| Sunday, 28 May 2023 |
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Good morning [%first_name |Dear Reader%],
You’re about to read the first edition of a brand-new subscriber newsletter from The Ken called First Principles.
Or perhaps not. Because you’re wondering, what is The Ken thinking? Sending a new newsletter on the most sacred and anti-work days of the week. A Sunday.
And that too, unannounced and uninvited.
Since there’s no other way around this, let me first just apologise for my intrusion. And then explain why Sundays might not be all that bad to meander, reflect, and reorient.
Which is the purpose of this newsletter.
First Principles is both a really old (think Aristotle) and relatively new (think Elon Musk) concept of reasoning, where we force ourselves to challenge the way things are in pursuit of the way things should be.
We do this by learning to see large, complex problems as composed of smaller “building blocks” of problems. And then solving those building blocks and reassembling solutions in ways others might not think of.
To do this well requires us to learn and apply two skills: analysis (breaking a problem into smaller parts) and synthesis (building solutions by assembling smaller parts).
Most of us are good at analysis, because it’s what is taught to us in schools and reinforced at workplaces. Not so many of us are good at synthesis, for the exact opposite of the earlier reasons.
First Principles thinking requires both.
Each Sunday, this newsletter will bring you fresh insights on how many leaders and individuals apply First Principles thinking to not just see the world differently, but also to remake it in their own vision.
And what better example of such a person than Dick Fosbury, who passed away in March. Fosbury was the inventor of the “Fosbury Flop”, or as we now know it, the modern high jump.
[aesop_nutgraf_quote_block title=”Fosbury shot to fame in 1968, when he won high-jump gold in Mexico City after a final that lasted more than four hours.<br/><br/>His technique, honed in college competition in Oregon, involved jumping backwards and arching his back over the bar, thereby reversing and ripping up decades of high-jump orthodoxy.
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