Most professors teach us to reason by analogy, but the world’s best thinkers do something completely different.

Tesla wouldn’t exist if Elon Musk didn’t appreciate first principles.

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?… …It’s like $80 per kilowatt hour. So clearly you just need to think of clever ways to take those materials and combine them…

Elon Musk on the Kevin Rose Podcast

Every domain has first principles, not just engineering stuff.

But most professors teach by analogy. They tell you what X person did, or what Y company did, they don’t explain WHY it worked.

To be smarter than your professors, do this:

Build a “Fact-base”

Start by compiling a list of facts related to the problem you’re solving.

Facts NOT Opinions.

Your ability to solve a problem in the real world, not the classroom, is dependent on how well you understand reality. Don’t worry about what’s right, what’s fair, or how things should be.

There are fewer first principles and less “rules” than you think.

How can you validate “first principles”?

The 5 Whys

Channel your inner child and asking why something is the way it is five times.

You’ll quickly sift the gold from the mud.

Debate Yourself

Lawyers try to hold two contradictory versions of events in their mind in order to see every angle of a case.

A lawyer that doesn’t get surprised, is a lawyer that cracks the case. The easiest way to do this is to “debate yourself”. Draw a table with two columns:

• Reasons X is True
• Reasons X is False

If the “false” column is nearly empty, you’ve probably found a first principle.

If this all seems like a lot of work, don’t worry, it’s time well spent:

“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

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