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

by Ozan Varol

The flies and the bees, respectively, represent what’s known as divergent and convergent thinking. The flies are the divergent thinkers, fluttering freely until they find the exit. The bees are the convergent thinkers, zeroing in on the seemingly most obvious exit path with a behavior that is ultimately their undoing. Divergent thinking is a way of generating different ideas in an open-minded and free-flowing manner—like flies bouncing around in a glass bottle. During divergent thinking, we don’t think about constraints, possibilities, or budgets. We just throw around ideas, open to whatever might present itself. We become optimists in the way that physicist David Deutsch defines the term—as someone who believes that anything permitted by the laws of physics is doable.25 The goal is to create a flurry of options—both good and bad—not prematurely judging them, limiting them, or choosing among them.