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Intuition

There are times people come to me at work, after trying everything I'm their only hope. After a moment listening to their problem and then running a couple of commands the issue is magically gone. They are left in awe, wondering how I did it. 

Another time there is an issue on some server. I log in, and once again run a few commands. Everything is back up and running smoothly. Others hardly had time to react to the alerts at all before it was already resolved.

When asked, I'm not always able to explain what I did, or at least why I did exactly that as my first attempt. There are so many possible choices. We have checklists of what to do in different kinds of incidents, but it can as well be something at the bottom of the list or completely outside of it.

Even if it feels like magic there isn't anything unnatural going on. I don't have superpowers. Just a vast array of knowledge and experience. It gives me the ability to subconsciously identify even the smallest details and recall similar situations from the past and the solution for it before I even realize it myself, or have time to start rationally thinking about the problem.

This makes it hard to sometimes teach my knowledge to others. But maybe the most important lesson is to teach them to trust their intuition.  The worst thing is they try something that doesn't work and then revert back to the standard procedure. But when it works they will be amazed.

And no, it doesn't work every time even for me.