Of the many articles and interviews that praise Elon Musk, few focus on the aspect of his thinking immediately applicable to our own lives.  That is, his method of problem solving.

Musk calls it “proceeding from first principles,” but for those of us who can’t grasp what he means by this, we need only look to the year 1637.

For long before there was a YouTube, transistors, or even Calculus, there was Descartes’ “Method,” and it’s one of the most powerful problem solving tools ever invented.