What are thinking skills

Skills

           

               Few of us spend much time consciously practicing thinking skills. We believe that thinking is either a natural function or believe that the great thinker among us are gifted. Nothing could be further from the truth. All research shows that each of us has a hugely powerful potential in our brains that lies vastly under used. Moreover when faced with a wide range of unsolvable problems in our lives the need to use this potential has never been greater.

The potential of the brain

               The facts about the brain are truly stupendous for example did you know that the human brain takes up a fifth of all the energy generated by your body in its resting state? It is similar to a 20-watt light bulb continuously glowing. how  big do you think the brain is? Well if you can imagine it your brain consists of 100 billions cell each one of which connects to 1000 other brain cells making a total of 100,000 billion connections. There are more cell connection points in the human brain than there are stars in our galaxy. As norman cousins put it “not even the universe with all its countless billions of galaxies represents greater wonder or complexity than the human brain.

Brain power

                 Here are some more astonishing facts about your brain. Although the brain weighs just 3lb it contains 12 trillion nerve cells (more than two and a half times the people on this planet). It contains 1000 trillion molecules (way beyond our ability to compute), and can process 30 billion bits of information a second. Your brain has 10 billion neurons and the range of connections all the neurons in the brain could make would amount to one with 28  noughts after it. Just stop and write that down to get a feel for what that is. Your brain has enough atomic energy to build any of the world major cities many time over. Unsurprisingly no human beings has yet existed who has been able to use all the potential of the brain. How about you?

 Exploding the myths

                 One of the reasons we fail to make the most of our brain and therefore our thinking skills  is that we hang on to a range of inherited assumptions about our brain and our capacity to think. Many of us believe that contrary to the facts we are either born bright or stupid. We think that we are only as   Intelligent Quotient (IQ) and that this is fixed throughout our lives. We think that when we run up against big problems they just can’t be solved. We fret over talking decisions and bemoan our ability to choose wisely. We think and that we cannot change it. And to top things off, we think that  as we age our brain declines and with it our abilities to remember things. The only of these assumptions that is true is that it is only our thinking that limits the power of our brains.

 

Brainwork

                A simple look at what we ask of our brain is enough to show us what a wonderful organ this is first unlike other species, we are the only species that can think in the 3 dimensions of past, present and future. We can use our brains to interpret our world in any way we choose, at one extreme positively and at the other negatively. We can use brains for working out answers to logical problems as well as using it imaginatively to work out answers to illogical problems. We can imagine with   our brains invent and innovate. We can learn change and develop. We can use our brains to interpret understand and become wise. We can use our brains to analyze things and to synthesis things. And again uniquely for planet, we can use our brains to think about our thinking. The brain is truly the most complex and versatile tool we have in our bodies.

Brain not Brawn    

            Given the wonderful instrument that our brains are it is astonishing that, until very recently, thinking was regarded in industrialized countries as a second-class skill. For several conturies, people were employed  first for their manual labour , secondly, for their machine operating skill and lastly and only called upon for their thinking ability. Today all that has changed. We no longer live in an industrialized age but an information age. Instead of brawn the successful companies and economies of today and the future need brains. They are the ones that will harness, use and reward the combined thinking abilities of everyone in them.

Management thinking

                So what kind of thinking skills do we need in the information age? Some people are researchers who have studied the qualities needed by successful workers. They found that at least half of the key skills are those that relate to how we use our brains. their list reads:

1. command of basic facts.

2. relevant professional understanding.

3. continuing sensivity to events.

4. analytical, problem-solving, decision-taking and judgment-making skills

5. social skills and abilities

6. emotional resilience

7. proactivity: an ability to respond purposefully to events

8. creativity

9.mental agility

10. balanced learning habits

11. self-knowledge