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

by Ozan Varol

We need the idealism of divergent thinking to be followed by the pragmatism of convergent thinking. “The creative

process is not about one state,” science historian Steve Johnson explains. “It’s the ability to move between different mental states.”32 Recall from earlier that cycling between moments of solitude and moments of collaboration creates the optimal environment for creativity.

We know surprisingly little about how the brain works, but according to one theory, idea generation and idea evaluation take place in different parts of the brain.33 For example, researchers in a University of Haifa study used a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine to evaluate how much oxygen different parts of the brain consume during creative tasks. They found that individuals who were more creative had decreased activity in the sections of the brain associated with evaluation.34

Because of the differences between idea generation and idea evaluation, many authors separate their drafting from their editing. Drafting is better suited for divergent thinking, and editing for convergent.

Brains work the same way. Left to its own device, your mind strives for the path of least resistance. Comfortable though it may be, order and predictability

get in the way of creativity.40 We must provoke and shock our minds the same way that Schwarzenegger shocked his muscles. Neuroplasticity is a real thing. Your neurons, just like your muscles, can rewire and grow through discomfort. As Norman Doidge, a leading expert in neuroplasticity, explains, the brain can “change its own structure and function in response to activity and mental experience.”41 Through reps and sets, thought experiments and moonshot thinking force our minds to rise above our daily trance.

Backcasting flips the script. Rather than forecasting the future, backcasting aims to determine how an imagined future can be attained.

The document describes the “customer problem, how current solutions (internal or external) fail, and how the new product will blow away existing solutions.” The press release is then presented to the company with the same enthusiasm that accompanies the public launch of a finished product. “We only fund things that we can articulate crisply,” explained Amazon’s Jeff Wilke.

In solving problems, we instinctively want to identify answers. Instead of generating cautious hypotheses, we offer bold conclusions. Instead of acknowledging that problems have multiple causes, we stick with the first cause that pops to mind.

answer to a perceived problem. But this approach puts the cart before the horse—or the sentence before the verdict.

and arrive at an "answer" prior to asking the proper question.

The Einstellung effect is partly a relic of our education system. In schools, we’re taught to answer problems, not to reframe them. The problems are handed to—well, more like forced on—students in the form of problem sets. The phrase problem set makes this approach clear. The problems have been set (einstellung), and the student’s job is to solve them—not change or question them.

adult

The end effect is the computer science acronym GIGO.

Peter Attia, a physician and a renowned expert on human longevity, is a master at distinguishing between strategy and tactics. I asked him what he does when patients come to him looking for the “right answers.” What diet should I follow? Should I take statins if I have high cholesterol? “I generally do not let patients fixate on tactics,” he told me, “and instead try to refocus them on strategy. When people are looking for the ‘right answers,’ they are almost always asking tactical questions. By focusing on the strategy, this allows you to be much more malleable with the tactics.”

THE NEXT TIME you’re tempted to engage in problem solving, try problem finding instead. Ask yourself, Am I asking the right question? If I changed my perspective, how would the problem change? How can I frame the question in terms of strategy, instead of tactics? How do I flip the thumbtack box and view this resource in terms of its form, not its function? What if we did the reverse? Breakthroughs, contrary to popular wisdom, don’t begin with a smart answer. They begin with a smart question.

Doubt isn’t always resolved in the face of facts for even the most enlightened among

us, however credible and convincing those facts might be. The same brains that empower rational thinking also skew our judgments and introduce subjective contortions.

results from the confirmation bias. We undervalue evidence that contradicts our beliefs and overvalue...

Instead, they form what’s called a working hypothesis. The operative word is working. Working means it’s a work in progress. Working means it’s less than final. Working means the hypothesis can be changed or abandoned, depending on the facts.

Before announcing a working hypothesis, ask yourself, what are my preconceptions? What do I believe to be true? Also ask, do I really want this particular hypothesis to be true? If so, be careful. Be very careful. Much as in life, if you like someone, you’ll tend to overlook their flaws. You’ll find signals from a love interest—or a spacecraft—even when they’re not sending any.

To make sure you don’t fall in love with a single hypothesis, generate several.

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.

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.

don’t like that man,” Abraham Lincoln is said to have observed. “I must get to know him better.” The same approach should apply to opposing arguments.

Regularly ask yourself—as Stewart Brand, the founder of the Whole Earth Catalog does—How many things am I dead wrong about?

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

As a result, we must consciously step outside our echo chamber. Before making an important decision, ask yourself, “Who will disagree with me?” If you don’t know any people who disagree with you, make a point to find them. Expose yourself to environments where your opinions can be challenged, as uncomfortable and awkward as that might be. If you’re Niels Bohr, who is your Albert Einstein lobbing thought experiments at you? If you’re Ruth Bader Ginsburg, where’s your Antonin Scalia writing a cheeky but powerful dissent? If you’re Andre Agassi, who is your Pete Sampras to keep you on your toes with a powerful serve?

