Critical Thinking is the ability to sit back, look at a situation, and analyze the facts to form an opinion. A good critical thinker will rationalize or reason the outcome of a case.
My goal for this article is to show you how an online home business is just that- it is a business and not a random thought that will form itself as time progresses. Your business requires planning and organization along with monitoring and implementation of change. Without preparation and critical thinking skills, your business will not survive.
Wikipedia states:
Critical thinking is self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored, and self-corrective reflection.
Four Steps To Critical Thinking
To clarify, I have listed four steps to critical thinking.
1. Adapt your actions to meet the situation
2. Use an orderly organized thought process
3. Look at and watch a situation objectively over time
4. Review your work and accept constructive criticism
Critical thinking skills, when applied to a case, will change the outcome. So, what does this have to do with an online home business?
Critical Thinking Skills In The Emergency Room
First, I will apply these steps of critical thinking to the most comfortable type of situation I know. Then we will take a look at why they are essential to having a successful online home business.
Good Skills
I am an emergency room nurse therefore, rapid critical thinking is imperative to save lives. The scenario will go like this:
I step into an ER room where a patient was just brought in by ambulance. My thinking process rapidly goes through the four steps above.
I adapt my actions and thinking to meet the patient’s needs while quickly assessing what type of condition the patient has. With an organized thought process, I look at the overall patient and determine which body system we are looking at first as the base for our problem. I then look at the monitors and listen to what findings the paramedics have and put this information together with my colleagues as a collaboration to best treat life-threatening conditions.
The process takes place in a matter of seconds, I form an opinion, and we use the end judgment to change the outcome of our patient and save lives.
Poor skills
Let’s say I walked into the room and started CPR on this patient without implementing my critical thinking skills. CPR could have changed the outcome of the situation but not for the patient’s benefit.
The patient had a heartbeat; therefore, my actions did not meet the situation’s needs. I ignored an orderly process, and my thoughts were random. By the same token, I was not monitoring the patient, or I would have known there was a heartbeat, and I did not collaborate for improved data to handle the situation best.
Critical Thinking Skills With An Online Business
Now let’s apply this to an online home business.
There are many types of online home business one can do. My preference is Affiliate Marketing.
Now, let’s apply these critical thinking skills to my secondary business. I own a website and do affiliate marketing. To have a successful online home business, and to be successful I must use these same four steps with my site and customers.
1. Adapt your actions to meet the situation
2. Use an orderly organized thought process
3. Look at and watch a case objectively over time
4. Review your work and accept constructive criticism
Good Skills
My business is thriving, but I believe I can improve performance. In light of this, I look at the situation with the help of analytics produced by Google algorithms. As a result, I use this information in an organized thought process and monitor it to see the trends. With this intention, I can collaborate with online statistics or co-workers to get feedback to change the outcome of my success.
The process is the same and just as necessary for your online home business as it is in a life-threatening situation. Be that as it may, the steps are slower and require more testing and graphics, but they are the same.
Critical thinking skills are the same, no matter where you use them, and they are essential to success.
Let’s say I decided to step right in and not use my skills.
Poor Skills
My website is doing well, yet I decide I’m not too fond of how it looks, and I’m not sure it reaches many people. No checks are made or taken action taken toward clarifying this statement; at the same time, my thought process is random. I decide to stop sending emails and follow-ups because it wastes my time. I don’t monitor how many emails are received or any customer feedback because I am bored and want to change it all.
My outcome did change, just like it did when I used critical thinking skills but not for the better; as a result my business began to die, just as the patient above also declined.
Your online home business is your life; therefore, you have to keep it alive with critical thinking skills. There are numerous ways to test your site and monitor it for productivity.
Application Of Critical Thinking Skills In Business
Adapt Your Actions To Meet The Situation
There are ways to check the performance of a website. One way is through Google Analytics in addition, it is free. With the information you can collect such as:
- The number of visitors or traffic
- Demographics of audience
- Where your visitors are coming from
- How long they are on your site (with this you can strategically place a CTA)
- Set goals to monitor conversions
- See what posts are ranking
- And so much more
By looking at the analytics, one can change the website to meet the needs of their visitors, thereby pulling in more traffic. Also known as adapting actions to meet the situation and the cornerstone of critical thinking skills.
Use An Orderly Organized Thought Process
Once we examine the analytics, it is important to organize them and our thoughts into a pattern to set our actions in motion. If I randomly pick a finding and begin working on it but do not work in an organized fashion, I may bet ahead of myself. Not to mention it will become chaotic, and my ratings may drop.
Look At And Watch A Case Objectively Over Time
I will look at all of the data and change one thing at a time because I want to know where improvements came from and make more changes accordingly. With this in mind, I don’t want to move too quickly and make changes too fast.
Review Your Work And Accept Constructive Criticism
In this stage, it is like a debriefing. Mull it over and talk it over, then look at the criticism and make decisions. Another person’s eyes may see something your eyes missed. In addition, they may see it all from a different perspective.
Conclusion
Then rinse and repeat and move forward. Critical thinking is important in all walks of life and your online business is no different. If you want success then follow these steps down the road to a better tomorrow along with an increase in traffic and conversions.
Hi Laura, Your title is eye-catching and caught my interest. Today in the world of online business it is important to have critical thinking. I am tired of my day job and am in need of a way to make money to resign. thank you very much for nicely written. Do you think the Wealthy Affiliate is a good way to make money online?
