What then is this missing link for innovative creativity and accelerated success?
Musk, some of the most brilliant minds of all-time — Aristotle, Euclid, Thomas Edison, Feynman and Nikola Tesla — use this missing link for accelerated learning, solving difficult problems and creating great work in their lifetime.
This missing link has little to do with how hard they work. It has everything to do with how they think.
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. Almost like a newborn baby.
On the flip side, reasoning by analogy is building knowledge and solving problems based on prior assumptions, beliefs and widely held ‘best practices’ approved by majority of people.
STEP 1: Identify and define your current assumptions
STEP 2: Breakdown the problem into its fundamental principles.
STEP 3: Create new solutions from scratch
Usually, when we’re faced with complex problems, we default to thinking like everybody else. First principles thinking is a powerful way to help you break out of this herd mentality, think outside the box and innovate completely brand new solutions to familiar problems.
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