Critical Thinking@Julia’s blog

What is it that we, the lecturers, most want to assist students to achieve at their time at university? The habit of thinking! What do I mean by the habit of thinking? Firstly, the slowing down of the rush of thoughts that mostly fill our heads and send us shooting all over the place.

Oh, we are all so busy! Busy students, busy lecturers, busy people rushing about from one activity to the next, finding a lecture , buying books, on the computer watch us all go, as we run, run, run! It is certainly a valid observation that to juggle study, paid employment and family and friends takes a great deal of time management. But only when we slow down occasionally can we have the space and place, to think! One way to do this is to make a little room inside our brains and spend a short time each day throwing out old thoughts and making room for new ones!

I have read, somewhere, (alas I cannot recall the reference to back up my claim) that it takes approximately three weeks to develop a habitual way of acting. The first three weeks we have to consciously work on remembering to do something ( clean our teeth, get up early) then after that it becomes an easy habit that we do effortlessly. One way to develop the habit of thinking is plan to have ten minutes in your day sitting quietly by yourself and sorting through your thoughts. As they hop into your brain have a look at them and decide if it is an old worn out boring thought you have seen many times and is ready to be thrown in the discard pile or is it a new and interesting thought worth pursuing and exploring. You don’t have to do the exploring right away just start classifying your thoughts, as a start to developing the habit of thinking.