Start With What You Know
How a diesel mechanic taught me to think
“The place to improve the world is first in one’s own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.”
-Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
My father is a diesel mechanic.
Growing up, our garage smelled like engine grease and the orange soap he used to scrub his hands clean at the end of the day. Tool chests lined the walls alongside fishing gear, hunting equipment, and everything needed to maintain a house and a life.
I don’t remember a single specific repair.
What I remember is believing my father could fix absolutely anything.
How He Worked
When something broke, he didn’t guess. He didn’t replace parts at random, hoping to stumble on the problem. He started with what he knew worked and tested each next step until he found where the system failed.
He was patient with my sister, my brother, and me. We held flashlights. We fetched wrenches. He explained the basic concept, showed us how it worked, and then let us try so we could understand even better.
But the thing I remember most: he answered questions with questions.
What do we know for sure?
What do you think is happening here?
What should we check next?
Most of the time, we already knew the answer.
He just gave us the space to reach it.
A Word for What I Already Knew
I didn’t encounter the phrase “first principles” until college.
It was a philosophy class on René Descartes. His method was simple: strip away everything uncertain until you reach what cannot be doubted. Then build from there.
I remember sitting in that classroom feeling a strange recognition. This wasn’t new. This was my father’s garage, translated into academic language.
He had been teaching me how to think my entire childhood.
Back to the Garage
Somewhere along the way, I forgot the method.
In my corporate career, I stopped building from what I knew. I started collecting. Other people’s frameworks. Other people’s answers. I took notes I never revisited and gathered wisdom I never applied.
The more I collected, the less I trusted my own thinking.
When I left my corporate role in 2025, I didn’t have a plan.
But I had a method.
I stripped away everything that was no longer working until I could find the core pieces of myself that felt authentic. The part that was actually mine.
Only once I found the bedrock could I start rebuilding.
It was my father’s garage all over again. Start with what you know works. Test each next step. Don’t guess.
The decision to leave wasn’t impulsive. It was diagnostic. I had finally asked the right question: What do I actually know for certain?
Everything else followed from there.
Why It’s Called ENOUGH
This is why I built a framework around that word.
When you strip away everything that isn’t working, everything borrowed, everything performed, you don’t find emptiness. You find enough.
Not perfect. Not polished. Just enough to build from.
First principles thinking always ends in the same place: what remains when everything else is gone. The ENOUGH Principle starts there on purpose. Because sufficiency isn’t the ceiling you’re trying to reach. It’s the floor you’re already standing on.
What the Culture of More Gets Wrong
We’re taught that more information means better decisions. So we consume. We gather. We stockpile wisdom like it’s currency. But information without foundation is just noise.
This is scarcity versus sufficiency with knowledge.
Scarcity says: learn more before you trust yourself. Collect every framework. Study every expert. You’re not ready until you’ve read everything.
Sufficiency says: start with what you know. Build from there. You already have enough foundation. The rest is refinement.
My father never read a book on first principles thinking. He learned by doing. By testing. By trusting that the answer could be found by asking the right questions.
A Small Practice
This week, when you face a decision, resist the urge to research first.
Instead, ask yourself: What do I already know about this? What do I know works? What am I uncertain about?
Write down your answers before you consult anyone else.
You might discover you’re closer to clarity than you thought.
See you next week.
P.S. I’d love to know: Who taught you how to think? And do they know they did?