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

the quality of an input isn’t the same as the quality of the output. Focusing on outputs leads us astray because good decisions can lead to bad outcomes. In conditions of uncertainty, outcomes aren’t completely within your control. An unforeseeable dust storm can cripple a perfectly designed Martian spacecraft. A bad wind can misdirect a perfectly

Being stuck, according to Wiles, is “part of the process.”41 But “people don’t get used to that,” he says. “They find it very stressful.” When he got stuck—which was often—Wiles would stop, let his mind relax, and go for a walk by the lake.

“Human beings,” social psychologist Daniel Gilbert explains, “are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished.

When we seclude ourselves from opposing arguments, our opinions solidify, and it becomes increasingly harder to disrupt our established patterns of thinking.

To learn and grow, we must acknowledge our failures without celebrating them.

Simple also has fewer points of failure. Complicated things break more easily. This principle is as true in rocket science as it is in business, computer programming, and relationships. Every time you introduce complexity to a system, you’re giving it one more aspect that can fail.

Testing can help turn unknowns into knowns.

Organizations can take a cue from Pixar, the creative studio behind numerous box-office hits, such as Toy Story and Finding Nemo. The company encourages its employees to spend up to four hours a week taking classes at Pixar University, its professional-development program. The classes include painting, sculpting, juggling, improv, and belly dancing

Testing as you fly requires a multilayered approach.