Live Better. How many paths is up to you. The Smarter Brain Get Smarter. You are stripping away each layer to get to the core of your problem. No spam. To understand this, I made a little diagram for you. Assumption: “I just can’t find enough time to workout and reach my weight loss goals.”First principles thinking:What do you really need to reach your weight loss goal? In layman’s terms, first principles thinking is basically the practice of actively questioning every assumption you think you ‘know’about a given problem or scenario—and then creating new knowledge and solutions from scratch. Elon has questioned that assumption and broke it down to its fundamental principles. Imagine building up your solution based on wrong assumptions. Is it to lose weight? STEP 3: Create new solutions from scratch, “The person who says he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually does not know what he thinks.”— Mortimer Adler, Once you’ve identified and broken down your problems or assumptions into their most basic truths, you can begin to create new insightful solutions from scratch. I need to exercise more, preferably 5 days a week for an hour each time. It was built from lego blocks. You can read about his “general parts technique”, Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future. Assumption: “Growing my business will cost too much money”First principles thinking:What do you need to grow a profitable business? A few weeks ago, I came across an interview with Elon Musk, where he discussed how he used First Principles thinking to arrive at the answers and ideas for his innovative practices. This offers you a level of relatedness and a sense of community, they can ask you about your progress and you can relay your achievements and setbacks. This will spur you on each day. At first glance, it’s easy to link his rapid success, ability to solve unsolvable problems and genius level creativity to his incredible work ethic. This is what everyone assumes surrounding the topic of spaceship battery packs. During a one on one interview with TED Curator, Chris Anderson, Musk reveals this missing link which he attributes to his genius level creativity and success. Diets, exercise regimes, and balance indicators are generally not personalized. (Before Christ). May it be about your work, business, health, anything. So, what problem do you have that you want to solve? It feels like they have been expensive to begin with. What is the stock market value of the material constituents?”It’s got cobalt, nickel, aluminum, carbon, some polymers for separation and a seal can. Musk gave this answer to a question from a reader asking him how he learns so fast. Having the knowledge and tools of the fundamental truths to your conundrum, create “support stations” that lift you up on difficult days. You know what if he’s to buy the materials that make up the battery, it would be way way cheaper. First off, you need to determine what the problems are in your life that you wish to solve. Impatience because you want to achieve your goal as quickly as you can, to reap the full benefits. Now we’re creating smaller, easier to achieve goals. Interesting. And if you understand this key concept, you’re going to have an unfair advantage when it comes to solving ANY problem. Let’s talk about how you can quickly use this genius problem solving method. Designed by Elegant Themes | Powered by WordPress, Start your 7-day free trial. By identifying your current assumptions, breaking these down into their basic truths and creating solutions from scratch—you can uncover these ingenious solutions to complex problems and make unique contributions in any field. We can now devise the solution based on it. Perhaps choose more apt names for your specific issue, rivals, enemies and its pitfalls. Yes, if the focus of selling my artwork is meaningful with a purpose of serving the audience—then I could make more money to make more art, so I can serve more people. Today we’re going to talk about First Principles Thinking. If you’d like to get more well-researched to think better, solve difficult problems, and make better decisions subscribe to The Smarter Brain. First Principles) first, we can reason up from there and create our own solutions. Here are some examples from everyday life in business, health and craft. Now we have our first principle, 1995 is earlier than 1990 if it’s B.C. This pretty much summarizes how you can know if a statement is a first principle or not. Apply this concept with me by investigating this statement: So yes, you can use this guide to investigate if a statement is really true or not. It’s got to deeper than that right? Why can’t we use a method to break down and simply our lives to better realize our aspirations? First principle thinking once incorporated into your mindset will give you and edge over your peers. “Growing my business will cost a lot of money.”, “I have to struggle and starve to become a successful artist.”, “I just can’t find enough time to workout and reach my weight loss goals.”, When next you’re faced with a familiar problem or challenge, simply write down your current assumptions about them. Almost like a newborn baby. Einstein, Aristotle and Ockham on How Real Geniuses Solve Difficult Problems. Think Better. In fact, sometimes it can be a tough mental workout to use first principles thinking simply because it’s much easier to default back to what you already ‘know.’ Because of our prior assumptions and limiting beliefs, we have a tendency to only think of a very limited range of creative uses or solutions to any given problem. Musk himself stated that he worked approximately 100 hours a week for over 15 years and recently scaled down to 85 hours. The problem is asking us how can a person be of age 10yrs old in 1990 and 15yrs old in 1995. