Improving Analytical Thinking Skills: Understanding and Enhancing Its Importance
The concept of analytical thinking has started to appear frequently, especially recently. During workplace interviews to get a job, we are frequently asked whether we have analytical thinking skills. We often hear that it covers a complementary and important area of child development. Of course there is more.
We do not spend every day solving simple problems easily. Sometimes problems become so complex that we get tired of trying to solve them, despair, and perhaps stop trying to solve the problem. Sometimes we cannot find the root of the problem, and sometimes we fail to find a solution. For this reason, we negatively affect our lives in a great way.
However, if we calmly divide our problems into classes and understand the reason, perhaps we can solve them easily. Analytical thinking ability exists to save us from all these troubles. Of course, unfortunately, there is no exercise that can enable us to achieve this ability in one day. However, even raising awareness will be a big step, and you will have adopted this ability over time without realizing it.
What is Analytical Thinking?
In order to better understand the concept of analytical thinking, it is necessary to first understand what deduction or, in other words, deduction methods are. In its most basic form, it is taking a general subject and examining it until it becomes specific. These can also be called reasoning methods. According to this method of reasoning, we divide a general topic into parts, examine them, and make judgments one by one. In this way, we can make the larger piece smaller.
The concept of analytical thinking is based on this most basic reasoning method. Assume that you have a comprehensive, complex and very difficult issue. With your analytical thinking ability, you first divide that issue into parts, classify those parts and think and work on them separately, find the main problem and solve it.
What Does Analytical Thinking Ability Provide Us?
You can imagine how big doors having analytical thinking skills can open for us. Analytical thinking not only helps us find a problem, but also provides us with a great advantage in other important aspects such as ease in decision-making, ability to analyze, and ability to gather information. Thanks to the perspective it gives us, it provides great support to us in increasing our overall success.
“Do you think you have analytical thinking ability?” has become one of the basic questions asked during the recruitment process today. As can be understood from the question, having this ability is of critical importance in working life. In addition to understanding whether you can deal with complex problems, this question also helps you see whether you have a creative side. While analytical thinking requires intense imaginative effort such as classification and dissection, it turns you into a more creative person without realizing it, even if this is not your goal. Analytical thinking is an important skill to have in order to take the steps in your career more confidently.
If we look at the earlier ages, thanks to the analytical thinking training given to children, they will be able to more easily grasp the subjects they will encounter during the academic period, from mathematics to science lessons. Analytical comprehension ability, which is the basis of their success in understanding lessons, will be an important skill that they will gain more practicality and increase their strength in their later years. In this way, they will actually be successful in solving problems other than the subjects they have received training for.
It is an undeniable fact that people with stronger analytical thinking skills are prone to research and questioning. In this way, they provide a great advantage in learning from each problem experienced in the past and in using parts of past problems for future solutions. We can attribute this growth and development in the mind to the power of analytical thinking.
Another issue that is as important as solving problems is to classify them according to their priorities. Our failure to make the right choice when we need to deal with more than one problem, or our attempt to deal with more than one problem at the same time may indicate that our analytical thinking skills are not very strong. Because, as we said, analytical thinking not only solves problems, it also allows us to classify them. Although this ability contributes to us in our private lives, being in a position to make logical decisions in emergency situations, especially in business life, provides a great advantage in reaching a leadership position.
So, does this analytical thinking contribute to us by categorizing problems according to their urgency or finding solutions after they arise? Of course not… Analytical thinking ability gives us the power to see and even prevent problems before they arise. Trouble may not be the only thing to foresee. We can say that the first steps of a project that has not yet been formed are taken by people who have developed analytical thinking skills. At the same time, they make a great contribution to the future thanks to their imagination in the development of a product or project. They make strong plans to create or develop new projects, so they can get positive feedback. Of course, they owe this development in their predictive abilities to their analytical thinking power.
How to Improve?
Just as we must be in a constant state of repetition in order to grasp a subject we want to improve ourselves on or a new language we want to learn, the same is true for improving this ability. We must constantly stimulate our minds. Think, think, think… Therefore, we practice and improve ourselves. So how do we keep our minds alert? By running it! We will force our minds to work regularly.
There are very simple and effective actions we can do to exercise our minds.
Maths
Although it may not sound fun, these exercises, which allow us to start from a general concept, such as solving an equation, and reach a more specific concept and basis, give us the ability to plan, divide a whole into its parts, and ultimately reach the right result. You can also do exercises like these, which are not very fun on your own, with people around you and gain analytical thinking skills together.
