Zero Thinking: The Mental Model for Creating Solutions Others Can’t Even See
The power of going back to basics
🏷️ Categories: Mental models.
A confession.
More than once, I’ve caught myself overthinking a decision or plan so much that I end up making the worst choice or overcomplicating everything.
Has it ever happened to you?
You plan too much, compare too much, analyze too much. And when you finally decide, you realize you were trapped in a web of assumptions that were never true to begin with. For people who overthink, one of the most powerful mental tools that exists is…
Zero thinking.
It’s a radical way of thinking that can transform how you make decisions, solve problems, and create projects. And, as always, I’ll give you examples. Elon Musk himself has said he used this mental model to develop SpaceX.
Here we go…
SpaceX and zero thinking
A great contemporary example is Elon Musk with SpaceX.
In 2002, Musk wanted to send a rocket to Mars (Wall, 2017). The market price was $65 million per unit. The logical conclusion would have been: “It’s impossible to make this cheaper — we’ve been producing rockets for decades, and they’ve always been very expensive.” Thinking this way makes it seem like an inevitable limitation.
Elon Musk asked himself: What is a rocket made of, and what makes it so expensive?
After researching, he discovered it was made of aerospace-grade aluminum alloys, titanium, copper, and carbon fiber. When he checked the market price of those raw materials, he realized they represented barely 2% of the rocket’s selling price (De Selding, 2013). The main reason rockets were absurdly expensive was that they could only be used once.
Conclusion: rockets could be much cheaper if they were reusable.
Solution: found SpaceX, buy raw materials, and build reusable rockets.
Result: Elon Musk has reduced costs by 99% through reusability (Berger, 2024).
The rest is history.
I think it’s important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy. The usual way we live our lives is by reasoning through analogy. We do something because it’s similar to something that’s been done before, or because it’s similar to what other people do... with slight variations on a theme. And it’s... mentally easier to reason by analogy than from first principles. First principles means reducing things to fundamental truths and asking: “Okay, what do we know for sure is true?” and then reasoning from there. — Elon Musk, interview with Kevin Rose for Innomind, 2013.
So what exactly is zero thinking, and how can we use it?
Here’s the answer.
What is zero thinking?
When Musk described in an interview how he thinks about his projects, he said: “I try to reason from first principles, not by analogy.”
What does he mean?
Most of the time, we think by analogy: we copy what others do, we tweak it a little, and if it works, we consider it good enough. But zero thinking breaks that pattern. It consists of taking a problem apart until you reach its most basic, undeniable elements and building the solution from there.
Plato and Aristotle were already talking about this more than 2,000 years ago.
René Descartes took it to the extreme with Cartesian doubt (questioning everything until reaching truths that cannot be denied).
Keep only the smallest, most absolute truths. Build from there.
Why is it so useful? 3 reasons
1. Discover radically new solutions
If you break a problem down, remove the noise, and look at the essence…
Suddenly answers appear that you would never have seen otherwise. Johannes Gutenberg didn’t invent the printing press out of thin air. He combined the screw press (used for making wine) with movable type, paper, and ink to create the printing press.
What emerged was a cultural revolution that changed history.
2. Break the status quo
Thinking like everyone else leads to improving what exists.
Thinking from zero leads to creating what doesn’t exist.
There’s a bias called loss aversion. It’s the huge discomfort we feel when we believe that by changing, we have more to lose than to gain. That’s why we overvalue what we have and undervalue what we could gain. That’s why you hear phrases like “better leave it as it is” or “that’s how it’s always been done.”
Zero thinking helps you escape this bias.
“Does it make sense to do it this way?”
“Is it true that there’s no other option?”
For centuries people carried heavy suitcases in airports and stations. Nobody questioned the suffering of carrying the weight. Until 1970, when someone decided to combine two things that already existed: a suitcase and wheels (Cantó, 2019).
The wheeled suitcase was invented late, but once it appeared, it seemed obvious.
Until then, everyone assumed carrying the weight was normal.
3. Avoid dogmas and think for yourself
Much of what we assume to be “true” is just a social construct.
Money, borders, hierarchies — all that and much more are not laws of nature, not gravity, and can be changed. Reasoning from zero frees you from following dogmas without questioning them.
How to apply it
The process always has two phases: break down and rebuild.
Imagine you have a Lego house. Most people change a few pieces to improve the house. Zero thinking, however, involves dismantling it completely to rebuild it better — or even create something entirely new with the same pieces.
If you don’t question the foundations, you always think inside the box.
Here are two techniques to achieve zero thinking:
1. The Socratic questioning technique
“What reasons do I have to defend this idea?” “How could it be criticized?”
“How do I know it’s true?” “How could someone disprove it?”
“What would happen if I thought the opposite?” “What if I assume my view is wrong?”
This method forces you to imagine new angles and respond to them.
2. The “why” technique
Children do it naturally. They always ask “why?” until they annoy adults. But if you apply it to a problem, after four or five “whys,” you reach the core.
— “It’s time to eat your vegetables.”
— “Why?”
— “Because they’re good for your health.”
— “Why?”
— “Because they have vitamins your body needs.”
— “Why?”
— “Because without them your body won’t work properly.”
— “Why?”
— “Because each organ needs different nutrients… let’s investigate it together.”
Children try to understand the complex world from basic principles.
Key advice: Think about function, not form
Most of the time we fall into the trap of trying to improve the form.
Is your schedule overflowing? You look for another app.
Your to-do list never ends? You switch methods.
The key question is not: How do I organize all this better?
The question is: What function do I want my day to fulfill?
Maybe you discover it’s not about filling hours, but about protecting blocks for thinking, creating, or resting. And the solution is not another app, but fewer commitments. The calendar doesn’t exist to show that you’re busy.
It exists to serve you, not to use you.
✍️ Your turn: If you dismantled your day like Lego pieces, which pieces would you keep and which would you discard to rebuild something simpler and more effective?
💭 Quote of the day: “Reduce it to the essential, but without losing its poetry.” — Leonard Koren, Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers.
See you next time! 👋
References 📚
Berger, E.. (2024). Falcon 9 reaches a flight rate 30 times higher than shuttle at 1/100th the cost. Ars Technica. URL
Cantó, P. (2019). Inventos que cambiaron nuestras vacaciones: la maleta con ruedas. Verne. URL
De Selding, P. B. (2013). SpaceX chief says reusable first stage will slash launch costs. Space. URL
Innomind. (2013). The First Principles Method Explained by Elon Musk [Vídeo]. YouTube.
Wall, M. (2017). How SpaceX’s Historic Rocket Re-Flight Boosts Elon Musk’s Mars Plan. Space. URL
This gets right to the crux of how to impact our lives without fear of failure and inspiration. thank you, Alvaro.
Good article. Some may be turned off by the reference to Elon Musk, but the fact is he did it and continues to do it. I've seen the Starlink satellites get launched from space at night over Hawaii. So amazing. Not only are they launched from a reusable rocket, but the same rocket launches dozens of satellites.