Weapon #1 — Critical thinking

• Critical thinking — Is a method of analyzing information critically to determine its validity and usefulness. 


• Normal people — Judge information by it’s source, channel and how well it fits what they already believe.

Example: It was on the news, it must be true. The government wouldn’t lie. Yeah that’s what I’ve been hearing.


• Critical thinkers — Judge information critically by questioning it and challenging it, regardless of it’s source.

Example: Doctors, government and the news say smoking isn’t bad for health, how do they know? Wheres the data?


• Masters think critically — They’re extremely careful about what they believe to be true and they ruthlessly analyze

information and fact check it before they commit it to their Unified Field Theory they use to perceive the world.


• Assume wrong until proven right — To protect yourself from misinformation, default to assuming all information
is wrong until it’s scientifically proven right, regardless of who told you, their level of authority or their emotions.

Uplevel Consulting™
 Critical thinking part #1 — Understand objects

• Remove yourself — Take a third party observers view of the situation, don’t think as a participant.


• Remove identities — Form an abstract understanding of things as “objects” and “relationships” to bring clarity.


• Identify objects — What people or things are they talking about and what words are they using to define them.


• Identify relationships — How do these objects relate to each other and in what directions.


• Identify time sequence — When and in what order did these objects relate to each other. 


• Remove ambiguity — People may use multiple words to describe objects/relationships, remove ambiguity. 


• Remove emotions — Don’t count emotions as objects or relationships, remove them from the equation. 


• Remove loops — People may loop the same object/relationship flow multiple times in different ways, remove them.

Uplevel Consulting™
 Critical thinking part #2 — Examine argument

• Examine argument — Identify what the argument is for/against by identifying it’s core components:


• Claim — What the argument is attempting to claim as the “truth”.


• Premise — A reason offered as support for the claim (since, for, because, the reason that, granted that, given the fact).


• Conclusion — A claim that is supported by the premise (so, therefore, consequently, thus, hence, accordingly).


• Judge argument — Determine if arguments are “valid” or “invalid” based on premises supporting conclusions.


• View from all angles — Take a look at all related parties from all related angles/perspectives to see differences. 


• Examine motive — Identify what all related parties want and what benefits them for others to believe/not believe.

Uplevel Consulting™
 Thinking critically part #3 — Discount biases

• Discount authority — Don’t give authority privilege when analyzing information, distrust it and be cautious.


• Discount consensus — Don’t perceive consensus as correctness when analyzing information, distrust it.


• Discount popularity — Don’t perceive your acceptance and popularity with others as a signal of accuracy. 


• Discount culture — Don’t relate information to your culture (or others), analyze it in isolation from bias.


• Discount religion — Don’t relate information to your religion (or others), analyze it in isolation from bias.


• Discount politics — Don’t relate information to your political views (or others), analyze it in isolation from bias.


• Discount yourself — Don’t relate information to what you do/don’t want to hear, analyze it in isolation from bias.


• Discount emotion — Don’t perceive your emotional response (or others) as right/wrong when analyzing information.

Uplevel Consulting™
 Thinking critically part #4 — Drill with questions

Drill until you understand — Keep asking questions to the subjects, participants, advisors, friends and yourself

until you believe you fully understand the nature of the thing. As you dig deeper you’ll discover its like an onion!

Uplevel Consulting™
Thinking critically part #5 — Problem solve

The “5 Whys” — Is a problem solving framework that’s

extremely simple and effective. Start by clearly identifying
the problem statement and then ask “Why” 5 times (or more)
until you identify the root cause. Keep asking why until it
can’t go any further. (Note: I use this a lot on our Q&A calls!).

Uplevel Consulting™