How to trust your gut

When I began making important life decisions and people first started telling me to trust my gut I now wonder if that's because they didn't know what else to say. These were the hardest, most complex decisions: whether or not to leave a relationship, which college to attend, what vocation to enter. In the absence of concrete data, the gut was a kind of oracle that spoke in riddle, if it spoke at all.

And yes, I used my gut to make hiring choices. In seconds I'd decide if an applicant was the kind of person I could work with. I made that choice based on a complex interplay of thoughts and feelings I can't explain and probably wouldn't recommend. That's because frankly, I don't know if I can trust my gut.

As I learned more about the gut-brain relationship and mental health, I learned that gut problems can stem from cognitive issues—and vice versa, problems that originate in our heads can lead to issues with our guts. It's bidirectional. And because hundreds of millions of neural transmitters exist in our guts, we must be designed to receive information that way.

A new article offers a questionnaire the author Arthur C. Brooks uses to help advise graduate students entering the workforce. It breaks the "trust your gut" calculation into three categories: excitement (your perceived happiness), fear (the amount of danger vs. perceived dread), and "deadness" (the level of fulfillment or challenge).

Each question should be answered as a value from zero to four, where 0 = “completely disagree” and 4 = “completely agree.”

Excitement

1. This job sounds fun and interesting to me.

2. If I take the job, next year I anticipate being happier than I am today.

3. I think I will look forward to going to work most days.

Add your scores across these questions. To move forward on the opportunity, the target range to look for is 9–12.

Fear

1. There is a chance that I might not succeed in this job.

2. Success is going to take hard work, and maybe some good luck as well.

3. If I do succeed, I will be very proud of the accomplishment.

The target range for these questions is 5–8.

Deadness

1. The idea of this job does not inspire me.

2. I have trouble focusing on this job’s day-to-day tasks.

3. I might hate it, but this job is only temporary.

The target is zero, or as close to zero as possible.

Like many in the workforce, my record for decision making is mixed: some good, some bad. Deciding whether to stay in a role or leave, to pass on an offer, to switch industries—these are all complex, hard decisions.

This simple framework helped me reflect on which decisions led to my best (or worst) job moves, and I hope it will help you too.