the seductive lie of the "perfect method"
thoughts on the discipline of choosing principles before tactics
Harrington Emerson, writing in 1911 for The Clothier and Furnisher, offered a deceptively simple observation: "As to methods, there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The person who grasps principles can successfully select their own methods. The person who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble."
I find myself returning to this quote often. There's something both comforting and unsettling about its clarity—the way it cuts through the noise of endless optimization and technique-mongering that defines so much of modern life.
Methods seduce us with their tangibility. They promise transformation through action, change through doing. We collect productivity systems like charms on a bracelet, each one glinting with the possibility of finally cracking the code. The Pomodoro Technique, Getting Things Done, the latest meditation app, the morning routine that will unlock all of our potential. Methods feel democratic—anyone can learn them, practice them, master them.
But principles? Principles demand something more uncomfortable: they require us to know ourselves.
I’ve written more directly about this in pieces like The Art of Structureless Structure, The Hidden Math of Habit Design, Mental Models for People Who Actually Want to Think, and most recently in Thinking About Thinking. But this one’s a little more personal—less about the scaffolding and more about what happens when you strip everything down and ask: what am I actually building toward?
These questions—what drives me, what do I actually believe, and what’s worth building—are also what shaped THE DAILY 5, the self-inquiry framework I built to help people stop outsourcing their clarity. That entire system is rooted in first principles thinking, but applied to the self.