How to Think in First Principles

Guys, my name is Ali Aluli. I am a systems engineer and a post-doctoral fellow at the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab. And in this video, I'm going to teach you how to think in first principles, which is, in my opinion, the single most important skill to adopt in life, in business, in career.

Why? Because when you learn how to think properly, especially using first principles, your thinking determines the decisions that you make in life, and the decisions that you make in life determine your outcomes, right? Life is just the array of decisions that you make. Obviously, there are external factors such as luck and probabilities and other people and things outside your control. But if we were to completely factor that out, all life is a game of decision-making. And he who makes decisions is the one who thinks and arrives at these decisions based on his thoughts.

So, there have been many definitions of first principles, uh, that I absolutely find ridiculous or not very helpful. Uh, you've probably first heard of the first principles idea from someone like Elon Musk or people who reference Elon Musk, who's very famous for, uh, uh, disrupting industries, especially when it came to electric cars or spacecraft, and just coming in and doing things different. And the definition that is mostly attributed to first principles is thinking, "Oh, you just got to break things down to the smallest units and then based on that, you go from there." And that's what I see a lot of YouTube videos saying, and then they stop and then they move on.

But I, I think first principles is a much simpler concept. It's not really about, I mean, obviously you're breaking things down, but why are you even breaking things down in the first place? And, and here's the, the punchline: First principles is basically about asking "why?" Why do we do things? And why, why, why are things done this way? And why can't things be done a different way? And what's stopping them from doing that? So you can boil first principles down to really critical thinking and, and root cause. If you replace first principles with root cause thinking, um, you're basically going to arrive at the same idea.

Now, I'm going to give you a few examples of how you can apply this in your personal life because I'm not here, I'm not an academic. I'm not here just to talk about definitions and theories. I'm here to give you something practical that you can start using in your personal life today. Um, and this is the stuff I've used in my career. This has helped me get my job at NASA, has helped me get a PhD, has helped me start a profitable online business on the side, has helped me grow my engineering YouTube channel to 28,000 subscribers. And the, the thing that has, uh, something I've always been, uh, doing is basically asking "why."

And in my PhD, for example, I have published a lot more papers than the average PhD student. Um, and on average, like in electrical engineering, in my field, people publish, I don't know, two, three papers or so, maybe four. Um, I've published over 10 papers, and I've probably worked maybe not nearly as hard as everyone else. And that's because I like to think that I think in first principles. Basically, when I went into my PhD program, a lot of students were just kind of copying what other students were doing or doing what everyone else was saying you have to do, or like, for example, just blindly following what their advisors have to do. It's kind of terrifying because this is a scientific field. Uh, this is like research, science, science and technology research in the United States. And a lot of people that I would meet and come across, uh, would simply not ask why. Why are we doing this? Why is this done a certain way? Why is this methodology, um, useful? Why is it not useful?

And the same context happened to me when I, when I started building my online business. Lately, I've built a low-ticket, low-ticket, meaning like something that costs very little money. It's like a, a productivity course. As of now, it's like, it's like $100. And I joined a group, basically, of people that are helping me build it. Uh, and there are many, and there's like a path that you kind of have to take with coaching or with courses or these kind of things. Um, and very often, what I do is I, I go off that path and I say, "No, no, no. Let me try this. Let me, let me do this other thing. Let me, let me innovate. Let me, let me try to do this thing a little different." And sometimes I would hear a lot of arbitrary rules like, "Oh, you can't turn this ad on after X amount of days," or like, "You can't do this." Like, or if you change that. And, um, very often, what I would observe is when people receive this kind of instruction, they just say, "Okay." And that's kind of valid in a way because obviously you paid for a coach, you, the coach should know what they're doing.

But one thing that I've been always notorious for, uh, in this space is I always ask the coach, "Why are we doing this this way? And why not a different way?" So, really, first principles in the business context starts at just an engagement of asking "why?" Why is this thing done a certain way? Why not be done a different way? And I've seen a lot of entrepreneurs that basically hire coaches, and the coaches just tell them what to do, and they do it, and they go make money. But then they stop the coaching program, and then they, like, I don't know, they lose the revenues, they, they don't make as much money anymore. And that's because, in my opinion, the coach has failed to do the most important thing that a coach needs to do, which is teach the person how to think. Right? You got to teach the man how to fish. You can't just give him the fish. It's easy for me to hold your hand and say, "Oh, just do this, do that, do that. This is how I've done it. This is how other people have done it. Just go ahead and do that." Um, if I, if I don't teach you why and the thinking principles involved, then you're not really learning anything of value, right? Like, as soon as I'm, I'm, I'm gone, you're, you're, you're going to be, you're, you're not going to make much progress.

