What role should instinct play in major decisions?

Originally asked

The American Academy of Achievement, to its honourees, its oral-history interviews

Near-verbatim recurring Academy prompt about judgment under pressure.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

Recorded David Lynch said elsewhere, not written here
Intuition? They say intuition is sort of feeling and intellect going at the same time. It’s a knowingness. As I always say, it’s knowing when something isn’t quite correct and then knowing a way to make it correct. And intuition is, I always say, the number one tool for the artist, I think the number one tool for people in business, perhaps the number one tool for human beings. Knowing how to do something, how to make it feel correct for you.

Meya Bekele, Maharishi University of Management commencement Q&A, TIME, 27 June 2016 source ↗

Others on this question

View all 14 →
Desmond Tutu Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town; chair of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission; Nobel Peace Prize, 1984
But the thing I think that thrust me possibly into the public consciousness, I had just been elected Bishop of Lesotho. I had gone there to become bishop and I went for a retreat. I don’t know — I mean, I don’t know what happened but it just seemed like God was saying to me, “You’ve got to write a letter to the Prime Minister.” And the letter wrote itself.
Recorded Academy of Achievement interview source ↗
Aaron Ciechanover Biologist and physician; Nobel laureate in chemistry for the discovery of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation
I never listened to any noise around me. I listened only to my gut feeling and did what I should have
Recorded Charmaine Lim, Bah Yirou and Damien Chua, Interview, Nanyang Technological University Institute of Advanced Studies, 26 August 2025 source ↗
Pete Rozelle Commissioner of the National Football League, 1960–1989
I think to a certain respect, yes. But also, you try to follow the best guidelines you have, the constitutional by-laws. You have to interpret them from time to time, but in the final analysis, in some instances, it would be a gut reaction. But a gut based on preparation and study. Not just a fly-by-night gut reaction.
Recorded Rancho Santa Fe, California, Academy of Achievement, 15 May 1991 source ↗

More from David Lynch

View profile →
Question When were you happiest? Time & hindsight
Let's see. Well, kind of every day. Like I said, it doesn't go away - this is a sort of a thing you carry around with you. I like isolation. I've been isolated, you know, for six months or seven months now, however long it's been. At the same time, you can be happy inside and still worried about the world. I'm worried about the world as it is right now, so many people suffering and so much negativity.
Recorded Chris Heath, GQ, 21 January 2025 source ↗
Question Which writers or artists most influenced your work? Taste & recommendation
I don’t know if that is true. There have been 110 or more years of cinema, and it’s impossible for any one of us to make a film that can’t be compared to something that has come before. To me Blue Velvet is Blue Velvet and Rear Window is Rear Window. You could say that Sunset Boulevard or Rear Window has conjured an idea for me, but even though I love them or am inspired by them, life is a 24/7 movie. Ideas come out of that all the time. It’s hard to say it’s cinema that conjures ideas. It’s altogether.
Recorded The Talks, published interview, 15 October 2014 source ↗
Question What does the first sixty minutes of your day look like? Daily life
On October 13, 2020, David Lynch rose and did what he had typically been doing each morning when he awoke during a long-term Covid isolation in his house and work studio just off Mulholland Drive in the Hollywood Hills. First, while filming himself for his YouTube channel, he swirled ten numbered balls in a large glass jar, his eyes averted, then picked one. “Today’s number is ten,” he declared.
Recorded Chris Heath, GQ, 21 January 2025 source ↗

More on craft & work

Also answered this

Geoffrey Rush, François Ozon, Cheryl Strayed, A.J. Jacobs, Edmund Hillary, Akio Toyoda

Search the directory for somebody in particular.

Explore further

Report this answer