A Penny For Your Thoughts

Given that thinking is what we theoretically do for a living, how good are you at it?  Are you truly a "critical thinker?"

Two years ago I would have reflexively answered that of course I was a critical thinker—I went to a college and law school you've heard of, I am blessed or cursed by promiscuously wide-ranging curiosity, and both my training in and practice of law and economics meant I'd been honing my critical thinking skills all my career.

Then I started "Adam Smith, Esq."

And realized there was an entirely different plane of critical thinking that I'd been missing out on.  What happened?  Simply put, I started reading everything—well, OK, not counting Harry Potter—with a gremlin on my shoulder asking, "Does this author make his case?  What are his unspoken assumptions?   The implications he doesn't run down?  Any internal inconsistencies here?"  &c.  What changed was I began to look at professional literature as potential grist for "Adam Smith, Esq."—but as I hope you realize by now, I never have and never will do a post which amounts to:  "There's something interesting; go read it."  Rather, I won't post at all unless I think I can critique, extrapolate, synthesize, or otherwise comment intelligently.  And thus I came to inhabit a new level of "critical thinking."

I tell this personal anecdote as a way of urging you to read this Harvard Business Review piece on this very topic.  Next time you're facing a decision:

• Make sure you understand the logic, not just the emotions, behind your decision.
• Specify what your assumptions are, then stress-test them; do they hold up?
• If you're unsure, collect some pertinent data; try to confirm or disprove them.  (This is hard, like playing both white and black in chess against yourself—you can't tilt in favor of one or the other subconsciously.)
• Consider the decision from different perspectives:  Is it really a zero-sum context?  What if you tried to offer more to get more?  Etc.
• Never forget that human beings are involved, and that they will react dynamically, not statically, to what you're contemplating.
• Lastly, consider both the short and the long term.  This is another way of saying that you have to ask not just, "What?" but "What then?"  And "What then...?" 

It shocked me to experience how passively I used to absorb information.  And now that I'm an "active" reader, I'm hungry to get better yet.  You probably are, too.