Your gut isn’t magic. It’s data your brain collected that hasn’t made it into words yet.

A hunch is compressed experience. You have watched thousands of interactions and your brain quietly logged which ones went badly, so when a new situation matches an old pattern the feeling arrives before any reason does. That is why the sense comes first and the explanation limps behind it. It also means a hunch is only as good as the experience under it, which matters in a place you have never been.

When one shows up this week, neither dismiss it nor obey it. Ask what it might be recognizing. Half the time you can name the pattern within a minute.