The idea that you should “just trust your gut” – that is, make many life decisions solely based on intuition (as opposed to based on reflection) – is obviously very popular. But I think that there are pretty much only four types of situations where we’re best off relying on intuition alone: when a decision is Fast, Irrelevant, Repetitious, or Evolutionary (FIRE for short).

Case 1: Fast decisions
There is no choice but to make the decision quickly, so thinking it through is infeasible. In this case, intuition is your only option because it’s the only method of deciding that’s fast enough.

Examples:
– the car barreling towards you in the other lane has just swerved into your lane
– you’re in a job interview and are asked whether you’d still be interested in this job if it pays less than your prior job
– the train you’re thinking of taking is about to depart, and there is no other train for five hours

Case 2: Irrelevant decisions
The decision is of low importance, so minimizing time, effort, and indecisiveness is more important than optimizing for the best outcome. In this case, intuition is your best option because it’s the least costly.

Examples:
– you are trying to decide whether to put carrots on your salad
– you are trying to decide what TV show to watch tonight
– you are trying to decide which $5 product to buy among several similar options

Case 3: Repetitious decisions
You have lots of experience making decisions in that realm AND received reliable information on how the decisions turned out. In this case, intuition is trustworthy because it’s been honed through practice with feedback.

Examples:
– a heart surgeon who is conducting her 500th heart surgery (but not a heart surgeon who is conducting her 2nd heart surgery)
– a digital marketer writing email newsletter headlines who has been tracking the performance of each such email for five years (but not one who doesn’t track the performance of the emails)
– a chess player making a decision about which move to make after playing chess daily for years (but not a chess player playing backgammon)

Case 4: Evolutionary decisions

It’s the sort of survival-relevant decision that our ancestors had to make regularly 20 thousand to 200 thousand years ago, and hence we should expect that evolution built us to have reasonable instincts in this domain. In this case, our intuitions are quite reliable: our genes endow us with these intuitions precisely because they helped earlier copies of our genes survive.

Example:
– should you eat that foul-smelling old food?
– is that person who has been staring at you likely to have malicious intent?
– should you walk on that injured knee that’s causing searing pain?

So, to recap, I think pure intuition is the right solution pretty much only for FIRE decisions, that is, those that are:

(1) Fast (because you don’t have time for anything else)

(2) Irrelevant (because the costs of other approaches are too high)

(3) Repetitious (because with lots of practice, when we’re receiving reliable feedback, our intuition becomes well-honed)

(4) Evolutionary (because certain types of decision-related instincts are built into our biology)

In other words, if you weren’t born with the ability to make the decision intuitively (non-evolutionary decisions), you didn’t learn to make that kind of decision intuitively (non-repetitious decisions), the stakes are high enough that it’s worth using the best approach (non-irrelevant decisions) and you have time to use another approach (non-fast decisions) then you should indeed use another approach.

So if a decision is not FIRE, you’re probably best off thinking the decision through carefully, discussing the decision with others, writing out pros and cons, etc. Intuition still plays a very important role in those cases, but it plays a supporting role (e.g., to help you figure out things like what you value, to help you estimate likelihoods, to help you synthesize lots of information into an overall judgment, etc.) rather than playing the only role.

I’ll emphasize since it is so important: intuition almost always plays a critical role in decision-making. The question here is just whether you’re merely (1) “going with your gut” (for the whole decision), or whether you are (2) feeding your intuitions (which might include intuitions about what you value, what you predict is true, what you feel, etc.) into a broader decision-making process.

I think that using just your intuition on important non-FIRE decisions tends to produce bad life outcomes.

So don’t just go with your gut. Go with your gut when your decision is FIRE, and otherwise, let your gut be a really useful tool, rather than letting it be in charge of the whole process.

Acknowledgments
Thanks to Sam Rosen for his help improving this framework. 

This essay was first written on April 7, 2019, and was first released on this site on August 30, 2021.

Do you struggle to remember people’s names after you meet them? Do you have a penchant for weird tricks? If you answered “yes” to those questions, you’re a great candidate to use my three-part weird trick to remember people’s names. I call it the “Tocayo Technique.”

I find it very effective, though unfortunately, I still don’t have a habit of using it as often as I should.

Step 1: Intention – before the person tells you their name, set an intention of actually remembering it. It’s too easy to not really be listening when a person says their name or to not even TRY to remember it.

Step 2: Repetition – say the person’s name back immediately when you learn it (e.g., “Nice to meet you, Isadore”). This is, of course, useful for memory, but it can also help you figure out if you misheard their name. You can also repeat their name in your head if there is no opportunity to say it aloud.

Step 3: Visualize

Branch 1: If you are aware of any other person with that same name (e.g., a friend or acquaintance, or celebrity), then:

Commonality: take a few seconds to notice anything this person has in common with the person you think of who has the same name (e.g., maybe they share the same haircut, or both are very tall, or both work in software), and then…

Confrontation: imagine that same-name person (i.e., the person’s Tocayo) interacting with or confronting the person you just met.

(If you are one of the people who has no mental imagery, then, unfortunately, this last part may not work for you.)

Ideally, this imagined interaction should involve something specific or relevant to the person who shares this new acquaintance’s name, and it should be as freaky and weird as possible. Weirdness makes the visualization more memorable.

Branch 2: If you can’t think of anyone who shares that person’s name:

Association: Think of the words that first come to mind that sound the most like the component sounds in the person’s name, and visualize (for a few seconds) some kind of narrative involving both this person and all those words.

Just be careful if the sounds aren’t exact fits, in which case you should try to remember what those sound differences are. Also, be aware that words can switch in your memory for their close synonyms. I once referred to someone named Sofas as “couch-us”! Fortunately, it wasn’t to their face.

So to summarize the Tocayo technique:

(1) Set an INTENTION to remember the person’s name.

(2) REPEAT the person’s name.

(3) If you can think of anyone with that name, notice any COMMONALITY between the two of them, then imagine them having a weird CONFRONTATION. Otherwise, ASSOCIATE each sound in the name with a word that sounds almost identical, and craft a narrative out of these words that involve the person.

Example 1: You are about to meet someone. You (1) set the intention of remembering their name. It turns out it is Tom. You (2) repeat the name by saying, “nice to meet you, Tom.” You think of Tom Cruise (since he is the first person who comes to mind that shares that name). You look for any similarities and notice that this Tom and Tom Cruise have similar hair.

Next, you imagine a confrontation between them and try to make it weird. In this case, you imagine Tom Cruise dropping down from the ceiling on a cable (Mission Impossible-style) and then mean-spiritedly licking his finger and sticking it into the ear of the Tom you just met. What is Tom Cruise’s problem? Hard to say. But the fact that he descended from the ceiling Mission Impossible-style will make it easy to remember it was Tom Cruise, and therefore, that this person is Tom.

Example 2: You meet someone named Natalie, setting the intention to remember her name and repeating it quickly in your head. You think of your friend Natalie (who’s a gymnast) and notice that they both have thinner than average lips. Then you imagine these two Natalie’s competing for who can do more double backflips in a row without making a mistake. It turns out this new Natalie can’t do any.

Example 3: You meet a new person, and when they tell you their name, it sounds like “su-kee.” You intend to remember their name, and say, “Nice to meet you, su-kee…did I say your name right?” When they confirm the pronunciation, you momentarily visualize that person picking up a magic key that they can point at any person to instantly initiate a lawsuit—a sue key.

Example 4: You are being introduced, and you decide you want to remember the person’s name, which sounds just like “ra-meer.” You repeat it quickly in your head, then you visualize Ra, the ancient Egyptian sun god, and watch in your mind’s eye as Ra morphs into a meerkat. A Ra-meer(kat).

I’m certainly not going to say this technique is EASY to do, but I think that after a little practice, you can likely learn to do it pretty reliably in 5-15 seconds or so. It also fails pretty gracefully. Even if you only achieve some of the steps, that’s still an improvement memory-wise over doing none of them. Just don’t try to do it right while someone is asking you a question!

I suspect that this technique works well for quite a few reasons, all of which relate to how (I think) memory works:

(1) Our visual memories are usually stronger than our auditory memories, so we want to get our visual system involved in the memorizing process. This is why the technique involves visualizations.

(2) Repetition helps memory, and carrying out the technique forces you to repeat the person’s name in multiple ways.

(3) Strangeness enhances memory, so by doing a strange visualization, you increase the chance that you remember it.

(4) Active generation of content tends to improve memory compared to passive processing, and the technique gets you to generate content rather than just listening to the person’s name.

(5) Paying attention increases memory, and when we are doing the technique, we’re forced to have focused attention at the moment when we hear a name.