Now, I want to also refer to where do physics, uh, enter this, right? Because, um, you guys have probably seen companies like Nvidia, that has soared in their market value. The founder is an electrical engineer. Same with Amazon. Amazon is a company that has reached a trillion-dollar market cap long time ago. The founder is Jeff Bezos, who studied electrical engineering and computer science. Companies like Tesla, SpaceX are founded by one guy, his name is Elon Musk. Elon Musk studied physics. So, is it a coincidence that a lot of these billionaire tech entrepreneurs studied engineering or studied physics? And what does that say about the people that have studied business, for example, in contrast to the engineers and people who studied physics?

Well, the answer lies in first principles thinking. Because as a very good engineering student, and I can assure you this because I've done a bachelor's, master's, and a PhD in electrical engineering, I'm doing a postdoc right now. The, as an engineer, you are rewarded in direct correlation to how good you are at solving problems. And in order to be very good at solving problems, you have to understand the problem. And if you want to be really, really good, you have to understand why the problem even ended there in the first place, so that you can, instead of putting a Band-Aid patch on it, try to actually figure out the root cause and, and, and solve the problem at the root. And if you can do that very successfully in the realm of science and engineering and technology, that is a soft skill that is easily transferable to the business domain. And this is what we have seen with Elon Musk. This is what we've seen with Jeff Bezos. This we have seen with many other CEO, um, tech entrepreneurs who have basically brought their engineering background, their first principle thinking, and they have disrupted things.

Now, one other point I want to touch on is why is first principles a prerequisite to disruption? Right? We notice a lot of the disruptive companies are led by CEOs who are engineers. And again, those engineers think in first principles. Well, when you study engineering, the very first class you take in engineering is physics, uh, one, which is basically basic mechanics. Uh, you might have even taken this in high school, which is basically a class that says, um, I don't know, if I take something and I drop it, um, gravity is pulling that thing. And I don't know, if I have a ramp falling down, uh, if I have like a block of something falling down on a ramp and there's friction, I'm going to have to push it really hard. How much friction is there? How much force? Basically, you learn about basic forces and basic motion. And that is your very first segue into how the world works.

And physics is the best teacher for first principles because all physics is trying to answer is a simple question: Is why do things happen the way they do in real life? Why do things happen the way they do in nature? Why is it that my mouth is talking and my, there are mechanical ways, vibrations being picked up by the microphone? How is this microphone processing this information? Uh, basically, there's a deep curiosity to why things are happening in the real world. And again, if you take that same level of thinking from physics and you get really good at it, and you start using it and solving problems, you will not only solve problems in the realm of sciences, but now you can also solve problems in the realm of business.

So, I want to give a very simple example, which is when Elon Musk, um, acquired Tesla and what set on a mission to make electric cars a lot cooler, a lot, lot more efficient, a lot, a lot better, basically. Um, a lot of competitors such as, um, I don't know, General Motors and other companies, just merely seemed the thing impossible. Like, "No, an electric car does not work. Oh, no, it does not work." And what, what was found is that a lot of these CEOs, simply because they didn't understand the physics, the underlying physics behind what makes a battery work, what makes an electric car work, what is the actual bottleneck, what is the actual constraint? Because they don't understand that, they didn't have a full or deep understanding of that, they, by definition, could not think in first principles. Hence, they could not answer these questions, right?

So, this brings us to another very, very important sub-skill or or subway of thinking within first principles, which is identifying constraints. Right? Something Elon Musk was very good at doing is looking at Tesla and looking at electric vehicles and saying, "Hey, this is the constraint right here." And this is the simple bottleneck that we need to solve, not, not only from a technological perspective, but from a business perspective. And what I mean by that is there's a very, uh, old Elon Musk interview in which the interviewer is asking him, "Oh, um, how come like other companies are not competing with you guys at Tesla and whatnot? And even though they have all the resources in the world." And then Elon looked at him and he said, "Well, the resources or the money is not the constraint." And then the interviewer was like, "Huh? What's the constraint?" And Elon said, "The constraint is simply that they don't have a focused, small group of people, mostly engineers, that are just trying to take risks and make things happen."

So, that same ability to look at a situation and find out where the constraint or the bottleneck or a thing that is stopping the growth, that was learned in physics and was learned in engineering, can be applied to physics. And this is something I practice day-to-day. For example, when I, when I join business masterminds or things of that nature, I am always asking the question of like, "What is the constraint? What is stopping us from doing this? What is stopping us from doing that?" And I'm shocked to see a lot of people in business don't ask this question or, or don't think about it enough. Right? Most people are like, most people think, "I want to grow my business, right? I want to get more sales. I want to get more clients." When the better question is, "What is stopping me from getting more clients with my current skill set?" Or, "What is stopping me from, uh, closing more people?" Right? Because then what that's going to help you do is going to help you pinpoint to the root cause of the problem, and then it just becomes a problem to solve, right?

And again, because people who study engineering and physics are extremely good at problem-solving, they can see this very clearly in business and they can apply it, and hence they can grow trillion-dollar companies. But you don't have to study engineering or physics to adopt this school of thought where instead of again asking yourself, "Oh, I want to do that. I, I, I need to do that," you, you basically just say, "What is stopping me from doing that? And what is the constraint? What is the one thing that's standing in my way?" Right? And this could be, this is where things get a bit difficult, and this is where you probably need good coaching, or you probably need someone who knows what they're doing to work with you on this initially because there's so many variables. Like, you're a human, and being human is very, very complicated, right?

