The next time you need to think critically about something, it’s worth asking yourself a few simple questions.

Recomendo recently shared a spreadsheet developed by Wabisabi Learning (an online learning platform) that’s designed to help you ask the kind of questions that inspire critical thinking:

By Nicole Dieker for LifeHacker.com

Image:  Shutterstock

• Who benefits from this?
• Who is harmed by this?
• What would be a counter-argument?
• Where would this idea take us?

  A lot of these questions are designed to get you to evaluate both sides of a potential idea; if you believe that a particular decision will benefit you, your family or society in certain ways, you also need to ask yourself how that decision might cause problems down the line—and be honest about the answer.

  Here’s the cheatsheet, if you’re curious about all the questions you might want to consider:

  

  These critical thinking skills are especially important right now, as states begin to open up and people begin to ask themselves whether it’s safe to go back to work, visit a restaurant or invite other households to form a quaran-team. For many of us, deciding what to do during this phase of the COVID-19 pandemic will come down to some very careful thinking about the potential risks and benefits—so it’s important to approach this analysis as critically as possible, while avoiding cognitive biases, wishful thinking and the kind of gut-level emotional responses that can lead you to make decisions before your brain has processed all of the available information.  Continue reading…