Problem Solving on Note TLDRLSS

Stop Pursuing Infinite Growth! Jason Fried's Art of "Non-Expansion" Operating Principles

Sat, 07 Mar 2026 11:00:00 +0800

Do you ever get the feeling that society is constantly telling us to be “bigger, more, and better”? Whether it’s running a company or building a personal brand, everyone seems trapped on that “hockey stick curve” that demands straight-up takeoff—like a treadmill accelerating infinitely until we’re exhausted.

But what if you chose to stop at a place that was “already good enough”?

This is the “non-expansion” strategy advocated by 37signals founder Jason Fried. This isn’t just about making money; it’s about how to take back control of your life.

1. Find Your Comfortable Orbit, Don’t Be Fooled by the “Hockey Stick Curve”

The narrative Silicon Valley is most obsessed with is the “hockey stick curve,” which starts flat and then erupts vertically. For Jason Fried

This is not growth, but a loss of control.

He compares entrepreneurship to “launching a rocket”:

Stage	Description
Breaking Gravity Stage	The early days of a startup do require burning massive energy to break through the pressures of survival and costs.
Entering Orbit Stage	Once you make more than you spend, you’ve entered “orbit.”

In orbit, “maintaining quality” is far more important than blind acceleration.

If your company gets twice as big, but loses the very qualities that made it wonderful in the first place, so what?

2. Optimize the “Craft,” That’s Your Pride in the Work

Jason Fried opposes what he calls “boring optimization.” Simply A/B testing like crazy to improve conversion rates by a fraction of a percent or fine-tuning button colors is, to him, boring beyond belief!

What he advocates instead is “interesting optimization”: focusing on making the product easier to use, simpler, and more elegant. The operating metric shouldn’t be the numbers on a spreadsheet, but rather

“When I wake up tomorrow, do I still want to do the exact same thing again?”

When you are proud of your work, the product will naturally generate its own attraction.

3. Your Only Competitor Is Your “Cost”

Fixating on competitors will only result in building copycat products. In contrast, Jason Fried believes the core of business is exceedingly simple:

As long as you make more than you spend, you survive.

He emphasizes the need for “The Blubber”: a company shouldn’t run so lean it’s bone-thin, but should maintain a financial buffer.

This layer of “blubber” kept them completely safe during the financial crisis and the pandemic.

“We take risks, but we never put ourselves in jeopardy.”

4. The Aesthetic of “Just Enough”: The Wisdom of Closing When Sold Out

This is a beautiful concept. There is a sandwich shop in Chicago that uses fresh bread daily and closes its doors the moment it sells out (usually by 2:30 PM). The owner refuses to use day-old bread just to make a little extra money, because

“It’s not worth selling food that you aren’t proud of.”

This aesthetic of “just enough” allows operators to find a long-term balance between their profession and their life, preventing business from swallowing up their entire existence.

5. Focus on the Core “Hot Dog,” Leverage the “Byproducts”

If you remove a certain feature and your product ceases to exist, then that is your “hot dog.”

Method	Description
Subtract First	Resource constraints can actually be an advantage that forces creativity. It’s better to build half a great product than a half-baked complete one.
Leverage Byproducts	The “leftovers” generated while polishing your core product can also be translated into value. Just as 37signals compiled their management experiences into the book “Rework,” or turned leftover materials into a compelling free newsletter.

6. Make Decisions Like a Squirrel Crossing a Lawn

“Planning is guessing”

When you are making long-term plans, it’s often the exact moment you have the least information.

Rather than falling into “analysis paralysis” over a grand plan, it’s better to act like a squirrel crossing a lawn:

Run a distance, stop to observe, correct your course, and run again.

Break progress down into small decisions measured in “days.” If you run in the wrong direction, your losses are limited strictly to that single day, which keeps you motivated to keep pushing forward.

Conclusion: Regaining Control Is the Ultimate Success

Abandon the blind worship of that “hockey stick curve” and spend your energy taking back control of your business and life.

If your work makes you feel that “if I stopped, the world would miss it,” and every single day you still have the motivation to keep running, then that is the ultimate success.

You don’t necessarily have to change the world; as long as you make your customers feel their lives are a little better, that is incredibly meaningful.

Reference

The 'First Principles' Used by Musk and Jobs to Escape the Prison of Mediocre Thinking

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 10:19:38 +0800

Do you ever feel like you are working very hard, but when faced with a problem, you tend to “just do what others are doing”, ending up totally exhausted and only earning a hard-earned pittance?

This is actually because our brains, in an effort to save energy, unconsciously fall into the traps of analogy thinking and herd mentality.

However, First Principles rethinking is a mental artifact that can help you solve fundamental problems and even disrupt convention entirely.

