Your first read on people is often right. Learn to notice it before you spend six months explaining it away.

First impressions carry real information because you take in far more than you can consciously account for. The trouble is what happens next: the read arrives without a reason attached, so you overrule it with arguments, and six months later you find the original reading was accurate all along. Losing it is a matter of dismissal, not inaccuracy.

Write the first read down rather than acting on it immediately. Keep it somewhere you can check later. Holding it as evidence, neither obeyed nor deleted, lets you find out over time how reliable your own instinct actually is.