Navigate Life Using First Principles

I started a new job and recently found myself overlooking principles I valued growing up. The changes were not drastic, but I wanted to correct them before they turned into bad habits. For example, I started prioritizing work over working out, spent less time with family and friends, and caught myself glazing over articles and papers instead of reading them thoughtfully.

Considering this, I took time to reflect on what I think those principles should be. I wanted to remind myself that as life gets busy and more complex, living by simple, fundamental principles becomes even more important. Sharing these principles keeps me accountable, but more importantly, I hope others can benefit too.

Complex problems are solved by first principles

To start, it’s helpful to see that solving complex problems begins with simple rules and laws. We see this philosophy all around us in math, the sciences, law and finance.

For example, in math many of us learned The Pythagorean Theorem, which describes the relationship between side lengths of right-angle triangles. When we first learned it, we solved basic problems like finding the length of some unknown side. As problems involving The Theorem became more complex, like an optimization problem in calculus, we had to complete intermediary steps that sometimes made us lose sight of the fact that the hypotenuse is always the root of the squared sums of the other two sides, no matter the context or increased complexity of the problem.

I think the same analogy applies to how we live our lives. Life starts with simple problems that are solved using rules and values set-out by our parents and guardians. As we get older and more variables are introduced (e.g. college, jobs, loans, relationships) applying these values can become ambiguous and less intuitive, in the same way we sometimes forget basic theorems when solving hard academic problems.

In science, we have Newton’s laws of motion, in law we have the Charter of Rights, and in finance we have Modigliani and Miller’s theorems. Deciding how to live our life is arguably the most complex problem we will face, so if math, science and finance have their own first principles, are there principles for how to live our lives?

Life is not an academic problem

A reasonable rebuttal to my analogy is that life is not an academic problem. Academic problems are usually constrained by a domain, have a finite number of variables and have a clear objective. In contrast, determining how to live our life is a continuous problem with an infinite number of external variables. To address some of this ambiguity, I placed my list of principles into categories I wanted to work on, which mimics domains and limits the number of variables. These buckets include: personal development, work, and family and friends.

Additionally, academic theories are more exact in defining an action whereas life’s principles are vague and provide little guidance on execution. For example, if one of my principles is “to be better than my previous self”, there are a host of different things that fall under that principle. I could be more organized, more disciplined, or more caring. On top of that, I have to decide how much more organized, disciplined and caring I’d like to be. Life’s principles define direction, but the choice of action and degree of adherence is left to the individual. To this, I'd note that the first step before deciding the action is identifying the principles, everything else is secondary. If the principle is to be better than your previous self, the steps you take and amount of effort you use is less relevant and comes with trial and error; the important thing is that you become better.

Finally, unlike theorems, life’s principles are subjective. What I value as a way of life may not be valued by someone else. This sharply contrasts academia where theorems are objectively tested and unanimously accepted. The scientific approach to my list would have been to research successful people and compile their tried and true principles, but even then, all of us have different definitions of what a successful person looks like. Although I don’t think a universal set of principles exists, I do believe there is substantial commonality and overlap between thoughtful lists. My list is a combination of my experiences, upbringing and guidance from others, and you can take, add, or remove any to make your own.

On personal development…

• Put your morals, health and education first. Everything else will come
• Be better than your previous self
• Live for others, but also for yourself
• Mean what you say, say what you mean
• Everything is a choice

At work…

• Be accountable. Work as if you own the business
• Always be prepared, always show-up
• Focus, and minimize juggling tasks
• Never stop learning
• Accomplishment breeds complacency. Remember where you came from

With family and friends…

• Be engaged and in the moment. Don’t go through the motions
• What seems trivial to you may be significant to others
•  Be there, especially if no one else is
• Tell people they’re important, but also show them

Listing out bullets diminishes the value, as I think each bullet could warrant an explanation. They sound simple, but like a compass, each principle acts as a guiding reference for navigating complexity. I imagine this list will grow as I get older, but at a minimum, it will be a snapshot in time of what I aspired to be.

* This post was originally published at www.lang-michael.com