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

by Ozan Varol

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 after physicist Richard Feynman earned a Nobel prize, he thought of himself as a “confused ape” and approached everything around him with the same level of curiosity, which enabled him to see nuances that others dismissed. “I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing,” he remarked, “than to have answers which might be wrong.”

What we’ve done before shapes what we do next. Here’s an example. 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. The keyboard layout most of us use was designed to be inefficient. Before the current arrangement, typewriters would jam if you typed too quickly. The QWERTY layout (named after the first six letters on the keyboard) was created specifically to slow down typing speed to prevent mechanical key blockage. In addition, for marketing purposes, the letters that make up the word typewriter were placed on the top line to allow a salesperson to demonstrate how the machine operates by quickly typing the brand name (try it out!).