You can also ask people who normally agree with you to disagree with you.

you can’t find opposing voices, manufacture them. Build a mental model of your favorite adversary, and have imaginary conversations with them. This is what Marc Andreessen does.

Instead of using a straw man tactic, engage in its opposite, the steel man. This approach requires you to find and articulate the strongest, not the weakest, form of the opposition’s argument.

Rockets and websites are different beasts, but they have at least one thing in common. They’ll crash unless you follow a cardinal rocket-science principle called test as you fly, fly as you test.

We conduct tests—not to prove ourselves wrong, but to confirm what we believe is true. We tweak the testing conditions or interpret ambiguous outcomes to confirm our preconceptions.

Self-deception is only part of the problem. The other part is the disconnect between testing conditions and reality. Focus groups and test audiences are often placed in artificial conditions and asked questions they would never get in real life. As a result, these “experiments” spit out perfectly polished, and perfectly incorrect, conclusions.

“Failure is not an option.” Kranz later wrote an autobiography with the same title, where he described the tagline as “a creed that we all lived by” in mission control.8 NASA gift shops quickly capitalized on the credo and began selling T-shirts emblazoned with the words Failure Is Not an Option.

“There’s a silly notion that failure’s not an option at NASA,” Elon Musk says. “Failure is an option here [at SpaceX]. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.”9 It’s only when we reach into the unknown and explore ever-greater heights—and in so doing, break things—that we move forward.

A moratorium on failure is a moratorium on progress. If

These people delay gratification in a world that has become obsessed with it. They don’t quit simply because their rocket blew up on the launch pad, they had a bad quarter, or their audition fell flat. They reorient their calibration for the long term, not for the short. When it comes to creating long-lasting change, there are no hacks or silver bullets, as venture capitalist Ben Horowitz says. You’ll need to use a lot of lead bullets instead.40

If we engage in resulting, we reward bad decisions that lead to good outcomes. Conversely, we change good decisions merely because they produced a bad outcome. We

The word input might be better reserved for a boring database software. But an input-focused mind is the mark of anyone who has achieved anything extraordinary.

This reorientation toward inputs has another upside. If you find yourself resenting the inputs, you might be chasing the wrong output.

When we switch to an input-focused mindset, we condition ourselves to derive intrinsic value out of the activity. The input becomes its own reward.

Focusing on inputs has another upside. You avoid the wild swings of misery and euphoria that come with chasing outcomes. Instead, you become curious—no, fascinated—about tweaking and perfecting the inputs.

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Short term success may lead to long term losses. One always needs to look at the longer view. Profit may vanish as quickly as it came.

But failures transmit invaluable signals. Your goal should be to pick up these signals before your competitors

“There is the event itself, with all its attendant disappointment, confusion, and shame, and then there is our reaction to it.” We don’t control the first part, but we do control the second. The goal, as Catmull puts it, should be “to uncouple fear and failure—to create an environment in which making mistakes doesn’t strike terror into your employees’ hearts.”57

The teams that had a climate of openness—where the staff felt safe to discuss mistakes—performed better because employees were more willing to share failures and actively work to reduce them.

To encourage the reporting of failures, Google’s moonshot factory, X, takes an unusual approach.65 In most companies, it’s a senior leader who decides to pull the plug on a faltering project. But employees at X are empowered to kill their own projects as soon as they realize, for one reason or another, that the project isn’t viable. Here’s the interesting part: For this act of hara-kiri, the entire team receives a bonus.

There must be a clear commitment to supporting intelligent failure and well-intentioned risk taking. People must know that intelligent failure is necessary for future success, that they won’t be punished for it, and that their careers won’t be ended for it. If the signals are mixed, employees will err on the side of caution and hide their mistakes instead of revealing them. There’s another component to psychological safety. If employees are to share their mistakes, the leaders must do the same.

expose ourselves to failure regularly. Think of this as vaccination: Just as introducing weak antigens can stimulate “learning” in our immune system and prevent future infection, exposure to intelligent failures can allow us to recognize and learn from them. Each dose builds resilience and breeds familiarity. Each crisis becomes training for the next one.

Our default mode is regress—not progress. When left to their own devices, space agencies decline. Writers wither. Actors flare out. Internet millionaires collapse under the weight of their egos. Young and scrappy companies turn into the same acronym-driven, bloated bureaucracies they were seeking to displace. We return to black-and-white.

Unfortunately, the human brain defaults to comfortable past achievements and modi operandi. We loveour old heroes with litle desire to birth new ones. Aecauzxe we logencies die because we would rather plzy than improve.

Our default mode is regress—not progress. When left to their own devices, space agencies decline. Writers wither. Actors flare out. Internet millionaires collapse under the weight of their egos. Young and scrappy companies turn into the same acronym-driven, bloated bureaucracies they were seeking to displace. We return to black-and-white.

We elect people like Donald Trump to rsturn us to former glory.