Common Sense and Common Action

Common sense is not so common at all.

I see this every single day in my practice. People come in with problems that have obvious solutions, and they can’t see them. They’re overthinking, overcomplicating, and completely missing what’s staring them right in the face.

Most of my job as a General Practitioner isn’t about diagnosing rare complicated diseases. My job is usually treating the common stuff: the aches and pains, the illnesses and conditions that most of you have had or will get. A lot of what I do is simply advising people on the basic steps they need to take to help themselves.

It seems much of what I do and advise is just plain common sense. But for some reason, common sense is remarkably uncommon, especially when you’re stressed, not feeling well and not at your best.

When Common Sense Disappears

Mix in some emotion, some pain, or the expectation of instant results, and some people lose their ability to see what’s obvious. They lose judgment. They lose any smattering of common sense they may have had in the first place.

Too often, you overthink your problems. Your rational brain ends up playing second fiddle to underlying emotions or to the social pressure around you. Sometimes you get caught in bad thinking habits. You become entrenched in behaviour patterns. Sometimes it’s a lack of confidence, or even a learned incapacity, that causes you to be unable to do what needs to be done.

Research on decision-making under stress shows that emotional arousal significantly impairs logical reasoning and judgment (Pham, 2007). When you’re anxious, in pain, or under pressure, your ability to see obvious solutions decreases dramatically.

I had a patient who came in with chronic back pain. She’d tried everything except the most obvious thing: she worked from her sofa with her laptop balanced on her knees for eight hours a day. The solution was obvious the moment she described her day: get a desk, a decent chair, take a few proper breaks, and do some stretching and posture work. Emotion and habit had simply blinded her to it.

What Common Sense Actually Is

Common sense has been described as a type of mystical force that bestows knowledge of the obvious. Yet for most of you, common sense is something that’s learned through life experience. It’s a type of knowledge in overalls, learned through trial and error.

Ironically, though, common sense is not that common. Perhaps understandable when the obvious isn’t always obvious. But when the obvious is really obvious? Common sense often just doesn’t apply.

Studies on practical intelligence show that common sense involves the ability to apply general principles to specific situations and adapt behaviour based on context (Sternberg, 2000). It’s not innate wisdom. It’s learned pattern recognition.

The Inability to See Reality

If you lack common sense, you have an innate inability to see things as they really are, an inability to do the things that really need to be done. I don’t think common sense is a tool in everyone’s shed.

Perhaps it all stems from an ability to step back, to take a breath, or to let go of the past or emotional clutter to see and do the obvious.

Take a look at the obvious. Look for what’s staring at you right in the face. Often, there’s an elephant in the room you’re just choosing to ignore, or you’ve ignored it for so long you don’t see it anymore.

Research on inattentional blindness shows that when people focus on one thing, they can completely fail to notice obvious information right in front of them (Simons & Chabris, 1999). The famous experiment, which you can watch online, has a gorilla walking right through the scene while viewers, focused on counting basketball passes, fail to see it.

From Sense to Action

Common sense means seeing and doing what you need to do. It doesn’t always happen. Either you don’t see it, or you don’t do it. Common sense should lead to common action. That’s the action that most rational people would do in that situation.

Having no common sense is all too common. Common inaction is also the norm. We should call it rare sense and rare action. Seldom do some people see the obvious and do what they need to do in life.

Studies on the intention-behaviour gap show that even when people know what they should do, approximately 50% fail to act on that knowledge (Sheeran & Webb, 2016). Knowing isn’t doing. Common sense isn’t common action.

The Questions That Reveal Uncommon Sense

‘What’s the obvious thing we’re missing here?’ I said today to a middle-aged heavy smoker with a cough.

‘What’s the simplest thing you could do each day that would really help?’ I said to another patient.

‘What haven’t you tried yet?’ I said to another.

A bit of common sense, as the expression goes, goes a very long way. But you have to be willing to look for it. You have to be willing to see what’s obvious. And most importantly, when you find the answer, you have to be willing to act on it.

Why Smart People Lack Common Sense

Intelligence doesn’t guarantee common sense. I’ve seen brilliant people do spectacularly stupid things because they overthought themselves into paralysis. They analysed every angle, considered every possibility, and completely missed the simple, obvious solution.

Common sense requires simplicity. It requires you to strip away complexity and see what’s actually there. Smart people often struggle with this because they’re trained to think in complex ways, to find nuance, to consider edge cases.

Sometimes the edge case isn’t relevant. Sometimes the nuance doesn’t matter. Sometimes you need to stop smoking, start exercising, or have that difficult conversation.

Research on expertise and decision-making shows that experts can sometimes perform worse than novices on simple problems because they overcomplicate them (Wiley, 1998). Knowledge creates blind spots. Experience creates habits. Both can obscure the obvious.

The Elephant in the Room

Most problems have an elephant in the room. It’s the thing everyone knows, but nobody mentions. It’s the obvious solution that feels too simple, too hard, or too uncomfortable to acknowledge.

You’re exhausted because you sleep five hours a night. You’re overweight because you eat takeaway every other night. Your relationship is failing because you never talk. Your career has stalled because you haven’t applied for a new job in five years.

These are the elephants. Everyone can see them except you. Or worse, you can see them, but you’re pretending you can’t.

Studies on psychological defence mechanisms show that people use sophisticated mental strategies to avoid acknowledging uncomfortable truths (Cramer, 2006). Your brain is working hard to help you not see what you don’t want to see.

Recovering Common Sense

If you’ve lost your common sense, you can get it back. But it requires deliberate effort to cut through your own mental clutter.

First, step back. Remove yourself from the emotion of the situation. Imagine you’re advising a friend with your exact problem. What would you tell them? That’s probably what you should do.

Second, ask the simple questions. What’s the obvious thing I’m missing? What’s the simplest solution? What would a rational person do here?

Third, act on the obvious. Don’t wait for the perfect solution. Don’t overthink it. Just do the common-sense thing.

Research on self-distancing shows that viewing your problems from a third-person perspective significantly improves decision quality (Kross & Grossmann, 2012). Remove yourself. See clearly. Act sensibly.

What You Need to Do

Stop overcomplicating things. Stop letting emotion cloud your judgment. Stop ignoring the elephant in the room.

Look at your life. What’s obvious? What’s the simple thing you’re not doing that would make everything better? What’s the clear action you’re avoiding?

Common sense isn’t mystical. It’s practical. It’s looking at reality without delusion and acting accordingly. It’s rare because it requires honesty, simplicity, and action.

Be uncommon. Use common sense. Take common action. You’ll be surprised what happens next.

Further reading

• Sheeran, P., & Webb, T. L. (2016). The intention-behavior gap. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 10(9), 503–518.
• Simons, D. J., & Chabris, C. F. (1999). Gorillas in our midst: Sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic events. Perception, 28(9), 1059–1074.
• Kross, E., & Grossmann, I. (2012). Boosting wisdom: Distance from the self enhances wise reasoning, attitudes, and behavior. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 141(1), 43–48.
• Wiley, J. (1998). Expertise as mental set: The effects of domain knowledge in creative problem solving. Memory & Cognition, 26(4), 716–730.
• Sternberg, R. J. (2000). Practical Intelligence in Everyday Life. Cambridge University Press.