Our world is full of information, especially as a Virtual Assistant. Much of this information is inaccurate and believing this information can be highly detrimental. Critical thinking skills are a set of skills that enable a Virtual Assistant to correctly and logically assess the ideas you are exposed to while developing your own opinions and decisions. 

Critical thinking skills also help a Virtual Assistant possess accurate ideas. By doing so, you permit yourself to develop powerful arguments and counterarguments in your discussions with others, making you more persuasive.  

Question Conventional Assumptions More Often

Our minds are highly predisposed to absorb the ideas they get exposed to without judging their accuracy and truthfulness. The mind is like a sponge for information, and while this is beneficial, it also goes against critical thinking. 

An effective way to improve your critical thinking skills as a Virtual Assistant is to deliberately stop when you hear or read an idea and asking yourself, “what is the evidence that this idea is true?” Don’t just accept the concept as true; you ask for reasons to believe it. If convincing evidence is presented, you can receive the idea and move on. If not, it’s worth maintaining some doubt. 

As you practice this, you will gradually get used to it, and it will become a habit. Building it into your thinking as a natural tendency to regularly question ideas promotes a healthy dose of skepticism. 

Gain a Good Understanding of Logical Fallacies as a Virtual Assistant

Logical fallacies include the tendency to misjudge information, reason incorrectly, and reach false conclusions. Overgeneralization is a common logical fallacy, which tends to quickly jump to a general conclusion from a small number of sample cases. For example, you meet two arrogant lawyers, and you decide all lawyers are this arrogant. 

While we think of ourselves as rational people, the truth is that all of us frequently fall prey to fallacies. Learning about the types of logical fallacies and working to identify them in our thinking and others’ thinking, will let you get better at spotting them and increasing your critical thinking abilities. 

Online, there is a multitude of information about logical fallacies. It’s important to research because the better you understand logical fallacies, the easier it is to spot them and protect yourself from them.
 

Learn About Topics from Multiple Perspectives

When learning about a topic, it’s common to learn about it from only one source. This one source tends to have a particular view on that topic; although many other theories exist, it’s essential to ask, “which are credible?” 

If you know one theory about something, it will often seem believable in the absence of alternative views, even if severely flawed. Knowledge-deficient minds are often gullible minds, so learning various theories about any topic is essential. So is familiarizing yourself with an array of perspectives to make you wiser and train your critical thinking skills. It’s an invitation to research and think more about an issue, which develops your knowledge and critical thinking. It can be frustrating to doubt an idea you’re used to holding, but it pays off in the end.
 

As you practice questioning conventional assumptions as a Virtual Assistant, you will gain a better understanding of logical fallacies. You will also learn about topics from multiple perspectives, and when this happens, the way you see things tends to change. With strong critical thinking skills, you can distinguish good ideas from bad ones, make wise choices in life, communicate persuasively and have a tangible impact on the world. 

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