Over the last year, I've been establishing myself as an author, focusing on the subjects suof reasoning, logic, and critical thinking. I'm happy to announce that I've published my first book Method Matters: A Practical Guide to Achieving Your Goals Through Critical Thinking! The book is available on Amazon.
If you'd like to learn more about my books or read my blog entries, I encourage you to head over to my author website to check out the blog, where I write about topics related to my book, view other books I've written, and to subscribe for future updates.
About the Book
The methods of observation, reasoning, and critical thinking have been developed and refined countless times throughout the centuries in all walks of life. These methods have driven innovations in every industry and enabled individuals and organizations to achieve their goals and prosper. Unfortunately for all of us, the basics of critical thinking are not effectively taught during our time in public schools and universities.
In Method Matters, Quinn outlines the steps of observation, introduces different types of reasoning including goal-based reasoning, delves into methods of creativity to help you overcome hurdles, and brings it all together to teach you how to plan, execute, and achieve your goals.
Method Matters also outlines the pitfalls that can hinder your rationality. Quinn showcases failures in critical thinking, including an experiment from flat Earthers that proves the Earth is round, and a strange series of events led by the author of Sherlock Holmes himself. He then outlines successes in critical thinking, including John Snow’s research on Cholera that helped save thousands of lives.
Learning to execute the critical thinking process effectively is crucial to advancing your career, business, and personal objectives. This book gives you the deep understanding necessary to take your goals to the next level.
List of Chapters
This book has a total of 16 chapters:
- Introduction
- Critical Thinking
- Observation
- Deductive Reasoning
- Inductive Reasoning
- Abductive Reasoning
- Goal-Based Reasoning
- Reasoning Over Time
- Methods of Creativity
- Blockers of Critical Thinking
- Emotion and Bias
- Critical Thinking as a Habit
- Driving Your Goals with Critical Thinking
- Case Study: John Snow
- Case Study: Quarter Tone Saxophone
- Conclusion
I start the book with a high-level introduction to critical thinking by using examples from my own experiences where I succeeded in applying it and where I could have done better. Then, the following chapters introduce the methods that drive critical thinking: making observations, reasoning with them, and drawing conclusions. The chapter Goal-Based Reasoning describes a form of reasoning I’ve created that facilitates the process of working through the planning process of completing your goals. I’ve dedicated multiple chapters to different kinds of reasoning because the ability to tailor them to your situation will enable you to work through them more effectively, but more importantly, so that you will be aware of how strong or weak the conclusions you draw from them will be.
Once you’ve learned the core critical thinking methods, the book introduces a few ways of thinking creatively that will enable you to think outside the box and solve problems in a way that strict logic cannot provide. I’ve included methods I’ve created and used myself for years. From there, the book outlines common things that block your ability to think critically, such as biases, pressure from other individuals, and past experiences. The chapter Emotion and Bias uses real-world examples to demonstrate how these blockers have interfered with individuals and groups of people, such as flat-earthers, and includes a curious example from the author of the famous Sherlock Holmes stories.
The book brings it all together in the chapter Driving Your Goals with Critical Thinking to teach you how to create, plan, and complete your goals taking full advantage of the critical thinking process. From there, it dedicates two chapters to studying real-life examples of projects that were completed thanks to these processes and assesses how they played a role in their success.