A handy guide!

A quick one: 

THE 7 KEY SKILLS OF CRITICAL THINKING

The infographic below lists the different skills necessary for developing critical thinking .

Smart Advisory! Critical thinking allows leaders at every level to evaluate their decision-making and how these decisions ultimately impact results. 

Here's the answer to yesterday's challenge to refresh your neurons. 

It has been excerpted from the book, Conquering Critical Thinking, by Dilip Mukerjea:

Here's a challenge to refresh your neurons. It has been excerpted from the book, Conquering Critical Thinking, by Dilip Mukerjea:

Here's an apt and nice excerpt from Dilip Mukerjea's book, Conquering Critical Thinking : Breaking Through from How to Wow!

Dilip Mukerjea writes in his new book, Conquering Critical Thinking : Breaking Through from How to Wow!:

HUMOUR IS CRITICAL TO YOUR HEALTH!

There’s a reason jokes entertain us, and it has more to do with intelligence than we think. Crafting a good joke is as serious an exercise in critical thinking as anything else. When comics recognise something as funny, they actually explore why it is funny. The process usually looks something like this: 

(1) Humorists will make an observation about the world around them, something that reflects the mundane occurrences of life.

(2) Then they will examine one of those observations and think about the ways that most people intuitively interpret that observation (the more universal the better). 

(3) Finally, the comic must look for alternative interpretations that no one else has considered but are just as true, if not more so.

A Critical Thinking Apéritif For You! 

Michael: Do you drink beer? 

Conrad: Yes, I do. 

Michael: How many beers a day? 

Conrad: Usually 3. 

Michael: How much do you pay per beer? 

Conrad: $5.00, which includes a tip. 

Michael: And how long have you been drinking? 

Conrad: About 20 years, I suppose... 

Michael: So a beer costs $5.00, and you have 3 beers a day, which puts your spending each month at $450.00. In one year, it would be approximately $5,400.00 correct? 

Conrad: Correct. 

Michael: If in 1 year you spend $5,400.00, not accounting for inflation, the past 20 years puts your spending at $108,000.00 correct? 

Conrad: Correct 

Michael: Do you know that if you didn’t drink so much beer, that money could have been put in a step-up interest savings account and after accounting for compound interest for the past 20 years, you could have now bought a Ferrari? 

Conrad: Do you drink beer? 

Michael: No. 

Conrad: Where’s your Ferrari?

Here's a nice presentation from the BigThink folks.

The topic is about Skepticism or the Imperativeness and Urgency of Being Skeptical.

Being skeptical isn't just about being contrarian. It's about asking the right questions of ourselves and others to gain understanding.

Smart People Question Everything 

Here are some interesting prompts and witticisms which I have had excerpted from Dilip Mukerjea's new book, Conquering Critical Thinking: Breaking Through from How to Wow! 

What would you do if you had the power to do more?

Know that YOU have the FREEDOM to express yourself! Do so!

The most powerful force in the cosmos isn’t technology: it’s IMAGINATION! 

The NUMBER ONE PROBLEM in the world, as is commonly assumed, is not global warming, food and water shortage, political corruption, war and terrorism, poverty, unemployment, planetary pollution, and other such elements: it is the stark INABILITY TO THINK CLEARLY. 

Confusion Immobilises; CLARITY IS POWER! 

By our citizenry being able to think clearly, we possess the power to eradicate all of the above-mentioned maladies. 

The quality of our lives and that of what we produce, create, or build, depends precisely on the quality of our thoughts.

Be purposefully engaged in becoming a world-class thinker across all contexts. 

Never give up on what you really want to do. The person with BIG dreams is more powerful than one with all the facts. Excellence! You HAVE to demand it of yourself! 

Any ape can reach for a peanut. Only we can reach for the stars!

Believe, as did Andrew Carnegie, that “definiteness of purpose” is the crucial starting point for all success—that “the man who knows exactly what he wants… has no difficulty in believing in his own ability to succeed.”

