could lose cautious you should be. Having said that gut feeling is our compass for life.

Always ask yourself:

• What is the worst outcome I can get?
• Is the decision reversible?

If you don't risk much - the worst possible outcome is not so bad - and the decision is reversible, you can make a quick decision and follow your heart.

If the decision is not reversible and can have a severe impact, you should still follow your heart but do proper research first.

Hello everyone, I believe going with your guts is the right way to go.

I'm a pro poker player who recently became a founder... Following your gut is important when strategizing, to hone this skill you want to understand WHY your gut is telling you to do something.

When making any kind of decision the key is to see whether or not it will lead to extra profit. If you understand why you're being pulled towards making some decision, you can better estimate the potential profit.

Depends on what things.

I would say yes and no. I always worry I forgot my laptop, charger, etc in travel laptop bag, And I look inside of it and actually forgot nothing. But at the same time its still good to check.

No -- be data-driven.

I have lost $1.5K recently in crypto following my gut. But now I think I have trained myself for the next time.

Either build your capacity or refrain from doing it.

I have habit of validating if my gut is telling the correct thing or not. Suppose my gut tells me I should quit my job to start the startup. Before taking a plunge, I spent a lot of time in validating all my hypothesis. I still keep validating them.

It has become more crucial since I have become a husband and a father. Before that I did leave a corporate job based on my gut feeling and it turned out to be a great decision. We can always tell it if it was a good idea in retrospect. You can never be sure today.

Understanding that difference is the key to "follow your gut".

You'd be surprised to see that many successful founders work based off their own gut than anything else. It is just not discussed in public forums a lot.

In my experience, I always thought that I should always follow my gut until I got mentored because I got better results. But I don’t know if being mentored is for everyone.

'Following your gut' is still risky without enough research and data points.

If you are in 20s, it may be okay as you will have more time to learn from mistakes and play with various strategies. But if you are in 30s, some good research will help.

I'd say: yes, kinda. But some decisions should also be backend by some kind of metrics.

When you have data, follow what the data says. But when you're building a startup, there is often no data at all. Or at least not a large enough sample size for that data to actually mean anything.

So yes, following your gut is the next best thing. In fact, I'd say the number one quality a founder must have is a good instinct for customers, markets, trends, and problems.

Analyzing data is easy — being instinctively more often right than wrong is hard (mostly because there is no way to verify which it is until much after the fact).

If you have some work experience and have tried to launch a few products in the past, I would say follow your intuition/gut. Somehow it already knows what you want and need. :)

In my experience, usually it's coming from somewhere - some knowledge or experience you picked up along the way.

So I say trust your gut with the occasional check-ins from other guts :).