Critical thinking

In his book, Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts, Sam Wineburg describes
the start of a history of religion course with Professor Jacob Neusner.

“What is the text doing,” [Neusner] asked about Genesis 1, as a hundred students or
so collectively quaked in their seats. One after another, baffled freshmen
summarized the text, only to have Neusner strike his fist on the podium: “Doing, not
saying. What is the text doing?”

That distinction, between saying and doing, lies at the heart of critical reading. To
read critically means to extract information actively from a text, rather than taking the
author’s own statements as the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. In
some cases, it can mean doubting the factual accuracy of the author’s statements.
More commonly, it means asking what we can learn from the way the author
selected and arranged facts the way she did

Critical reading is not the only way to use a source; historians mostly read primary
sources for the facts they contain, and they assemble stories from the patterns they
find. But they must always be alert to the opportunity to extract from a source more
information than its creator wished to convey.

I. Challenge A Source’s Credibility

The most critical of critical readings will show that a source says something that is
factually inaccurate or logically incoherent. Historians sometimes do so to hold
historical figures to account for their misdeeds. In other cases, the goal is not to
condemn the creator of the source, but to use the inaccuracies or fallacies to
understand better that person’s view of the world.

A. The source is lying

1. Internal evidence shows that a source is lying.

Whitney Strub, Perversion for Profit: The Politics of Pornography and the Rise of the
New Right, 27:

1
Kefauver’s report downplayed juvenile delinquency as a general concept and instead
dwelled specifically on sex crimes. A “very large percentage” of the pornography
market “reaches the hands of juveniles,” the report claimed, and “the impulses which
spur people to sex crimes unquestionably are intensified by reading and seeing
pornographic materials.” Once again, as with the comics, an absolute lack of
evidence confronted Kefauver in his efforts to establish the pornography—sex crime
connection. This time, instead of grappling with this obstacle in the text of his report,
he banished it to the margins: a brief note buried in the report’s bibliography—
presented in smaller print type than the report’s body—observed, “There are no
studies of the relationship of pornographic literature to sexual offense.”

What is the source saying? That pornography spurs sex crimes, and that there is
no evidence to show that pornography spurs sex crimes.
What is the source doing? Claiming that pornography spurs sex crimes despite a
lack of evidence.

There could also be external evidence that a source id lying, e.g. statistics from a
government source.

II. Explain the Nuances of Argument

Even sources that are factually accurate and logically sound are worthy of
exploration, for every person must make choices when presenting information or
argument. Look for the following, and use them to understand the source’s creator’s
views.

A. The source makes surprising choices about what facts to present, how to present
them, and what to emphasize.

Alan Taylor, The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels,
& Indian Allies, 382.

Longing to erase the disgrace of past defeats, Brown vowed that his troops would
fight to ‘gain a name in armys worthy of our selves or the gallant nation in whose
name we fight.’ Matching the British in combat became his definition of victory: ‘Let
us meet our present gallant and accomplished Foe, Reg[ular] to Reg[ular],’ for only

2
 then could Americans ‘be proud of our Men and Nation.’ Brown substituted an
intangible—the restoration of honor—for the tangible conquest of Canada.

What is the source saying? That Americans can win honor by fighting British
regulars.
What is the source doing? Giving up on conquering Canada.

III. Put the Source in Context

By reading a source with outside events in mind, the historian can extract new
meanings.

A. Contemporary context

1. The source is advancing an unstated agenda

2. The source is countering an argument

B. Historical context

1. The source says something old

2. The source says something new

As a critical reader you should reflect on:

• What the text says: after critically reading a piece you should be able to take notes,
paraphrasing - in your own words - the key points.
• What the text describes: you should be confident that you have understood the text
sufficiently to be able to use your own examples and compare and contrast with
other writing on the subject in hand.
• Interpretation of the text: this means that you should be able to fully analyse the
text and state a meaning for the text as a whole.
Critical reading means being able to reflect on what a text says, what it describes
and what it means by scrutinising the style and structure of the writing, the language
used as well as the content.

3
Critical Thinking is an Extension of Critical Reading

Thinking critically, in the academic sense, involves being open-minded - using

judgement and discipline to process what you are learning about without
letting your personal bias or opinion detract from the arguments.

Critical thinking involves being rational and aware of your own feelings on the
subject – being able to reorganise your thoughts, prior knowledge and
understanding to accommodate new ideas or viewpoints.

Critical reading and critical thinking are therefore the very foundations of true
learning and personal development.

