Principle Creation Ability ≈ Levelling Up Ability
/By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.
Reading time: 7 mins
Summary: Input * Principle = Output. The better you are at creating principles, and the better you are at applying principles, likely the better your output. So, try to get good Principle Creation Ability!
“We do not learn from experience... we learn from reflecting on experience.” ― John Dewey
Experience = What
Reflecting on experience = Principle Creation
Experience * No Principle Creation = No Learning = No Levelling Up
Experience * Principle Creation = Generate Learning = Level Up
“Metacognition Ability ≈ Pricpile Creation Ability ≈ Ability to level yourself and others up” Taxonomy:
L0: Did something
L1: Know if what you did went well or badly but not why
L2: Know if what you did went well or badly and why but only for that circumstance
L3: L2 + abstract principle that can be applied for many circumstances
L4: L3 + recall and transfer the principle into new circumstances
Creating a principle through reflection can often take only <10% of the time of the experience, but give you 100%+ extra value.
Jingle: If I was your (school) principal, I’d heavily suggest the principle that after each experience you try to create a principle!
Wisdom = Number of principles you can apply in a positive sum fashion in a circumstance
In an ideal world you can apply multiple principles to any given circumstance.
Then you prioritise the principles and figure out the 2-5x principles that best apply.
A taxonomy of principle application:
Zero principles = Bad. Normally random low quality output.
One principle = Dangerous. Highly susceptible to being an ideologue.
2-5x principles = Good. Unlikely to be beholden to one principle, can hopefully balance multiple principles to get a positive sum outcome.
6+ principles = Bad again :(. 6+ principles is normally too complicated to balance against each other and you often end up in ‘analysis paralysis’.
+++++++++++
Detail
When to try and create a principle? All the time!
Every time something went well.
And every time something didn't go well.
Try abstract out a principle.
Then one can try and apply the principle again in the future.
This is a way to systematically extract out learnings.
To me, principle creation is metacognition by a different name.
Examples of when to do:
Reflection at the end of meeting
What went well & Principle of why
What didn't go well & Principle of why
In 1:1s
What went well in the last week & Principle of why
What didn't go well in the last week & Principle of why
Product - eg after user testing
What did they like & Principle of why
What didn’t they like & Principle of why
But you can also do proactive principle creation
For example you learned something then you think about how to apply it to your field. For example I’ve been getting into systematic sequential phonics and thinking about how the frameworks apply at Edrolo. So I’ll write at an abstracted level how to apply these principles.
Examples Of Principles
In some respects each of these Cloud Streaks blogs is trying to birth one principle.
Setting expectations properly
Happiness = Reality - Expectations
Many people have not done much innovation before.
For the purposes of this, innovation = Where no one knows the answer = 0% known.
Normal school = The teacher knows the answer = 100% known.
For ‘normal school AKA 100%’, done well, ‘1 unit of effort = 1 unit of progress’.
But where one is ‘innovating AKA 0% known’, done well, ‘10 units of effort = 1 unit of progress’.
I didn’t realise this at the start of Edrolo 9 years ago. And many people don’t know this when they first join Edrolo.
If you have the expectation that ‘1 unit of effort = 1 unit of progress’ and what is actually happening is ‘10 units of effort = 1 unit of progress’ then people can feel quite dejected, like they are not making good progress when in fact they are!
So the abstracted principle is:
For 0% new AKA normal school, done well, 1 unit of effort = 1 unit of progress.
For 100% new AKA innovation, don well, 10 units of effort = 1 unit of progress.
And to tell people this before they attempt to innovate so that expectations are realistic.
An oversimplification, there are two types of tasks:
1. Has ceiling: Where there is a ceiling and you can get 100%.
2. Ceilingless: Where there is no ceiling and you can always levell things up. Eg how to make the best coffee, how to best spend a tuesday, how to make the best Year 7 Maths Textbook.
For ceilingless tasks you have to stop somewhere. I call the place one should stop ‘the line of sufficiency’.
The mission of Edrolo is to improve education. Going beyond the line of sufficiency normally means that the overall amount of improvement Edrolo can deliver to education decreases as one spends too long on a certain area, meaning the opportunity cost offsets the improvement.
With the benefit of hindsight, I used to spend way too long on some tasks. And I also saw others spending too much time on certain tasks.
So the principle is for ceilingless tasks is one should set a line of sufficiency at the outset to guide when to stop and move on.
“We can never be sure we are right, we can only be sure that we are wrong.” Richard Feynman
“Uncertainty is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” Voltaire.
If this is the case, then we likely need constant course corrections. It often doesn’t feel nice to do course corrections (aka admitting you were at least to some extent ‘wrong’), but not doing course corrections normally means ‘achieving failure’ AKA getting to a destination you don’t want to be.
So try to normalise admitting you are ‘off course’ constantly, aka ‘constant course corrections’. Then hopefully you have a chance of being less wrong as you normalise ‘course corrections’.
Edrolo specific
In some respects Content Technology such as recipes and machines are a large set of principles integrated in a positive sum way.
Strategies to level up “Principle Creation Ability”
Write about things at an abstracted level. Or don’t just do experiences, do ‘reflecting on your experiences’ with the end goal to have clean abstracted principle. Eg a nice ‘one sentence summary’. One of the best strategies I have to think at an abstracted ‘principle creation’ level is ‘metacognition writing’.
Write a blog like CloudStreaks each week.
Write a mini blog as a learning in your weekly email.
Write at an abstracted level anything you want to level up in regularly (eg weekly or fortnightly). Eg my ‘Product thought development, not product strategy’ email thread at Edrolo.
Wisdom = 1. Having lots of principles * 2. Confidence to implement them proportionally * 3. Resilience to do it again and again
“Stop the bully without becoming the bully” is a famous line from George W. Bush in the Gulf War. I’ll rephrase it here to ‘Stop the bad behaviour without committing bad behaviour’.
Proportional implementation:
-L1: Not stopping bad behaviour = More bad behaviour occurs = Negative Sum
L1: Stop the bad behaviour without committing bad behaviour = The bad behaviour stops = Positive Sum
-L1: Too much = Stop the bad behaviour but committing bad behaviour = They dislike you = Negative Sum
If you only take away one thing
Principle collection and creation is a key way to level up.
You get good at the things you spend time trying to get good at.
If your job is ‘knowledge work’, then ‘Principle Creation Ability’ is likely a good approximation of how you are at levelling up at your job. So IMO spend time trying to get good at ‘Principle Creation’!