How do we make better decisions, business predictions, bets about the future, so we end up more satisfied with our choices?
It turns out, not through more sophisticated thinking models.
That’s rarely what works in a complex, unpredictable world.
That’s how you get financial crises no one saw coming, or pandemics no one could forecast the path of.
It’s through reps.
Mark Egan shares in the article in the BIT new newsletter:
“When doctors were 80% sure a patient had pneumonia, they were right only 20% of the time. But when weather forecasters predicted an 80% chance of rain, it really did rain 80% of the time.”
The difference?
Weather forecasters get a lot more prediction reps.
They practice constantly, every day, seeing outcomes and adjusting their gut feeling accordingly.
Doctors, on the other hand, make far fewer “predictions” they can quickly test and calibrate against reality.
So their gut stays untrained.
One other study found something similar when comparing big vs. small life decisions.
People make better choices about where to eat than which house to buy. Even though one is considerably more important.
It’s not that restaurants are simpler, it’s that we’ve had hundreds more chances to practice deciding what we enjoy.
We don’t really know what we’ll like until we try it.
And if we don’t try often enough, we don’t develop that “gut feeling” muscle that gets better with each round.
So whether you’re leading a team, running a business, or trying to improve your speaking, selling, or decision-making - nothing beats reps + reflection.
Get more cycles. Test more predictions. Calibrate your gut feeling.
That’s how intuition sharpens.
That’s how judgment becomes less biased. Not through another training. Reps.
So, how many reps did you get in this week on the things that matter?
