You want to think clearly and make more effective decisions, faster?
Let’s look at some of the ways people try to upskill their thinking in order to be better decision-makers. You may have tried some, or all of these, yourself:
1. Courses and workshops that inspire you, but whose content ends up doing nothing more but collect digital dust on your hard drive. Is your inner critic hammering you for the thousands of dollars you spent on doing courses that you never took action on afterward?
2. Tweets by experts who seed inspirational, 280-character long ideas, but leave you to figure out ‘the how’ on your own. Isn’t it frustrating going down the rabbit hole of tweets, thinking that with every tweet you are getting closer to being a better critical thinker, but the rabbit hole never stops?
3. Advisors or mentors who have been there, done that, but whose wisdom is biased, teaching you lessons they learned 20 years ago, not the lessons you need to learn today. Have you leaned on hiring advisors who have been there, done that, BUT whose wisdom is not yours to keep?
What do all of the above approaches have in common?
The transfer of knowledge. And knowledge is power. Or, is it? The amount of new information that you absorb is directly proportional to how smart you feel, but not to how capable you are in transforming that knowledge into a practical skill.
And decision-making is a skill.
Anyone can use Google and gather information, yet we’re not all millionaires with six-pack abs, are we?
Unless you change the way you think, you are no better off having it all at your fingertips. Your ability to think clearly and process information logically has to be of a different order of magnitude in order to leverage the information that comes your way.
And, as a leader, you cannot be mentored into better decisions OR outsource your decision-making by hiring better, smarter people. As a leader, you have to develop your own thinking muscle; depending on others is not a viable, long-term solution.
If you learn how to think and make decisions from first principles:
– You’ll stop putting decisions off
– You’ll make decisions with a cool, calm head
– You’ll stop second-guessing yourself
– You’ll be more likely to capitalise on last-minute opportunities
– You would be able to make the right decisions the first time around
– You would be able to identify core problems rather than just dabble in symptoms
– You would be able to finally implement those great ideas you have been holding onto forever because you just couldn’t clear the obstacles to get started
– You would be able to do all of this, systematically, every time
Bottom line is; doing what you’ve always done won’t cut it.
The good news is, you already have the main element required for critical thinking – your brain!
It may not have all the knowledge, BUT it can compute incoming information and fashion answers out of that information. If you learn how to use your brain to think critically, the world is your oyster!
In Black Belt in Thinking, we don’t teach; we train fluency. We don’t transfer knowledge; we transfer skills. We train you to use your Slow Brain to Think Fast in order to make sound decisions. We train you to identify the root causes of persistent problems and solve them once and for all. We train you to organize your thoughts and have the ability to communicate them clearly and accurately.
Imagine what it would be like if you knew, undeniably, that every problem you come up against is solvable. You would be unstoppable!
Register today to start your critical thinking training, so that you never doubt your ability to make great decisions ever again!
Mirta is a Director of ViAGO Limited, a behavioral science enthusiast, and a mum to three boisterous boys.