Critical thinking is an essential cognitive activity, which is important for all people irrespective of their age and occupation. Cognitive skills can be divided into three large groups which are analytical, critical, and creative thinking. They all are indispensable and important at every particular stage of our cognitive activity. Critical thinking is a self-directed and self-corrective approach that allows us to search for an evidence or proof while evaluating our own ideas. It is the basis of effective communication, which helps to overcome our usual egocentrism.
The ability to think rationally is crucial in all types of occupation. Without a clear evaluation of one’s ideas, students and employees can fail to build their relationships with peers and make innovative projects. At this stage, people involve creative thinking in the process and make both types of cognitive activity produce the best solution. We cannot evaluate one quality over the other because critical and creative thinking perform different functions. Any idea is not a solution unless it is properly analyzed and proven to be helpful. Producing ideas is important, but applying them to the existing problems can be tough. We can search for another person to evaluate our solution objectively, but the best censor is ourselves.
In fact, critical, analytical, and creative thinking are all involved in the production of one solution. To address any problem, we shall analyze the existing solutions and store some background information on the given topic. Then, we evaluate every solution and search for reasons why it is a success or a failure for this particular problem. As soon as we come up with evaluation of other solutions, we can make up our own mind on the problematic issue. Because of the critical thinking, we can provide reasonable proofs that our point of view does make sense.