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

by Ozan Varol

The moment we pretend an activity is routine is the moment we let our guard down and rest on our laurels. The remedy is to drop the word routine from our vocabulary and treat all our projects—particularly the successful ones—as permanent works in progress. NASA didn’t lose a single crew member in space during the Apollo, Mercury, and Gemini missions, when human spaceflight was viewed as a risky work in progress. The only fatalities during those early years occurred during a launch rehearsal test on the ground, when the Apollo 1 spacecraft caught fire. It was only after human spaceflight was viewed as routine that we lost a NASA crew during flight. “We’ve grown used to the idea of space,” President Reagan said after the Challenger disaster, “and perhaps we forget that we’ve only just begun.”29