What looks like instinct is usually accumulated reps.

Want to get notified about new posts? Join the mailing list and follow on X/Twitter.

Intuition is not magic. Intuition is compressed experience.

People love the idea of having “good instincts,” but most instincts do not appear out of nowhere. They are usually built from examples, reps, mistakes, corrections, and patterns encountered so many times that your subconscious can start handling the recognition automatically.

This is why shortcuts fail. You cannot skip the grunt work and still expect the elegant insight. You cannot outsource all the low-level pattern exposure and still expect your brain to synthesize high-level structure. If every important fact has to be looked up, it is not available for creative thinking. It is outside the workspace where connections get made.

The expert sees the move quickly because the expert has paid for that speed in advance.

Do enough reps and the patterns compress. Compress enough patterns and people start calling it intuition. Spend enough time with that intuition and you may forget how much work it took to build, or that you even had to build it at all – it may become so hard-wired that it feels almost innate.

Want to get notified about new posts? Join the mailing list and follow on X/Twitter.