Homework:

Read the following three short articles on multitasking:

Apply critical reading strategies as you read and re-read. Remember that critical
reading is essentially creating a dialogue with the text, so jot down your reactions,
ideas, questions, comparisons of texts, and personal examples.

After reading the articles, analyse the articles by paying attention to the following
points:

• Who is the intended audience for each article? (which audience did the author
intend this article for?)

• What is each author’s claim (main assertion - his main point) and purpose
(intended effect on you as a reader – to give information, to persuade or to
entertain)?

• What tone did each author use, and what effect does tone have on the article’s
purpose and message? (Friendly, angry, happy etc…)

• What is the quality of evidence in each article? What types of sources does
each author refer to, to support his claim? (See the information given before
these articles)

4
 • What effect does the amount of evidence have on your acceptance or rejection
of the message? Do you need more or less evidence to accept the author’s
ideas, and if so, of what type?

• What experiences of your own did the article’s information relate to? How does
your own experience help you accept or reject the author’s claim?

• Overall, based on these points of analysis, which article do you accept most
fully? Note that you may want to answer this question early on and use it as
your own claim to focus your essay.

How (and Why) to Stop Multitasking

by

Peter Bregman
May 20, 2010

During a conference call with the executive committee of a nonprofit board on which
I sit, I decided to send an email to a client.

I know, I know. You’d think I’d have learned.

Last week I wrote about the dangers of using a cell phone while driving. Multitasking
is dangerous. And so I proposed a way to stop.

But when I sent that email, I wasn’t in a car. I was safe at my desk. What could go
wrong?

Well, I sent the client the message. Then I had to send him another one, this time
with the attachment I had forgotten to append. Finally, my third email to him
explained why that attachment wasn’t what he was expecting. When I eventually
refocused on the call, I realized I hadn’t heard a question the Chair of the Board had
asked me.

I swear I wasn’t smoking anything. But I might as well have been. A study showed
that people distracted by incoming email and phone calls saw a 10-point fall in their

5
IQs. What’s the impact of a 10-point drop? The same as losing a night of sleep. More
than twice the effect of smoking marijuana.

Doing several things at once is a trick we play on ourselves, thinking we’re getting
more done. In reality, our productivity goes down by as much as 40%. We don’t
actually multitask. We switch-task, rapidly shifting from one thing to another,
interrupting ourselves unproductively, and losing time in the process.

You might think you’re different, that you’ve done it so much you’ve become good at
it. Practice makes perfect and all that.

But you’d be wrong. Research shows that heavy multitaskers are less competent at
doing several things at once than light multitaskers. In other words, in contrast to
almost everything else in your life, the more you multitask, the worse you are at it.
Practice, in this case, works against you.

I decided to do an experiment. For one week I would do no multitasking and see

what happened. What techniques would help? Could I sustain a focus on one thing
at a time for that long?

For the most part, I succeeded. If I was on the phone, all I did was talk or listen on
the phone. In a meeting I did nothing but focus on the meeting. Any interruptions —
email, a knock on the door — I held off until I finished what I was working on.

During the week I discovered six things:

First, it was delightful. I noticed this most dramatically when I was with my children.
I shut my cell phone off and found myself much more deeply engaged and present
with them. I never realized how significantly a short moment of checking my email
disengaged me from the people and things right there in front of me. Don’t laugh, but
I actually — for the first time in a while — noticed the beauty of leaves blowing in the
wind.

Second, I made significant progress on challenging projects, the kind that —

like writing or strategizing — require thought and persistence. The kind I usually try

6
to distract myself from. I stayed with each project when it got hard, and experienced
a number of breakthroughs.

Third, my stress dropped dramatically. Research shows that multitasking isn’t just
inefficient, it’s stressful. And I found that to be true. It was a relief to do only one thing
at a time. I felt liberated from the strain of keeping so many balls in the air at each
moment. It felt reassuring to finish one thing before going to the next.

Fourth, I lost all patience for things I felt were not a good use of my time. An
hour-long meeting seemed interminably long. A meandering pointless conversation
was excruciating. II became laser-focused on getting things done. Since I wasn’t
doing anything else, I got bored much more quickly. I had no tolerance for wasted
time.

Fifth, I had tremendous patience for things I felt were useful and enjoyable.
When I listened to my wife Eleanor, I was in no rush. When I was brainstorming
about a difficult problem, I stuck with it. Nothing else was competing for my attention
so I was able to settle into the one thing I was doing.

Sixth, there was no downside. I lost nothing by not multitasking. No projects were
left unfinished. No one became frustrated with me for not answering a call or failing
to return an email the second I received it.

