In our daily life, we always face such embarrasing situation: you want to tell someone about something, and you are keeping talking, trying to explain clearly to others about what you are talking about, but the more you speak, the more confused the listeners are. Why does this happen?
The answer is that you are not a logical person, and you don’t have a comprehensive logical mindset. Then how to improve our logical thinking?
We should know that, the ability of logical thinking is not innate, but is cultivated in the continuous learning. The difference is that some people are well trained, while others are not. Here are several ways that could help you improve your logic, as long as you master the following tips, you will have a new understanding towards logic.
1. Learn To Use The Logic Output Mode Called “PREP+A”
“PREP+A” is the abbreviation of “ POINT, REASON, EXAMPLE, POINT and ACTION”. This is a complete thinking process. We can follow the below steps when we have a formal speech or presentation.
Firstly, you should introduce concisely about your point, and that’s to say. You should know what you’re talking about and what do you want to express.
Secondly, give the “basis or reason” to support your conclusion, and that’s to say, why do you think so and what kind of facts and explanations are you based on?
Thirdly, use practical examples such as data, personal examples, etc. to enhance the persuasiveness of your conclusions or oopinions.
Furthermore, repeat the conclusion or your point to make sure that the message you want to convey has been delivered.
Finally, Action is what you want the other peoson or your audience to do.
In short, this mode starts with conclusion, and explains the conclusion with reason and basis, then cites specisic examples to support it, and finally emphasizethe conclusion again.
2. Talk To Yourself In Your Daily Life
In addition to formal occasions, we can also practice our logical thinking in our daily life. Whether you tell something to others or listen to others, you can deliberately think about a manuscript: what are the reasons? and what are the cases? This kind of imperceptible practice can continuously optimize your logical thinking.
Another way is self-question. In another words, whether you see, hear and read some important imformation, you can ask youself the following question: why does the speaker or the author present it from this perspective? How does he get this conclusion? What are the advantages and disadvantages of this article? What if I write or speak this, how can I do it better? The two ways can greatly help you improve your logical thinking in your daily life.
3. Improve Your Logical Mindset By Watching Movies
Most people prefer to watch movie, because it won’t take too much to understand a story. In this case, we might spend some time to sort out the whole story after we watch a movie, about its plot, its main line or something that could help you get your thoughts in order about the movie.
As we all know, a good movie should be logical in essence. For most suspense, science fiction and crime movies, they have much more requirements on logical thinking, so we can find these kind of movies to watch.
After you sort out these things, you can also search others’ opinions about the movie on the Internet, and compared your opinions with others to see what kind of details have you omitted. If you often practice your logical thinking in this way, you might improve quickly.
4. Writing Interesting Logical Exercises
There are a lot of interesting test questions about logic on the Internet, frequently doing these test can also exercise logic. Let’s list an example:
Proposition: If 1+1 doesn’t equal 2, then 1+1=9. Is this a true proposition?
- TRUE
- FALSE
- CONTRADICTION, THERE IS NO TRUE OR FALSE.
The above is a common type of logic exercise. Maybe from the start, it will take you some time to solve it, but as long as you practice more about it, and you’ll figure it out quickly.
5. Random Brainstorming
Brainstorming is a fantastic way to exercise your ability, because it not only can train your brain, but also exercise your stress tolerance. In such case, if your logical mindet is clear, and you can explain your ideas to others clearly and concisely.
But if you are not good at brainstorming, you don’t have to be afraid, and you also can take part in such occasion, because you can listen to others’ thoughts, and you can practice in that way when you get home. I believe, with continuous listening, learning and practicing, you will improve quickly.
6. Writing
Writing is a sort of arrangement of self-thinking. Taking time to construct an article so that others can read and understand it is actually to train your logical thinking ability and organizational ability. Because writing is a process of setting a theme and finding the answer.
Firstly, you have to define your problem, and then find answer for your problem, furthermore, analyze the advantages and disadvantages from different perspectives, and finally get your own conclusion. To finish the whole process and write an article is to have a logical thinking exercise.
As for what to write, it depends on yourself. Because it’s broad, such as writing an original story,writing a book or learning experience, life experience. After you improve your writing ability, you can find a key word at will, and then use the key word to build a logical framework, and write an article. In this way, it not only can train your logical thinking, but also can improve your writing skills.
7. Make Structured Reading Notes
Each book has its own logical structure, and the contents is the basic logic for the author to write this book. So we can exercise our logical thinking ability by taking notes.
When we first read a book, one effective way to test whether we master the book or not is writing the catalog from memory. After we write it, we can compare it with the catalog to see whether we are right or not. And then from your own perspective, think about you were the author, how do you write this book. Then write your own logical outline.
After you finish reading this book, there will be more or less important points that you are pay more attention to. After understanding and thinking about these points, you can write articles based on your knowledge points. Of course, this way need to take much time to do it, but in the long run, it’s a good way to exercise your logic.
8. Output Your Ideas To Others
What if you learned a lot of logical knowledge, but you don’t output your idea to others, maybe that’s won’t work too much. Because explaining your ideas to others is also a good way to make your own mind clearly.
Think about this occasion: you are telling a story to one of your friends, at first, you are confused and can not find the center point about the story. And then, here’s come another friend, you dicide to tell her the story, and you explain the story again, but this time, you are more concise and clear than before, although there are still confusions. Again, another friend comes here, and you decide to tell her the story, and this time, you get the whole story, more concise and clear than the last time.
This occasion tell us that repeatly output your ideas can make you understand your own much better, and help you clear your logical mindset.
Finally, one more thing: thinking depends on your basic knowledge. Without the underlying knowledge, most of your thinking can only be superficial.
Only by reading and learning continuously, accumulating different knowledge, and then sorting out the thinking with the help of writing, strengthening understanding, and letting all kinds of knowledge blend together, so as to really upgrade your thinking.
