Day 7 | Daily Dose of learning
This project is inspired by the ‘100-day project’, a challenge consisting of committing to doing an activity everyday for 100 days.
I have decided to write about one thing I learn everyday for the next 30 days. This can be a skill, a deep concept to elaborate on, or a mere life lesson that made me become aware of something I consider relevant.
The decision is based on the belief that “we are what we repeatedly do”, as Valentin Perez put it.
First Principle Thinking
First principle thinking is the “first basis from which a thing is known”, as Aristotle put it. It is the idea which states that, in order to really understand something, we need to be able to deconstruct it until we are left only with the foundational truths of a situation. Break a situation down into the core pieces and then put them together in a more effective way.
The first principle goes against our standard way of perceiving situations, namely optimizing form rather than function. Innovation is often an iteration of previous forms.
“For instance, when criticizing technological progress some people ask, “Where are the flying cars?” Here’s the thing: We have flying cars. They’re called airplanes. People who ask this question are so focused on form (a flying object that looks like a car) that they overlook the function (transportation by flight). This is what Elon Musk is referring to when he says that people often “live life by analogy.” ”
Reasoning by First Principle fosters critical and lateral thinking, which are considered good frameworks and skills of working out solutions to problems and elaborating situations.