Philosophical Tools

I've identified twelve practical philosophical tools that I use in all sorts of situations; from the theological to the conversational. They are listed in no particular order and if anyone knows of others I'd be interested to hear about them.

• local context
• seeing the big picture first
• breaking something into small steps
• 'Reverse Engineering'
• Occam's razor
• batching similar tasks together
• pattern recognition
• the past-history of something
• links/connections between things
• Law-of-non contradiction
• "the cover is better then the book"
• "If the sequel sucks then the creator of the original was a one-hit wonder."