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

by Ozan Varol

But here’s the problem: Building the pedestal is the easiest part. “You can always build the pedestal,” Teller says. “All of the risk and the learning comes from the extremely hard work of first training the monkey.”87 If the project has an Achilles heel—if the monkey can’t be trained to talk, let alone recite Shakespeare—you want to know that up front. What’s more, the more time you spend building the pedestal, the harder it becomes to walk away from moonshots that shouldn’t be pursued. This is called the sunk-cost fallacy. Humans are irrationally attached to their investments. The more we invest time, effort, or money, the harder it becomes to change course. We continue to read a terrible book because we already spent an hour reading the first few chapters or pursue a dysfunctional relationship because it has dragged on for eight months. To counter the sunk-cost fallacy, put the monkey first—tackle the hardest part of the moonshot up front. Beginning with the monkey ensures that your moonshot has a good chance of becoming viable before you’ve poured massive amounts of resources into a project.