April 10, 2026- Let your mind and your gut work things out together

Not everything that makes sense works, and not everything that works makes sense.

~Rory Sutherland

We love to look at our results and backtrack. From the results, we try to determine the efficacy of our process. We claim to be data driven, and that is a very responsible thing to be.

What if we got lucky? What if our results were based on the actions of others, actions that were entirely outside our control? What if we were going through some emotional waves that caused us to be less effective than we might otherwise be?

It is very difficult to create control groups when it comes to human experiments. Our behaviors are too individual, too nuanced. Our data are generally faulty. There are too many variables in our lives to control for them all.

What does this mean for us? Feelings matter. We cannot rely on logic alone in our decision-making process. Our gut tells us as much or more than our heads. Our instincts will often lead us in the right direction and they shouldn’t be ignored. Logic can’t tell us what the best version of us would do, only our gut can.

Logic and instinct do not have to be at war with one another. They are two different perspectives in the same conversation. They both have something meaningful to add to the discussion.

Not everything that works makes sense, because we are just not that smart. If we were, we wouldn’t make so many mistakes. Let your mind and your gut work things out together.