And let's say, for example, you have a client acquisition problem. You're struggling to acquire clients. And you say, "Okay, okay, Ali, I'll think in first principles. What, how, how to acquire a client?" First, you got to have something that someone else wants. Then you got to advertise it. You got to make it known such that that person knows that you have it. And then you got to basically convince them that it's worth having, right? So then you can ask yourself, "Well, what is stopping me from doing that?" Right? What is stopping me from first of all, having a product that's worth advertising? Two, advertising it? Three, being able to convince the person who takes a look, or who I successfully grab their attention, that this is something that's worth buying? Only when you start thinking in that way, you actually become far more productive because then you'll come at the root cause on why you are not growing. And that way, instead of chasing more shiny objects and, uh, being a very easily gullible and sellable, uh, dream client for a lot of these scammy internet marketers who are like, "Just, oh, you need this new thing, or you need this new that," you need, 99% of the time, you don't need a new thing. You just need something that already exists, but you need to know how to use it and in which context. That is the thing that's very important. That's what first principles teaching teaches us.

So again, I'm going to go back to this example. You have a business right now, we're trying to acquire more clients. What is the thing that's stopping you from acquiring more clients? Now, you might say, "Oh, I don't have money, so I can't run ads." Okay, no problem. Let's look at other avenues that are not money-oriented. What's stopping you from, uh, doing, uh, cold outreach? Or from posting content? Now, you might say, "Okay, as far as the outreach, I don't know. I only have like one hour in the day. It doesn't seem high leverage." Fair. Let's put that on the side. As far as content, you might say, "Oh, I don't know. I've never, um, posted anything on YouTube before. I don't know. The idea of starting a YouTube channel seems very overwhelming, whatnot."

And then, then the question becomes, "Okay, well, then what's stopping me from posting my very first video on YouTube and seeing what's going to happen?" And again, this is where things get complicated because the arguments your brain is going to present you are not always going to be rational. They are going to be emotionally driven, disguised and in rationality. And what I mean by that is you tell yourself, "Okay, I got to post my very first video. What's stopping me from doing that?" And your brain is going to say, "Oh, um, your lighting sucks. You don't have good lighting. You don't have a good microphone. You don't have good XYZ whatnot." And what most people do is they just say, "Okay, yeah, you know what, brain, you are right. Maybe I should just put this off to later." Obviously, this level of self-talk sometimes it's not conscious. It's kind of happening in the back, and then people put it off, and then two years later, three years later, don't make progress.

Now, if you stick with this idea of first principles and using constraints and bottlenecks and asking the question, "What's stopping me?" every step of the way, you're not going to stop there. You're going to say, "Okay, well, okay, even if I have lighting, what's stopping me from getting good lighting?" Oh, maybe a ring light is only $10 on Amazon. What's stopping me from having good audio? I mean, I have an iPhone, and the iPhone is probably good enough. Maybe I can search if, if it's not good enough or not. And then, even if, even under all these circumstances, what's stopping me from just posting the video and seeing how it goes? And then taking it and sending it to a few other people and seeing what they think about it? What's stopping me from doing all that? Right?

That chain of "What's stopping me? What's stopping me? What's stopping me? What's the constraint? What's the constraint? What's the constraint? What's the bottleneck? What's the bottleneck? What's the bottleneck? What's the holdup? What's the hurdle? Why, why, why are we not doing this? Why can't I do that? Why, why, why am I not doing this?" These questions are rooted in first principles thinking, which is again, I have a desired goal. I'm trying to achieve this. This is my current state. Why? What's stopping me from getting there? What is the bottleneck? Right?

So, going forward, I really want to, if you really want to start thinking in first principles, and again, our definition of first principles thinking is to be able to critically think and arrive at root causes and try to identify bottlenecks and remove bottlenecks from achieving your goal. And most importantly, to look at the evidence and the physics, and not on other people's opinions. Just because everyone is doing very high-quality editing on YouTube and is hiring insane, um, editors, just because Mr. Beast is posting insanely high production content, does not mean you should as well, right? You should ask yourself, "What do I want? What am I trying to achieve? Where am I trying to go?" And then you can ask your, and then the very second, the immediate question that comes after that is, "What's stopping me from doing it?"

Now, because very often, you don't need to go acquire something new. You already have the resources. You maybe just need to, uh, have better help on on how these resources are organized and curated. That's a different matter. But again, to think in first principles, figure out what you want, figure out what's stopping you from getting it, and make sure that that reason is real and is bounded in physics, and is not due to your own limiting beliefs or someone else's ideas. And that being said, that's the end of the video. If you found it useful, please do leave a comment below. I plan on making more videos like this, and I'll see you guys in the next one. Peace, love.