Paranoia and intuition are one and the same. When it's found to be correct, we call it intuition, when it's discovered to be ill-founded, we dismiss it as paranoia.

The reason it's sporadically right/wrong is that it's a feeling thing, and feelings work differently than thought, i.e., feelings aren't rational.

My best suggestion is that if you feel something warning you about your situation, take a moment to look at the feeling objectively, think about your options, and use your own reasoning, based on experience, to make your decision.

Your odds of making the right decision might not really be all that better than they would be if you just blindly followed your feelings, but at least you'd know you had tried to make a conscious decision, rather than relying on some vague, irrational impulse.

If neither of these is to your liking, you could always use the timeless method of, say, flipping a coin. XD