Is Critical Thinking a Soft Skill or a Hard Skill?

Have you recently come across some material about critical thinking and now it has you wondering whether you possess this skill or not. Maybe you decided that you possess it or perhaps you concluded that you’re not one of the lucky ones. There may be still some doubt and you’re thinking you want to be perfectly sure about it, without a grain of doubt.

No time to dispense worrying anymore because you have come to the right place!

Critical Thinking

To start, let’s clear the concept of critical thinking first. Critical thinking is the advanced ability of problem-solving, logical thinking, and rational thought process. In short, it can be summarized as acquiring a good command at higher cognitive functioning.

For those who do own this skill, it must be a great benefit but to those who have no clue what all of this entails, the distress must be creeping in. Before you decide anything prior to reaching the end of this journey, suppress any negative feelings.

Critical thinking is a skill most people can put a claim on and some people would have no idea what it even is. Some people may be battling with indecision and some people must be wondering if and how they can join the team of those lucky to lay a claim to it.

Categorizing skills

When the skills are broken down into parts, they come under two categories:

These terms must be unfamiliar for some people. Well, soft skills are interpersonal skills such as communication skills, listening skills, emotional intelligence. Soft skills are not learned but they are a characteristic of personality. Hard skills are teachable skills such as computer programing, command of several languages, writing, marketing, and mathematics. They represent hard-earned accomplishments, qualities, and abilities.

Now here comes the grey area:

Most of the soft skills can also be classified as hard skills. As everyone knows, communication skills, time management, teamwork, and several other soft skills can also be learned.

So is critical thinking a part of soft skills or a part of hard skills? Let see.

Critical thinking: a soft skill or a hard skill?

As we reviewed earlier, critical thinking is the mastery of communication, reasoning, analyzing, and evaluation. These skills can be innate but if you ponder over them, these skills can also be taught and learned. As some institutes even claim to certify you in some of these skills.

But why is critical thinking so important? How does it benefit you if it is hard to categorize or can be placed into either category of soft skill or hard skill?

Critical thinking as a soft skill

Critical thinking as a soft skill is very useful as you don’t have to strive to learn new things. It can be very important as you progress from student life towards employment. As a student it is quite profitable to be able to quickly come up with solutions to complex problems, whip up creative ideas for assignments and presentations, and engage in advanced discussions. These practices do strengthen critical thinking skills and benefits from them will be reaped in the future.

Benefits

Are you wondering how these abilities are beneficial in the long run? Well, first it will be advantageous to have sound reasoning, evaluation, and communication skills but wouldn’t it be a silver lining to have these abilities on the tips of your fingers.

Academic benefits

Now imagine your new teacher asked a difficult question in class or handed out a very tough assignment. If you have recently enrolled in an HNC or HND assignments, then you know how hard those HND assignments are to complete without using some clever academic skills, which critical thinkers do possess.

If you possess good critical thinking skills you can also offer HNC assignment help to students and derive learning, writing, and time management experience from it.

Benefits in career and personal life

You may have gotten some idea now how these skills are proven to be profitable in academics. Apart from that era of life, critical thinking is also highly advantageous in career and personal life. For example, time management is an obstacle faced on daily basis but remembering you made those deadlines of HND assignments successfully while tapping into these skills will have you managing everything smoothly. Career and personal life are also riddled with challenging stressors. Just like the art of critical thinking got you out of academic problems, it will help you solve any personal and professional problem without unneeded stressing.

Critical thinking is a hard skill

Before you assume you are doomed because the mastery of critical thinking has not been passed down the genetic vine to you, take a deep breath and remember that prior mentioned grey area. If you are not blessed with critical thinking, you can still learn and master it with a little effort.

What part of critical thinking is easier and quicker to obtain? With just a little effort you can become amazing at communication, time management, reasoning, analyzing, and problem-solving skills.

Benefits

The benefits of critical thinking do not differ whether you place it in the category of soft skill or the category of hard skill. It will be a little difficult in the beginning to utilize those skills at the maximum capacity but patience will lead you there.

Academic benefits

As you are working to acquire and utilize these critical thinking skills for your academics, first try using them to complete out the pending assignments and projects. You might have used HNC assignment help previously to smooth out tough assignments but the HND program will be a perfect platform to put your new skills to the test.

With newly learned skills you can write those difficult HND assignments with clarity all on your own, needing no help.

Career-oriented benefits

Well if you have finished studying and are working through career-oriented challenges then you can still avail of these newly learned skills. You can use them to improve your communication and interpersonal relations with your colleagues. Reaching deadlines on time and shooting new and creative ideas will also prove to be effortless.

Personal benefits

Critical thinking helps in strengthening interpersonal relations and intrapersonal relations. Intrapersonal relation is the connection with your own self. Critical thinking also provides you with the tools to master your own emotions, motivations, and helps you select and achieve your goals.

If you are battling emotional problems such as anxiety and depression, they can also be improved with good critical thinking skills. As you find the reasoning behind your emotions and feelings, it will be easier to manage them and stop them from bringing you down.

In essence

A thing or skill doesn’t need to hold a label to be effective. Labels may help differentiate between objects, qualities, and attributes but they are not good and complete representative.

Critical thinking can be innate and something relative to you only (soft skill), or it can also portray a diligently learned expertise (hard skill). The prominent thing is to learn how to make good use of them and in the rightly needed situation.