Quick update:
You can now support The Wisdom Project and help us keep the newsletter ad-free and openly available to everyone.
Buy us a coffee, a pizza or a book :)
Now, onto today’s topic - First Principles Thinking
Relying on established practices and conventional wisdom is often our default mode when making decisions.
It can lead to limited thinking and missed opportunities.
What you need is First Principles Thinking!
It’s a crucial life skill that’s fundamental to making all important decisions in life.
Let’s first understand it with a short parable -
The Parable of the Wise Stonecutter
In a kingdom long ago, there lived a stonecutter named Wei.
He was known throughout the land for his ability to split massive boulders into perfect blocks for building.
One day, the king summoned Wei to the palace.
A giant boulder blocked the entrance to a sacred cave, and none could move it. Many strong men had tried to break it with heavy hammers, but the boulder remained unmoved.
When Wei arrived, he saw the boulder and the many broken hammers scattered around it. The king said, "Wei, if you can break this boulder, you shall be richly rewarded. But beware, this is no ordinary stone."
Instead of immediately grabbing a hammer, Wei walked around the boulder, examining it closely. He ran his hands over its surface, tapped it gently in various places, and listened carefully to the sounds it made.
The crowd grew restless. "Why doesn't he start striking?" they murmured. "Is he afraid?"
But Wei paid them no mind. He continued his examination until he found a thin, almost invisible line running across the boulder's surface.
Wei turned to the king and asked for a bucket of water and a small, sharp chisel. The crowd was bewildered, but the king, intrigued by Wei's unusual request, granted it.
Wei poured the water over the line he had found. Then, with great precision, he placed the chisel on the wet line and struck it once with his hammer. To everyone's amazement, the boulder split cleanly in two.
The king, impressed, asked Wei, "How did you accomplish what no one else could?"
Wei replied, "Your Majesty, while others assumed brute force was needed, I sought to understand the boulder itself. All stones, no matter how large, have natural seams. By finding this seam and using water to soften it, I let the boulder's nature do most of the work. My task was simply to find the right point and apply a small, well-placed force."
The king nodded thoughtfully. "You have shown great wisdom. Not only have you solved our problem, but you have taught us all a valuable lesson. From this day forward, you shall be known as Wei the Wise, and you shall teach others your method of thinking."
And so, Wei became an advisor to the king, teaching people to look beyond surface assumptions, understand the true nature of problems, and find elegant solutions based on fundamental truths.
What is First Principles Thinking?
First principles thinking is breaking down complex problems into their most fundamental truths and then reassembling them from the ground up.
It's about questioning every assumption you think you 'know' and instead trying to understand the foundational truths of a situation.
Why It Matters
This approach allows you to:
Overcome cognitive biases and conventional limitations
Identify innovative solutions to complex problems
Gain a deeper understanding of any subject or challenge
Real-World Example: Elon Musk and SpaceX
Elon Musk famously used first principles thinking to revolutionize space travel.
Instead of accepting the high cost of rockets as a given, he broke down the problem to its fundamentals:
What are rockets made of? Aerospace-grade aluminum alloys, titanium, copper, carbon fiber.
What is the value of those materials on the commodity market? Only about 2% of the typical price of a rocket.
By focusing on the fundamental costs of the materials, rather than the traditional pricing of rockets, Musk was able to drastically reduce the cost of space launches.
Ask yourself - How many decisions do you take in your life just because everyone else around you takes them in a particular way? Are you thinking by default or are you thinking from first principles?
First Principles Thinking - AI Prompt
I’ve designed a prompt that you can use with any AI chatbot like ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini and use it to apply First Principles Thinking to any crucial decision or problem in your life.
Use this prompt - enter your specific situation and it will give you directions on how to apply first principles thinking to make a wise decision in the situation.
Just copy the prompt from the Notion page above, and paste it into a an AI chatbot, enter your specific details and hit enter.
And see the magic!
Further Reading
From the Archives
3 interesting posts from The Wisdom Project archives -
Last weeks top link -
🤗 How can we help?
Whenever you’re ready, here’s how we can help you -
Learn the top ideas, notes and summaries from the best personal development books in the world - Get the keys to wisdom
Make better decisions in the areas that matter - Health, wealth, and relationships - Get the mental models for busy professionals
Everything you need, to build life changing habits - The Toolkit for Atomic Habits
Quit your job and build a profitable business on your own terms. Get feedback, support, mentorship, connections, courses and lots more. - Join the tiny community for your big dreams.
That’s it for today.
See you next week 👋
We’ll be back with more interesting notes, highlights and curations.
Cheers,
Ayush & Aditi