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

by Ozan Varol

Whenever someone challenged one of my opinions during an academic presentation, I’d get defensive. My heart rate would skyrocket, I would tense up, and my answer would reflect the annoyance with which I viewed the question and the questioner. I then went back to my scientific training and began to reframe my opinions as working hypotheses. I changed my vocabulary to reflect this mental shift. At conferences, instead of saying “I argue…,” I began to say “This paper hypothesizes.…” In my case, this subtle verbal tweak tricked my mind into separating my arguments from my personal identity. Obviously, I was the one who came up with the ideas, but once they were out of my body, they took on a life of their own. They became separate, abstract things I could view with some objectivity. It was no longer personal. It was a working hypothesis that simply needed more work.