Summary: Good decisions don’t come from overthinking-they come from trusting your unconscious mind, which processes far more information and experience than your conscious thinking can handle. By stepping back, reducing mental overload, and listening to your instincts, you can make faster, more effective choices. 

What if I told you that your most brilliant decisions—the ones that propel you to success, solve complex problems, and navigate tricky situations—happen when you’re not consciously thinking at all?

It’s counterintuitive, isn’t it? But it couldn’t be more true.

I have spent decades in my role as a keynote speaker and neuroscientist observing and evaluating how top leaders are making their most important decisions, and I’m constantly amazed by how backwards most people see the whole “thinking” business. You likely have been taught that more analysis equals better decisions, that conscious deliberation is the gold standard of intelligent choice-making. I’m here to tell you that is wrong.

Your unconscious brain isn’t just keeping you alive by managing your heartbeat and breathing—It’s your secret weapon for superior decision-making, creative problem-solving, and peak performance. And most of us are, at best, not using it to its full potential and, at worst, dismissing it altogether.

How Does Your Unconscious Mind Make Decisions?

Wolf Singer, former director of the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, told me something very interesting during my time there: your unconscious mind accounts for the majority of your decision-making activity. When you take action, your conscious brain is often the last to know what you’ve decided. What’s more, the more mastery you have over a task or subject, the less your conscious mind is involved in the decision!

This isn’t a design flaw—it’s evolutionary genius. Your unconscious operates at lightning speed because, to the brain, speed means survival. When faced with immediate threats, conscious deliberation just isn’t a luxury your brain can afford. Instead, it uses the thousands of data points of previous experiences and makes a quick judgement call about what’s needed.

Unlike your working memory, which can juggle only about four pieces of information simultaneously, your unconscious memory has practically limitless capacity. It’s processing vast amounts of data, recognizing patterns, all while integrating experiences that you’ve probably completely forgotten at the conscious level. It almost sounds like science fiction, or a supercomputer, but it isn’t! It’s the benefit of experience, of hours spent learning, and of a brain built to survive.

Did you know? Recent neuroscience research has shown that the outcome of a decision can be encoded in brain activity of the prefrontal and parietal cortex up to 10 seconds before it enters conscious awareness. Your brain is literally deciding before “you” know you’re deciding. Who is really running the show here??

Does Overthinking Lead To Worse Decision Making?

It’s because of this that thinking less can lead to smarter answers. Overthinking overrides your brain’s natural ability to tap into your mastery and often leads to worse outcomes. I see this constantly in my work with high-performing executives and teams: the moment they start overanalyzing, their performance deteriorates.

Consider cognitive overload —that mental exhaustion that creeps in after making too many choices: what to wear, what to eat, what route to take to avoid road construction, when to call your parents… These small choices compound and add on to the larger ones you make throughout the day, and it all becomes too much. Your brain needs a break. Obviously, when your working memory runs out of steam, your brain doesn’t shut down. Instead, it shifts focus to short-term rewards and abandons long-term strategic thinking. Ever wonder why you bought that car with questionable safety ratings because you liked its color? Blame cognitive overload.

Your unconscious decision-making capacity doesn’t suffer from these same limitations. It operates efficiently regardless of how many decisions you’ve made consciously, continuously processing information and preparing optimal responses.

Why Do You Make Mistakes When You Think Too Much?

One of the most interesting discoveries in cognitive neuroscience involves the difference between expert and novice decision-making. While beginners benefit from conscious analysis and step-by-step thinking, experts can actually be hampered by it.

I spoke about this in The Leading Brain, when looking at tennis players. Imagine this scenario: an inferior player asks her skilled opponent, “How did you make that brilliant backhand? Did you shift your grip or adjust your elbow?” Even if the expert can’t answer—and usually she can’t—the damage is done. Her next shot will likely be inferior because she’s now thinking consciously about something she normally does unconsciously.

This phenomenon, known as “choking,” is essentially neurological hijacking. I am willing to bet that this is something that you have experienced at least once, be it at work or with sports or hobbies. Your prefrontal cortex—your conscious “thinking” brain—interferes with the unconscious processes that enable expert performance. 

But why is this happening? Research using MEG (magnetoencephalography) shows that intuitive decisions are made immediately, without conscious or reasoned thought. They involve specific neural mechanisms that guide the subsequent action. When experts try to consciously control these automatic processes, they disrupt the very neural networks that make them exceptional.

How Do You Trust Your Instincts in Decision-Making?

If you want to tap into this unconscious powerhouse (and honestly, why would you not?), here are evidence-based strategies I share with the top leaders that I work with:

1. Flip A Coin: When torn between equally appealing options, flip a coin. But here’s the twist—pay attention to your reaction to the result. If you feel relief, then the coin chose correctly. But if it’s unease or disappointment that comes over you, then you’ve uncovered your unconscious preference. The coin didn’t make your decision; rather, it revealed what you already knew unconsciously.
   
2. Strategic Incubation: For complex problems, engage your conscious mind intensively for a defined period, then deliberately step away. Go for a walk, take a shower, or sleep on it. Your unconscious continues processing while your conscious mind rests, often producing breakthrough insights when you least expect them. When you return to the problem at hand, the decision will become much clearer.

3. Expertise Recognition: Put plainly, you need to learn to trust your initial instincts. Especially if you have expertise to back it up. That immediate “gut feeling” about a situation, person, or solution often represents the distillation of years of experience and pattern recognition, which are all operating way below your conscious awareness.

4. Automate and Delegate: Minimize cognitive overload by automating routine choices and delegating tasks that don’t fully require your attention. Steve Jobs wore the same outfit daily, not from lack of creativity, but to preserve cognitive resources for decisions that truly mattered.

Is Thinking Less Sometimes Better For Decisions?

We live in an information-saturated world. The ability to discern signals from noise, to trust expertise-based intuition, and to recognize when to think less rather than more becomes a real competitive advantage.

The goal isn’t to abandon conscious thought—it’s to understand when conscious analysis helps and when it hinders. Beginners need conscious guidance, sure, but experts perform best when they trust their unconscious selves to rise to the occasion. Your unconscious represents an underutilized competitive advantage. It’s faster, has greater capacity, and integrates vast amounts of experience in ways your conscious mind cannot match.

The most successful people I work with have learned to balance between conscious analysis and unconscious instinct. They know when to think hard, but more importantly, when to think less. 

The question isn’t whether you should trust your unconscious—it’s already making most of your decisions anyway. The question is whether you’ll learn to lean into its power and stop interfering with its brilliance.

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About the Author

Wall Street Journal bestselling author. Neuroscientist. Keynote speaker.

Friederike Fabritius is a neuroscientist, Wall Street Journal bestselling author, and keynote speaker who translates cutting-edge brain science into actionable leadership strategies for Fortune 500 organizations. Author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller The Brain-Friendly Workplace and the award-winning The Leading Brain, Friederike is recognized as a trailblazer in neuroleadership, helping executives think sharper, innovate faster, and lead through complexity. A LinkedIn Top Voice who is quoted frequently in the media, Friederike has been featured in Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Newsweek, among many others. Friederike has built a community of over 50k professionals through her LinkedIn audience and “The Brain-Friendly Newsletter”.

Friederike consistently earns speaker ratings of 4.9 out of 5 and Net Promoter Scores over 90%. Her outstanding audience feedback is why her clients ask her to return to them again and again.