Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Professional and Personal Life

Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Professional and Personal Life by Richard Paul & Linda Elder One of the hallmarks of strategic thinking, whether it is for business or for personal application, is the ability to think critically. This is also the expressed contention of Michel Robert in his series of well-known strategic thinking books for CEOs & senior managers. In this particular book, which also happens to be one of my personal favourites, the two authors argue that everything you do in life is determined by the quality of your thinking. I fully concur with the authors. The two authors are principal leaders of the Center for Critical Thinking, a well-respected research & professional development organisation among the critical thinking community. What I like about this book is that the authors help the reader to become a better thinker in every aspect of your life: in your career, & as a consumer, a citizen, a friend, a parent, & even a lover. They also help the reader to analyze your own thought processes so you can identify your own weaknesses & overcome them. To be more precise, they actually show the reader how to "take thinking apart" & assess it for quality. In a nutshell, readers will learn how to improve all the three core components of thinking: - analysis; - evaluation; - re-thinking; The authors have also provided practical metacognitive exercises for honing your thinking skills every day. These are the powerful & beautiful features of this wonderful book! In the end analysis, thinking strategically is actually using effective critical thinking to achieve your goals & enhance your life. This also applies in the business realm. I want to compliment both authors for crafting this excellent guide & field book on critical thinking. Their writings are clear, succinct & concise. Personally, I have enjoyed working on their exercises in the book. If you want to get smart, especially in today's chaotic world where you're at the mercy of everyone else - from dishonest politicians to aggressive, stop-at-nothing ad agencies - get hold of this book quickly. Readers who are interested to explore further the two authors' masterwork are welcome to check out their corporate website. They have a lot of other good stuff e.g. Thinker's Guides.

This book presents a process of analytical thinking that will help you make rational decisions. It also presents many thinking exercises you can apply immediately. Of great importance is the author's descriptions of how the brain tricks itself into making wrong decisions. The writing is very readable and generally keeps you riveted to the material. However, you must frequently stop and think about the ramifications of what the author is presenting. Each sentence, paragraph, section, chapter is deeply thought out. There is great detail and information to consider. The exercises were useful, although there were a few that were too simplistic. Sometimes the exercises were too repetitive to material just presented in the text (repetition of the same questions, in the same order). But overall, the exercises were most valuable and I will probably return there on later readings of this book. There is one reviewer of this book that took issue with the sections discussing how to analyze controversial issues. I had the same reservations. After presenting detailed logic on how to think through issues objectively, I thought the authors let their own anarchist biases effect their proposed analyses of controversial issues, turning these sections into a rhetoric for their political positions. If they had said that their logic was just one analysis of the issues then that would be OK, but instead they presented their controversial analyses as the correct one. These really detracted from the power of the material as I thought of many poor assumptions made on their part. But fortunately, the political rhetoric and controversial issues section of the book was small... at most 2 chapters. However, there is so much to like about this book. I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to learn a process for critical thinking. It is so easy for our minds to let non-rational factors determine our decisions. Worse, we often don't realize that our mind is playing tricks on ourselves. And, this is to our detriment. By applying the authors' rules and exercises you can help catch this flawed, mostly ego-centric thinking while its still in the midst of a crime. John Dunbar Sugar Land, TX

Paul and Elder have left us with a concept of thought, and thinking about thought, that redefines the processes, questions, issues and tools to think beyond ourselves, for ourselves, as well as in behalf of our responsibility to each other. I found "Tools" highly reader frendly, substantively challenging, and consistent. Elder's roots in Educational Psychology compliment Paul's classical perspective making this, in my opinion, their best work ever. Next to "How to Prepare Students for a Rapidly Changing World" or "Taking Charge of Your Learning and Your Life," this is the best most definitive work I've found on the subject. For newbies, there's nothing here that smacks of elitism, authority, or privilege. Tools is about intellectual humility, fairmindedness, and fundamental intellectual standards that introduce us to our own non-intellectual tendencies, prejudices, egocentrisims, and inadaquacies. You come to realize, the label, "intellectual," is actually a good term. By the time you've finished the fourth paragraph, it becomes impossible to think about anything without thinking to some extent about the way you are thinking. The integrity of concepts and best practices for thinking, understanding, teaching and learning becomes quite apparent with each new issue, each new book, editorial, news report, subject, question or debate you encounter. Above the bravado, shouting and world debate you see the shortcomings behind the thinking in leaders, teachers, writers, students, the media, and governments, and yourself. Fingerpointing needs to start with yourself, If you want to understand critical thinking, become and do what you imagine, I know of no better place to start. Tools is a great read! But, more to the point its a necessary lesson.

This is a book for business people, for people in a profession, and for people in any arena who simply want to learn how to live their lives in a more rational and ultimately more fulfilling way. In the authors' recurrent phrase, it contains abundant tools for taking charge of one's life. As such, it not only contains good business sense, it contains good sense for living a better life as well.It's a crisp, clear, useful book. The authors consistently address the heart of each essential aspect of critical thinking in multiple domains. They explain each aspect clearly, trace out its implications, offer effective advice on how to deal with it both as an individual and as a professional. They even supply activities and questions-in inserts labeled "Test the Idea"-for applying that aspect of critical thinking to the reader's own unique circumstances.The book combines strategic thinking, self-knowledge, fairness toward others, and a down-to-earth, usable ideal of justice. It shows not only how to advance in each, but how those qualities fit together with and further one another. So there is a sense in which the book is essentially about human fulfillment (though that isn't explicitly addressed as a main topic)-fulfillment for myself through understanding, honest self-assessment, and taking control of my life; fulfillment for others in ideals of fairmindedness and justice; fulfillment for the planet as a whole in how the qualities combine.One of the most invigorating features of Critical Thinking is the way the book covers a whole range of topics clearly and explicitly. The coverage is brief and to the point, but it allows for a wealth of further application for those readers who are willing to incorporate the authors' guidelines into their day-to-day life. For example, Paul and Elder devote only two pages to a clear, succinct discussion of understanding implications (one of the key elements of reasoning). Then there is a quick "Test the Idea" box. It asks the reader to describe a problem he or she is facing, to formulate alternative decisions to address that problem, and finally to think out the logical implications of each alternative decision. Notice two features of this that seem to go in almost opposite directions: first, how simple the activity is, how do-able, and second how life-transforming it would be if I consistently thought through my potential decisions in terms of a range of alternatives and a conscious awareness of the implications of each. The book consistently offers the same clarity coupled with profundity for each topic covered.The actual topics covered in the book are just the ones people need to address to take charge of their lives:-How to think realistically in a world full of change and danger.-How to evaluate my own thinking across a range of dimensions: * my skills and abilities * my self-understanding * my overall stage as a thinker-How to improve my thinking-again in a range of dimensions, including:

Paul and Elder's "Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Personal and Professional Life" provides the key to developing ones mind as an active tool for quality thinking and ultimately better decision-making in professional and personal life. This book explicates the difference between quality thinking in professional practice and flawed thinking. The authors challenge a personal self-examination of the quality of the reader's thinking with activities that are insightful, cognitively interesting and structured so each component of thinking is enhanced. The approach is practical, and meaningful for the reader interested in developing as a critical thinker. Paul and Elder's expertise in dealing with the complexity of thinking needed to survive in society today is illuminating. As a nurse leader working in a chaotic health care system subject to constant change and revision: critical thinking is the answer to implementing an improvement in health care delivery. The authors have unlocked the mystery of improving my thinking for quality decision-making in my nursing practice. The more I work with these ideas for improving the quality of my critical thinking and decision-making in nursing practice the more empowered I am as a person and professional nurse. Penelope Heaslip RN