Critical thinking is fast emerging as one of the most desirable skills in the workforce. It’s the kind of skill that can apply to all aspects of your life. This ranges from the personal to the professional, lifting you to new heights by helping you harness and focus your thinking.
What is Critical Thinking?
This thinking is defined as the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. [1]
To put it in more layman’s terms, it’s the skill of taking information in and parsing through it intellectually, with clear, accurate, and precise logic. It’s also called a questioning approach to knowledge and perceived wisdom. [2]
This type of thinking helps people analyze information and think outside the box. Therefore, enabling you to solve problems with innovative solutions and plan systematically.
Critical Thinking is a Desirable Skill
According to the World Economic Forum, it is among one of the most desirable skills to have in the workforce. As a result, more companies than ever before are emphasizing it, as the importance and benefits of it make themselves clearer. Schools are also citing the importance of these thinking skills. Universities and colleges include critical thinking tests in their application process to see how applicants do with logic or linear thinking.
More than that, this thinking is crucial for many career paths, such as lawyers, doctors, reporters, scientists, engineers, accountants, analysts, and any position that requires problem-solving.
Obstacles Critical Thinking Can Help You Overcome
Negative Influences in Your Life
Critical thinking can help you examine where beliefs and thoughts come from. These types of thinkers are more self-reflective and can modify their views and attitude in light of new facts. [3] Analyzing those influences rather than falling under them accidentally can help you improve your life.
Out of Control Ego
The natural tendency to see things through the lens of our own experiences and how things relate to us can be limiting. Critical thinking can help reframe ego-centered thinking, opening us up to empathy and increasing opportunities.
Problems
Problem-solving is a crucial skill to have in our day-to-day life. Critical thinking helps organize scattered and emotional thoughts to solve problems better. It can help us get in touch with emotions while working through them with logical thinking.
Time Wasting
Being scattered and unfocused can offer a huge obstacle to productivity. Some people even lose whole days by going in too many directions at once. So critical thinking is a crucial skill that helps evaluate your time and tasks. In turn you will spend your time wisely by prioritizing and organizing your tasks.
Developing Critical Thinking Skills
This kind of thinking is a skill that you have to develop, nurture, and grow over time. It’s a talent we all have the capacity for, but it’s simply dormant in most of us. It isn’t something you can just decide to be infallibly one morning upon waking. So, developing the knack for this line of thinking can take years, and we often call it wisdom in our elders. However, there are things you can do and steps you can take to learn how can think more critically and practice it.
The First Step
The first thing to be aware of to cultivate more critical thinking is that there are currently flaws in your outlook. Logical fallacies, assumptions, and missed information can create barriers. Being aware of this will allow for challenging these barriers so you can practice becoming a thinker who can effectively solve problems through logical thinking.
Think Critically
Critical thinking is a crucial and useful skill that can be applied throughout your life. So By examining your thinking and finding ways to streamline and grow it, you can free yourself from obstacles and think differently. For more tips and tricks on how you can change your life with critical thinking, visit our blog.