What are First Principles? It’s Actually the Fundamental Logic of Physics

First Principles Thinking is simply:

“Getting to the bottom of things by breaking them down into the most basic, absolute objective facts, and then rebuilding from scratch.”

When we solve problems, our brains usually try to conserve energy by employing analogy thinking.

We look at what others are doing and follow suit, perhaps tweaking it slightly. In short, “copying with minor adjustments.”

First principles thinking, on the other hand, ignores what others are doing or what past experiences suggest, focusing only on: “What are the most fundamental conditions of this matter based on physics or its profound true nature?”

Breaking the Myth of Analogy Thinking

In simple terms, it’s about peeling a complex problem like an onion down to its most basic, absolutely objective facts, and then deriving a solution anew from this foundation. This is entirely different from the habit of blindly following trends!

Real-World Applications by Top Visionaries: Musk and Jobs

For example, Elon Musk founding SpaceX is the most classic case. Initially, he wanted to buy rockets, but the prices quoted by the Russians were too high. He used first principles to break it down:

“What is a rocket fundamentally made of? Aluminum alloys, titanium, carbon fiber. What is the market value of these raw materials?”

After calculating, he realized the raw material costs accounted for only a mere 2% of the total rocket manufacturing cost! The remaining 98% was entirely premium brought about by inefficient manufacturing processes in the traditional aerospace industry.

Since the fact was “the raw materials are very cheap,” he decided to buy the materials and build the rockets himself, brutally slashing the costs down to a fraction of the original price.

Steve Jobs did the same. Phones back then all had a bunch of physical buttons, but instead of asking “how to make a button phone easier to use,” he explored “what is the true nature of a mobile communication device,” which led to the redefinition of the iPhone.

A Four-Step Breakdown Method Even Ordinary People Can Use

This method isn’t just for building rockets; it can also be used for career advancement and personal finance!

Step	Brief	Description
1. Define the Problem	List your “of courses”	Write down all the assumptions you believe are “just the way things are” or “what everyone says is the only way.”
2. Deconstruct the Problem	Find the basic facts	Like an annoying five-year-old, keep asking “why” until you hit “objective facts.” This is known as the 5 Whys root cause analysis.
3. Reconstruct Solutions	Innovative combination	Use the remaining “fundamental building blocks” to break out of the original framework and piece together a new solution. Don’t patch old methods; create new rules directly.
4. Validate and Iterate	Pragmatic testing	Build an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) with the lowest cost and test it in the real world to see if your new logic holds up.

First Principles Thinking Flowchart

  graph TD
    A[Encounter a bottleneck or high-cost status quo] --> B(Phase 1: Eradicate inertia<br>List all assumed 'of courses' and 'conventional methods')
    
    B --> C{Phase 2: Soul-searching question<br>Is this assumption an indisputable<br>objective fact?<br>E.g., laws of physics, mathematics}

    C -- "No (Just experience, blind conformity, or an excuse)" --> D[Use the 5 Whys to continuously ask 'why']
    D --> C

    C -- "Yes (An unshakeable absolute fact)" --> E[Extract and retain as 'fundamental building blocks']

    E --> F(Phase 3: Lego restructuring<br>Break old frameworks and reconstruct from scratch using basic blocks)
    
    F --> G[Phase 4: Cost reduction and efficiency<br>Design the lowest-cost MVP for field testing]

    G --> H{Did the test successfully achieve the goal?}
    
    H -- "No (Discovered new variables or wrong assumptions)" --> B
    H -- "Yes (Path successfully validated)" --> I(((Acquire an innovative and pragmatic solution)))

Why Is It So Powerful Yet Rarely Used?

Because it consumes a tremendous amount of mental “vital energy”!

We are inherently wired to be lazy, making it very easy to fall back on old experiences. However, by practicing just 10 minutes a day—like asking “why” 5 consecutive times when facing a problem or deliberately making an “anti-commonsense” small decision—you can gradually train this mental muscle that belongs to the strong.

Put plainly, first principles teach us this: Whether you want to create value in your career or achieve steady returns in investing, breaking out of the safe framework of “everyone does it this way” and boldly returning to the essence is the key to escaping mediocrity.

Next time you feel lost, try asking yourself:

“If everything could be restarted without any limitations of experience, what should be my very first step to achieve my goal?”

Reference

Reject Inefficient Hard Work, Master the Systematic Methodology to Solve 90% of Complex Problems

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 16:44:00 +0800

Do you often feel like you are busy every day, but your work and life are always stuck in the same place?

Many times, blindly “working blindly” can only bring a linear accumulation of results, and even make you fall into the dilemma of “diligent Sisyphus”.

Endlessly pushing a boulder to the top of the mountain, only for it to roll back down when it reaches the top—a futile and absurd fate of endless repetition.

What true masters pursue is actually the “ability to solve problems”, which is the secret weapon to trigger exponential personal growth and escape bottom-level competition.

