Elon Musk's method is first-principles thinking: break a problem down to what is physically true, then rebuild the answer from there. The exam version of that matters more than the biography. Roughly 10-15% of GCSE and A-Level questions each year are unseen, phrased in a way no past paper used, and that slice is what separates a grade B from an A*. Learning mark schemes by rote gets you the other 85%; understanding gets you the rest.
What is Elon Musk?
Currently worth 218.1 billion dollars
Owner of several companies including Tesla, Space X, the boring company and is also on his way to acquiring twitter.
Quite the figurehead.
Naturally, when you seem someone so successful, it makes you wonder how exactly they did it?
Fortunately, Elon is quite the chatterbox whether he is ranting on twitter or he is speaking at conventions or in interviews.
And in each of these escapades he sprinkles his secrets to success here and there.
One of those being, how he learns and thinks about new stuff.
Learning via 1st principles
What is 1st principles thinking? Aristotle was the 1st to define the term as “a first basis from which a thing is known”. That basically means, a concept that cannot be simplified down further. A self-evident truth.
In maths, for example, we tackle topics such as calculus and trigonometry, but these concepts all arise from numbers first and foremost.1 + 1 = 2 would be our 1st principle in this case. It’s the same for other subjects too. Take chemistry for example.
Chemicals being mixed together and producing tremendous reactions.
While very delightful to look at, can be explained from the 1st principles of electrons and protons that a 15 year old is taught.
"Yeah, but I could just memorise all of this"
You could, but it won't really help you in the long run.
Learning from 1st principles is what leads to the keys of understanding.
For the vast majority of GCSE and A-Level questions you can pretty much ROTE learn mark schemes, however, every year about 10-15% of the questions on the exam are new - they have not appeared in previous years.
If you have spent your revision time simply ROTE learning mark schemes, you are in trouble because you haven’t seen these before. But, if you spent your time understanding things from a conceptual level, you will be able to apply the concepts properly to reach the right conclusion.
And that 10-15% is what makes the difference between the grade B student and the grade A* student.
But don’t be mistaken that the use for 1st principles starts and ends with school exams.
Why does st principle thinking drives innovation matter?
20 years ago, Elon embarked on his lifelong dream to launch a rocket to Mars.
Unfortunately, he ran into a problem very quickly.
It costs 65 million dollars to buy a rocket!
A drop in the ocean for him right now, but at the time, that was some serious moolah.
But that's where his 1st principles thinking kicked in.
Elon started to think.
What is a rocket?
What is it made out of?
How much do each of these parts cost?
And after doing the maths he found out that the materials needed to make a rocket only cost 2% of the total price!
So, instead of buying a 65 million dollar rocket he launched SpaceX. He would buy the raw materials and then assemble the actual rocket himself.
And today, SpaceX manufactures and profits from making rockets that cost nearly 10x less than what they did 20 years ago.
How do you figure out what the 1st principles of a topic are?
Well, it's actually fairly straight forward. Start with why?
Question all of your basic assumptions about a topic.
One way to do this is via the Feynman technique. To see if you really understand something try to teach it to a 5 year old.
I am sure many parents at home can relate, but when you try to teach a 5 year old something they never assume anything. Like ever!
And therefore, whenever you tell them something they will ask why?
And when you respond to that. They hit you with another why?
And eventually, you will be stuck in a never ending series of whys?
While it is annoying, for you to understand a topic well, you should be able to answer all of these why questions.
And once you reach a point where you can no longer answer that why question that is where either:
- Your understanding falls apart,
- or where you have hit the 1st principle of a topic - the principle can not be broken down further.
How do you finish up?
Next time you sit down to study. Ask yourself. Do I understand this topic from a fundamental level? Can I derive all of the material in the topic from a core set of key principles?
If not, then you don’t understand it well enough to move on, irrespective of past paper marks.
“I think most people can learn a lot more than they think they can. They sell themselves short without trying. One bit of advice: it is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree — make sure you understand the fundamental principles, i.e., the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to.”
- Elon Musk
What else is worth reading?
- 🧠Why learn?
- How to Excel in Online Learning: A Comprehensive Guide
- How to Excel in Your Studies in London: A Comprehensive Guide
- How Travel Enhances Your Skills: A Deep Dive into Personal Growth…
- How Travel Enhances Your Skills: More Than Just a Getaway
What are the honest limits of this advice?
The evidence behind study methods is measured as an average across many students, not a promise about one. The EEF toolkit reports months of additional progress on average, with real variation underneath. What works also depends on the subject and where the gaps are.
Officially, this is what a pass is worth — the government lists it as a Level 2 qualification:
“GCSE — grades 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4 or grades A*, A, B, C.” — gov.uk, What qualification levels mean
What research supports these methods?
The study techniques on this page are not our opinion. Each comes from published cognitive-science research, linked here so you can read the original:
- Karpicke & Roediger, Science (2008) — testing yourself beats re-reading, by a wide margin
- Cepeda et al., Psychological Bulletin (2006) — spacing sessions out beats cramming
- Dunlosky et al., Psychological Science in the Public Interest (2013) — practice testing and spacing rated highest of ten techniques; highlighting among the lowest