That’s why it’s so surprising that multitasking is so hard to resist. If there’s no

downside to stopping, why don’t we all just stop?

I think it’s because our minds move considerably faster than the outside world. You
can hear far more words a minute than someone else can speak. We have so much
to do, why waste any time? So, while you’re on the phone listening to someone, why
not use that extra brain power to book a trip to Florence?

What we neglect to realize is that we’re already using that brain power to pick up
nuance, think about what we’re hearing, access our creativity, and stay connected to
what’s happening around us. It’s not really extra brain power. And diverting it has
negative consequences.

7
So how do we resist the temptation?

First, the obvious: the best way to avoid interruptions is to turn them off. Often I write
at 6 am when there’s nothing to distract me, I disconnect my computer from its
wireless connection and turn my phone off. In my car, I leave my phone in the trunk.
Drastic? Maybe. But most of us shouldn’t trust ourselves.

Second, the less obvious: Use your loss of patience to your advantage. Create
unrealistically short deadlines. Cut all meetings in half. Give yourself a third of the
time you think you need to accomplish something.

There’s nothing like a deadline to keep things moving. And when things are moving
fast, we can’t help but focus on them. How many people run a race while texting? If
you really only have 30 minutes to finish a presentation you thought would take an
hour, are you really going to answer an interrupting call?

Interestingly, because multitasking is so stressful, single-tasking to meet a tight

deadline will actually reduce your stress. In other words, giving yourself less time to
do things could make you more productive and relaxed.

Finally, it’s good to remember that we’re not perfect. Every once in a while it might
be OK to allow for a little multitasking. As I was writing this, Daniel, my two-year-old
son, walked into my office, climbed on my lap, and said “Monsters, Inc. movie
please.”

So, here we are, I’m finishing this piece on the left side of my computer screen while
Daniel is on my lap watching a movie on the right side of my computer screen.

Sometimes, it is simply impossible to resist a little multitasking.

(Editor’s note: Fellow HBR blogger David Silverman has some different thoughts on
multi-tasking in his post, “In Defense of Multitasking”)

8
In Defense of Multitasking
by

David Silverman
June 09, 2010

HBR.org blogger Peter Bregman recently made some excellent points about the
downside of multitasking — as did Matt Richtel in his New York Times article on
Monday.

I will not deny that single-minded devotion often produces high quality. Nor will I
attempt to join the misguided (and scientifically discredited) many who say, “Yeah,
other people can’t do it, but I’m super awesome at doing 10 things at once.”

But let’s remember, unitasking has a downside too — namely, what works for one
person slows down others. Multitasking isn’t just an addiction for the short-attention-
spanned among us; it’s crucial to survival in today’s workplace. To see why, take a
look at computing, where the concept of multitasking came from.

Long ago, in the days of vacuum tubes and relays, computers worked in “batch”
mode. Jobs were loaded from punched cards, and each job waited until the one
before it was completed. This created serious problems. You didn’t know if your job
had an error until it ran, which could be hours after you submitted it. You didn’t know
if it would cause an infinite loop and block all the other jobs from starting. And any
changes in external information that occurred during processing couldn’t be
accounted for.

The invention of time-sharing resolved these issues: Multiple tasks can now be done
concurrently, and you can interrupt a task in an emergency. Incoming missile? Stop
the backup tape and send an alert to HQ.

So, how does all that apply to the way people work? In several ways:

1. Multitasking helps us get and give critical information faster. You can get
responses to questions quickly, even if the person you’re asking is on another task.

9
For example: I was at an all-day off-site (no BlackBerrys allowed) when one of my
direct reports received a request from an internal customer to make a slide. Since I
was unreachable by phone when he started on it, my employee worked the entire
afternoon on something that, after I finally read my e-mail and called him, took us
only 30 minutes to do together because I had information he didn’t have.

2. It keeps others from being held up. If I don’t allow for distractions in an attempt
to be more efficient, other people may be held up waiting for me. This is the classic
batch job problem. Going back to my slide example: The next day, the person who
had requested the slide said he only needed a couple of bullet points. Had he been
reachable earlier, and not devoted to a single task and blocking all interruptions, we
wouldn’t have wasted what ended up being nearly six hours of work time (my
employee’s and mine).

3. It gives you something to turn to when you’re stuck. Sometimes it’s good to
butt your head against a task that is challenging. And sometimes it’s good to walk
away, do something else, and let your subconscious ponder the ponderable. When
you return 25 minutes later, maybe you’ll reach a better solution than you would
have if you’d just stuck it out. And in the meantime, you’ve finished some other task,
such as writing a blog post. (By the way, my 10.6 minute attempt to uncover how
many minutes it takes to get back to a task after an interruption yielded a variety of
answers — 11, 25, 30 — and links to a lot of dubious research, such as this
University of California study of 36 workers and this study that tracked “eleven
experienced Microsoft Windows users [3 female].”)

