Figuring It Out

Imagine you had the skill of figuring it out, every time. And the next time you face a problem or have a goal, you can just figure it out again. It is very unlikely that you are such a person. It is very unlikely that one person or a group of persons can figure it all out. At least I haven’t heard of anyone who can do so. The best of them get it right most of the time.

The skill of being able to figure it out appears like a fantastic skill to have. Having the capacity to figure out how to repair a dishwasher, bake a wedding cake, be a great mayor for your town, build a car, be nice to everyone all the time, eradicate smallpox, send a man to the moon, paint the Mona Lisa. These achievements seem to have nothing to do with each other. They occurred at different times, in different places, and were made by different people. They required different skills, knowledge, and processes. Some of them took decades to be figured out and are one-time events while others occur repeatedly and take only a few minutes. The nature of problems that are being solved and goals that are being achieved are all very different. However, there are commonalities between them.

Finding commonalities means identifying and deeply understanding the principles that are part of successfully figuring it out. These we call first principles. They are the fundamental concepts or assumptions that are inherently true and form the basis for figuring it out.

First principles can be facts or ways of thinking that are inherently true. Ways of thinking include systems thinking, high and low-level thinking, critical thinking which embody some of the fundamental workings of the world in which the problem you are trying to solve exists.

First principles can be hard to grasp. For some problems or goals, getting to these basic fundamental truths and assumptions is a long and arduous path. You must dissect everything. You must act, experience, and think your way through a whole mess of things. You encounter different ways of thinking, systems, and layers which all try to convince you that they are the truth. You never know when you have broken down the last piece. Or can you know? How can you identify first principles?

By testing potential truths, which we call approximations. Approximations are truths not yet identified. You make approximations that you turn into testable hypotheses. And then you test. The result you get from the test is your feedback that you then use to challenge your approximation to create a new hypothesis and test it again. In other words, you are giving it your best try over and over again, never confusing your approximation with an actual truth.

What’s crucial when there is no truth is to make your best approximation. Your approximations can be made through reasoning, experiences that you have had, other people’s experiences from different disciplines, or just a gut feeling. You use your best judgment and that judgment must be built over time. But then it is crucial to test approximations by taking actions, to get new information and being able to adjust your approximations. Thinking and then action, finding the right balance here is extremely important. More of both is better than less of both.

Until here we assumed that you could know about first principles thinking and if no truths or assumptions are available, using approximations that are re-evaluated and questioned over time is the right way to go about figuring it out. But if you don’t know about first principles thinking: Why is the path to truth, assumptions, or approximations so hard for most of us to get to?

For every one of us, when we try to solve a problem or reach a goal, we usually start with a set of truths, assumptions, and/or approximations in your mind. Whether they are conscious or unconscious doesn’t matter. What’s important is to point out that they are there. Then you take action to solve the problem or reach your goal:

If it isn’t successful: Either you give up. Or you think about why it didn’t work. You come up with an answer which seems to make sense but by doing that you still haven’t identified anything that might bring you closer to making it work. This experience just taught you what doesn’t work and not what does work. You might be lucky and by identifying what doesn’t work and changing it, it might suddenly work.

If it is successful: Either you don’t think about why it worked because it worked or you identify the wrong reasons for why it worked. You may be lucky and identify the right reasons for why it worked.

So when you don’t know what first principles thinking is and therefore how to be most likely to figure it out whatever the thing you have to figure out is, the only way to get there seems to be forced into this process of having to figure it out over and over again, sometimes succeeding and sometimes failing. And that’s why I told you about it in the first place.

That will allow you to keep wondering and searching for the best way to figure it out which directly leads you to the truth. Or is it the truth?