First Principles Thinking: The Most Powerful Way To Think

Create a new recipe from the fundamental truth

Credit: Author

First principles thinking drives complex problem-solving and workplace innovation through reverse engineering. Companies that employ first principles thinking are one step ahead as they plan and build for the future.

We start with multiple principles in life governed by our values, perceptions, belief system, and how we learn to reason. These principles lead to opinions and give leeway to our brain to apply shortcuts in the form of conclusions it learned before.

We learn to live with them without validating the underlying assumptions. The principles may be sound when we first started, but questioning if they still apply requires debunking old theories and creating new versions of reality for ourselves.

First principles thinking requires embracing a new mindset that identifies when our old way of doing things is obsolete. A shift in thinking that discards conventional wisdom, cuts through the dogma, and questions our own beliefs.

Traditional thinking: How do we typically think?

• Starts with limitations
• Iteration and improvement of an existing path
• Explore available solutions in the form of variations of what exists without true knowledge
• Look back in time and then determine what to build
• Question the path taken to reach a certain goal

First principles thinking: How should we think?

• Starts with the possibilities
• Define and explore a completely new path
• Create a new recipe from the fundamental truth
• Look into the future and its needs
• Ask the question, “What’s the goal?”

First principles thinking (also called reasoning from first principles) requires breaking down a problem into its fundamental building blocks, its essential elements, asking powerful questions, getting down to the basic truth, separating facts from assumptions, and then constructing a view from the ground up.