Part IIIPersonal Decisions: Personal Safety, Personal Finance, and Health Choices

Outside of financial markets or other quantitative situations, intuition can be immensely useful. This is most true in situations with evolutionary precedent that your intuition was designed for. Take, for instance, your personal life. Do you love your spouse? Your intuition knows for sure. Ruminating over this won’t get you anywhere, and may only confuse you. Analytically, it doesn’t mean you should leave him or her—after all, there are the children, the beach house, the 401(k) plan to consider—but in terms of basic love, your intuition knows the truth.

Physical danger is the classic example of where you have to listen to your instincts. Take the risk of avalanches. ...

Get Snap Judgment: When to Trust Your Instincts, When to Ignore Them, and How to Avoid Making Big Mistakes with Your Money now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.