Recently, I’ve been relearning how to think more critically. The urgency comes from the overwhelming amount of information I absorb each day (X, Youtube, podcast, friends…); I rarely manage to turn it into anything useful for my building process. I need a way to process this flood of input and shape my own thinking model. I mainly learned this process from this excellent video on first principles thinking.

Specifically, the process takes just two steps: Boil Down: Distill all incoming information down to real‑world truths. Build from Truths: Use a thinking model that builds new ideas from those truths—rather than from random guesses or feelings.

Truth vs. Recommendation

All the information we encounter falls into two broad categories:

Fundamental Truths – Basic principles that can’t be reduced any further. They’re the bedrock of how the world works.

Personal Recommendations – Insights drawn from someone’s experience, intuition, or preference. They can be helpful, but they’re derived rather than fundamental.

The key is to identify fundamental truths and build understanding on that foundation. When I see a recommendation or a piece of conventional wisdom, I ask: Why is this true? What underlying truths make it valid? That question forces me to uncover the causal relationships beneath common practices.

Inverse Thinking: Start with the Goal

Most of us tackle problems with a limited mindset: What can I build with the tools and knowledge I already have?—and we end up making only incremental improvements.

Let’s reverse the sequence. Instead of starting with present possibilities, begin by asking: What is the ultimate goal, the perfect solution we want to reach? Only after defining that ideal outcome should we work backward to see which fundamental truths can get us there. This approach frees us from current constraints and opens the door to real breakthrough innovation.