How to Improve Your Critical Thinking Skills (& Why You Should)

Critical thinking is the process of approaching thinking from a place of aliveness and play. You don’t just automatically believe everything that’s presented to you. You grab the piece of info and you start “playing” with it. The end goal being arriving at the best possible solution.

Every time you exercise your ability to think. You fortify your critical thinking skills and crush more critical thinking barriers.

But there is a problem.

Our ordinary and convenient lives rarely give us the opportunity to flex our brains. Commonly, the situations we face require a below-average level of thinking.

You drive to work. You solve the same boring and mundane tasks. You go home. You prepare your microwave food. Watch the same shows everybody else is watching. You go to bed.

All of this. Day in. Day out.

Then one rainy day. Seemingly out of nowhere. You face a challenge. Your boss handed you a mission-impossible task and he wants it for today! Your brain paralyzes. It’s not used to thinking. Or at least not used to thinking differently. Therefore, you fail.

It’s like you were playing chess with the graybeard men across the street for years. Suddenly, a black van stops and hands grab you pull you in. The thugs who got you put a black cover on your head and drive with haste. In the next moment. You are seated on a chair. The mask is removed. There is a chessboard and behind the tiny figures, there’s the national Chess master as an opponent.

Most of the time we feel confident about our skills because most of the time, we do things that are below or equal to our skill level. We are used to solving common problems. But we never voluntarily try to handle complicated tasks.

All of this causes our thinking to rust.

Preparedness, it seems, is commonly disregarded.

Unless there is:

• Continuous deliberate practice.
• Feedback about our work.
• Push to expand intellectually.
• Or, at the very least, recurrent engagement in activities that maintain the current level of high-value skill we obtained at some point.

The only thing one can do “on the job” is forget and experience skill degradation.

If you missing all of the above. You probably feel like you’re inside an inescapable maze of sameness. The averageness of the daily tasks that require your attention are unchallenging to say the least. Not only does this makes life start to feel like a burden. But it also deteriorates your cognitive muscles.

So, for those who are interested in bettering their thinking – and I’m all for that. This piece will surely resonate.

Here we go…

Why You Need To Improve Your Critical Thinking Skills?

First things first.

Before unlocking the how to improve critical thinking skills tips, let’s briefly explore why it’s needed.

Like in the introduction, because our thinking is systematically not challenged.

Even if you do somewhat intellectually challenging work. It’s not enough to advance in life because:

1. Our brain is extremely adaptable and with time, makes the complicated seem easy.
2. Even if we get better at one specific field. It’s not enough. Life requires capabilities in many different fields.

Plus, a more personal observation…

When I was younger, I always thought that adults knew everything about everything. I imagined that they are versed investors. Prolific mathematicians. Rational decision-makers and also master chefs.

With more living, sadly, I realized that age doesn’t equal skills.

Yes, you get to do a lot of things right because you lived long enough to see what shouldn’t be done. But the process of improvement is usually in only one area and also means that: you failed, you failed again, and on the third or the forth time you (hopefully) corrected yourself.

Yet again, if you don’t take steps to expand your portfolio of skills. You probably suck at many other important areas.

Here’s an example: