now, no signup required!
It’s a typical day at work and your manager asks you to solve a problem. You begin your research and start looking for solutions. The process likely becomes time-consuming and confusing. Now imagine an alternate approach where you take some time to analyze the problem first. Once you have gained more clarity, you’ll feel more confident about finding and presenting the solution. The process of gathering and reviewing information would become much easier and the experience will enhance your problem-solving skills. All this will be possible because you got time to think critically through a situation. Read on to understand why learning to think critically is an essential skill and its benefits at the workplace.
What It Means To Think Critically
Critical thinking or thinking critically allows you to analyze a situation to reach an objective judgment. By impartially evaluating facts, you make well-informed decisions and well-reasoned arguments. Most conclusions you draw come from a place of logic and reason. Critical thinking is a highly valuable skill that employers seek in their employees.
Here are a few reasons why organizations want you to think critically:
-
Analytical Thinking
Analyzing information objectively lies at the core of critical thinking. It helps you differentiate between important and unimportant data that will influence your decision.
-
Good Communication
To think critically, you require information that is correct and well-founded. Getting people (like coworkers) to share ideas is a great way to gather relevant information and make the right choice. In other words, good communication is an important aspect of critical thinking.
-
Creative Thinking
Critical thinking makes way for creativity and innovative thought processes. It prompts you to think out-of-the-box and make connections that others wouldn’t have thought of. It encourages you to identify solutions in creative manners.
-
Open-Mindedness
There is room for self-reflection with critical thinking. You can recognize personal biases more efficiently as you resort to objectivity and impartiality. This further enhances your decision-making as you rely on unbiased judgment.
-
Questioning
When you learn to think critically, you don’t take anything at face value. You leave space for doubts and deeper inspection. Therefore, you’re encouraged to ask appropriate questions to get to the bottom of problems and reach the right conclusions.
How To Think Critically
If you want to learn effective ways to think critically, here are a few habits you should adopt:
-
Question Assumptions
Always start by questioning the basic assumptions. Never take something for granted and take time to dig deeper. For example, if you want to build a technical product for small businesses using sustainable technology, you need to ask yourself: How many businesses use sustainable technology? You may find out that there aren’t many businesses that do so and your product is not feasible for the market.
-
Reason Through Logic
To arrive at well-reasoned conclusions, you need to reason and support your arguments. For example, if a clothing enterprise overgeneralizes its success in the first week of opening its store, it’s setting itself for failure. Realistically, once the hype simmers down, it may not be able to piggyback on its initial success. The enterprise has to find new and innovative ways to increase brand awareness and engagement. This is the power of thinking critically and relying on logic.
-
Seek Out Variety
If you want to enrich your critical thinking, you should seek out diversity in thoughts, opinions and arguments. You don’t want an echo chamber where people think and process information just as you do. This is why several organizations take inclusionary measures and hire people from various walks of life. For example, brainstorming sessions improve manifold when people from different schools of thought participate.
The Most Important Habit!
Harappa’s Thinking Critically course will teach you how to be a mature thinking professional who thinks through situations and arrives at well-informed decisions. You’ll learn how to separate facts from opinions and make insightful observations through crisp evaluations. The Ladder Of Inference will teach you how to process complex information, while the Mental Models will help you simplify that information. Create a mental map for your thoughts and think critically for personal as well as professional development.
Explore topics such as Critical Thinking, Types of Thinking, Examples of Critical Thinking & How to Improve Your Critical Thinking from Harappa Diaries and strengthen your ability to think clearly and rationally.
