When you think rationally and clearly about what to believe or what to do, you are using your critical thinking skills. Critical thinkers engage in independent and reflective thinking. They use logic and reason to come up with solutions to problems.
Critical thinkers are not born, they are developed. If you want to develop your own critical thinking skills, here are some of the tools that you can employ.
Books
Critical thinking is a well-known subject so there’s a myriad of books from experts, both past and present, regarding the topic. The vast number of books available can make it difficult to choose. Here’s a short list of some of the best publications on critical thinking.
The Critical Thinking Companion by Wabisabi Learning. – Packed with engaging activities and games, cool tools, and challenges that will boost your brain power, The Critical Thinking Companion is an essential accessory for anyone wanting to enhance their critical thinking skills.
Think Smarter: Critical Thinking to Improve Problem-Solving and Decision-Making Skills by Michael Kallet. – If you’re looking for real-world applications of critical thinking, Think Smarter has got you covered. There are dozens of exercises that can be applied to different functions and industries.
Wait, What?: And Life’s Other Essential Questions by James E. Ryan. -Illuminating yet hilarious, surprising yet poignant. That’s the best way to describe Wait, What? It contains a myriad of examples from social movements, popular culture, history, politics, and the author’s personal life.
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan. – Considered one of the world’s greatest thinkers of the modern time, Carl Sagan is also a distinguished astronomer and a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. In this book, he stresses that scientific thinking is essential to the search for truth and the well-being of democratic institutions.
A Short Course in Intellectual Self-Defense by Normand Baillargeon. – Media manipulates and politics can be confusing. The book arms with you with the knowledge so you can ask the appropriate questions and protect yourself from intellectual attacks.
The Unlimited Mind by Zoe Mckey. – The Unlimited Mind is a great collection of tactics, tips, and tricks of some of the most successful people that will help you harness and improve your inner smartness. It will teach you to think smarter and search for your inner intelligence.
Games
Time flies when you’re having fun and this is what makes these games a must if you want to develop the critical thinker in you. It might not seem obvious, but these games work your brain out, making decision making easier in the real world.
Chess. – This ancient board game dates back to 600 AD and is still one of the best games available for developing critical thinking skills. Chess has been proven to promote brain growth, and on both sides of it. It teaches concentration, focus, foresight, planning and logical thinking. It’s so effective that in a study, students who played chess for 120 days increased their IQ scores significantly.
Settlers of Catan. – Settlers of Catani is a strategy board game that can be played by multiple players. Each player becomes a settler of an island called Catan. Each player then tries to dominate the island by gathering resources and building roads, settlements, and cities. This game teaches resource management, negotiation, and critical analysis.
Minecraft. – It’s one of the most successful games ever developed, and can be played by gamers from all ages. What it lacks in high-end graphics, it makes up with gameplay and unlimited possibilities. It’s like playing Lego, but you need to mine the block or resources required. You also need to survive because there are monsters that hunt at night, and you need to eat so you must hunt for food.
Civilization. – It’s like Settlers of Catlan but on a more epic scale and played inside a computer. The first iteration of Civilization came out in 1991, and it became an instant hit. Players say they feel like being a god in control of the world. But in order to dominate, you will need planning, reasoning, and logic.
Apps
The dawn of computers revolutionized the ways in which critical thinking can be enhanced. As previously mentioned, there are games out there that disguise themselves as critical thinking development tools. Some computer applications, however, exist for the sole purpose of boosting your brain.
Lumosity. – Lumosity is a very popular brain-training app. This application was designed and developed by neuroscientists to increase attention span, boost memory, enhance problem-solving skills, and develop quick and flexible thinking. All of these are essential in critical thinking. The application has been downloaded more than 70 million times, and even a once-a-day session can enhance your mental skills.
Fit Brains Trainer. – With over 360 puzzles and games that get progressively harder as you go up the levels, this app will help you think faster. Fit Brains Trainer also tracks individual performance, and based on the user’s progress, make an appropriate recommendation on how to improve.
Wizard. – People with schizophrenia, a game developer, psychologists, and University of Cambridge scientists all collaborated to develop this app. The goal of Wizard is to improve the unique memory of a particular event. It might have been created to help schizophrenia patients, but it’s also a potent critical thinking tool.
Elevate. – This game was launched in 2014, and is designed to develop analytical skills and communication through challenges that test your general knowledge. For example, it can test your knack for spotting grammatical mistakes.
Eidetic. – If you frequently miss birthdays or forget phone numbers, this app was designed for you. It uses facts that you yourself entered such as your partner’s birthday or your mother’s phone number. Eidetic then tests you periodically if you remember these facts. It can also be used to learn languages.
Conclusion These tools are only as good as how often you’ll use them. Set aside a time for regular reading and practice. Daily exercises, even short ones, help develop parts of your brain that are essential to critical thinking.
