In his book about developing intuition, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, Malcolm Gladwell talks about the concept of thin-slicing. Thin-slicing is the way in which humans often instinctively come to make decisions and judgments within seconds. Thin-slicing means that you quite unconsciously make intuitive assessments about something or someone from tiny bits of information, often in what feels like a nano-second. For example, you meet someone for the first time and know that something isn’t quite right, that you don’t quite trust that person. You pick up cues that you don’t even notice on a conscious level and later you may find the tangible evidence that backs up your intuitive flash. Of course, that doesn’t mean that you should always trust your first impressions – whole romantic dramas warn you of that danger! But it does mean that listening to what your instincts tell you may often work better for you than trying to analyze and gather facts.

How can you develop intuition? It’s one of those elusive traits that defies a structured approach but you can become more aware of how finely-tuned your intuition is with these suggestions:

• Start to predict who’s on the end of the phone when it rings and notes how often you’re right. You may find your hit rate starts to improve for no reason other than that you’re focusing on it.

• Intuition is strongly linked with creativity and playfulness. Take a hop and a skip to these chapters to find out more about how to become more creative and playful in your daily life.

• Becoming more present-centered assists you in tuning out conscious thought and tapping into what’s going on in your unconscious – the source of your intuition. See the section ‘Visualising your whole-life goals’ in this chapter for more on living in the present.

• Finally, simply notice what results in you getting overtime when you ‘go with your gut’ compared to the times when you carefully weigh up the evidence. Do you see any trends developing?