Why Recipes Make You Dumb

Lately, I’ve been binging Sorted Food on YouTube—a bunch of Brits doing chaotic cooking challenges. Think: random ingredients, limited time, total improvisation.

They taste, adjust, and build from scratch. Me? I Google ‘how to boil pasta’ like it’s a cheat code. One missing ingredient and I’m out. The whole thing falls apart because I don’t know how to adapt—I don’t know the fundamentals.

Over and over, I’ll watch them taste something and casually say, “needs more depth” or “a bit sweet—needs balance.” And I’m sitting there like… how do you even know that? Let alone know what to add.

It hit me: if I understood cooking at a first principles level, I wouldn’t just follow recipes—I’d know how to adapt. I’d know what to do when the plan breaks.

That’s the danger of learning without understanding. You can follow the process, sure. But in a wicked environment—where everything’s changing—you fall apart the moment the variables shift.

Most people solve problems by analogy. “What’s already been done? What’s the template?” That’s the recipe mindset. First principles thinking flips that. You break something down to its bare essentials—then rebuild from scratch.

You’re not copying—you’re understanding.

This mindset’s going extinct. GPT writes our emails. Notion replaces thinking. Templates run our lives. We’re in the golden age of shortcuts—and the graveyard of original thought.

Developers today can build whole apps with Cursor or GPT. But if the tool fails? They’re stuck. They never learned how to debug from first principles. They don’t know what’s under the hood.

And when fewer people understand the foundations, those who do?

They become priceless.

Sometimes I wonder—fast forward 100 years… will anyone even have skills? Or will we just sit around, asking for what we want and hoping the machine gets it right?

You’ve probably heard of the “5 Whys” method. Keep asking “why?” until you hit bedrock. But it’s often misused—turning into a loop of lazy introspection. “Why did we miss our deadline?” “Because we underestimated scope.” “Why?” “Because we always do.” Cool, thanks.

Instead here are 2 ways I actually implement first principles thinking at work.

Whenever someone asks me for feedback I ensure I do it from 2 frames.

David Rock, in Quiet Leadership, describes this beautifully. Insight isn’t something you give—it’s something you coax. Rather than dumping solutions, you guide someone to their own “aha” moment. Ask better questions. Create space. Help them connect dots, not collect advice.

This isn’t just why questions but things like:

I’ve created a database of questions I love to ask to get towards insight that you can see here.

If you want to build great things—or great teams—you can’t rely on recipes forever. Learn to taste. Learn to build. Learn to think from scratch.

And when in doubt?

Boil the problem down. Then salt to taste.

Until next time,

Ajay

P.S. I’m on a mission to finally understand the first principles of home cooking. If you’ve got any killer tips or go-to resources, send them my way.

A few tools and collections I’ve built (or obsessively curated) over the years:

These are tools and services I use personally and professionally — and recommend without hesitation: