The big picture.

Experience is an active participation in events or activities, leading to the accumulation of useful knowledge and skills. But young persons have a problem—with limited life experience, seeing the larger picture can be a challenge.

Those pesky lifebombs.

Paradoxically, young persons tend to be more rational (i.e., more deliberative and detail oriented) than adults, yet they are notoriously poor decision makers. Although aware of the potential dangers of their actions—say, driving too fast, driving drunk, having unprotected sex, experimenting with drugs, binge drinking, railsliding nude, or jumping into unknown waters— young persons make calculated choices to ‘play the odds’ (see: Death, taxes, and … toasters?). They believe it’s worth the risk for the perceived rewards. And while that calculation may be technically correct, it ignores the categorical possibility of disaster.

Just the gist, ma’am.

As people grew older and more experienced, says psychologist Valerie Reyna (2012), they become more intuitive. More of their decisions are based on what she calls the gist, or an overall sense or impression of the situation along with its emotional meaning. This approach, in which “one sees the forest more than the trees,” enables adults to sense the best course of action more quickly. In looking at the larger picture, they avoid a trade off of serious risks (say, dying in a car accident) against immediate rewards (the approval of friends).

But the usefulness of gists is not limited to situations that involve an immediate, risky choice. The present casts its shadow far into the future, and like a stealth bomber, the adverse consequences of today’s decisions may not be evident until later in life. Consider the California woman whose driver’s license was suspended for failing to pay a $59 Illinois speeding ticket 27 years earlier. Or the slow-mo financial tsunami that slammed Baby Boomers who failed to seriously save for retirement earlier in their careers. WalMarts from Honolulu to Hackensack are full of ’em.

Develop your pan-o-vision.

Gist-based thinking is not simply the retrieval of instances experienced in the past. The experience per se is not what is important, says Reyna. Rather it is the distillation of the meaning of past experiences—what is understood or learned from those experiences and emotions—that can be applied to recognizing similar future instances. So, how do nubile NeXters overcome their lack of experience and avoid the lifebombs? Smart ones formulate gists not only from their own mistakes, but also from observing mistakes made by others.

Gist-based thinking is not a gift but a skill. And like any skill, it’s something you can learn. Developing awareness is a part of growing up, and over time, you’ll come to recognize and manage the cognitive traps that interfere with intuition. Meantime, help improve your decision-making by developing certain “big picture” habits of mind:

The more complex the decision, the more we benefit from using gists. If you lack experience, always test your hunches. Stop rationalizing the desired result and reflect whether you missed something in your objective analysis.
Our behaviors are affected by the gist we understand, rather than the verbatim facts we are presented with. You’ll make better choices by answering the question, “What does (or should) the information mean to me?”
Gists manifest themselves as a gut-feeling. Don’t ignore it, but don’t unquestionably trust it—it isn’t always right. Find out why you have a gut-feel by examining your beliefs and attitudes. It’s probably safer to ask “What do I admire?” or “Will this make me better person?” than simply “What do I want?”
If you’re still unsure, tap the wisdom of tribal elders. Ask them to distill the meaning of their experiences and share what they learned, including their emotions. Think how their gists can be applied so that you’ll recognize similar future instances.

Developing our gist capabilities is often the deciding factor between failure and success. In making their controllable life-choices, wise deciders always consider the larger meaning. As a minimum, it can spare us countless headaches (and heartaches). Experience is always inevitable. Learning is not. And that’s the gist of it.