The older I get, the less I believe in coincidence… and the more I believe in pattern recognition. For shizzle…
For years I’ve struggled to explain why I trust my gut so much. I’d find myself sitting in workshops, presentations or client meetings and within minutes I’d know something wasn’t quite right. Sometimes it was a positioning. Sometimes it was a campaign. Sometimes it was a founder. Sometimes it was an opportunity. I couldn’t always explain why I felt that way, but more often than not, time proved it right.
// Then I heard Mel Robbins describe intuition as pattern recognition.
And fuck me… Everything clicked.
Gut feel isn’t magic. It’s memory.
// Not conscious memory. Pattern memory.
Every conversation you’ve had. Every mistake you’ve made. Every brand you’ve studied. Every person you’ve met. Every airport. Every supermarket. Every campaign. Every article. Every failure. Every success.
// Your brain is constantly collecting dots.
Intuition is simply what happens when it connects them faster than your conscious mind can explain them. That’s why great strategists often arrive at an answer before they’ve written the presentation. PS: Totes not claiming I’m a great strategist. I mean, I’m good… but great? TBD
I’ve always said one of my strengths is connecting dots...
// The funny thing is… I never really knew how.
I’d just look at a business and almost instinctively know where the tension was. I’d hear a founder talk for ten minutes and start questioning their positioning. I’d walk through a supermarket and immediately notice why one product felt more distinctive than another. I’d watch a TV commercial and know why it would probably fail.
I wasn’t guessing. I was recognising.
Strategy is decades of pattern recognition disguised as instinct.
People often think strategy is about frameworks. Or workshops. Or Post-it notes.
// It’s not.
Those things help organise thinking. They don’t create it. The real work happened years earlier e.g. Reading books. Observing people. Listening to conversations. Travelling. Watching culture shift. Failing. Winning.
Working across different industries. Seeing the same human behaviours play out in completely different categories.
Eventually you stop seeing brands. You start seeing patterns.
That’s why a strategist can walk into a room, hear the brief, and within minutes have a proposition, a positioning or an idea. It looks like intuition. It isn’t…
It’s twenty years of inputs being processed in real time.
Kinda like the same way a firefighter can walk into a building and instantly know something feels wrong. The same way a surgeon notices something others don’t. The same way an experienced parent knows when their child isn’t themselves.
They’re not psychic. They’re recognising patterns.
Never let someone make you apologise for your gut*
*Read this again.
That doesn’t mean your intuition is always right. It doesn’t mean you skip research. It sure as hell doesn’t mean you ignore evidence/data.
// Research validates. Data confirms. Testing refines.
But intuition? Intuition points you in the direction worth investigating.
There’s a difference. And it’s not just true in business.
Think about the last time you met someone and something just felt… off.
You couldn’t explain it. You didn’t have evidence. You just fucking knew.
Or the job interview where everyone said the right things, yet you walked away with a knot in your stomach. Or the business opportunity that looked perfect on paper, but never quite sat right.
How many times have you ignored your gut… only to realise six months later it was trying to protect you?
Here’s what I’ve come to believe…
// Your intuition isn’t irrational. It’s actually informed.
It’s built from thousands of tiny observations you’ve forgotten you ever made.
That’s why experience matters. That’s why curiosity matters. That’s why reading widely, travelling, meeting people, working across industries and staying obsessed with human behaviour matters.
You’re not just collecting knowledge. You’re building a better pattern recognition engine. *Mind Blown*
Things I’m trying to remember more often…
// Trust your gut… but validate it.
// Read widely. Every input becomes another pattern.
// Curiosity adds up
// Experience isn’t measured in years. It’s measured in observations.
// The best strategists don’t see more… they connect more.
Maybe that’s what experience really is…
Not knowing all the answers., but just recognising “the pattern” before everyone else does. It’s the reason I trust my gut more than anything, more than ever.
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PS: Clarity is easy to talk about and surprisingly difficult to create. If your team is currently navigating complexity, competing priorities or strategic drift, I’d be happy to have a chat.
💀🖤
Cheers,
DANIEL JACOBS
http://bjornfox.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/denialjacobs/
Melbourne, Australia
THE CREATIVE STRATEGIST 