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

“I’ve come from behind too often,” the great tennis champion Andre Agassi writes, “and had too many opponents come roaring back against me, to think that’s a good idea.”35 The opening doesn’t have to be grand, as long as the finale is.

With this book, I aim to create an army of non–rocket scientists who approach everyday problems as a rocket scientist would. You’ll take ownership of your life. You’ll question assumptions, stereotypes, and established patterns of thinking. Where others see roadblocks, you’ll see opportunities to bend reality to your will. You’ll approach problems

“Nothing in the physical world seems to be constant or permanent,” physicist Alan Lightman writes. “Stars burn out. Atoms disintegrate. Species evolve. Motion is relative.”37 The same is true for facts. Most facts have a half-life. What we’re advised with confidence this year is reversed the next.

Knowledge is good. But knowledge should inform, not constrain. Knowledge should enlighten, not obscure. Only through the evolution of our existing knowledge will the future come into focus. The tyranny of our knowledge is only part of the problem. We’re constrained not only by what we’ve done in the past, but also by what others have done as well.

“When you try to improve on existing techniques,” says Astro Teller, the head of X, Google’s moonshot factory, “you’re in a smartness contest with everyone who came before you. Not a good contest to be in.”

every annual letter to Amazon shareholders, Jeff Bezos includes the same cryptic line: “It remains Day 1.” After repeating this mantra for a few decades, Bezos was asked what Day 2 would look like. He replied, “Day 2 is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death. And that is why it is always Day 1.

In solving problems, we instinctively want to identify answers. Instead of generating cautious hypotheses, we offer bold conclusions. Instead of acknowledging that problems have multiple causes, we stick with the first cause that pops to mind. Doctors assume they have the right diagnosis, which they base on symptoms they have seen in the past. In b

it can be just as dangerous to celebrate success as it is to celebrate failure, and I’ll reveal why a postmortem should follow both triumph and defeat.

In our daily lives, we fail to exercise our critical-thinking muscles and instead leave it to others to draw conclusions. As a result, these muscles atrophy over time. Without an informed public willing to question confident claims, democracy decays and misinformation spreads. Once alternative facts are reported and retweeted, they become the truth