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

by Ozan Varol

This giant leap—taken within a human lifespan—is often hailed as the triumph of technology. But it’s not. Rather, it’s the great triumph of a certain thought process rocket scientists used to turn the impossible into the possible. It’s the same thought process that has allowed these scientists to score dozens of interplanetary holes in one with supersonic spacecraft, sending them millions of miles through outer space and landing them on a precise spot. It’s the same thought process that brings humanity closer and closer to colonizing other planets and becoming an interplanetary species. And it’s the same thought process that will make affordable commercial space tourism the new norm. To think like a rocket scientist is to look at the world through a different lens. Rocket scientists imagine the unimaginable and solve the unsolvable. They transform failures into triumphs and constraints into advantages. They view mishaps as solvable puzzles rather than insurmountable roadblocks. They’re moved not by blind conviction but by self-doubt; their goal is not short-term results but long-term breakthroughs. They know that the rules aren’t set in stone, the default can be altered, and a new path can be forged.

we all encounter complex and unfamiliar problems in our daily lives. Those who can tackle these problems—without clear guidelines and with the clock ticking—enjoy an extraordinary advantage.

Instead, the term is used colloquially to refer to the science and engineering behind space travel, and that’s the broad definition I’ll use in this book. I’ll explore the work of both scientists—the idealistic explorers engaged in research about the cosmos—and

symphony.

Perhaps we see that politicians and attorneys creats, rathsr than solve, problems. Their creativity tries to avoid problems rather than solve them.

Critical thinking and creativity don’t come naturally to us. We’re hesitant to think big, reluctant to dance with uncertainty, and afraid of failure. These were necessary during the Paleolithic Period, keeping us safe from poisonous

The human brain defaults to the familiar and the comfortable. We need to train ourselves to deal wirh the amygdala and tbe devault setti g of the brain.

same plays from the same playbook. Instead of risking failure, they stick with the status quo.

As a result, these muscles atrophy over time. Without an informed public willing to question confident claims, democracy decays and misinformation spreads.

Hete we have a prime reason for the positive response to Trumpism. It was a comfortable defaulr for his ardent suporters and a welcome return to an outdated and discredited default for others.

You’ll approach problems rationally and generate innovative solutions that redefine the status quo. You’ll come equipped with a tool kit that enables you to spot misinformation and pseudoscience. You’ll forge new paths and figure out ways to overcome the problems of our future.

This is the root definition of critical thinking.

You’ll learn how our obsession with certainty leads us astray and why all progress takes place in uncertain conditions.

We’re all programmed with the same fear of the uncertain.

Our yearning for certainty leads us to pursue seemingly safe solutions—by looking for our keys under street lamps. Instead of taking the risky walk into the dark, we stay within our current state, however inferior it may

you stick to the familiar, you won’t find the unexpected. Those who get ahead in this century will dance with the great unknown and find danger, rather than comfort, in the status quo.

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Training in critical thinking would tell us that allowing students to research the paths used to explore theories and debate themwould lead to students discivering new avenues of inquiry. One also needs critical incident studies to record agressive and non-productive behaviors during the process and to devise methods to correct them.

Here’s

Again, the defau!t to the familiar and the comfortable. The amygdala at its worst.

Our ability to make the most out of uncertainty is what creates the most potential value. We should be fueled not by a desire for a quick catharsis but by intrigue. Where certainty ends, progress begins.

wind.

The eventual fate of the Iraq War and of G.W. Bush's presIdency.

“The great obstacle to discovering,” historian Daniel J. Boorstin writes, “was not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge.”

Ego and hubris are part of the problem. The other part is the human distaste for uncertainty.

Stories provide the perfect remedy for our fear of uncertainty. They fill the gaps in our understanding. They create order out of chaos, clarity out of complexity, and a cause-and-effect relationship out of coincidence.

When we prefer the seeming stability of stories to the messy reality of uncertainty, facts become dispensable and misinformation

These mentally vivid images strike a deep, lasting chord known as the narrative fallacy. We remember what so-and-so told us about how his male-pattern baldness was caused by too much time in the sun. We fall for the story, throwing logic and skepticism to the wind.

Authorities then turn these stories into sacred truths.

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

The intensity of his passion for the unknown is contagious. The fourth floor of the Space Sciences Building at Cornell University, where Squyres’s

century.

Much as Galileo had been earlier.

The origin of the word planet makes this clear. Planet is derived from a Greek word that means “wanderer.” Ancient Greeks looked up at the sky and saw objects that moved against the relatively fixed positions of the stars. They called them wanderers.62

Those who cling to the past get left behind as the world marches forward.

There are important lessons here for us all. When we face uncertainty, we often manufacture excuses for not getting started. I’m not qualified. I don’t feel ready. I don’t have the right contacts. I don’t have enough time. We don’t start walking until we find an approach that’s guaranteed to work (and preferably one that comes with job satisfaction and a six-figure salary).

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

The default carries immense power, even in advanced industries like rocket science. This idea is called path dependence: What we’ve done before shapes what we do next.

neurological study showed that nonconformity activates the amygdala and produces what the authors describe as “a pain of independence.”10

As Warren Buffett put it, “The five most dangerous words in business are ‘Everybody else is doing it.’” This monkey see, monkey do approach creates a race to the exceedingly crowded center—even though there’s far less competition on the edges.

Instead of regarding the status quo as an absolute, you take a machete to it. Instead of letting your original vision—or the visions of others—shape the path forward, you abandon all allegiances to them. You hack through existing assumptions as if you’re hacking through a jungle until you’re left with the fundamental components.

First-principles thinking allows you to see the seemingly obvious insight that’s hiding under everyone’s nose.

The solution is obvious: Do the same thing with rockets.

invisible rules. These are habits and behaviors that have unnecessarily rigidified into rules. They’re unlike written rules, which are visible. The written rules appear right there in the standard operating procedures and can be amended or deleted.

invisible rules are even more stubborn.

We then make things worse by defending our self-imposed limitations.

Routines free us of the thousands of exhausting daily decisions we would otherwise

Demand current—not historical—supporting evidence. Many of our invisible rules

Destruction, by itself, isn’t enough if it’s not accompanied by a commitment to the right thought process.

Carl Sagan put it well: “When faced with two hypotheses that explain the data equally well,” you should “choose the simpler.”37 In other words, “when you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not unicorns.”38

Curiosity is a crucial ingredient in any thought experiment.

For answers, we rely on the same methods, the same brainstorming approaches, and the same stale neural pathways. It’s no wonder that the resulting innovations aren’t innovations at all.

Fear of the outcome is another reason we shun curiosity. We don’t ask hard questions when we’re afraid of what we might find (which is why people are reluctant to visit their doctor when they fear the diagnosis).

Before the world stuffed us with facts, memos, and right answers, we were moved by genuine curiosity. We stared at the world, wrapped in awe, and took nothing for granted. We were blissfully unaware of social rules and viewed the world as our very own thought experiment. We approached life not with the assumption that we knew (or should know) the answers, but with the desire to learn, experiment, and absorb.

The purpose of a thought experiment isn’t to find the “right answer”—at least not initially. This isn’t like your high-school

Optimal creativity doesn’t happen in complete isolation. Breakthroughs almost always involve a collaborative component.

The best-performing group was the third. “Intermittent breaks in interaction improve collective intelligence,” the researchers observed.79 Cycling between isolation and interaction improved the average score of the group while also leading the group to find the best solutions more frequently. Importantly, both low performers and high performers in the group benefited from intermittent interaction.

Zen Buddhism, this principle is known as shoshin, or beginner’s mind.87 As the Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki writes, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few.”