Inner Development Goals: Thinking (Cognitive Skills)
Inner Development Goals: Thinking (Cognitive Skills)
#WCIW Post for 17 April 2022
Today’s post is about the Inner Development Goal category of ‘Thinking – Cognitive Skills’.
The IDG website has this to say about this important set of skills:
“Developing our cognitive skills by taking different perspectives, evaluating information and making sense of the world as an interconnected whole is essential for wise decision-making.”
My response:
As a creative practitioner, I am often annoyed when creative people are seen as daydreamers when, in actual fact, cultivating a creative mindset entails developing the cognitive thinking skills listed on the IDG website (see below). I would also nominate a further skill, which is the ability to get these thinking skills working in tandem with our imagination and emotions. This is as essential for creative work as it is for dealing with complex issues.
A creative prompt:
Today I am going to pick just one skill in the ‘Thinking – Cognitive Skills’ category as a focus for a creative prompt because I already have a lovey exercise stored away in my archives that will suit. The skill is ‘Long-term orientation, Visioning’ and the prompt actually comes to us via The Long Time Academy, which do wonderful work so do check them out for useful and imaginative provocations and other resources.
I am very interested in Futures Literacy, which is a capability that allows us to imagine and explore possible and alternative futures for ourselves and our planet. Futures Literacy is often talked about in the context of collective imagination; the little thought exercise below could either be done by an individual or as a group discussion:
Whose vision of the future am I living in?
Whose vision of the future do I want those who have yet to be born, to be living in?
More information about ‘Thinking – Cognitive Skills’
The IDG Framework has identified the following cognitive skills as essential:
“Critical thinking – Skills in critically reviewing the validity of views, evidence and plans
Complexity awareness – Understanding of and skills in working with complex and systemic conditions and causalities
Perspective skills – Skills in seeking, understanding and actively making use of insights from contrasting perspectives
Sense-making – Skills in seeing patterns, structuring the unknown and being able to consciously create stories
Long-term orientation, Visioning – Long-term orientation and ability to formulate and sustain commitment to visions relating to the larger context.”
Thank you for reading.
· Feel free to share these articles on social media but, if you do, I would love it if you could include the #WCIW and #IDGs hashtags.
· If you want to find out more about the IDGs, then check out the website here.
· The IDG Summit is on the 29 April 2022. Information and bookings here.
· If you have enjoyed this article, why not come to my free workshop to explore them further. It will be held on the 27 April 2022. Information and bookings here.