Recognize Limited Resources, Learn “Field Hospital” Screening

Human energy is limited, and we cannot solve all problems.

We should pursue the optimal use of resources at all times, which requires us to perform “field hospital-style” effectiveness screening on the problems at hand:

Problem Type	Description	Handling Method
Unsolvable Problems	For example, wanting to immediately have a perfect partner or reverse the overall environment, such problems should be decisively “abandoned”.	Abandon
Problems that Do Not Need Solving	Noise that contributes very little to the goal, directly ignore.	Ignore
Solvable and High-Return Problems	This is the only “blade”, worth investing 100% of your energy.	Invest

Learning to “not solve” certain problems tests wisdom more than learning to “solve” them.

This is exactly the practice of the 80/20 rule, investing 20% of the key energy to obtain 80% of the value.

Give Up Perfectionism, Find “The Optimal Solution Right Now”

Many people’s efficiency is stifled by “perfectionism”. In fact, in a constantly changing reality,

Perfect solutions do not exist, but “the optimal solution right now” is always there.

Even at the lowest point in life, although a “perfect life” is unattainable, you can still pick the best one out of limited choices.

Just like in prison, although you have lost your freedom, you can still choose to read or learn.

When an unfavorable situation becomes an established fact, picking the ultimate optimal solution among limited options is the essence of resilience.

Hypothesis-Driven and Structured Breakdown

The core logic is “hypothesis-driven”. When facing complex decisions, you must dare to give an intuitive “Day One answer” on the very first day.

This is not a blind guess, but a “high-level judgment” after the brain has integrated known information. With this hypothesis as a starting point, subsequent investigations will have a goal. Then, use the following principles to refine:

Principle	Description
3-9 Principle	Break down large problems into 3 to 9 sub-problems, no more than 10, otherwise the brain will not be able to process them.
SMART Principle	Goals must be Specific, Measurable, Action-oriented, Relevant, and Timely.

In addition, a Deadline is the key to determining the meaning of a thing. A project that can make 1 million, completed in two months is a successful startup, taking a year to complete may only be equivalent to an ordinary salary.

Plans without deadlines are essentially diluting value.

Respect Common Sense and Data, Personally “Enter the Practice”

No matter how perfect the plan is, it cannot compare to personally “entering the practice”. In actual operation, you must know how to respect common sense and let data speak.

We often say we should respect experts, but experts must be properly used for solving “specific technical problems” (like a chef taking charge of dishes), instead of letting experts run your core system.

Most importantly, real data is the soul of decision-making. For example, when developing for the elderly market, intuition might say the elderly fear “sickness”, but actual research will tell you they actually fear “getting old” more. This cognitive gap is the key to success or failure.

Conclusion: Let Go of Noise, Focus on the Gold Thread

“Gold Thread” is not just an instrument, but a mirror that helps us see whether our efforts are truly valuable. Now please review your to-do list:

“Which problems should you decide to abandon today? Which are the ‘Gold Thread’ tasks worth devoting all your attention to conquering?”

Bravely let go of the noise, and put the good steel on the blade, so that you can achieve exponential leaps in your limited life.

Problem Solving on Note TLDRLSS

Stop Pursuing Infinite Growth! Jason Fried's Art of "Non-Expansion" Operating Principles

1. Find Your Comfortable Orbit, Don’t Be Fooled by the “Hockey Stick Curve”

2. Optimize the “Craft,” That’s Your Pride in the Work

3. Your Only Competitor Is Your “Cost”

4. The Aesthetic of “Just Enough”: The Wisdom of Closing When Sold Out

5. Focus on the Core “Hot Dog,” Leverage the “Byproducts”

6. Make Decisions Like a Squirrel Crossing a Lawn

Conclusion: Regaining Control Is the Ultimate Success

Reference

The 'First Principles' Used by Musk and Jobs to Escape the Prison of Mediocre Thinking

What are First Principles? It’s Actually the Fundamental Logic of Physics

Breaking the Myth of Analogy Thinking

Real-World Applications by Top Visionaries: Musk and Jobs

A Four-Step Breakdown Method Even Ordinary People Can Use

First Principles Thinking Flowchart

Why Is It So Powerful Yet Rarely Used?

Reference

Reject Inefficient Hard Work, Master the Systematic Methodology to Solve 90% of Complex Problems

Recognize Limited Resources, Learn “Field Hospital” Screening

Give Up Perfectionism, Find “The Optimal Solution Right Now”

Hypothesis-Driven and Structured Breakdown

Respect Common Sense and Data, Personally “Enter the Practice”

Conclusion: Let Go of Noise, Focus on the Gold Thread

Reference

解决90%问题的方法论！ #独立思考 #金线 #解决问题 #方法论 #自我提升 - YouTube