Work-Life Balance (robin Martin Jones)

1.1a: The authors argue that critical thinking is "hard work." They also provide examples of self-reflective questions that help us develop "strong sense" critical thinking. They also propose "serious thinking about thinking is rare in human life" (page xxi). Define and discuss what you think the authors mean by "that serious thinking is rare in human life."

Critical thinking consists of those activities of the mind that are important and indispensable to making decisions we can live with. It is important to realize that serous study of critical thinking is rare because is not subject in most colleges.

Sometimes, people have been told to think something through but were not quite sure to do that. That can be related to what the authors mean by "that serious thinking is rare in human life." Some people think of critical thinking as negative thinking because they do not want to be unfavorably criticized, nor do they want to learn how to criticize others unfavorably; at the same time, critical thinking helps people to learn how to stop being unfavorably critical of themselves and others.

1.1b: Anonymously discuss a situation in work that required individual or team critical thinking. From your recollection, identify any characteristics and levels of critical thinking that you recognized (chapter 2) as well as any shortcomings of critical thinking (based on knowledge gained this week).

Everyday, we make a lot of decisions about what to do and how to act in work. Some of these decisions need individual or team critical thinking to be effective. Thoughtful decision making is a real life process that everyone who want to avoid regrettable decision use. It is also a process we can use to make relatively simple decision in our everyday lives.

Since dispute with others often arise during decision making, it is important to know how to act and resolved conflicts. Critical thinking helps to evaluate information and arguments to consider when making decision. In my department at work, we are seven plus the supervisor. For a couple of months, we didn't have meeting and all decisions just came from the supervisor; some of them creating conflicts between the team. When we analyze the situations, we try to predict what will happen if we do nothing, and we try to figure out that we need to have meeting to discuss every decision before application. Now we have meeting every week and as team discuss every situation and have an alternative resolution. We are now becoming aware of how to deal with the structure at work.