What is common sense?

Common sense is good sense and sound judgment in practical matters. Practical matters refers to ordinary activities and work. Another word for common sense is practical intelligence. Common sense, or practical intelligence, gives you the mental ability to cope with the challenges and opportunities you face in life. Common sense thinking prevents you from making irrational mistakes or decisions.

Common sense is situational and dependent on context. Your common sense in one context might be very effective, yet you fail to make the right decisions in another context.

Achieving common sense is an ongoing process, not a destination. Everyone has lapses in judgement once in awhile and learning from these mistakes helps us refine our common sense and intuition.

Thinking that overrides common sense

Some of the things our brains do to override common sense include:

• Always using mental shortcuts. Sometimes ours brains get programmed to follow a predetermined train of thought in certain situations or conditions. This is often influenced by our family, workplace and culture. This mental programming is essentially creating thinking shortcuts. These shortcuts can get us into trouble because when we apply them we are reacting instead of reflecting. (Common sense requires us to interrupt this trained way of thinking so we don’t make sloppy decisions because our mind is on auto-pilot.)
• Black and white thinking about the world and others around us.  This type of thinking doesn’t allow room for doubt and is a cause for forgetting to use common sense.
• Having an unwillingness to be wrong. When in a dispute with someone, it is pigheaded to stick to your guns and not side with the smarter argument, whether it’s from you or the other person.

Take off your personal lens

Everyone sees the world through their own personal lens. Our personal lens is what we’ve programmed our brain to see and is developed through our own experiences. From this lens, we develop intuitions that we apply to different situations. Even if we steadily update our intuitions as we grow our experience, our sense of reality is still only a small portion of the larger picture. You need to realize that what you see through your lens is just your point of view. If you start to affirm to yourself that through your lens is the only true reality, you start to try and make everyone and everything conform to your standard of reality.

Your personal lens can cause you to make irrational decisions. You need to remember to keep an open mind, take off your lens and learn how other people perceive the world. Consulting with others will give you a wider perspective on things. This will make room for your common sense to grow because it will be based on common experiences.

Reflection vs. rapid cognition

The act of reflecting on the practical things going on in your life is where true common sense resides. Make sure you allocate time to think and reflect on the things that have just happened and things that will happen in the future. Common sense builds on your reflection of past experiences, allowing you to refine and update your personal lens.

However, reflection is only one side of the coin. On the flipside is rapid cognition. Some circumstances require fast thinking and quick decision making that still produce sound results. So how do you set yourself up to make smart quick decisions? Spend ample time reflecting before hand so you will react wisely when quick thinking is required.

Sometimes information can come at you really quickly. Know if  you can make a sound decision in a split second or need to throw cold water on the excitement and give yourself some time to reflect on the information.

Basic, common sense things to know

There are common sense things that everyone should know to ensure personal survival, self-knowledge, and long-term health and safety.

1. Knowing how to cook and how food gets to your table
2. Knowing how to grow your own food
3. Knowing about nutrition
4. Knowing and respecting your surroundings, starting from your own neighborhood/community and expanding outward
5. Knowing how to budget and not spend more than you’re earning
6. Knowing the limitations of your own body
7. Knowing how to analyze situations and think for yourself
8. Knowing how to repair items like mending clothes and fixing household objects
9. Knowing how to plan in advance (Forward thinking is always a sign of good common sense, as is being able to review the consequences of different outcomes)
10. Knowing how to be resourceful
11. Knowing how to connect with the community
12. Knowing how to keep safe

Reference

“How to Develop Common Sense.” http://www.wikihow.com/Develop-Common-Sense.