Seven habits to develop critical thinking

Form your own opinions

Turn Brain into Mind

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1. Understand mental process

Your brain naturally uses mental shortcuts to explain what's happening around you

It's evolved to be fast and automated

Be aware of your cognitive biases and prejudices

Awareness is where it all starts

2. Spend time thinking

Evaluate what you see, what you hear & what you read

Evaluation leads to better, less inaccurate conclusions

If you don't have time to think, you'll never think critically

3. Motive

Everyone has motive and biases, sometimes you can detect them easily other times it's hard

Evaluate every message you recieve in two ways, both with and without consideration of *messenger*

Understanding motive gives you fresh perspective.

4. Do your research

Take matters in your hands.

Start evaluation with your own research, via books, internet etc

Use newfound information to remove blind spots

More the relevant information, better the conclusion

5. Question everything

Right questions get you more information, they open up new thinking paths

Question to develop perspective, choose right answers over easy ones

Questioning is how you develop, keep developing.

6. Question all Assumptions

Assumptions are formed to simplify the reality, however with time, they solidify to become belief system

Don't assume you are right

Assumptions are often tools and forms of manipulation

It is by questioning old assumptions, you welcome new beliefs

7. Simple is efficient

New information, if irrelevant, increases the complexity of situation. It is overwhelming.

Filter out irrelevant information, use new one as tool to simplify the decision

Always choose well thought out, yet simple decision

Keep it simple

Critical thinking is about, being able to think, to know how to make connections between ideas and to know how to evaluate the information.

It is about becoming progressively, less and less wrong.