Why smart people make bad decisions
Layla Shaikley
Co-Founder at Wise Systems — Check us out for the smartest last-mile software. Join the over 290,000 people across social media who follow along for straightforward startup learnings and leadership frameworks ↓
Knowledge versus intelligence, and intelligence versus judgment
This was originally posted on my Substack on March 29th, 2025, subscribe there (and here) for more learnings from a founder.
The most costly thing you can say is “I know I should, but…”
There is a difference between knowing and doing, and that is the difference between having knowledge and being intelligent. Intelligence manifests itself in judgment.
Intelligence sharpens good judgment. People pay for good judgment. People seek you out for good judgment.
Think of all the things you "know better than" to do, but you do anyway:
I was in surgery last week — I repaired my ACL and meniscus. The surgery went well. The post-op recovery has been brutal, but I am fortunate to be on the other side. I am really happy with the surgeon that I chose. As soon as I got up from anesthesia, he said "Your ACL tear was bad luck. Your meniscus was so far gone, due to your previous injury, that it had bucketed while you were playing soccer and took your ACL down with it." In that quick comment, my surgeon assured me that my active lifestyle was not bad judgment. And, actually, maintaining that lifestyle is something I should work to regain.
It has been drilled into me that physical therapy will be crucial for my long-term recovery. Those who don't complete rehab are 4x more likely to tear the other knee. And those who don't rehab have a 30-40% higher chance of retearing the original knee. Not to mention functional deficiencies like an imbalanced gait, which lead to increased injury risk in general. Everybody knows PT is important. But many people skip it. And of those people who skip it, only 50% get back to previous activity levels. So how could anyone miss rehab? Turns out, it is common.
There are things we genuinely can't control (the original injury) versus where our judgment matters (the consistency in rehabilitation). And how we treat the latter will have huge implications on our lives.
"I know better, but I will" is a sign of bad judgment. It is not due to a lack of knowledge. And we are all guilty of it.
I spent a lot of time researching surgeons to ensure my operation was managed with good judgment. I recalled a Johns Hopkins study of surgical teams revealed something surprising about medical errors. Teams with less experienced surgeons who consistently followed checklists and communication protocols had significantly fewer complications than teams led by brilliant surgeons who inconsistently applied safety practices. The head researcher, Dr. Gawande, followed one veteran surgeon with exceptional knowledge who resisted systematic approaches. In a six-month period, his complication rates were 26% higher than younger colleagues who had developed the judgment to consistently apply best practices rather than relying on knowledge alone.
The Information to Judgment Pipeline
While Malcolm Gladwell popularized the 10,000-hour rule for mastery, research by psychologist Anders Ericsson revealed a crucial distinction often overlooked: it's not just practice, but deliberate practice with judgment that creates expertise. The study compared two pianists, both had logged similar hours at the keyboard over a decade, but Elena incorporated consistent feedback and adjusted her approach based on results, while Michael simply repeated the same exercises without refinement. After ten years, Elena performed professionally while Michael reached a plateau. The difference wasn't knowledge or even consistency alone. It was the consistent application of judgment that transformed Elena's practice into mastery.
Personal check-in: to figure out if you’re an Elena or a Michael, ask yourself if you keep expecting different results while doing the same things.
(Sidebar: Judgment is more accessible than ever. Here’s the prompt I use after having Claude edit my Substacks for grammar. The response is always packed with tactical insights that help me sharpen my judgment and spot my own blind spots)
How judgment works
This is how it works
And judgment can be developed with awareness. Walter Mischel's famous marshmallow experiment tested children's ability to delay gratification. However, the fascinating part came decades later. Researchers tracked these children into adulthood and found that those who consistently demonstrated self-control — not just knowing they should wait, but actually developing the judgment to do so — had higher SAT scores, lower BMI, better social competence, and greater financial stability. One participant, Carolyn, initially struggled with the marshmallow test but developed rituals of consistency in her daily life. By age 30, she had built a successful business while her equally intelligent peers who couldn't translate knowledge into consistent action struggled with debt and career instability.
