Think Like a Rocket Scientist: Simple Strategies You Can Use to Make Giant Leaps in Work and Life

by Ozan Varol

Genius hesitates.

If you stick to the familiar, you won’t find the unexpected.

The problem with the modern world, as Bertrand Russell put it, is that “the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”

Einstein’s younger son, Eduard, once asked him why he was famous. In his reply, Einstein cited his ability to spot anomalies that others miss:

“In order to stay calm in a high-stress, high-stakes situation, all you really need is knowledge.… Being forced to confront the prospect of failure head-on—to study it, dissect it, tease apart all its components and consequences—really works.”

Writing down your concerns and uncertainties—what you know and what you don’t know—undresses them. Once you lift up the curtain and turn the unknown unknowns into known unknowns, you defang them. After you see your fears with their masks off, you’ll find that the feeling of uncertainty is often far worse than what you fear. You’ll also realize that in all likelihood, the things that matter most to you will still be there, no matter what happens.

And don’t forget the upside. In addition to considering the worst-case scenario, also ask yourself, What’s the best that can happen? Our negative thoughts resonate far more than our positive ones do. The brain, to paraphrase psychologist Rick Hanson, is like Velcro for the negative but Teflon for the positive.

The secret is to start walking before you see a clear path.

As Warren Buffett put it, “The five most dangerous words in business are ‘Everybody else is doing it.’”

Back to First Principles The credit for first-principles thinking goes to Aristotle, who defined it as “the first basis from which a thing is known.”12 The French philosopher and scientist René Descartes described it as systematically doubting everything you can possibly doubt, until you’re left with unquestionable truths.

“Your assumptions are your windows on the world,” said Alan Alda, in a quote often misattributed to Asimov. “Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won’t come in.”

the quote attributed to many luminaries says, “If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.”

As he explained, “The sculptor arrives at his end by taking away what is superfluous.”

George Bernard Shaw once said, “Few people think more than two or three times a year. I’ve made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.”

“We are drowning in information,” biologist E. O. Wilson said, “while starving for wisdom.”28 If we don’t take the time to think—if we don’t pause, understand, and deliberate—we can’t find wisdom or form new ideas.

Being stuck, according to Wiles, is “part of the process.”41 But “people don’t get used to that,” he says. “They find it very stressful.” When he got stuck—which was often—Wiles would stop, let his mind relax, and go for a walk by the lake. “Walking,” he explains, “has a very good effect in that you’re in this state of relaxation, but at the same time you’re allowing the sub-conscious to work on you.”

Pick up a magazine or book about a subject you know nothing about. Attend a different industry’s conference. Surround yourself with people from different professions, backgrounds, and interests. Instead of talking about the weather and repeating other small-talk platitudes, ask, “What’s the most interesting thing you’re working on right now?”

First-principles thinking, as Dumas’s answer implies, often has an inverse relationship to expertise. Unlike the insiders, whose identity or salary can depend on the existing state of affairs, outsiders have no stake in the status quo. Conventional wisdom is easier to tune out when you’re not smothered by it.

The political strategists James Carville and Paul Begala tell a story about the choice a lion faces in deciding to hunt for a mouse or an antelope. “A lion is fully capable of capturing, killing, and eating a field mouse,” they explain. “But it turns out that the energy required to do so exceeds the caloric content of the mouse itself.” Antelopes, in contrast, are much bigger animals, so “they take more speed and strength to capture.” But once captured, an antelope can provide days of food for the lion.12 The story, as you may have guessed, is a microcosm for life. Most of us go after the mice instead of the antelopes. We think the mouse is a sure thing, but the antelope is a moonshot. Mice are everywhere; antelopes are few and far between. What’s more, everyone around us is busy hunting mice.

The goal should be to resist the tendency to activate convergent thinking through a “This can’t be done” attitude. Instead, begin with a divergent “This could be done if…” mindset.

One way to shock your brain and generate wacky ideas is to ask, What would a science-fiction solution look like?

Backcasting flips the script. Rather than forecasting the future, backcasting aims to determine how an imagined future can be attained. “The best way to predict the future,” Alan Kay says, “is to invent it.”83 Instead of letting our resources drive our vision, backcasting lets our vision drive the resources.

