The Great Instinct Override

Image: When your inner wisdom meets your stubborn side - guess which one usually wins?

This is a true story about a chocolate brown and white striped bikini and a white linen shirt. I was about to leave for a weekend away, holding said yellowed shirt and 'stained with sea-salt' bikini, both calling for a proper soak. I thought I'd let them work their magic before I left, then wash them properly when I got back. My instinct spoke up immediately: "The chocolate will bleed. Don't soak them together."

But then an optimistic voice, Stella, piped up saying "she'll be right, don't worry about it."

My inner wisdom tried again: "I don't think these should be soaked together. Consider soaking them separately."

Stella persisted: "Just throw them in there, I’m sure it will be fine."

One final attempt from my better senses: "Eleni, you know better than this."

I went with Stella and the chocolate bled, obviously. It ran onto the white linen shirt, and I ended up spending three hours on my return, with bleach, salvaging what could have been avoided entirely with the most infuriating question rolling around in my mind: why would I override that wise, learned voice that was ready to help me from the outset?

What’s happening neurologically when we override what we know?

Imagine your brain as a well-meaning committee in a constant meeting. Your prefrontal cortex, the wise, sensible chairwoman of the committee, is the one saying, “Hang on, this might not be a good idea.” She’s in charge of long-term thinking, decision-making, impulse control. All the stuff that keeps your life (and your whites) in order.

But when you’re tired, overwhelmed, or stretched thin — which is most of us, most of the time — that prefrontal cortex loses its grip on the microphone. In swoops your amygdala (aka Drama Queen of the Brain), who’s less interested in wisdom and more into immediate relief. She wants ease and she wants it now. She wants to believe it’ll all be fine even if you soak the damn bikini with the white shirt.

And then there's your dopamine system, whispering, “Ooooh, shortcut! Quick fix! Less effort!” It rewards the path of least resistance, even if that path involves 3 hour of bleaching later.

This is what’s known as decision fatigue: when your brain has made so many calls already that day (What to wear? How to phrase the email? Should I eat this or that?) that it starts defaulting to whatever is easiest. Even if you know better. Even if you've learned that lesson before. Your neural resources are just spent.

So you override what you know because your brain is trying to help — it's just choosing the wrong team captain. It’s certainly not a sign that there is something wrong with you.

When Good Sense Goes to Die

So this story wasn't even high-stakes decision-making, it was bloody laundry! Which makes you wonder: if we can't trust ourselves with a bikini and a shirt, what the hell are we doing with the big stuff?

It appears we’re doing the same thing, every single day, in the mundane moments where we think the stakes are too low to matter. Here is an example. I've spent 18 months since burnout working on getting back to that state where I feel alive at 6:30am. The magic formula? Getting to bed at 10:30. Simple, effective even. But then there's Pörni—this brilliant Norwegian series—and suddenly it's "just one more episode" at 10:15, then another at 11. My internal clock casually suggests "you’re tired, sleep beckons" whilst my brain pipes up "it's just one night, it'll be fine." Good sense doesn't stand a chance against awesome Norwegian drama and I’m sure you can guess how fresh I felt come sunrise.

We Ruin More Than Just Our Clothes by Ignoring Our Instincts

Your instincts have been collecting data your entire life. They know when someone's lying, when a situation feels off, when you're about to make a spectacularly bad decision. They're your personal early warning system, calibrated by experience and evolution. And we consistently tell them to shut up.

The paradox is that we trust our smartphones more than our own bodies. We'll follow GPS directions without question but ignore the internal navigation system that's been keeping humans alive for millennia.

Studies on decision fatigue show that our cognitive resources are finite—every choice depletes the tank. When we're running on empty, we make progressively worse decisions. We choose the screen over sleep, the meeting over the walk, convenience over nourishment, noise over silence, pretending “I’m fine” when we’re clearly not, the soak-them-together over keep-them-separate, and scroll through work emails right before bed. What feels like laziness or poor willpower is actually just what happens when your brain is knackered and you're trying to function on determination alone.

The beautiful irony is that our bodies are constantly trying to optimise our health. Your gut literally has its own nervous system containing more neurons than your spinal cord. It knows what you need. Your circadian rhythm has been perfected over millions of years of evolution. It’s telling you when to sleep, eat, move, digest, release hormones, and repair your body—working nonstop to keep you running smoothly, whether you notice it or not. .

But we've become insanely good at overriding our own operating manual. The question isn't whether our instincts are reliable—the science shows they absolutely are. The question is why we've learned to ignore the very system designed to keep us functioning at our best.

Next week: How modern life has systematically trained us to distrust our own wisdom, and why we've been taught that ignoring our bodies makes us more productive.