Critical, or analytical, thinking is a way of interacting with what we read or listen to in an attempt to have a deeper understanding. There is a belief that argument is a way of finding the truth, observes Adrian West, research director at the Edward Bono Foundation UK. Although there is little debate that information technology complements and often enhances the human mind in the quest to store information and process an ever-growing tangle of bits and bytes, there's increasing concern that the same technology is changing the way we approach complex problems, and making it more difficult to really think. We are exposed to greater amounts of poor yet charismatic thinking, the fads of intellectual fashion, opinion, and mere assertion, says West. The wealth of communications and information can easily overwhelm our reasoning abilities. What's more, it's ironic that ever-growing piles of data and information do not equate to greater knowledge and better decision-making. What's remarkable, West says, is just how little this has affected the quality of our thinking. According to the National Endowment for the Arts, literary reading, for one thing, declined 10 percentage points from 1982 to 2002, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Analytical reasoning is a more linear approach to gathering and analysing data. It takes a step-by-step flow that breaks down information in a logical pattern. Critical thinking skills enable you to question the data, verify it, and analyse outside information before developing a more holistic solution.