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March 12th, 2026
​A newsletter by Anne-Laure Le Cunff​

🫀 The Gut Decision Matrix

We often talk about “trusting our gut.” But the gut feelings people refer to can actually stem from two very different sources: instinct and intuition. Because they feel so similar (fast, automatic, sometimes emotional) we tend to treat them the same, which can lead to poor decision-making in many situations.

Instinct is evolutionary and biological, designed for survival. Intuition is learned pattern recognition, built through experience. When we confuse them, we may trust reactions that deserve skepticism or ignore signals that deserve attention.

A helpful way to improve judgment is not to suppress these automatic responses but to identify which one we are experiencing so we can act accordingly.

Two roads to action

Instinct refers to inborn behavioral responses shaped by evolution. These responses are fast and automatic because they originate in brain systems such as the amygdala and brainstem, which process threat and survival signals.

When you jump back from something that looks dangerous or feel a sudden jolt of fear, your brain is prioritizing speed over accuracy. From an evolutionary perspective, reacting quickly to possible danger increased the chances of survival.

Intuition, by contrast, emerges from experience-based pattern recognition. Research on expert decision-making shows that people who have spent years in a domain develop the ability to detect subtle signals that others miss.

Psychologist Gary Klein documented this in studies of firefighters and emergency responders: experienced professionals often sensed that something was wrong before they could explain why. Their intuition was not mysterious – it was the brain rapidly matching current cues to patterns learned over time.

A framework for automatic responses

A simple framework can help you interpret these signals before acting on them. Next time you experience an automatic response such as fear, attraction, suspicion, or confidence, take a moment to pause briefly and ask yourself the following two questions:

1. Is this instinct or intuition?
​2. Are you in immediate danger or is this a more complex situation?

Then, use this simple Gut Decision Matrix to decide how much to trust the automatic response:

(a) If your response is instinct in immediate danger, it usually makes sense to act right away. These survival mechanisms evolved specifically to deal with situations where hesitation could be costly.

(b) However, instincts can misfire in modern contexts. When a situation is more complex, it’s often better to slow down and question the instinctive response before acting on it.

(c) If you have domain-specific expertise or experience in similar fast-moving situations, a strong intuition may be worth acting on quickly. In these moments you may not have time for deliberate analysis, so it can be reasonable to rely on your brain’s automatic pattern recognition, which can detect important signals faster than conscious reasoning.

(d) Finally, in slower-developing or more complex situations, it’s best to treat intuitions as hypotheses and examine them through additional thinking, evidence, or testing before committing to a decision.

Instinct and intuition both operate below conscious awareness, which is why they’re often lumped together as “gut feelings”, but they arise from different mechanisms and serve different purposes.

Instinct protects us from immediate threats. Intuition helps us recognize patterns we learned through experience. When we know how to distinguish between the two, our automatic responses become more useful.

So instead of asking whether to trust your gut, a better question is: what kind of gut feeling is this? Once you know that, deciding what to do next becomes much easier.

🔬 Tiny Experiment of the Week

Want to start applying the Gut Decision Matrix? This week’s tiny experiment invites you put this framework into practice:

This will help you differentiate instinct from intuition so you can make better decisions. Want to dig deeper? Get your copy of the book​.

👀 Into the Mind of...

NIR EYAL

Each week I ask a curious mind about their habits, routines, and rituals. This week we learn from Nir Eyal, whose new book Beyond Belief explores how the assumptions we carry shape our lives.

1. One daily practice you can’t do without? On Sunday evenings, I sit down and timebox the entire week ahead. I review each day, block by block, and ensure the plan aligns with the life I’m actually trying to live. Once the week is laid out, each morning becomes simple: I follow the plan I’ve already committed to.

2. One mindset shift that transformed your work? For a long time, I focused on rearranging the world around me through better tools, better systems, better routines. Eventually, I realized that external changes only get you so far if your beliefs stay the same. This shift changed my work more than any productivity method ever has.

3. One anchor ritual to reconnect with yourself? I have a small prayer ritual I use whenever I need to reconnect with myself. I pause for a few seconds and turn my attention inward. During that moment, I don’t ask for circumstances to change. I focus instead on the qualities that help me meet those circumstances. The ritual is short, but I always find that it helps remind me what’s important.

Read Beyond Belief

🛠️ Brain Picks

• Coule scans your inbox and surfaces the potential tasks hiding in plain sight – no forwarding, no manual triage. It turns scattered asks into clear, intentional work, so your attention stays focused on what matters. Sign up for a free account and bring calm back to your workflow.​
• Meco is the newsletter aggregator built for reading. Break free from inbox overwhelm and wake up to a personalized news briefing crafted from your newsletters, using smart filters to always surface the most relevant content at the right time.
​• The MindValley Book Club Awards celebrate the most impactful books each year. Vote for your favorite book and automatically enter to win over $2,000 in prizes. (note: Tiny Experiments is one of the nominated books!)

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🗓️ Community Events

If you enjoy the newsletter, you’ll love our community of curious minds conducting tiny experiments within a safe space and learning together. Here is an overview of upcoming events (full calendar):

• Work with your natural rhythms. Join Gosia Fricze on Monday for a creative hour session to explore how your energy naturally ebbs and flows, what happens when you ignore it, and how to design your days in alignment with your rhythms.​
• Use postcards as a reflection tool. Join this workshop with Suzanne Lees where you will use a blank postcard to create a weekly reflection on something that brings joy or meaning to your life, which you will then share with friends and family.
​• Make progress on your project. Join Kathryn Ruge for a ‘body doubling’ coworking session to work on personal or work-related projects that you want to make progress on, covering all timezones.
• Improve your knowledge management system. Join the next PKM Collective meeting where we learn from one another through sharing how our systems work in the real world and give new PKM users a leg up.
​• Host your own workshop (anytime!). Do you have an idea for a short presentation and Q&A or a workshop you’d like to trial? Test your first iteration in the Ness Labs community and get feedback. We promote all sessions here in the newsletter.

All of these and future events are included in the price of the membership (only $49 for one year), as well as access to our courses, workshop library, and a dedicated space to track your tiny experiments.

Until next week, take care!
Anne-Laure.