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

The reason for this approach is well summarized by a Sufi teaching: “You think that because you understand ‘one’ that you must therefore understand ‘two’ because one and one make two. But you forget that you must also understand ‘and.’”10 Components that otherwise function properly may refuse to play nice with each other after assembly. Put another

Success is the wolf in sheep’s clothing. It drives a wedge between appearance and reality. When we succeed, we believe everything went according to plan. We ignore the warning signs and the necessity for change. With each success, we grow more confident and up the ante. But just because you’re on a hot streak doesn’t mean you’ll beat the house.

This chapter examines the importance of searching for a better question instead of a better answer. In the first part of this book (“Launch”), you learned how to reason from first principles and ignite your thinking by conducting thought experiments and taking moonshots to generate radical solutions to thorny problems. But often, the question we or

When it completed its mission at the fringes of our solar system, Sagan came up with the idea of turning its cameras around and pointing them at Earth to take one final image. The now-iconic photo, known as the Pale Blue Dot, depicts Earth as a tiny pixel—a barely perceptible “mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam,” in Sagan’s memorable words.17 We t

People should be able to cultivate insights on their own, come together to exchange those insights with the group, and then return to working alone, cycling between solitude and collaboration. The pattern is similar to the focus and boredom cycle that we explored earlier.

“If you have a successful business,” Kokonas explains, “it’s actually harder to change it.” The inertia required for changing course is too strong, particularly when you’re at the top of your game. “It’s hard to make incremental changes,” he says. “Every now and then you just need to destroy it and rebuild it better.”

When people know they’re being observed, they behave differently.

Like all others, the story of your significance is just that: a story. A narrative. A tale. If you don’t like the story, you can change the story. Even better, you can drop it altogether and write a new one. “In order to change skins, evolve into new cycles,” author Anaïs Nin writes, “one has to learn to discard.”

And don’t forget the upside. In addition to considering the worst-case scenario, also ask yourself, What’s the best that can happen? Our negative thoughts resonate far more than our positive ones do. The brain, to paraphrase psychologist Rick Hanson, is like Velcro for the negative but Teflon for the positive. Unless you consider the best-case scen

Although redundancy is a good insurance policy, it obeys the law of diminishing returns. After a certain point, piling up additional redundancies unnecessarily increases complexity, weight, and cost.