Dreaming and Reading Books
The power of reading cannot be underestimated. It was unthinkable that this beautiful action, which added success to our success in many areas, could not help us gain analytical thinking skills. Reading books to keep our minds alert may not seem logical at first. Because generally reading a book to escape from thoughts is like sleeping. A person moves away from thoughts. However, in fact, this event does not proceed exactly this way in our minds.
We imagine the articles we read, not necessarily books, without our own will. The place, smells, colors and even sounds mentioned in the article… These dreams trigger our brain at all times and push us to think. In this way, we give ourselves the ability to think analytically without even realizing it. Also, what we learn by reading. If you cannot encourage yourself in this regard, you can write articles criticizing the books you read on the internet or become a member of book reading clubs.
Being open to innovations
Being open to innovations is also a big step towards improving our analytical thinking ability. With each new information, we repeat our old information and make room for new ones, thus always keeping our minds alive. Going to new places and learning new things is a compulsory action during student years, but when the student years are over, it becomes even more difficult for people to encourage themselves in this regard. To prevent this, we must discover what subjects we enjoy. In fact, even learning about our own tastes and the subjects we enjoy helps us stimulate our minds. Once we find topics that interest us, researching and reading becomes easier.
To discover
Another method as effective as reading or doing math is to explore. As we discover ourselves, new enthusiasms may arise within us, or they may already be there. Now is the time to express these enthusiasms and curiosities. Going to new places, listening to new songs, eating new foods… This whole discovery process keeps the mind open and forces it to work. This nourishes our analytical thinking ability.
Play a game
Playing games is great for strengthening our analytical thinking ability. Of course, not every game benefits from doing this. Games that allow us to use our minds intensively, briefly classified as mind games, are games where we can get help in this regard. Mind games push you to make plans and be forward-thinking. It can be said that it is the most fun way to strengthen analytical thinking ability.
Asking Questions
Unfortunately, asking questions and questioning do not get the value they deserve among our daily hustle and bustle. We cannot even sit down and think about what our perspective on the world is or what we think is right. In order to get away from our anxieties, we avoid thinking, questioning and therefore asking questions. What was the last time you asked yourself about yourself and when did you do this? I hope your answer is soon. If not, gain awareness and start asking yourself questions.
To think
Thinking and pondering on a subject is a great resource for improving your analytical side. Give yourself time to think. You can try to gain a new perspective by examining ideas that contradict your own ideas and open a way to exercise your mind.
Relating more than one subject is a fun and very useful habit in daily life. Exercises of gathering more than one class under one main heading are of great importance in order to gain the ability to divide into classes in analytical thinking power. The communication and connections between events or disciplines are actually everywhere. Physics and chemistry, chemistry and biology… Even needs are connected to each other. It is important to gain this awareness and give yourself time to examine these connections.
Take note
Although taking notes seems like a small action, it is perfect for an organized life and of course strengthening analytical thinking skills. Although taking notes may seem like it is used only to plan the work to be done, it is actually much more than this little task writing. For example, most of us have a notebook that we kept in our childhood: a diary.
Writing a diary not only exercises your mind, but also helps you look at yourself from the outside with a new perspective. When keeping a diary is like a task and consists of blank pages to be filled every evening or morning at the desk, the desire to write will of course decrease. For this reason, you can set new rules for yourself or reject all limits and rules and write whenever you want. If you are more prescriptive and get bored of writing every day, you can keep emotion diaries such as a happiness diary or sadness diary. In this way, keeping a diary can be stopped from being a boring activity. Of course, there are notes that can be kept outside the diary.
There are now applications for all the topics I will mention that are possible to take notes on. Of course, downloading the appropriate application instead of typing by hand would also be an option. So what are these? You can calculate daily calories, keep a note of the calories you consume, take note of the number of cigarettes smoked per day or the number of non-smoking days during the smoking cessation process, keep a note of the amount of water drunk in order to increase or regulate our daily water consumption, and keep notes of many things, from the distance you walked to your budget account. All of these are actions that have a great place in strengthening analytical thinking ability.
You can gain skills thanks to all these analytical thinking techniques, but there is one thing that should not be overlooked: you should perform all these actions with this as your goal. So you have to focus. Devote yourself to this task and watch the beautiful change you will experience from your private life to your educational life and even your business life.