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former. ~ Albert Einstein

Before we work on Artificial Intelligence, why don't we do something about Natural Stupidity?

This is the preamble to Dilip Mukerjea's new book, CONQUERING CRITICAL THINKING! Breaking Through from HOW to WOW!

T h e C r i t i c a l I m p e r a t i ve : BECOMING FUTURE-SAVVY! The Learning-How-To-Learn Millennials

Millennials have entered the gene pool as The Facebook Generation. Anyone outside this group will be towed into their slipstream ... if they wish to stay relevant to the equilibrium that is being punctuated. 

Millennials are resourceful and know they must remain so: their imminent future means that finding a job is an entrepreneurial activity. They’re selling their skills to the highest bidder, or most often, just anyone willing to pay for them. If they can’t find a full time job, a part time one will do for now. Even project work will be fine. 

Many of them are solopreneurs and freelancers who moonlight, and frequently earn their entire living, online. 

Before they know it, they’ve entered the world of involuntary entrepreneurship, a path that neither academia nor any other facet of early learning has prepared them to take. It is driven by their adaptive alertness to the upheavals and transformations that are reshaping our world. 

These impelling forces thus demand that learning how to learn has become a core cognitive skill in ecosystems of clashing, crashing, crushing, competitive intelligences. To stay relevant, and ahead of the pack, the average person who turns 30 within the next decade, will have worked between 200-300 different projects. 

When you consider the positives within millennial resourcefulness – flexibility, freedom, purpose, meaning, and an ability to control your own destiny – the freelancer lifestyle proffers some powerfully compelling reasons to switch into their logic. 

But this can only happen when you become a Grandmaster of Critical Thinking! 

Dilip Mukejea writes in his new book, Learning How to Learn (not yet released; still in the works; this is a sneak preview!)

The 4Cs SUPERSKILLS for the 21st Century 

CREATIVE THINKING 

Creativity can be measured by its fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration. The most creative minds are those for whom creative thought is fluid. The most creative thinkers are also flexible within their creating endeavours — they are willing and able to manipulate their thinking to improve upon that which they are creating. 

When creative thinkers are at the peak of their creative process, they may enter a state of concentration so focused that they are totally absorbed in the activity at hand. They may be in effortless control and at the peak of their abilities. 

Finally, creative and innovative thinkers are original; they do not blindly "copy" the thinking of others but rather build their thinking from the ground up...via the ability to see what’s not there and make something happen: they are productive, not reproductive. 

CRITICAL THINKING 

Another way to form ideas is to use critical thinking. This involves a person using his own knowledge or point of view to decide what is right or wrong about someone else's ideas. 

This is sometimes called "having a mind of your own." It means that a person doesn't have to believe or accept everything that someone else says or writes. 

In addition to evaluating other people's ideas, critical thinking can also be used to evaluate things, relationships, phenomena, and situations. If used with due competence, critical thinking can help a student be spectacularly successful in school and elsewhere. 

COMMUNICATION 

Eradicating confusion, gaining clarity, by sharing thoughts, feelings, concepts, questions, ideas, solutions. This skill cultivates the ability to synthesise and transmit ideas with fluency in written and oral formats. 

* Articulate thoughts and ideas effectively using oral, written and nonverbal communication skills in a variety of forms, formats, and contexts 

* Listen effectively to decipher meaning, including knowledge, patterns, values, attitudes, intentions, and hidden contexts. 

* Use communication for a range of purposes (e.g. to inform, instruct, motivate, persuade, and evaluate). 

* Utilise multiple media and technologies, and know how to judge their effectiveness a priori as well as to assess their impact on outcomes. 

* Communicate effectively in diverse environments (including multi-lingual), cross-cultural, and multi-disciplinary.

COLLABORATION 

Collaborative Learning provides oral language and listening practice, and results in increases in the pragmatic speaking and listening skills of group members. 

Additionally, the collaborative learning process increases students' reading comprehension and the learning of reading strategies. 

