Trust your instincts: have shorter meetings

Most people think of a "snap judgement" as a bad thing, but according to researchers quick decisions might be best.

From the article...
Study participants were asked to identify an oddly rotated symbol on a screen of more than 650 identical symbols. Those who made quick, instinctive decisions did better at correctly identifying the symbol than those who gave a longer, more thought out answer.

"This finding seems counter-intuitive," said Li Zhaoping of the University College London, one of the authors of the study published online in the journal Current Biology. "You would expect people to make more accurate decisions when given the time to look properly. Instead they performed better when given almost no time to think."

When given time to engage the higher-level processes of the conscious mind, participants guessed wrong because their conscious brain overrode the decision of the lower-level subconscious.

We all "know" what to do -- it's just that few of us trust ourselves to just DO it without peer confirmation that we won't be "wrong" or ridiculed for our actions. According to this study, your gut-instinct is going to be right most of the time anyway so why not skip the decision-stalling meetings and just move forward?

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