Aristotle’s 1st Principle | Form vs Function
All great thinkers do it
Simplicity Tool
Form vs Function- 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.
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.
Essentially, first principles thinking will help you develop a unique worldview to innovate and solve difficult problems in a way that nobody else can even fathom.
"If I had an hour to solve a problem, I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions."- Albert Einstein.
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.
"The person who says he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually does not know what he thinks.
Assumption: "Growing my business will cost too much money "First principles thinking: What do you need to grow a profitable business? I need to sell products or services to more customers. Does it have to cost a lot of money to sell to new customers? Not necessarily, but I'll probably need access to these new customers inexpensively. Who has this access and how can you create a win-win deal? I guess I could partner with other businesses that serve the same customer and split the profits 50:50. Interesting. Assumption: "I just can't find enough time to workout and achieve my weight loss goals.
All great thinkers do it. Reasoning by first principles removes the impurity of assumptions and conventions. What remains is the essentials. It's one of the best mental models you can use to improve your thinking because the essentials allow you to see where reasoning by analogy might lead you astray.
