How to become a Critical thinker?

I completed a mark of writing 61 blogs and encountered the epic writers’ block and wrote a whole blog describing how I felt and how I tackled it. The one skill which came to my rescue was “Critical Thinking”. In the book written by Donald. L. Karshner, the emphasis on the relationship between critical thinking and creative thinking is explained as each other’s subset as and when demanded in various circumstances.

So, I decided to approach the problem as a critical thinker.

The process started with identifying the root causes preventing me to write on a regular basis. I made sure to avoid confusion between causes and consequences. This chaos can easily mislead you from achieving your objective.

Symptoms are not the root cause – You might see yourself getting uncomfortable at your desk with the mere thought of typing something. You might look at your watch and postpone the research on the topics. You might struggle to get up on time. These are symptoms and not your real problem. The reason behind these problems needed more questioning.

Breaking down your causes – I understood it was the issue of my will power and not anything else. Carl Phillips has openly termed Writer’s block a myth and well he is right. The reality is people working at publication houses read and write back to back as a part of their job. It demands them to stay on top of their game. So, I started writing at new locations each day. I started regaining my focus more without getting affected by the surroundings.

Coming out with a “Problem statement” – A problem statement can be understood as an objective with boundaries and clearly defined success criteria and constraints. In my case, my objective was to write two blogs daily and plan the next day’s topics. The question became bigger when I thought of making a month’s plan and that was where I again decided to split the plan into weeks. The take away here is to keep narrowing down your quest.

Measuring the success criteria – Make sure to use numbers here while setting up your milestone. I kept my numbers in check on a daily basis. The other way you can utilize the numbers technique is by time stamping your activities like research, reading and writing. Reading and research took most of the time so I kept my travel hours focussed on it. I made notes on phone to summarize important points.

Analyzing the future goal – It is imperative to keep the “whys” in your head at all times. The more clarity you have the more relevant content you will produce for your readers. I have understood my niche and expectations from readers by analyzing the traffic data. The same needed to stay aligned with my monitory goals.

80/20 Pareto rule – The blog by Perry Marshall explains the idea of time management on the basis of 80/20 rule. Don’t stay stuck with small day to day task rather try and outsource it. The rule says 20 % of people create 80 % of the outcome but it is not always true. Hence, one should always consider all the edge cases. I decided to apply 20% of time in marketing and followed platform wise approach in setting up my bloggers account. It has worked so far.

Do you question a lot? If not start thinking on it now – Questioning your moves and self-doubting your strategy are two completely opposite paths. You keep questioning your moves as you want to double check if the direction taken is right and reaching the goal. Thinking too much about it will lead you to self-doubt and eventual confidence fall.

COMMON STEPS FOR CRITICAL THINKERS

• Defining your problem
• Narrowing down to objectives which are measurable in nature quantitatively
• Generate recommendations or create a plan
• Analyze your key findings
• Generate solutions to gain success