My trainee's gut-feel fix on a bricked server taught me to value instinct over checklists.

Seeing them revive that system with just a hunch after ignoring the repair guides was a small win, even though most techs would call it irresponsible.

4 comments

4 Comments

aaron_adams3mo ago

Yeah when you said "letting a trainee skip the guide is how big mistakes happen" that's exactly it. A trainee's lucky hunch might work once, but they haven't built the deep knowledge yet to know when to break the rules. It's like the checklist builds the pattern recognition in your brain over years, so eventually your "gut feel" is actually just your experience talking fast. You can't start with instinct, you earn it.

finleyl393mo ago

Get why that felt like a win, it's cool to see a hunch pay off. But calling it instinct over checklists isn't quite right. Checklists exist for a reason, they stop us from missing simple fixes. Gut feels are great once you've been doing this a while. Letting a trainee skip the guide is how big mistakes happen, lol. You need both, not one over the other.

simon_young463mo ago

Want to know what worked for me? I used checklists as a base for instinct, @finleyl39.

the_sam3mo ago

So where's the line then? At what point does a hunch become earned instinct instead of just luck. Feels like that's the real debate here.