Collaborative learning is ensured where we carefully plan, structure, monitor, and evaluate for positive interdependence, individual accountability, group processing, face to face interaction, and social skills.

 We cultivate this skill via the ability to work effectively and respectfully with others, including those from diverse groups and with opposing points of view. 

CRITICAL THINKING: WHY IS IT SO HARD TO TEACH?

Here's the link to an interesting, though belated, article, in the form of a .pdf document entitled, 'Critical Thinking: Why Is It So Hard to Teach?'. Readers can download the pdf document.

In this article originally published in 'American Educator', cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham at the University of Virginia, deconstructs “critical thinking skills” – which everyone seems to agree that students should learn better in school – and gives some helpful advice on how we should go about teaching those skills.

CHAMPIONING STUDENTS: DEVELOPING CRITICAL THINKING & PROBLEM SOLVING SKILLS

[continuation from the Last Post ~ in connection with the recent launch of a series of new programs intended for parents as well as their school-going kids/teens, under the auspices of 'The House of Creative Brains'.]


Today most of us, irrespective of whether one is student or working pro, we are information rich but knowledge poor.

Most of us also think that the Google search engine is our entry point for information search, leading to quick knowledge acquisition, instead of critical reading & critical thinking.

Is the technology of today, with the overwhelming advances of the Internet & other modern conveniences of the "electronic culture", producing a decline in critical reading & critical thinking?

Literary critic Sven Birkerts, author of 'The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age', which was published during the nineties, said:

"... the search for truth requires deep reading & deep thinking... dual processors which inform such a search & lead us toward insight & illumination."

Dilip offers powerful thinking tools & methodologies to read fast & think skillfully, so as to help you to cut through all the data smog, info-glut & info-garbage.

In a nut shell, critical thinking is not necessary being "critical" & negative.

To me, I think the well-known 'Critical Thinking Community' puts it in perspective:

"Critical thinking is the art of taking charge of your own mind. Its value is simple: If you can take charge of your own mind, you can take charge of your life."

With this philosophy in mind, we reckon a student is more likely to approach reading as a thinking endeavour, rather than a regurgitating routine.

Thinking is definitely hard work - it's an intellectually disciplined process; that's why so few people want to engage in it.

Dilip & I share the ardent belief that most students will not learn how to think unless we accord explicit attention to helping them to do so.

We also believe that thinking - critical thinking, to be more precise - gives students the ability to not only understand what they have read, but also build upon that knowledge without incremental guidance.

Critical thinking teaches students that knowledge is fluid, & builds upon itself. It is not simply rote memorisation or the ability to absorb lessons unquestioningly.

In the end analysis, Dilip & I believe that critical thinking, which encompasses skills sets like conceptualising, predicting, hypothesising, fact finding, analysing, decision making, problem solving, comparing & contrasting, organising, inferring, synthesising & evaluation, encourages students to think for themselves.

More importantly, students will be encouraged to use good thinking as the guide by which they live their lives.

I like to leave the following inspirational quote as food for thought:

"A common belief is that knowledge is power. It's not. Knowledge is ubiquitous in the Internet Age and thus grants no special privileges, no unique power. Certainly we need to have knowledge and stay current. But the real power comes from what we do with knowledge. In other words, in the 21st century power comes from our ability to think... "

~ Michael Durr, author of 'My Brain, My Future';

[to be continued in the Next Post.]

[For more information about the series of new programs under 'The House of Creative Brains', please get in touch with Ms. Faye Yeoh via her email faye_yeoh@yahoo.com.]

A WISE QUOTE FOR MONDAY MORNING

"Getting the right answer was not enough. I learnt to question conventional wisdom, & approach each new problem with a fresh mind. I was not worried about making a mistake nor did I necessarily follow conventional rules. I learnt that any given problem have more than one solution, each with its own pros & cons. My task was to select the best solution, given the circumstances."

~ Dr Lee Wei Ling, Director of the National Neuroscience Institute, writing in her personal capacity in yesterday's issue of the 'Sunday Times' ('A' for Uncle Ernest);