First Principle Thinking

Let Us Have A Thought Experiment

To implement this way of thinking. I want you to imagine a case where you want to think of an idea on how you could lessen the gap between small businesses and larger businesses. How would you think of it? Before I explain the way of thinking, I want you to first try and make your own for 5 mins. Don't look at the solution yet for you to practice this so called First Principle Thinking.
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Now, I will assume that you have tried making a scratch of it. Chances are, the idea you had was..... Okay I will assume that it was good too (I don't want to hurt your feelings). But I want to walk you through the step-by-step process.

(1) Describe the Problem AGAIN

It could be writing it down, or rephrasing it in your own words. As long as you understand the main point.

(2) Constantly asking the word "What", "How"

This would lead to the very root cause so you must start from there, all the way up.

(3) Write/Express down every thought that comes in your mind.

You can sketch it through a piece of paper, or you can be vocal about it.

Sample:

I want to lessen the gap between small businesses and large businesses. What is a good solution? I have thought that to lessen the advantage of larger businesses, I will think of a solution for small businesses to lessen the gap. Meaning (we are now thinking from first principles), my main priority is thinking of a solution for small businesses and neglecting larger businesses. But how? "Here, you add all of your ideas. I don't want to reveal a few of my business ideas so it will be up to you to :)"

Anyone Can Learn It

I have had tons of ideas from it mostly theoretical. In fact, I realized that there are some people who has it naturally and those were the ones who are curious about different stuff. I have realized that curiosity leads to First Principle Thinking because of the word "what", "how", and "why" in almost every case. In fact, constantly repeating the word "why" would lead to the root cause of a problem or the very beginning of a thought. Hence, most of our prominent scientists/innovators are insanely curious. It's not because they are good, but because of their way of thinking which is different from the rest. Hence, our top scientists has achieved great heights not because they were great, but because they were different. And that makes them great!

Let Us Have Another Thought Experiment Using The Word "Why"

The word "what" and "how" is what you use when starting from the initial idea then working your way up. But what if you are already at the way up and you want to find the root cause of a problem or the initial idea. We constantly ask the word "why".

Sample:

Your website has a feature removed that made customers unable to purchase. It seems that one of your junior engineers has accidentally removed it.

• Why did one of your junior engineers accidentally removed it?

  • He thought that a code snippet was irrelevant.

• Why did he thought that it was irrelevant?

  • There were no comments indicating that it was important.

• Why are there no comments indicating that it was important?

  • Our senior engineers has forgotten to add it because they were rushed.

• But why were they rushed?

  • The PM wanted the feature added as quickly as possible because our PM is getting married this week.

Now, the main problem went from being the junior engineer that removed it, to the senior engineer forgetting to add a comment to ensure that a code snippet was important, to the PM rushing the feature because he/she is getting married this week. Now, everyone at the team is pointing fingers which is bad. But, atleast we have found the root cause of everything.

So using the word "why" helps us dig into the root cause of a problem or an idea. Meaning, we use it if we had already worked our way up and there is a problem and we want to find the root cause, or if you want to find the root idea.

Notice also that it was the same concept as the 5 Why's by Sakichi Toyoda (if you are familiar with it) except on our example, we didn't reached the 5th.