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

Use better thinking to empower yourself, discover opportunities, avoid disastrous mistakes, build wealth, and achieve your biggest goals! This is your complete, up-to-the-minute blueprint for assessing and improving the way you think about everything - from business decisions to personal relationships. Drs. Richard W. Paul and Linda Elder, of the Center for Critical Thinking, offer specific guidance for making more intelligent decisions, and overcoming the irrationalities and "sociocentric" limits we all face. Discover which of the "six stages" of thinking you're in and learn how to think with clarity, relevance, logic, accuracy, depth, significance, precision, breadth, and fairness. Master strategic thinking skills you can use everywhere and learn how to critically assess what experts tell you. Packed with new examples and exercises, this guide won't just help you think more effectively: it will help you use those skills to empower yourself, discover new opportunities, avoid disastrous mistakes, and grow your wealth. Above all, it will help you gain the confidence and clarity you need to pursue and achieve your most important goals in life - whatever they are!

Use Critical Thinking in Every Part of Your Life
“Paul and Elder have devoted their careers to developing fairminded critical thinkers. In this book, they share deep insights into their best thinking about thinking. This book challenges us to become better in every aspect, to use our best thinking as a tool for social justice.”
--Dr. Daryl Watkins, Leadership Department Chair, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

“Richard Paul and Linda Elder’s latest collaboration advocates conscious thinking...for a...world mired in cultural assumptions, egocentric behaviors, and sociocentric actions. The text, chockful of examples, offers effective ways to uncover flawed thinking processes, examine inherited values, and expand our capacities for a peaceful world.”
--Dr. Richard LaManna, Academic Assessment, Bronx Community College, CUNY

“...Dr. Paul and Dr. Elder have developed an approach that stands in stark contrast to the tendency to embrace critical thinking as an essential, yet vaguely understood goal. The book inspires its readers to draw on methods grounded in wide-ranging examples...in order to reason effectively about the challenges that beleaguer the human condition.”
--Julie Stephens de Jonge, Professor of Spanish, University of Central Missouri

You are what you think.

Whatever you’re doing right now, whatever you want, and how you feel are all determined by the quality of your thinking. If you aren’t thinking clearly, you’re at the mercy of everyone from dishonest politicians to ad agencies. But most people never think about how they think. No wonder they’re susceptible to the frustration, pain, ineffectiveness, and financial loss that result directly from poor thinking.

This is your complete guide to becoming a better thinker in all facets of your life: at work, as a consumer, as a citizen, friend, parent, and even as a lover. Foundation for Critical Thinking leaders Drs. Richard Paul and Linda Elder teach the core skills of effective thinking; then they help you analyze your own thought, identify weaknesses, and overcome them.

Packed with exercises, powerful new visuals, and brand-new “test the idea” activities, Critical Thinking will empower you as never before: to discover new opportunities, avoid disastrous mistakes, and gain new clarity throughout your entire life.

Escape the poor thinking habits everyone falls prey to
Get past the egocentrism and sociocentrism that shackle your thinking
“Test the idea”--and see if you can use it in your life
Assess ideas for clarity, relevance, logic, accuracy, depth, precision, fairness, and more
Think far more effectively at work
Overcome the common obstacles to effective thinking in the workplace
Think strategically: Take responsibility for your own growth
Direct your thinking toward your most important goals