On Second Thought – A Simple Guide for Critical Thinking » Community

Critical thinking has always fascinated me because it’s one of a very few topics where the demand for skill development far exceeds the supply of available learning resources. Try to build a shortlist of articles, books, videos or courses on critical thinking skills and you’ll see what I mean by limited supply. And yet, it’s a skill we’ve never needed more, in light of:

Our access to an unprecedented amount of information and data
Increasing pressure to make more decisions more quickly; decisions that entail more complexity, ambiguity and uncertainty while having a significant impact
Tools like generative AI that give us “answers” to anything we prompt them to give us answers for — fragile answers that can shift substantially when we ask again or ask differently

We need a practical, workable guide for applying sound critical thinking to our decision-making inputs (the information and data we base choices on), outputs (the options we consider and choose), and the process we use to get from one to the other (how we synthesize). The steps below provide a guide that I have found to be especially helpful for myself and in coaching others, but first, let’s align around what critical thinking is.

Critical Thinking Defined

Simply defined, critical thinking is the habit of pausing before we decide to check our facts, question our assumptions, and consider what we might be missing.

The important point that I would highlight is that it’s a habit, which means that we can develop it in ourselves and others with intentional discipline, practice and reinforcement. There are times when working with a coach can help us to modify or improve our technique, much like any other habit, but we can also make considerable progress on our own.

Utilize the steps below for making decisions and you should be well on your way to building or strengthening your critical thinking skills.

Step One: PAUSE

Are you thinking or reacting? I like to think of this as the critical “second” we give ourselves to arrive at the phrase “on second thought…” Our brains are wired to follow different pathways for reacting to things quickly, as opposed to deliberately thinking through them. The shorter, reactionary path is tremendously helpful for managing real or perceived threats, but it relies on shortcuts that can short circuit careful analysis. Pausing gives us the opportunity to orient our minds to the thinking path, which enlists deeper judgment and a thoughtful analysis of alternatives.

Step Two: Check Yourself

What do you know and how do you know it? Verify your sources.

Step Three: Challenge Yourself

What might you be missing? Is there another way to look at this?

Step Four: Chess Yourself

You read that right — part of chess is projecting what others will do and what can happen with the other “pieces on the board” depending on your next move. Critical thinking is mental chess. How will the system (other people, other teams, etc.) react to your decision? What intended and unintended consequences could come from making this choice?

Step Five: Decide

Knowing what you know after working through steps 1 through 4, what makes the most sense? What would change your mind? How can knowing what would change your mind inform your approach to enacting the decision you make?

There’s a lot to consider when it comes to critical thinking and the lack of learning resources connected to it might suggest that it’s a difficult skill to cultivate. On second thought, a guide like this one suggests that we can build our skill in this area and even make it a habit by pausing to ask ourselves a few simple questions before we make our next move.

Ernest currently serves as a Personnel Research Psychologist within the Chief Human Capital Office of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). He earned his Ph.D. in industrial-organizational psychology from the University of Akron in 2016. Over the last 20 years, he has worked in for-profit, non-profit, and government settings while holding a variety of individual contributor and leadership roles. His areas of expertise and experience include assessment for hire and development, leadership development, employee engagement, performance management, and organizational change and transformation.