Improving your intuition
I could loose anything. I could loose car keys, my wallet, even my BlackBerry but if I ever had lost my intuition I’d be doomed like instantly. I know I would :-) Well, maybe not instantly but I would be gamed over within few months. Luckily intuition is not something you can lose or even be stripped off. It’s something you have or you don’t have. Simple. So, you can’t lose it but can you gather it?
I think you can actually learn it. In fact I think it’s all about learning. If that was true then can you teach yourself a good intuition? I think you can. I train with exactly two friends and I do it since high school. It’s been 10 years mind you and it seems like it is working. I’m making bets, in fact we all are. I’m betting against reality one year ahead and I do it every day, all the time. I’m betting with my friends against or with popular fashion, trending thinking and whatever else captures our attention.
We bet by tweeting and blogging a lot. We bet against society, culture, technology and economics. We do it every day. We then comment, look back compare with the reality. We train our intuition by engaging in conversations, providing reasons behind our thinking and most importantly we browse the notes and look back. Reality verifies our bets and we refine our thinking according NOT to the right or wrong ways of looking at things but according to the ways that actually work!
I personally do even more than just betting. Betting is fun, but it can serve a much deeper purpose. I draw stats out of my bets and cross section the reasoning used at the time and place I placed my bets. I analyse the data, the sources, the thoughts. I basically analyse the way I think. Applying analysis of hard data, facts against bets in the past is wicked. I mean it’s sorcery :-) There’s a lot of surprising information that springs out of the analysis. This supercharges the learning.
The analysis of your own thoughts seems strange but it works and improving your bets is working. It’s my hobby and I can share you with one conclusion, although it’s not only my own experience: we always overestimate next five years and underestimate in perspective of ten years… The other insights are just mine ;-)