Trust the Negative Gut, Not the Positive Gut
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- —
An asymmetric decision rule Nat Eliason applies to instinct. He treats the older, non-rational part of the brain as a reliable detector of bad situations and an unreliable detector of good ones. A quiet signal saying don't work with this person, don't trust this deal, will be wrong some of the time but right often enough to act on — and reasoning your way past it usually just manufactures justifications for the money or the connections. Euphoria gets the opposite treatment: excitement about an opportunity is a prompt to pause and interrogate what future you are imagining and whether it is an illusion, because upside emotion suppresses risk assessment and drives short-term thinking. He extends the same asymmetry to groups: unanimous agreement on an executive team is a warning sign rather than confirmation.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
How to run it
- 1
Notice which direction the gut signal points
Before evaluating the opportunity, classify your instinct: is this a low-level 'no' about a person or deal, or a surge of excitement about an outcome? The two get opposite treatment.
- 2
Treat a negative signal as a veto
When the instinct says don't work with this person or don't trust this, act on it. It will be wrong sometimes, but it is right often enough that overriding it is a losing policy.
Pro tip You do not need to articulate why. Demanding a reason is how the veto gets overturned.
Watch out Reasoning your way out of a bad-vibe signal typically surfaces the money or the introductions as counter-arguments — those are precisely the lures.
- 3
Expect the confirmation to arrive late
Ignored negative signals usually look fine at first. Nat's pattern is that one, two or three months later you realise the instinct was right and you should have listened.
Watch out An uneventful first month is not evidence the instinct was wrong.
- 4
Interrogate euphoria instead of acting on it
When an opportunity makes you elated, pause and ask why you are so euphoric, what you think it will get you, and what imagined future might be an illusion. Excitement is a prompt for scrutiny, not a green light.
Pro tip Write down the specific future you are picturing, then test whether it depends on things outside your control.
Watch out Getting too excited suppresses risk assessment and pushes you into short-term thinking.
- 5
Apply the unanimity rule to teams
If everyone on an executive team agrees with a decision, do not take it — unanimity means the risks and downsides have not been fully explored. Cancel the meeting and disperse.
- 6
Send people away to build the counter-case
Give everyone a day or two to think about what is being missed, then reconvene and have people present the devil's-advocate argument before the decision is made.
Pro tip Assign the counter-case as an obligation, not an invitation, so dissent does not depend on courage.
Watch out If nobody can construct a compelling argument against the decision, you are probably inside a story with hidden risks you have not thought through.
In the wild
Nat's canonical case: you are considering working with someone, and a small feeling registers that you shouldn't — you shouldn't trust this person, you shouldn't take this on. Nothing in the visible facts supports it. Because the signal is inarticulate, the rational brain overrides it, usually citing the size of the cheque or the network the person can open. The arrangement often starts well. One to three months in, the original instinct is vindicated, and the lesson each time is that the signal was worth more than the reasoning stacked against it.
→ A recurring pattern in which the ignored instinct proves correct within a quarter, at the cost of the relationship and the time spent.
A team version Nat cites approvingly: a leadership team reaches a decision everyone agrees with and prepares to move. Under this rule, that agreement is the stop signal. The meeting is cancelled, everyone goes away for a day or two specifically to work out what is being missed, and the group reconvenes with each person presenting the devil's-advocate case. If no compelling argument against can be produced, the conclusion is not that the decision is safe — it is that the team is caught inside a story whose risks have not been examined.
→ Downside exploration is forced structurally rather than depending on someone being willing to dissent in the room.
Common mistakes
Reasoning your way past a bad feeling
The rational brain is very good at generating justifications — the money, the connections, the timing — and those justifications are usually assembled after the decision to proceed has already been made emotionally.
Treating excitement as confirmation
Euphoria about an opportunity is exactly the state in which risks go unexamined and short-term thinking takes over, so it warrants more scrutiny than a neutral option, not less.
Reading team consensus as validation
Unanimous agreement usually means the downside case was never built, not that it does not exist.
From the transcript
“that part of our brain is really really good at detecting bad vibes”
“if everybody on an executive team agrees with a decision you shouldn't do it because it means that you haven't fully explored the risks or…”
“you need to like cancel the meeting everybody go off for a day or two think about what you're missing there and then come back…”
From the episode
Chasing Success vs True Fulfilment - Nat Eliason
Nat Eliason