When you’re trying to assess information and draw conclusions from it, one of the hardest things can be having too much data. Maybe you’re researching a particular option and there’s a huge amount of stuff out there, more than you could possibly want, so which do you need and which can you safely ignore? You have to be able to sift information, and you have to be sure you’re getting it right so you don’t discard anything you should have kept hold of.

Facts are all very well, but how do you know if they’re relevant? What if they appear to conflict with each other? If you have two similar sets of data doing roughly the same job, which one should you use?

First of all, recognise that there’s such a thing as too much information. If you can’t see the wood for the trees, you’re overloaded. If you’re doing the research because you want to use it to influence someone – your boss to adopt your proposal, your partner to agree to refurbish the kitchen, your local council to construct cycle paths – a few pieces of carefully selected data will have far more effect than a daunting pile of paperwork stuffed with statistics and figures and diagrams.

The next step is to slim the information down. If you do this before you even find it, that’s better still because it’s so much more efficient. You could spend all day researching information and then filtering it down, or you could do the sifting first, in effect, and only spend half a day on research. I know which I’d prefer. So think: work out what data you do and don’t need before you start.

Right, what you need to do is be clear and incisive about what you’re trying to achieve. As with so many kinds of skilful thinking, you need a properly thought through objective. That gives you something to measure the information against so you can judge whether it’s needed or not.

So you don’t simply want to persuade the council to construct cycle paths. Be more specific about the aim. Do you want an agreement in principle at this stage, or are you arguing for a specific route? What will influence them – accident statistics? Costs? Attracting tourism? Keeping the locals happy? What would make them say no? Or yes? Now we’re talking. Once you understand exactly what you need to demonstrate, it’s much easier to see which arguments you need to use, and therefore to back up with data. No point digging out figures on the effects on tourism, for example, unless that’s actually an issue.

This ability to establish what is relevant and what isn’t is essential to critical thinking, not only because it saves time but also because it enables you to streamline your thinking and direct it where it’s really needed.