Thinking about thinking about thinking

In navigating the dynamics and wealth of information in today’s world, one has to be a skilled thinker. Good thinking pays off in every aspect and situation of life, it can help us avoid problems, wasted time and effort and frustration. To maximize the quality of your thinking, you must first learn to be an effective critic of your thinking in essence, make learning about thinking your priority.
Thinking plays a very important role in our lives, everything we do, want or feel is influenced by our thinking; but we pay little attention to it, we seldom think about thinking consciously to analyze or evaluate our thoughts or find out about its origin. It takes intellectual work and lots of practice to improve the quality of thinking.
Improving your thinking
• Clarify your thinking
Our thinking can sometimes be vague, muddled, deceptive or misleading. To figure out real meaning we have to go beyond the face value of our thoughts (or what people are saying); explain your understanding of the statement to help clarify it in your own mind. If you cannot summarize in your own words, what you think someone just said, you have not really understood, same goes for what you say to people.
• Stick to the point
When thinking is pertinent, it focuses on the main tasks at hand. Our minds often rush to make associations like this reminds me of that, or that reminds me of this other thing; which most often than not distract us from the main point of the issue. Always be on the look out for fragmented thinking, if thinking drifts away from what is relevant, it needs to be brought back to what truly makes a difference by asking yourself questions like: am I focused on the main problem? Does my information directly relate to the problem? What facts are going to help me answer the question?
• Question Questions
Good thinkers routinely ask questions in order to understand and effectively deal with the world around them. Not superficial or loaded questions, but questions that lead to a penetrate masks and fronts and make real problems explicit and adds structure to the thinking process. When listening to other people, take notice of when they question or fail to question; look closely at the question being asked, which question you do, and should ask; and examine the extent to which you are a questioner, or simply one who accepts the definitions of situations gives by others. Whenever you are dealing with a complex problem, formulate the question you are trying to answer in several different ways until you hit upon the way that best addresses the problem at hand.
• Be Reasonable
Being reasonable, is the ability to change one’s mind when given a good reason to, but only a few people are willing to change their minds once they are set, or suspend their beliefs to fully hear the views of those with which they disagree. If you find yourself in these kinds of situations, ask yourself whether the person’s view has some merit and see if you can break your defensiveness to hear what their saying.
These are just a few recommendations among myriad ways in which one can bring intellectual discipline to control their thinking. In the end, the best thinkers are those who understand the development of thinking as a process that takes many years of practice.