Critical thinking, informations, and decisions.
By: Konstantinos Patronas
Tags: Information, Decisions, Critical Thinking

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Critical thinking, informations, and decisions.

Critical thinking is the human capacity to analyze and evaluate information regarding a subject, verify the the veracity of information, ignore external biases and reach to a justified idea by focusing only in facts and rationality.

Why is critical thinking important?

Have a better perception of reality which can reduce anxiety and fear.

Make better decisions in work and personal life.

Be a better person, being a critical thinker requires to set aside your personal beliefs to analyze a problem, this way you can understand what the other is going through.

What do you need to develop critical thinking?

Be curious

Being curious, always ask questions, seek more knowledge, being eager to learn more.

Have understanding

If you focus to small portion of a problem you will loose the full picture and you will not be able to takle down the problem effectivelly.

Be logical

Verify everything, dont do logical jumps.

Be no biased

Critical thinking is not only to verify opinions of others but also to verify your opinion if is true or not and not act impulsive or desiderative, this means that personal biases must stay aside and accept only facts and rational statements that we like or not.

Be open minded

Allow your self to accept that your or others opinions might not be the only one or the best, allow acceptance of other opinions.

Have empathy

Being able to put your self in a situation of another person makes it more easy to understand how he/she reached a conclusion.

Create associasions

Being able to associate the information and its effects on big scale but as well how it effects individuals.

Doubt everything, but know when to stop

You have always to question truth, but note that the doubts must be limited to the reasonable, or you will never lead to any resolution.

How to evaluate information

Evaluation of information needs to pass some criteria in order to evaluated as True or not to pass and evaluated as False

Is the information accurate?

The souce of the information should be verified and supported by evidence, also the information should have been reviewed by others which are trustworthy, also information should be un-biased and emotional free.

Who provides the information?

Is someone who is subject matter expert? is an existant person? its a sponsor? the source of the information provides any info? for example, is a goverment site? an organization? a commercial site? a personal blog? is biased to any degree? (political, idelogical, cultural, religious, personal, institutional) its propaganda of any type?

Is important?

How imporant it is? its the information on the apropriate level?

Its still relevant?

How old is the information? its still revelant or the information content is out-dated?

How to take good decisions

Dont limit your options

Dont limit your options artificialy, for example if you have to decide to go to concert or not, you dont have this option only, other alternatives is to go to the movies, to go for a drink, for a dinner or practice a hobby.

Dont follow a single option only

If you have the time, energy and the circuimstances allows it follow more than one option and drop as soon as possible options that dont do well.

Look what other people did

Most likely any problem you will need to deal at work or personal life there is someone else who have allready did, on the internet you can find tones of similiar occassions, which might not fit 100% to your case but you can get some ideas, or even combine various ideas and create something that fits your case.

Think the problem from another persons view

Try to think the problem from other prespectives and not only yours! you might see that the problem is not exactly what you thought to be, or you might realize that the solution is something far different what you initially think.

Dont think short term if feasible

Avoid short term solutions if you can! its much better to invest more time to a permanent solution rather you face the problem again, maybe in a more hectic moment.

Set priorities

If you have to decide for many things start from the most important, partition your time to the optimum for each solution.

Does this decision affects other things?

Some decisions might affect other part of or work or personal life, some will affect them positive, some negative.. lets say that you have found your dream job, but does this dream job gives you enough time to enjoy life? does this dream job gives you enough money to enjoy life?

Trial and Error

Nothing guaranties that your solution will work smooth or new variables will be inserted to the problem, so you need to set some evaluation marks that will often reviewed and do some changes to the solution.

Decide relaxed

Dont take decisions when you are tired, emotional or under stress.