By
the age of 46 years old, Elon Musk has innovated and built three revolutionary multibillion-dollar
companies in completely different fields— Paypal (Financial Services), Tesla
Motors (Automotive) and SpaceX (Aerospace).
This
list doesn’t even include Solar City (Energy), which he helped build and
acquired for $2.6 billion recently.
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.
Musk
himself stated that he worked approximately 100 hours a week for over 15 years
and recently scaled down to 85 hours. Rumor also has it that he doesn’t even
take lunch breaks, multitasking between eating, meetings and responding to
emails all at the same time.
No
doubt work ethic plays an important role in unlocking your inner creative
genius and becoming the best at what you do—but there’s more to this—there are
extremely hard-working people who still make little progress in life and die
before sharing their best work with the world.
What
then is this missing link for innovative creativity and accelerated success?
Just
like 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.
Let’s
talk about how you can quickly use this genius problem solving method.
First
Principles Thinking
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.
It’s called reasoning from “First Principles.” [1]
Musk:
Well, I do think there’s a good framework for thinking. It is physics. You
know, the sort of first principles reasoning. Generally, I think there are —
what I mean by that is, 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.
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 a majority of people.
First
principles Thinking: Reasoning by analogy
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.
Here’s
how you can quickly use this in three simple steps recommended by Elon Musk
himself.
STEP 1: Identify and define your
current assumptions
“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
Here
are some examples from everyday life in business, health and craft.
“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 work out 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. (Note: You can stop here and write these down
now.)
STEP 2: Break down the problem
into its fundamental principles.
“It
is important to view knowledge as sort of semantic tree. Make sure you
understand the fundamental principles, ie the trunk and big branches, before
you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to.”
[2]
These
fundamental principles are basically the most basic truths or elements of
anything.
The
best way to uncover these truths is to ask powerful questions that uncover
these ingenious gems.
Here’s
a quick example from Elon Musk during an interview with Kevin Rose on how this
works. [3]
Somebody
could say, “Battery packs are really expensive and that’s just the way they
will always be… Historically, it has cost $600 per kilowatt hour. It’s not
going to be much better than that in the future.”
With
first principles, you say, “What are the material constituents of the
batteries? 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. 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. 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.”
This
is classic first principles thinking in action.
Instead
of following the socially accepted beliefs that battery packs were expensive,
Musk challenges these beliefs by asking powerful questions that uncover the
basic truths or elements i.e. carbon, nickel, aluminum. Then, he creates
ingenious innovative solutions literally from scratch.
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.
[4]
Here three simple everyday
examples of how this works (Step 1 to Step 3).
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 you can 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 work out and reach my weight loss goals.”
First
principles thinking:
What
do you really need to reach your weight loss goal? I need to exercise more,
preferably 5 days a week for an hour each time. Could you still lose weight
exercising less frequently, if so how? Possibly, I could try 15 minute
workouts, 3 days a week. These could be quick high intensity full body workouts
that will speed up my fat loss in less time.
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? I
would need a reasonably sized audience that will appreciate and buy my artwork.
What
do you need to reach a larger audience? 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? 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. Interesting…
Think Different
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.
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.
Mayo
Oshin writes at MayoOshin.com, where he shares simple, practical ideas to help
busy people, be more productive in life and business.
To
get these practical ideas to live a smarter, faster and better life in today’s
distracted world, join the free weekly newsletter here.
FOOTNOTES
In
this interview, Musk talks about this 100-hour work week. This is his interview
on TED about first principles thinking.
Musk
gave this answer to a question from a reader asking him how he learns so fast.
(source)
This
is not always easy. 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 tend to only think of a very limited range of creative uses or solutions to
any given problem. This is more formally known as “functional
fixedness”.Dr.Tony McCaffery, Cognitive Psychologist and Innovation expert, has
developed a simple method that can help us overcome this tendency and uncover
creative solutions. You can read about his “general parts technique” here.
Thanks
to peter at renaissance man journal for some inspiring insights on first
principles thinking.
Originally
published at mayooshin.com
—
Published on September 14, 2018
SUCCESS,
PROBLEM , DECISION MAKING, ANCIENT WISDOM, INNOVATION, ENTREPRENEUR,
CREATIVITY, BUSINESS, ELON MUSK
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