Critical Thinking

A big part of effective decision making involves the use of critical thinking. What is critical thinking? It is the ability to challenge your and other’s assumptions and biases.
Critical thinking is not really taught in our educational system very well. We are taught to memorize facts and feed them back. We’re never really taught how to question the assumptions we and others make. Some people do challenge assumptions; they are skeptical by nature. But most of us, unless the facts or ideas presented are truly outrageous, will accept an assumption without too much trouble.

The Socratic Method, from the Greek philosopher Socrates, used to be taught many years ago. It is still a part of legal education. It is learning through asking a series of questions until you arrive at some knowledge. It is kind of like a 4 year old constantly asking you “Why?” until you get to a point where you really can’t answer. That’s when the 4 year old may have sparked a challenge to one of your dearly held assumptions. Critical thinking is just that: asking both the right questions and enough questions to arrive at the truth.

When faced with an important problem or decision, it can be very valuable to question your underlying assumptions. For example, perhaps you are beginning the process of selecting a college. You just assume, because it is “what everyone does”, that you should go to college. However, your assumption may not be right for you – perhaps a trade school would be a better path for you. Or, if you decide to choose a house, perhaps your assumption that home ownership is appropriate because it’s the “American Dream” is not the path for you. Perhaps renting, or living on a boat is the right path for you. These ingrained assumptions, part of our social norms, are not often aggressively challenged.

A crucial part of the decision making process is stating the decision, or problem, correctly. DecisionPlanner asks questions and asks for your objectives to try and help you clarify the decision – its scope, timetable, rewards, and ramifications. Applying critical thinking during this part of the process, challenging your own assumptions, can make a big difference.

Would you like some help with decision making? Try DecisionPlanner at www.yoopersoft.com.

Paralysis by Analysis

There are a couple of common reasons for bad decisions. The most common reason is simply not enough time was spent analyzing and thinking about the problem. Another common reason is no decision is made at all (and we all know that no decision is really a decision) because of too much or endless analysis.

The phrase “paralysis by analysis” refers to a decision postponed indefinitely due to spending too my time collecting or analyzing information.

Sometimes the people responsible for the decision truly do not know what to do; there is a lot of information to go over and it does take a long time. Sometimes it’s because they are afraid to decide – it could be a “lose – lose” type of decision, all solutions being painful.

However, most of the time uncertainty is just rearing its ugly head. People want to be certain that the decision they are making is the correct one. You can never be 100% certain, but if you follow a tried and true method, and diligently work each of the steps, you can at least be certain you have covered all your bases.

DecisionPlanner helps you avoid analysis paralysis. If you carefully do each step, the software will do the analysis and make a recommendation. The factors (or decision criteria) can be defined specifically enough that the answer can be researched and put into DecisionPlanner. Most of the time, the answers to the factors can be defined so that there is no interpretation needed. This means that you spend your time researching the alternatives, but not analyzing the answers to death. That’s what DecisionPlanner does.

Analysis paralysis is a bad thing. Use a tool like DecisionPlanner to avoid it.

Would you like some help with decision making? Try DecisionPlanner at www.yoopersoft.com.