Poll: People hate being judged because judgment is the clearest way to assess intelligence. Do you agree?
On Consistency
Consistency is a celebrated skill that folks point to when talking about their wins:
Consistency is not an end goal, but a medium — a pathway to personal and professional growth. It transforms abstract potential into concrete capability through:
Consistency turns improvement into an ever-conditioned muscle, versus a goal. And consistency — often — requires thick skin and self-discipline.
Consistency Makes Us Believe in Ourselves
When we are consistent, a few things happen:
Skill Mastery: Consistency is the fundamental pathway to developing expertise. No significant skill is learned overnight. Whether it's playing a musical instrument, learning a programming language, or developing athletic prowess, mastery requires sustained, repeated practice. Each consistent effort builds neural pathways, muscle memory, and deep understanding that casual or sporadic attempts cannot achieve.
Psychological Momentum: Consistency creates psychological momentum. When you consistently do the thing, you build:
This internal momentum becomes self-reinforcing. Success breeds more success, and consistent effort creates a positive feedback loop of achievement and motivation.
But Then, Consistency Is Why People Trust You
People rely on those who:
Your reputation is a portfolio of your consistent actions, not your occasional brilliance. And then it compounds.
Compound Growth: Consistency operates like compound interest in finance. Small, regular investments of effort accumulate exponential returns over time. What seems insignificant daily becomes transformative annually. A writer who writes 500 words daily will have drafted multiple books in a few years. An athlete who trains consistently will far outperform someone with sporadic, intense bursts of activity. And if you’re in your thirties or forties and have lift weights now, you have a much higher chance at being able to enjoy and play physically with your grandkids. Dr. Peter Attia presents compelling research showing that strength training in your thirties and forties dramatically improves your chances of maintaining functional strength decades later. His work demonstrates that individuals who consistently strength trained earlier in life were up to three times more likely to maintain the physical capability to lift, play with, and care for their grandchildren well into their seventies and eighties. As Attia notes, the gradual loss of muscle mass (sarcopenia) begins around age 30, accelerating after 60 — but consistent resistance training creates both physical and neurological reserves that preserve function. So if you lift now, you have the judgment to consistently invest in your future physical capacity when the benefits aren't immediately visible.
And throughout the process of compound growth, your judgment continues to get sharpened as you:
Consistency teaches you to persist through difficulties, transforming obstacles into opportunities for growth. It forces you out of procrastination. Most significant achievements require sustained effort over extended periods. Consistency bridges the gap between short-term challenges and long-term goals. It transforms abstract aspirations into concrete realities through persistent, incremental progress.
A practical example is that ChatGPT believes that with 2.5 hours of Arabic exposure with my children daily, they will develop a foundation for Arabic. The consistency adds up. The daily exposure, practice, and reinforcement create neural pathways and muscle memory that sporadic, intense study cannot match.
I looked into this and found out that MIT linguists studied families raising bilingual children and found a counterintuitive pattern. Families who consistently exposed children to just 30 minutes of a second language daily produced more fluent bilingual speakers than families who conducted intensive weekend language sessions. Researcher Dr. Kuhl documented the case of the Rodriguez family, who spoke Spanish for just half an hour each evening during dinner, versus the Chen family who conducted three-hour Chinese lessons each weekend. Despite fewer total hours, the Rodriguez children developed natural fluency and accent, while the Chen children retained stronger English accents and less natural syntax in Chinese. This pattern demonstrated how consistent language exposure builds the neural pathways for judgment about language use that occasional immersion cannot.
Consistency isn't about perfection. It's about anticipating and responding dynamically to obstacles and transformation through sustained, intentional effort.
Anyways, before I sign off — the response to my prompt above was that I did not write like a best-seller because my writing was not personal enough. It suggested I use anecdotes or research to strengthen my writing. I gave it a shot. What do you think?
Would you agree?
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