Fundamentals

Goals:

1. Describe fundamentals.

2. Skillfully use fundamentals for learning, teaching, designing, building, and so forth.

What

The term fundamental refers to a thing that is essential to X—so essential that X cannot exist without it.

The variable X can stand for a profession, an object, an action, an idea, a subject to be learned, or something similar.

The term fundamentals refers to the set of things that essential. For example, the fundamentals of a house are {foundation, floors, walls, windows, doors, rooms, and so on}.

Examples

1. Some of the fundamentals of American government are limited government, rule of law, the right of a person accused of a crime to have an attorney, and following the constitution.

2. The fundamentals of baseball are catching, throwing, hitting, pitching, base running, stealing bases, defensive strategy and so forth.

3. The fundamentals of computer science include data structures, algorithms, states, tokens, operating systems, complexity as in O(1) and O(N), and so forth.

4. The fundamentals of story telling include

   1. The plot, which is the main events.
   2. The characters who are the people involved.
   3. The setting which refers to where the events happen.
   4. The problems which the main characters are trying to solve.
   5. How the problems are resolved.

5. Some of the fundamentals of a car are

   1. The engine, motor, or other source of power.
   2. Wheels or similar for moving over roads.
   3. Some way to turn; steering.
   4. A frame to support all the parts.
   5. A gas tank, battery, or similar to store energy.
   6. A mechanism to transmit power from the engine or motor to the wheels.

Rationale for Fundamentals

If you remove a fundamental, the thing of interest cannot exist. This makes fundamentals essential by definition.
So, in any domain, we should prioritize two key questions:

1. What are the fundamentals?
2. How good do they need to be to get the job done?

For example:

• When learning, I want to know which fundamentals I need to master—and how well I need to know each one to be effective.

• When designing a business, I want to identify the fundamental parts of a business—and figure out how strong each must be to succeed.

Focusing on fundamentals offers many payoffs:

• It targets what matters most. You avoid wasting time on non-essentials.

• It supports skill building. Advanced performance is just strong fundamentals applied fluently.

• It increases clarity. You understand the structure of what you’re working on.

• It improves transfer. Once you master core ideas, you can apply them in new situations.

• It builds confidence. You know your foundation is solid.

• It enables effective teaching and leadership. When you can explain and improve the fundamentals, you can help others grow too.

In short: mastering fundamentals is one of the highest-leverage actions you can take in learning, designing, building, and leading.

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How to Teach and Learn Fundamentals

1. Figure out what the fundamental things are. Do this be asking skilled people, skimming many good resources and looking for patterns. ChatGPT is useful; ask it to describe the fundamentals of anything.

2. Progressively learn or build each fundamental such that it is good enough for your context.

Summary

A fundamental is an essential part of a thing, a performance, or whatever. To teach/learn fundamentals, figure out what they are and then learn or build them good enough for your context.