I first met the concept of critical thinking in my early thirties. Without entertaining you with how many centuries ago this encounter happened, let me tell you this: I thought I could never master this seemingly ungraspable way of thinking. When I heard the words “critical thinking,” I imagined astute diplomats, cunning politicians, and other kinds of geniuses practicing it, taking advantage of the rest of us.
But I was approaching the art of critical thinking in a narrow-minded and uncritical fashion. It’s not a secret cognitive practice reserved for a select few. In fact, everyone can learn to use critical thinking to their advantage if they are somewhat curious, creative, and clever. In other words, most of us can practice this type of thinking. Yet not so many of us do. My mission in this book is to unveil the mystery of critical thinking and help you adopt its basic principles.
Before I engage in the presentation of the nitty gritty, please read the following statements and decide if you’d like to become better at doing each or any of them.
• Interpret others’ needs by assessing their behavior, words, and body language and offer them proper help or support.
• Settle arguments as objective as possible by validating each party and presenting alternative, fair solutions to each party.
• Organize ideas for an essay, story, or news article, paying attention to the complexities of the motivation of each character—real or fictional.
• Gather and analyze data with precision and conduct valid experiments.
• Based on data, assess and anticipate consequences of various decisions and take action to mitigate their negative impacts—for example, in your business.
• Scrutinize your or your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses to optimize your strategies.
• See through marketing schemes and be an informed customer.
• Ask clever questions for new insights.
• Investigate, examine, and evaluate information to reach more accurate conclusions.
• See yourself in a more objective way and use this knowledge to present your skills in a relevant and advantageous way at, for example, job interviews.
Strong critical-thinking skills will help you do better in the areas mentioned above and more. And this book will tell you how to develop those skills. Without further ado, let’s start our journey!
