How to Develop Critical Thinking Skills

Want me to coach you? Check out my program at fitnessmastery.com/?video=B6MfA5DvEmU

In this video, you'll learn the reason why we often fail to develop critical thinking skills that are necessary for success and what we need to be aware of in order to overcome this problem.

Every day we're being bombarded by thousands of decisions and our mind cannot process all the facts so we rely on our "fast thinking" system to make the right choice.

This was first observed by Daniel Kahneman who discovered that there are 2 mains systems that govern our way of thinking.

System 1: Fast, automatic, frequent, emotional, stereotypic, subconscious

System 2: Slow, effortful, infrequent, logical, calculating, conscious

In today's age of information overload we're continually relying on System 1 to make decisions because we don't have time to analyze all the facts.

This isn't a problem when it comes to things like which shoes to wear, or what piece of clothing to buy but when it comes to making important life decisions the "fast thinking" system 1 will lead us to failure more than success.

On top of this, all the marketing we're exposed today is training us that the decision is already made for us. And we can't help but to respond to "social proof" and make choices that are pre-approved by society.

Relying on social proof is our evolution, but today this evolution might be working against us in the form of groupthink.

And groupthink is limiting out individual development, the uniqueness of opinion and our ability to achieve success in major areas of life.

The most successful people in the world are aware of System 1 and System 2 thinking.

Moreover, these high performers know how and when to use each system.

I've made this video as a reminder and wake up call to think of how many times we took information out there without even questioning the source.

This often happens with YouTube videos in the fitness and nutrition world where guys don't even question the content served to them.

The opinion of the creator serves as evidence.

And this ultimately reduces the critical thinking ability of the viewer who then just acts as told by the "guru".

This is a very deep topic and I would highly urge you to check out Kahneman's book. It's one that I read every 6 months to immunize myself from group think :)

Related books:
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

Scientific references:
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8355141
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14584987
sciencemag.org/content/306/5702/1776.short
jstor.org/stable/1914185
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7455683
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17835457

For more fitness, nutrition and personal development tips check out:

Instagram: instagram.com/mariotomich
Website: tomic.com

Music: Different Heaven & EH!DE - My Heart [NCS Release]
youtube.com/watch?v=jK2aIUmmdP4
soundcloud.com/different-heaven
soundcloud.com/ehide-dubstep