Amazon takes a similar backward perspective on its products.84 Amazonians write internal press releases for products that don’t yet exist. Each press release functions as a thought experiment—the initial vision of a breakthrough idea. The document describes the “customer problem, how current solutions (internal or external) fail, and how the new product will blow away existing solutions.

The articulation is so crisp that the press releases include a six-page list of hypothetical frequently asked questions from customers.

Through backcasting, Amazon can inexpensively evaluate whether ideas are worth pursuing. “Iterating on a press release,” Amazon’s Ian McAllister explains, “is a lot less expensive than iterating on the product itself (and quicker!).”

That’s my moonshot for you: Be more unreasonable. Breakthroughs, after all, are reasonable only in hindsight.

When we reframe a question—when we change our method of questioning—we have the power to change the answers.

scientists refrain from stating opinions. Instead, they form what’s called a working hypothesis.

Opinions are defended, but working hypotheses are tested.

To make sure you don’t fall in love with a single hypothesis, generate several. When you’ve got multiple hypotheses, you reduce your attachment to any one of them and make it more difficult to quickly settle on one.

Ideally, the hypotheses you spin should conflict with each other. “The test of a first-rate intelligence,” F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”

The team had built a theory without gathering all the facts—which, if you know your Holmes, is the worst mistake an investigator can make—and then refused to let the facts disturb it.

they were on the right track. They were too busy trying

But every no brings us one step closer to the truth. Every no provides far more information than a yes does. Progress occurs only when we generate negative outcomes by trying to rebut rather than confirm our initial hunch.

Karl Popper had termed falsifiability, which means that scientific hypotheses must be capable of being proven wrong.36

A scientific theory is never proven right. It’s simply not proven wrong. Only when scientists work hard—but fail—to beat the crap out of their own ideas can they begin to develop confidence in those ideas. Even after a theory gains acceptance, new facts often emerge, requiring the refinement or complete abandonment of the status quo.

(What fact would change my mind?). Follow the “golden rule” of Darwin who, upon finding a fact that contradicted one of his beliefs, would write it down right away.

I’d rather be right than consistent.47 “One mark of a great mind,” Walter Isaacson said, “is the willingness to change it.”

In one study, participants became more critical of their own ideas when those ideas were presented to them as if they were someone else’s.

Our goal should be to find what’s right—not to be right.

Bohr and Einstein turned to each other to stress-test their opinions because the men were too close to their perspectives to see their own blind spots.

“The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war.”

If we aren’t guaranteed to win, we assume the game isn’t worth playing. This natural tendency to avoid failure is a recipe for failing.

A moratorium on failure is a moratorium on progress.

Treating failure as an option is the key to originality. “When it comes to idea generation,” Adam Grant writes in Originals, “quantity is the most predictable path to quality.”17 Shakespeare, for example, is known for a small number of his classics, but in the span of two decades, he penned 37 plays and 154 sonnets, some of which have been “consistently slammed for unpolished prose and incomplete plot and character development.”18 Pablo Picasso produced 1,800 paintings, 1,200 sculptures, 2,800 ceramics, and 12,000 drawings—only a fraction of which are noteworthy.19 Just a handful of Einstein’s hundreds of publications had real impact.20 Tom Hanks, one of my all-time favorite actors, admits, “I’ve made an awful lot of movies that didn’t make any sense, and didn’t make any money.”

Breakthroughs are often evolutionary, not revolutionary.

“no one will be punished or humiliated for errors, questions, or requests for help, in the service of reaching ambitious performance goals.”

The notion of giving bonuses for failing might strike you as odd. It’s one thing to tolerate failure, but something else to reward it. But there’s genius in this incentive scheme. It’s more expensive for nonviable projects to continue; they waste money and resources.67 If a project has no future, shutting it down frees up precious resources for other moonshots that have better odds of landing.

“What have you failed at this week?” If Sara didn’t have an answer, her father would be disappointed. To her father, failing to try was far more disappointing than failure itself.

Research shows that success and complacency go hand in hand.44 When we succeed, we stop pushing boundaries. Our comfort sets a ceiling, with our frontiers shrinking rather than extending. Corporate executives are rarely punished for deviating from a historically successful strategy.