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

by Ozan Varol

The unknown knowns are like anosognosia. This is the land of self-delusion. In this category, we think we know what we know, but we don’t. We assume we have a lock on the truth—that the ground underneath our feet is stable—but we’re actually standing on a fragile platform that can tumble over with a rogue gust of wind.

All the facts in the world can’t keep democratically elected hate machines from taking office as long as they can inject a false sense of certainty into an inherently uncertain world. Confident conclusions by loud-mouthed demagogues who pride themselves on rejecting critical thinking begin to dominate the public discourse.

Where’s the emergency brake or the spare tire in your company? How will you deal with the loss of a valuable team member, a critical distributor, or an important client? What will you do if your household loses a source of income? The system must be designed to continue operating even if a component fails.

Important point: insurance etc.

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

The width of the engines that powered the space shuttle—one of the most complex machines humankind has ever created—was determined over two thousand years ago by a Roman road engineer.3 Yes, you read that correctly. The engines were 4 feet 8.5 inches wide because that was the width of the rail line that would carry them from Utah to Florida. The width of that rail line, in turn, was based on the width of tramlines in England. The width of the tramlines, in turn, was based on the width of the roads built by the Romans: 4 feet 8.5 inches.

If you were a horse breeder in Detroit in the early 1900s, you would have assumed that your competition was other breeders raising stronger and faster horses. If you ran a cab company ten years ago, you would have assumed that your competition was other cab companies. If you run airport security, you assume that the primary threat will come from another guy with a bomb in his shoe, so you “solve” terrorism by making everyone take off their shoes. In each case, the past drowns out the future.

Complying with these procedures then becomes the benchmark for success. “It’s not that rare,” Jeff Bezos says, “to hear a junior leader defend a bad outcome with something like, ‘Well, we followed the process.’” “If you’re not watchful,” Bezos warns, “the process can become the thing.” But you don’t need to throw your standard operating procedures into the shredder and create a corporate free-for-all. Rather, you need to make a habit of asking, as Bezos does, “Do we own the process or does the process own us?”7

Good question!

“Talent hits a target no one else can hit,” philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer said, but “genius hits a target no one else can see.”

“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.”

To mop the mist collected on your mental windshield in those areas and expose the invisible rules governing your life, spend a day questioning your assumptions. With each commitment, each presumption, each budget item, ask yourself, What if this weren’t true? Why am I doing it this way? Can I get rid of this or replace it with something better? Be careful if you find yourself coming up with multiple reasons to keep something. “By invoking more than one reason,” observes author and scholar Nassim Nicholas Taleb, “you are trying to convince yourself to do something.”22