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

by Ozan Varol

As Einstein said, everything should be made “as simple and as few as possible.”36 This principle is known as Occam’s razor. The name, I admit, is unfortunate. It sounds like a cheap late-night horror flick, but it’s actually a mental model named after William of Ockham, a fourteenth-century philosopher. The model is often stated as a rule: The simplest solution to a problem is the correct one. This popular description happens to be wrong. Occam’s razor is a guiding principle—not a hard-and-fast rule. Nor is it a preference for the simple at all costs. Rather, it’s a preference for the simple, all other things being equal. 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.”