Break the Wheel: Question Best Practices, Hone Your Intuition, and Do Your Best Work
by Jay Acunzo
But here’s the problem: Just because something is the most common approach doesn’t mean it’s the best approach for us. Informing our decisions based purely on conventional wisdom only biases our thinking toward whatever the most people are saying or doing. That type of thinking doesn’t guarantee we’ll create exceptional work—not without knowing how or if it applies to us. So often in the business world, we overlook that strong signal. We seek final success or the big, topline number to justify our actions. When that doesn’t come, we fall back on the conventional approach. He understands the signal inherent in emotional customer reactions. They’re a sign you should keep going.
But here’s the problem: Just because something is the most common approach doesn’t mean it’s the best approach for us. Informing our decisions based purely on conventional wisdom only biases our thinking toward whatever the most people are saying or doing. That type of thinking doesn’t guarantee we’ll create exceptional work—not without knowing how or if it applies to us.
So often in the business world, we overlook that strong signal. We seek final success or the big, topline number to justify our actions. When that doesn’t come, we fall back on the conventional approach. He understands the signal inherent in emotional customer reactions. They’re a sign you should keep going.
His research suggests that intuition is our ability to identify the pathway toward a conclusion, not the conclusion itself. In other words, we’re able to quickly and intuitively identify which information is useful and which is irrelevant—a profoundly useful skill in the era of Advice Overload.
However, to consider or contemplate the world around us (intuition), we don’t actually need the right answer. Instead, we need the right questions. Constant curiosity drives us forward in better ways than merely following a list of instructions handed to us.
Attempting to learn from others only goes so far. It’s the same as simply relying on conventional thinking. All of this merely provides us with possibilities, not answers, and then it’s up to us to vet those possibilities to ensure they’ll work for us.
"But here’s the problem: Just because something is the most common approach doesn’t mean it’s the best approach for us. Informing our decisions based purely on conventional wisdom only biases our thinking toward whatever the most people are saying or doing. That type of thinking doesn’t guarantee we’ll create exceptional work—not without knowing how or if it applies to us."
"So often in the business world, we overlook that strong signal. We seek final success or the big, topline number to justify our actions. When that doesn’t come, we fall back on the conventional approach. He understands the signal inherent in emotional customer reactions. They’re a sign you should keep going."
"His research suggests that intuition is our ability to identify the pathway toward a conclusion, not the conclusion itself. In other words, we’re able to quickly and intuitively identify which information is useful and which is irrelevant—a profoundly useful skill in the era of Advice Overload."
"However, to consider or contemplate the world around us (intuition), we don’t actually need the right answer. Instead, we need the right questions. Constant curiosity drives us forward in better ways than merely following a list of instructions handed to us."
"Attempting to learn from others only goes so far. It’s the same as simply relying on conventional thinking. All of this merely provides us with possibilities, not answers, and then it’s up to us to vet those possibilities to ensure they’ll work for us."
"The best a best practice can bring you are possibilities, but then you have to vet those possibilities using that body of knowledge you have on the world around you. There are no final answers—only lifelong learning."
"“Every context is slightly different,” he told me. “History rhymes; it doesn’t repeat. So you have to be able to walk into a new context, put your experience aside for a bit, and understand what’s different.”"
- →So ask yourself, what is your aspirational anchor? Aspirational anchors combine two powerful things in our work: our intent for the future, and some kind of hunger we have today to rise above the status quo.
- →There’s this gap that exists in our careers between the work we aspire to do and the work we’re actually doing; between the results we want to see and the results we’re actually seeing.
- →Whenever a company differentiates itself from the competition or sparks a movement in the market, I’ve stopped believing that some genius idea or massive budget led to their success.
- →When you and I act like investigators, we start to pay more attention to our audience than to the industry, and when that happens, the audience tends to pay more attention to us.
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