Thinking and reflecting critically has never felt like my natural strength.
I wish it came more easily to me: the ability to slow down, examine a situation properly, and make better decisions for my own growth and for spotting opportunities. But like many things, critical thinking is probably less of a personality trait and more of a practice.
Recently, my boss, Ziyong, asked me to reflect on a video I watched. In it, Singapore's Foreign Minister, Vivian Balakrishnan, shared about building his personal AI agent and his broader perspective on where this technology might be going.
I happened to be on a bus to Kuala Lumpur for leisure, so I used the ride to ask Gemini for frameworks that could help me think more critically.
It suggested three:
- First principles thinking
- STEEP
- The Futures Wheel
The more I sat with them, the more I felt that they are not competing frameworks. They can be used together.
First principles thinking gives the foundation. It asks: what are the absolute truths here, once the hype, assumptions, and noise are stripped away?
This sounds simple, but I find it hard. It is applicable to almost everything, but it requires discipline. Without identifying what is actually true, it is easy to build opinions on shaky ground.
STEEP helps widen the lens. It prompts us to think across social, technological, economic, environmental, and political or legal dimensions. Once the first principles are clearer, STEEP gives a structured way to explore the broader implications.
The Futures Wheel then helps deepen the thinking. Given an event or trend, what is the immediate consequence? That is the first-order change. What happens because of that consequence? That becomes the second-order change. And so on.
In a way, the three frameworks form a sequence:
- Strip the issue down to what is true.
- Look across the wider system.
- Trace the consequences over time.
Gemini also suggested four questions that I found useful:
- What is the underlying driver?
- Who stands to win, and who stands to lose?
- What must be true for this to actually succeed?
- If this becomes standard, what becomes obsolete?
These questions feel adjacent to the frameworks above, but they are more immediately usable. They force me to move beyond surface-level reactions and ask what is really happening underneath.
I am leaving this here as a reference for myself. Critical thinking still does not feel natural to me, but having a few handles makes it easier to practise.
And maybe that is the point: not to suddenly become a naturally brilliant thinker, but to build repeatable habits that make better thinking more likely.