In all honesty, I was primarily echoing OP's bit where they said, "I'm just using my gut and it's going swimmingly."

More broadly, this kind of thing often makes me think of the idea of "self-reliance" [1]. In other words, the accumulation of career experience parallels the gradual process of learning to trust yourself and your (ever more finely honed) instincts more and more.

[1]: https://archive.vcu.edu/english/engweb/transcendentalism/aut...