Why “principles first” thinking and practising matter
Henrik Karlsson’s “On Feeling Connected” inspired an exploration into the critical contrast between applying “applications first” strategies and embracing “principles first” thinking and practice.
Reading
’s (as always, beautiful) piece “On feeling connected” made me think about an important point on “applications first” versus “principles first” thinking and practising.12
When reading Henrik’s piece, I was immediately reminded of Adam Grant and his book “Give and Take”3. It is, for what it is, excellent too. But somehow, as much as I tried, pitching it against Henrik’s post felt wrong. There seemed to be an elegance and beauty in Henrik’s argument which, I felt, could not be matched by whatever Grant had written.
And then it dawned on me: what fundamentally sets “On feeling connected” apart from “Give and Take” is the fact that it explores the principle of giving (and it’s practising, to become effective4), whereas the latter (true to its nature as a business/self-help book of sorts), is much more concerned with the application of giving. But why does this matter? It is nothing new that self-help is often about quick fixes, i.e. about applications, and it is quite obvious that “principles first” requires some extra work if it is to be applied to real-world situations.
Yet, there is a fundamental difference between the two, and it concerns the temporal aspects: While both application first and concrete fielding of principles first thinking can help you in the short term (and even will generate direct returns in the long-term), it is principles first thinking which really prepares you for the long run.
It is the mastery of the principles and their practising which is timeless, and ultimately prepares you for whatever will come down the road.
While “applications first” often offers considerable benefits in the short term (and is hence of particular interest for business and self-help books and substacks), “principles first” is the thinking that offers both long-term and transferable insights — at the “cost” of having to think more about it and training its applications by thinking for yourself, in the relative context, but with a view to future, oblique opportunities to apply it.5
And this is why principles first matters.
Henrik himself makes a great example in his article of what this could look like, concretely, when he talks about “practising” the principle of giving. He calls this a “nice little mental trick” 6:
[What] people who see giving as an act of potency realize is that this feeling of a loving connection is something you can produce yourself. If a feeling of connection to the world and other people is a kind of wealth, it is a wealth you don’t need to inherit or earn. It is more like you are the federal reserve and you can just print that stuff.
…
It is a nice little mental trick.
What follows makes the point of the principles behind this, and shows us quite practically how mastering the principle of giving does not only generate “short term” returns (a joyous feeling, a connectedness with yourself and the world) but ultimately prepares us for an entirely different field of application, potentially far down the road, and triggered by circumstances we can neither imagine nor fathom:
Because at some point, sooner than you would wish, life will turn into a catastrophe. People you love will die. You will get chronically ill. There will be violence. And at that point, you might not make it unless you can generate this kind of generous love that connects you to the world and gives it meaning. Frankl and Antonovsky both made this observation about concentration camps.
And this capability is something no self-help or business / management book like Grant’s with its “application first” thinking could achieve in the same way.7
This post – as most of my writing – is footnote heavy. Footnotes turned out to be the second-best way to branching out and providing hints at or thoughts of interesting leads or other things that don’t fit the main corpus.
I first came across the difference between “applications first” and “principles first” reasoning and thinking in Erin Meyer’s “Culture Map”. It’s worth reading itself, but for an intro of just these two aspects, her INSEAD Article will do: “The Art of Persuasion in a Multicultural World“ (https://knowledge.insead.edu/leadership-organisations/art-persuasion-multicultural-world). Interestingly enough, and quite true to its nature as a good and helpful business article written by an American, it’s much more “applications first” and far less about the „(meta)principles“ behind (which are only briefly mentioned). And it definitely does not touch on how thinking about and deeply understanding the principles behind the distinction of the two approaches could become useful far down the road, in areas we would not even start thinking about: something a more “principles first” approach to that article would probably have done.
Grant, Adam. Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success. A Penguin Book. New York, N.Y: Penguin Books, 2014.
As you will see in the example below, it is really not just the thinking about the principle, but both the thinking about and practising of it which are important. Which leads us down to a whole other rabbit hole (of principles) with
’s “Philosophy of Practising” (which I haven’t finished yet since I’m still processing and unpacking the many principles she’s picked up, referenced, and beautifully woven into it): Pont, Antonia. 2021. A Philosophy of Practising: With Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781474490481.I have not fully unpacked all of this, but two points I want to make are, on one hand, the cultural aspects of the different ways of thinking (as mentioned above), and on the other, the link to the “research” side of things. On the first point: Business schools, even in Europe, emphasise “application thinking” a lot, and business books do as well. The abundant self-help literature is no different, either. It is, however, the more philosophical “principles first” approach that helps one deal when finding solutions or perspective under different circumstances from the specific applications covered in these business and self-help books. And on the second: While clearly related, this article is not about the “analytical” or “synthetical” (or: inductive and deductive) approaches to research, which mostly concerns the “how to do research side of our thinking”. That question of “how to do research” is an equally interesting area to explore, with a twist which is nicely explored in “How to Conduct Research like Drucker and Einstein” by William Cohen. This post, however, is trying to be more concerned with “what to do with the results of research” and “how to act on and think of these results.”
At the risk of over-stretching this:
, in “An Alternative Approach to Deep Tech VC” makes the intriguing observation that researchers have retreated to more basic research whereas company R&D has moved away towards heavily applied research. The idea of a neglected “middle-ground” is a very intriguing one. This in itself has far-reaching consequences on many forays I’m not going to cover here.Now, I don’t want to say that applications first thinking or approaches are bad and that principle first is the purer form of thinking. As often, both have their value. Here in Europe, we even might learn a bit or two from cultures which do this better. But I think it’s worthwhile reflecting on the fact that the more we’re trained to think “applications first”, the more we must deliberately reflect on the underlying principles too. Those will otherwise be thrown under the bus and be lost to our future selves when we most need them.