{"id":3159,"date":"2026-09-12T07:34:39","date_gmt":"2026-09-12T07:34:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/?p=3159"},"modified":"2026-09-18T18:20:18","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T18:20:18","slug":"do-your-own-experiment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/2026\/09\/do-your-own-experiment\/","title":{"rendered":"Do your own experiment"},"content":{"rendered":"

Only by following your own intuition can you find out what happens if you do.<\/em><\/p>\n

I was just thinking again recently about a particular section from my zine Creativity is for everyone<\/a><\/em>.\u00a0 I thought I would share it so as to be able to link to it here.<\/p>\n

Intuition<\/h2>\n

An important thing in creativity and in life is your relationship with your own intuition.<\/p>\n

Intuitive knowing isn\u2019t the same kind of knowing as knowing a fact<\/em>.\u00a0 Intuitions can be misleading – e.g. if they were based on insufficient information.<\/p>\n

But if you don\u2019t pay any<\/em> attention to those internal pushes and what-ifs, then you\u2019re missing out on a valuable source of wisdom.<\/p>\n

It can be a challenge to learn to trust your intuition – and it can be a challenge to learn when to question it.<\/p>\n

Both are important.\u00a0 Both are skills which mainstream culture doesn\u2019t support very well.<\/p>\n

If you get time with a good counsellor or therapist, or a friend who\u2019s a good listener, part of what they\u2019ll do is help you tune in to your own intuitions about things, and come up with safe ways to test their truth.<\/p>\n

In day to day life, most of us get more encouragement to override<\/em> intuition than to listen<\/em> to it.<\/p>\n

Intuition and risk<\/h2>\n

Trusting intuition is partly a matter of owning the risk of it<\/strong>.\u00a0 It\u2019s an act of faith to trust your own sense of a situation even when others disagree or you don\u2019t have conclusive evidence.<\/p>\n

Of course there are also<\/em> risks in following other people\u2019s ideas and overriding<\/em> the voice of your intuition.<\/p>\n

For one thing, you might have been right!\u00a0 By taking the
\ngenerally-recommended path, you might miss out, in some practical
\nsense.<\/p>\n

But that<\/em> risk applies either<\/em> way:\u00a0 it\u2019s possible you\u2019d miss out on something by taking your<\/em> path, too.<\/p>\n

What you\u2019re also<\/em> risking by overriding intuition is a loss of valuable experience.\u00a0 I mean like this:<\/p>\n

Suppose you thought in the first place that the recommended path was the wrong direction, and then it is<\/em>.\u00a0 In that case, you\u2019ve missed out on doing your own experiment.\u00a0 In a sense, you\u2019ve done someone else\u2019s experiment instead.<\/p>\n

If you follow your own<\/em> intuition and then it all goes wrong, at least you\u2019ll have some new data.\u00a0 You\u2019ll be fine-tuning your intuition for the next adventure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Only by following your own intuition can you find out what happens if you do. (Extract from a zine.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,56,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creativity-logistics","category-intuition","category-long-term-thinking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3159"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3165,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3159\/revisions\/3165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}