Hey, I think it was a pretty obvious idea. In high school, preparing for physics exams, rather than memorising all the formulas, I worked on figuring them out b

Hey, I think it was a pretty obvious idea. In high school, preparing for physics exams, rather than memorising all the formulas, I worked on figuring them out based on some root principles, on the fly. So every exam I spent the first 10 minutes reading the exam and deriving all the formulas I gathered I needed on the back of the answer booklet. It was a lot more effective than memorising which type of questions needed which formula. Like maybe 15 years ago my dad wanted to teach me maths and he kept repeating the importance of learning the 'first principles'. I didn't get a word he was saying at the time, but looking back, he had the idea too.