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Just going one or two levels deeper than most people is often enough. Interesting…. As you break down the problem it allows for a unique viewpoint you can develop forwards, rather than simply fall back into the old, lazy status quo that you’ve been stuck in for so long. Doing something completely alone is possible, but often feels empty unless someone is coming along with you for the ride. To achieve results in our own lives, we could use this method of thinking to create a framework in which would in effect gamify our lives. Learn how your comment data is processed. – Exercise: All exercise should be done before breakfast or 8 am — ignores that some people are not morning people, therefore low motivation, certain diets do not benefit from anaerobic exercise in the morning due to specific metabolic states. You will immediately start seeing obstacles, maybe because you don’t enjoy cooking the food in that diet, or because that exercise is too advanced and not worth starting, or you simply don’t like those hours and life seems insurmountable if you tried any change. It’s a space of assumptions and not questions anymore. Frequently this kind of experience leads to a standardization of expectations and practices and therefore ignores the individual and possible tailored solutions. If you use traditional thinking by analogy we walk straight into a general problem. This is a harder mode of thinking, but does offer better results, is far more effective and creates recognizable change. This lego house didn’t exist as a lego house to begin with. You need to break down to the fundamentals, you need to be the hero and plan your own journey. – Work-life: 9–5 work and then evening/weekend relaxing — Some people work longer hours have different shifts, how do they figure out their balance? In the end, though, the work must come from you. In layman’s terms, first principles thinking is basically the practice of actively questioning every assumption you think you ‘know’ about a given problem or scenario—and then creating new knowledge and solutions from scratch. From there start researching and breaking down what your daily habits are, when do you have time to exercise, what type of exercise excites you the most, and so forth. In our current volatile and disruptive world, historical data and experience may not always work. Think of a lego house. Applying this idea of understanding the underlying concepts and principles (a.k.a. To solve your unique problem and get you on your way to creating a framework that incorporates useable elements and mechanics, we need to start with the three basic questions that any First Principles Thinker needs to ask: As your problems are unique to you, you’ll, unfortunately, have to do most of the work of breaking them down into their fundamentals. This is an easy mode of thinking, and for the most part effective, but also offers no innovation or large changes. The process that you will follow if you adopt First Principles thinking, to add new mechanics into your life, is in effect like peeling an onion. Are they really expensive? Or an activity you’ve been meaning to take on can be aided in this mode of thinking. That is our current assumption. We’ll find out how this fundamental principle solved his roadblock. When You Lose Momentum, You Become Vulnerable to Distraction, 3 Habits Ruining Your Focus And Relationships, Why You Should Stop Checking Your Phone First Thing in the Morning and How to Do it, How to Make Time For Your Passion Project if You Are Too Busy Working For Someone Else, Increase Your Productivity Output by Improving Your Input. One article of interest is how games can improve education by allowing you to fail more often and learn, rather than be punished for failing. You know, the sort of first principles reasoning. Break that down on a material basis and say, “If we bought that on the London Metal Exchange what would each of those things cost?”, It’s like $80 per kilowatt hour. Assumption: “I have to struggle and starve to become a successful artist”First principles thinking: What do you really need to create great work and make a good living as an artist? Here’s how you can quickly use this in 3 simple steps recommended by Elon Musk himself. Specifically, “If we bought that on the London Metal Exchange,what would each of those things cost?”. It will require some determination from you, but because it is something that you’ve willingly chosen to do and have figured out how it fits in your life, you’ll have more motivation to do it. It’s “I feel free when I travel.” and from there we can deduce that what I really want is freedom and not more money. I probably need to do some marketing, but I don’t like self-promoting so I’d rather not do this.Ok, is there any way for you to promote your work without being sleazy? Not necessarily, but i’ll probably need access to these new customers inexpensively.Who has this access and how you can create a win-win deal? The task isn’t too overwhelming that you don’t start with it. So clearly you just need to think of clever ways to take those materials and combine them into the shape of a battery cell and you can have batteries that are much, much cheaper than anyone realizes.”. Could you still lose weight exercising less frequently, if so how? But Elon Musk’s explanation of it got me thinking about how we could use that methodology of thinking as a gamifying mechanic/element in our daily lives. When you think about first principle, it’s those lego blocks. It’s called reasoning from “First Principles.” [1]. A first principle is just the basic assumption that cannot be reduced any further. Examples of certain considered truths could be: – Healthy eating: superfoods are the mainstay — ignores that not everyone lives in walking distance of a superfood shop, certain cooks and nutritionists are international and ignore local variations or restraints.