Management Skills - Logical Thinking

Management skills: How to think Logically

How thinking logically can make your life better

Your ability to Reason is your means of success. And logic is the method of reason. In business, you must react to people and problems according to the principles of reason.

If you become UN-reasonable you will:

1. Make unnecessary enemies
2. Not get the best from customers and colleagues
3. Lose in the game of life

And yet, IF you gain the reputation for acting always according with reason, then you will:

1. Make friends and influence people
2. Get the most cooperative effort from others and
3. More likely win in the game of life

So, two questions:

1. What is reason?
2. What is its method?

Answers:

• Reason is the art of accurate thinking
• LOGIC is the method of reason

Logic can be defined as:

A specialised system of thought distinguished by being:

1. Based upon and corresponding to, the observed facts

Logic is NOT fantasy. It deals with what is real. What is real is defined primarily as

What is observable and measurable?

And then, later: Whatever cannot be seen, or touched, but what can be deduced to exist, by reasoning from the evidence of the senses.

2. Logical thought is NON-contradictory,

In logic you must be consistent: You cannot say one thing and then later contradict the statement, with an opposing statement.

3. Logical thought is hierarchical

One premise combines with another to create a third statement: the "conclusion". That conclusion can be the starting point for the next piece of reasoning.

4. Logic depends on clear and unvarying definitions.

Concepts must denote certain things, and then once agreed, the meanings cannot be switched mid-sentence. Definitions must give the exact meaning of the word and no reasoning between people can be successful unless the definitions are agreed.

Ways to go wrong

From the above list of four, we can reverse them to give us a list of common mistakes. Watch out for the following mistakes in yourself and others:

1. Basing your thinking on rumour, guesswork or gossip.

Don't try to build conclusions on a junk heap. Get to the solid ground of facts: or as close to facts as is possible in the context you are in.

2. Holding contradictory ideas

Identify any contradictions in your thinking, language and actions.

If you profess to believe in one thing, but you do the opposite thing, people will rightly smell a rat!

Be consistent: Root out any and all self contradictions and become as fully integrated as possible.

Self doubt: Self doubt springs from having two or more opposing thoughts in your mind at once.

Your full powers can only be expressed when you are in a fully self-consistent frame of mind.

3. Having disconnected ideas (you have not sorted out what is important to you and what is not)

Remember that knowledge is hierarchical. Always keep in mind the relative importance of everything.

Things are not equal.

Everything has a relative value and it is crucial to your sanity to keep the relative values in mind: If you don't, you will be swamped by an oceanic wave of information, tasks and questions that you will have no means of managing and you will feel a sense of overwhelm.

Failing to think hierarchically will lead you to making the error of NOT recognising the important from the trivial.

As a result you will:

• Invest too much time on things that don't count (TV and donuts).
• Not enough time on things those do count (Study and exercise).

What you read today has an effect on how you feel tomorrow.

And those effects are cumulative.

If you keep making a simple error, (for example: reading trashy celebrity gossip magazine instead of studying a book covering the new improved techniques) and you repeat that error every day, it will amount to a disaster in three years. Always ask yourself: "IF this, ......then what .....will follow in the long run......." type questions.

4. Failing to define your ideas

You think in concepts that are often used but ill defined.

Concepts of:

• Fairness
• Professionalism
• Right
• Wrong
• Good
• Evil

But if you have not taken the necessary time and effort to really understand the meaning of these words and their implications to your actions, then you will repeat the same rookie mistakes and end up

• Broke
• Sick
• And confused

If you do work hard to understand the real meaning of the terms such as:

• Health
• Productivity
• Efficiency
• Honesty

And similar abstractions, and you implement them, then you will find yourself forever on an increasing level of Health, wealth and peace of mind. Conclusion Gain the reputation for acting always according to reason, then you will:

• Make friends and influence people
• Get the most cooperative effort from others and
• More likely win in the game of life

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