Tips for Mastering Critical Thought

Here are some ideas to help your critical thinking skills:

Be Skeptical

Doubt things. Don’t accept things at face value and think them through. The worst error you can commit is to delegate all your thinking to another person. By creating a layer of doubt on everything, even your ideas, you can improve them.

Skepticism isn’t cynicism, which rejects everything. It just means you need to place a layer of rational thought before accepting anything as truth.

Be Empirical

Many failures of thinking have to do with the beautiful theories and complex models we form inside our heads. These models can serve us well, but they can also trap us. Blinding you to potential opportunities and disguising threats.

Being empirical simply means that you experiment where you don’t know. Look towards data, not hypothesis, and follow what the numbers are telling you. No solution can be permanent, but resist the urge to force a complex reality into a simplified box.

Emphasize the Important

If I inform you that elephants are purple or that you can cut your e-mail time in half without problems, which would be better for you to think about? Rational thinking is an energy consuming ability. As such, you need to force it upon the things that matter most in your lives.

Sadly, many people who have mastered rational abilities of skepticism and empiricism avoid using them where they matter most. Within their narrowed field of study, they are ruthless thinkers, bringing out the truth. But then they go home and apply weak thinking skills to matters critical to their lives.

Here are some thoughts for where you might want to use your newfound critical thinking skills:

• Habits. Where do you spend most your time and energy? If you are wrong about your habits, the result can be huge over a period of years.
• Beliefs. How does your religious and spiritual beliefs influence your thinking. Using rational thinking skills can help you fine tune this ever-present aspect of your life.
• Goals. What do you want to accomplish? Are you going about it the right way?
• Opportunities. Have you summarily rejected opportunities because they don’t fit your worldview? Use some critical thinking skills to open up new possibilities.