Beyond the Obvious: The Secret to Solving Problems That Seem Impossible

We’ve all been there. Staring at a problem so tangled, so immense, that it feels like a solid brick wall. Whether it’s in our careers, our personal lives, or a creative project, we hit a point where every path forward seems blocked. Our thinking gets stuck in a loop, circling the same tired solutions that never quite work.

What if I told you that the reason we get stuck is that we’re asking the wrong questions? We’re trying to improve the existing wall, maybe by painting it a different colour or adding a few more bricks, when we should be asking why the wall is there in the first place.

This is the essence of First Principles Thinking. It’s a mental model that has been championed by thinkers from the ancient philosopher Aristotle to the modern innovator Elon Musk. Instead of reasoning by analogy (basing our solutions on what has been done before), we break a problem down to its most fundamental, undeniable truths—the “first principles”—and then build a solution from the ground up.

“I tend to approach things from a physics framework. Physics teaches you to reason from first principles rather than by analogy.” – Elon Musk

It’s the difference between trying to make a faster horse and carriage, and inventing the automobile. It’s a superpower. And to understand its magic, let me tell you a story.

The Story of the Whispering Reeds

In a valley cradled by ancient, slumbering mountains, lay the village of Kora. For generations, the people of Kora had been plagued by the “Roaring Sorrow”—a seasonal flood that would surge down the mountain slopes, swelling their gentle river into a destructive beast.

Every year, they faced the same problem. And every year, their solution was the same. “The wall must be higher,” the village elders would declare. They reasoned by analogy. The village downriver had built a wall, and it worked for them. Their own wall had held for a few years, so a bigger, stronger version must be better.

They would spend months hauling stone and mixing mortar. The wall grew into a formidable barrier, a monument to their fear and hard work. Yet, every few years, an especially fierce storm would come, and the Roaring Sorrow would breach their defenses, leaving devastation in its wake.

A young woman named Elara, a weaver known for her intricate patterns, watched this cycle with a heavy heart. She had lost her grandmother’s loom in the last flood. This year, as the men prepared to haul more stone, she didn’t see a solution. She saw a tombstone in the making.

One evening, she walked not to the great wall, but upstream, to where the river was still a network of small, playful streams trickling down the mountain. She sat not on a boulder, but on the damp earth, feeling the ground beneath her. She didn’t think about the wall. She thought about the water.

She began to ask herself simple, almost childish questions.

• What is the problem, really? Not that the wall is too small. The fundamental problem is that too much water is arriving at the village, all at once.

• What is water? It’s a liquid. It has no agenda. It simply follows the path of least resistance. It flows downhill.

• Where does the water come from? From the rain that falls on the mountain slopes.

• Why does it rush down so fast? She looked around. The slopes were bare and rocky in many places, worn down by years of runoff. The water had no reason to slow down.

She wasn’t thinking about walls anymore. She was thinking from first principles. The core truth wasn’t about stopping a mighty river; it was about managing countless small streams.

The next day, at the village meeting, the elders discussed reinforcing the wall with iron. Elara, mustering her courage, stood up.

“We are fighting the river at its strongest,” she said, her voice clear. “Why don’t we calm it when it is weak?”

She explained her idea. It was not one grand, brutalist solution, but hundreds of small, elegant ones. Instead of a single massive wall at the village, she proposed creating a series of shallow terraces and check dams all along the mountain slopes. Instead of fighting the water, they would guide it. They would plant deep-rooted grasses and hardy trees whose roots would act like a sponge, drinking the water and holding the soil. They would dig small, meandering channels that would force the rushing water to slow down, to whisper instead of roar.

The elders were skeptical. It sounded like the work of a gardener, not an engineer. It was weak. But it was also far less costly than raising the wall, and they were tired. They agreed to let Elara and a group of younger villagers try her “whispering solution” on one section of the mountain.

For months, they worked. They didn’t haul stone; they moved earth. They didn’t mix mortar; they planted saplings. They carved gentle curves into the land, creating a patchwork of green that followed the mountain’s natural contours.

When the rainy season arrived, the village held its breath. The clouds burst, and the rain came down in sheets. People gathered at the old wall, expecting the worst. But the Roaring Sorrow never came. The river swelled, yes, but it remained within its banks. Up on the slopes, Elara’s system was working. The terraces filled and gently overflowed. The new plants drank deeply. The water arrived at the village not as a raging bull, but as a steady, manageable flow.

They hadn’t built a better wall. They had solved the real problem.

From the Valley to Your Reality

Elara’s story is a perfect illustration of First Principles Thinking. The conventional wisdom (analogy) was to build a bigger wall because that’s what people do to stop floods. The first principles approach was to ask:

1. Identify Assumptions: The core assumption was that the problem was a “strong river” that needed a “strong wall.”

2. Break it Down: The problem was deconstructed to its fundamentals: Water + Gravity + Steep, Bare Slopes = High-Velocity Runoff.

3. Reconstruct from the Ground Up: With these truths, the solution became obvious. The goal wasn’t to block the water, but to slow it down and absorb it. Hence, terraces and vegetation.

This is exactly what Elon Musk did with SpaceX.

• Analogy: Rockets are incredibly expensive. To buy one costs tens of millions of dollars.

• First Principles: What is a rocket actually made of? Musk asked this question. The answer: aerospace-grade aluminum alloys, titanium, copper, and carbon fiber. If you calculated the cost of these raw materials on the commodity market, it came out to only about 2% of the typical price of a rocket.

The cost wasn’t in the fundamental stuff. The cost was in everything done after the materials were sourced—the decades of established, inefficient manufacturing, assembly, and bureaucracy. By breaking it down, Musk saw that the real problem wasn’t the material cost. He could build a rocket far cheaper himself by rethinking the manufacturing process and, most famously, by making the most expensive parts reusable.

The cost of the rocket wasn’t a fundamental truth. It was just a historical artifact of how things had always been done.

How to Start Thinking from First Principles

You don’t need to be building rockets or saving a village to use this. Apply it to anything.

1. Clarify Your Problem & Question Assumptions: What is it you’re really trying to do? What “truths” about this problem are actually just long-held beliefs or traditions? For example, “I need a better resume to get a new job.” Is that a fundamental truth? Or is the truth that “I need to effectively communicate my value to a potential employer”? A resume is just one way to do that. What are others?

2. Break It Down (Ask “Why?”): Channel your inner toddler. Ask “why” relentlessly until you hit a foundational truth.

   • “I need to work out more.” Why?

   • “To be healthier.” Why is working out the path to health?

   • “It strengthens the heart, builds muscle, and reduces stress.” Why do you need those specific things?

     This process might reveal that your real goal isn’t just “working out” but “reducing stress,” and maybe a 20-minute walk in nature is a better and more sustainable solution for you than a 1-hour gym session you’ll never do.

3. Build a New Solution: Once you have the fundamental pieces, like a set of LEGO bricks, you can reassemble them in a new, more effective way. Your solution will be tailored to the real problem, not the perceived one.

First principles thinking is more than a problem-solving technique; it’s a mindset. It’s the conscious act of resisting the pull of the obvious. It requires courage to question the status quo and the patience to build from the ground up.

But for those who master it, it’s the key that unlocks the door to true innovation, creativity, and solutions to problems that once seemed impossible. So the next time you face a wall, don’t just think about how to get over it. Take a step back, and ask if it even needs to be there at all.