4. The higher up you are in the organization, the more important multitasking
is. The fewer things you have to do, the more you should concentrate on them. If I’m
painting my house, and I’m on a ladder, I’ve got to keep on that one task. But if I’m
the general contractor, I need to stay on top of the house painter, the carpenter, the
electrician, and the guy swinging that big ball on the end of a giant chain, lest the
wrong wall or an unsuspecting worker get demolished. To take this to the logical
extreme: Does Barack Obama get to unitask? Can he say, “I’m not available for the
rest of the day, because I’ll be working on that spreadsheet I’ve been trying to get
done on the number of my Facebook friends who aren’t updating their pages with

10
posts about their pet cats?” Or does he have to keep doing his job while handling
whatever spilled milk (or, say, zillions of gallons of oil) comes his way?

What do you think? Are we comfortable pretending we really can live our lives not
multitasking? Or are we like my father and others who say smoking is bad but can be
found on the front porch in the dead of night, a small red glow at their lips, puffing
away while texting their BFFs and playing Words with Friends?

Before you answer, think about the eight Washington Post reporters who tried to go
a week without the internet and failed miserably. The truth is, we need multitasking
as much as we need air.

Multitasking Damages Your Brain And Career, New Studies

Suggest

Travis Bradberry

You've likely heard that multitasking is problematic, but new studies show that it kills
your performance and may even damage your brain.

Research conducted at Stanford University found that multitasking is less productive

than doing a single thing at a time. The researchers also found that people who are
regularly bombarded with several streams of electronic information cannot pay
attention, recall information, or switch from one job to another as well as those who
complete one task at a time.

A Special Skill?

But what if some people have a special gift for multitasking? The Stanford
researchers compared groups of people based on their tendency to multitask and
their belief that it helps their performance. They found that heavy multitaskers—
those who multitask a lot and feel that it boosts their performance—were actually
worse at multitasking than those who like to do a single thing at a time. The frequent
multitaskers performed worse because they had more trouble organizing their

11
thoughts and filtering out irrelevant information, and they were slower at switching
from one task to another. Ouch.

Multitasking reduces your efficiency and performance because your brain can only
focus on one thing at a time. When you try to do two things at once, your brain lacks
the capacity to perform both tasks successfully.

Multitasking Lowers IQ

Research also shows that, in addition to slowing you down, multitasking lowers your
IQ. A study at the University of London found that participants who multitasked
during cognitive tasks experienced IQ score declines that were similar to what they'd
expect if they had smoked marijuana or stayed up all night. IQ drops of 15 points for
multitasking men lowered their scores to the average range of an 8-year-old child.

So the next time you're writing your boss an email during a meeting, remember that
your cognitive capacity is being diminished to the point that you might as well let an
8-year-old write it for you.

Brain Damage From Multitasking

It was long believed that cognitive impairment from multitasking was temporary, but
new research suggests otherwise. Researchers at the University of Sussex in the UK
compared the amount of time people spend on multiple devices (such as texting
while watching TV) to MRI scans of their brains. They found that high multitaskers
had less brain density in the anterior cingulate cortex, a region responsible for
empathy as well as cognitive and emotional control.

While more research is needed to determine if multitasking is physically damaging

the brain (versus existing brain damage that predisposes people to multitask), it's
clear that multitasking has negative effects. Neuroscientist Kep Kee Loh, the study’s
lead author, explained the implications: "I feel that it is important to create an
awareness that the way we are interacting with the devices might be changing the
way we think and these changes might be occurring at the level of brain structure.”

12
Learning From Multitasking

If you’re prone to multitasking, this is not a habit you’ll want to indulge—it clearly
slows you down and decreases the quality of your work. Even if it doesn’t cause
brain damage, allowing yourself to multitask will fuel any existing difficulties you have
with concentration, organization, and attention to detail.

Multitasking in meetings and other social settings indicates low self- and social-
awareness, two emotional intelligence (EQ) skills that are critical to success at work.
TalentSmart has tested more than a million people and found that 90% of top
performers have high EQs. If multitasking does indeed damage the anterior cingulate
cortex (a key brain region for EQ) as current research suggests, it will lower your EQ
in the process.

So every time you multitask you aren't just harming your performance in the moment;
you may very well be damaging an area of your brain that's critical to your future
success at work.

13