In this brief video, Elon Musk, who previously brought us how to build knowledge and 12 book recommendations, talks about a framework for thinking.
I do think there is a good framework for thinking. It is physics – you know the sort of first principles reasoning … What I mean by that is boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there as opposed to reasoning by analogy.
Though most of our life we get through it by reasoning through analogy, which essentially means copying what other people do with slight variations. And you have to do that, otherwise mentally you wouldn’t be able to get through the day. But when you want to do something new you have to apply the physics approach. Physics has really figured out how to discover new things that are counter-intuitive, like quantum mechanics … so I think that’s an important thing to do. And then also really pay attention to negative feedback and solicit it, particularly from friends. This may sound like simple advice but hardly anyone does that and it’s incredibly helpful.