Thank you for stopping by. Yes, I do think Wealthy Affiliate is a good way to learn to have an online business and make an income. It does take some time to build so I recommend you start soon. If you have further questions please feel free to comment to this thread.
I really enjoyed reading your blog post. I especially thought the one section where you mentioned how people should accept constructive criticism is important, too. You can’t have a narrow-minded opinion and think your way is the only way that will work with online marketing. I appreciate the information you provided, it gave a better understanding for those who are trying to make it out there in the online world. Thank you!
Hi Randi, Are you involved in online affiliate marketing. It sounds a bit like you are. If so I urge you t take a look at WA for the extensive online training to help with things like SEO, analytics, ranking and so much more.
Thanks for the post,I appreciate the comparison between the ER and running your own business, they both thrive on critical thinking.
It’s very important to adapt your actions to meet any important situation, having a specific thought process, being objective and taking criticism, you laid down very sound advice and I enjoyed taking it in.
The topic of your discussion is a very important one to stress, the ability to think, then to move forward and take action on your course, just like the course I have taken on with WA, when I started, I had no idea of what I was doing, but with the training and learned thinking skills, I was able to move forward, thanks for the post and the inspiration.
Neil, You are so welcome. Thank you for your input into the article on critical thinking. All comments are such an incredible help to the ones who read this post. Each of us has a bit to add and give that will change the perspective of those around us.
Very well written and speaks to the place we all need to be, organized. Your comments are so important to our success that they need to be published for all of WA to read! Please consider doing? I cannot say enough of how well written and very well considered your post is. Keep up the good work and continue to post. All the best, Mike
Thank You, Michael, I am so happy you enjoyed critical thinking skills. It is something we can all improve on and a subject that we so often overlook as new affiliate marketers. As a business, it is important to have direction and a plan.
Critical thinking is essential in many circumstances and a lot of people have slow reaction time. In the case of running a home based business, it can be easy to let distractions interfere with that process. These distractions can be making the wrong choices when things go wrong or off-course and over correcting when that happens instead of assessing the situation properly. I’m sure your advice by offering a real world example will help people remember your steps when needed.
Stephanie, In the world of online business the critical thinking is so important. But it does function differently than in a life and death situation. It is not important to react quickly in affiliate marketing. It is more important to assess the situation and follow through with testing and improvements. I hope you found value and some help also. If you would like more information on how to start your online home business please see the articles posted and feel free to ask any questions needed for a better understanding.
Your advice rang lots of bells for me. I’ve had a website for a bit now but it’s not really doing what I thought. Not dormant you understand but not necessarily hitting my goals. I know about analytics in general and have played around with Google Analytics a bit but I’m not sure what it’s telling me. I’ve had a quick look at the link you recommended for help and they look pretty impressive. I’ve already got a website so don’t really need the basic setup training. Do they offer more specific advice like how to use Google analytics?
I had to laugh about your Reese’s comment. Funny how we get attached to particular peanut butter brands. In my part of the world it “Pic’s” but the main argument in the family remains smooth or crunchy!
Thanks again for sharing your experience and advice. I’ll be very interested to hear more on how to learn about Google analytics if you can help.
Mike, I do agree with you about Google analytics. All of the online tools to improve my business are a learning curve for me. I am in the process of taking the weekly live training classes that are offered here at Wealthy Affiliate. Jay recently began a series on how to use and interpret the Google console.
Once I have finished these and implemented what I need for my business, I will have a better understanding to help teach others.
I recently did use my critical thinking skills to determine the problem for a high bounce rate on my website. A high bounce rate happens when people who come to my site leave too quickly. I found a correlation between the landing page and how it displayed on a mobile phone. I worked through this, fixed the issue and success has prevailed.
All of what I have covered in this comment response proves how important it is to become a premium member of Wealthy Affiliate if you are serious about success with an online business.
Thank you for your comment, your compliments, and your questions. If I can be of further assistance, please feel free to respond to this thread.
I appreciate you Mike.
For business to thrive and flourish it must be well organized and planned effective which this could be achieved through critical thinking,Your business requires planning and organization along with monitoring and implementation of change. Without planning and critical thinking skills, your business will not survive! this statements is perfectly true
Thanking for stopping by and adding positive affirmation to Critical Thinking Skills.
This is a great reminder for me. As a newbie blogger, I focus on putting contents out there so much and forget about taking actions against performance of my website. Whether it’s someone’s life at stake or your business, I completely agree that critical thinking needs to be practiced and applied to be successful. Also, I’m guilty of covering my eyes from seeing criticism from others. Thanks for a good reminder!
Saori
Saori, Yes it is hard to remember to do all the things needed to run a business. This is where a list and planning come in so handy. I use a daily list and mark off what I have accomplished. And I set aside a day of no writing to take a look at my site to find where I need to improve.
Thanks for this great informative and educative article!
Wealthy Affiliate is a great way to start your online business and make money. Although, it requires time, patience commitment and consistency to make money with wealthy affiliate . I have tried so many platforms in the name of making money online and larger percentage turned out to be scams. I have my peace when I finally found wealthy affiliate!
no need for hyping, try it and you will understand my position
Hello, I am so happy to see you are already a member of Wealthy Affiliate. It is an incredible platform and just like you, I believe I have discovered gold in the waters of education here.