First Principles Thinking
Purpose
[stub: first-principles-thinking]
Metadata
| Author | Amit Singh |
| Scope | productivity |
Local graph
Linked from 2 notes
4 — Personal Decision Journals
Pre- and post-decision review, graded on process not outcome.
Productivity for Knowledge Workers
A book-shaped table of contents for productivity as practiced by a knowledge worker: foundations, self-management, goal setting, time and deep work, personal knowledge management, learning, task systems, decision making, habits, digital productivity, engineering and career practice, health, review, and an advanced operating-system layer, plus reference appendices — cross-linking existing notes instead of duplicating them.
Related notes
2 — Reversible vs Irreversible Decisions
The one-way-door / two-way-door distinction — why irreversible decisions deserve deliberate slowness and reversible ones deserve speed, and conflating the two wastes both.
Expected Value
Weighing a decision by probability-weighted outcomes rather than gut feel or the most vivid scenario alone.
Opportunity Cost
What a choice actually costs is the next-best option it forecloses, not just the resources it visibly consumes.
3 — Avoiding Cognitive Biases
The recurring judgment errors most likely to distort an engineering or career decision — see Philosophy for the full bias catalog this chapter draws on.