“Boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there, as opposed to reasoning by analogy. Through most of our life, we get through life by reasoning by analogy, which essentially means copying what other people do with slight variations.” -Elon
As I was writing this, the SpaceX Dragon crew capsule docked at the International Space Station. This was an extraordinary feat of engineering and sheer will. But there is also something else. Elon Musk attributed much of the success of SpaceX to what he refers to as ‘first principle thinking’ (FPT).
- Identify and define your current assumptions.
- Break down the problem into its fundamental principles.
- Create new solutions from scratch.
As I’m writing this, I can't help but think about how many organizations are adopting solutions based on analogy rather than first principles thinking (Scrum, Microservices, etc). While reasoning by analogy can be a powerful tool to learn from others, such as Intel learning from the steel industry and pushing the Celeron Chip and anologous to the low cost steel rebar, it should not be the only tool.
Covid has forced me to reconsider my coaching, courses and fitness using first principles thinking. Rather than making the mistake of I mentioned in my previous post, I am attempting to adopt FPT to each one. Using the three step process above has led me to redesigning and entire course from first principles to great effect.