Think Like a Rocket Scientist: Simple Strategies You Can Use to Make Giant Leaps in Work and Life by Ozan Varol. I am very impressed with the messages in this book. Majoring in astrophysics at Cornell, Ozan was also serving on the operations team for the 2003 Mars Exploration Rovers project. He really is a rocket scientist.
Ozan went to law school and today teaches at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon.
So, when did you first learn to correctly breath? Yes, breath. Can you recall learning how to think? Well, Ozan will teach, as the book title implies like a rocket scientist.
Likewise, you will certainly appreciate learning that scientific thinking can position you for success in life.
Ozan delivers the opportunity to improve how your approach, perceive, analyze, and act in our very chaotic, and complex world.
This book’s insights are across three sections: Launch, Accelerate, and Achieve. Each provides rich examples from a scientific mindset. This will provide new thinking for many.
Chapter 1 Flying the Fact of Uncertainty
Chapter 1 provides a great introduction to NASA thinking. Tackling the identification of uncertainties, Ozan introduces benefits of best-case and worst-case scenarios. This is great thinking for rocketry. In addition, this addresses risk mitigation via redundancies (and deploying margins of safety) that can easily be applied to many organizations.
Chapter 2 Reasoning from First Principles
In some respects, Chapter 2 may indeed be the most significant of the book. This is a tough call since many chapters are very revealing and enlighening. Chapter 2 takes direct aim at the outdated thinking model “we’ve always done it this way” that brings down so many organizations.
Chapter 4 Moonshot Thinking
This chapter perfectly addresses thinking like NASA at it’s origin. Ozan provides the important background to the leadership role President Kennedy played in 1962 by challenging the American scientific community:
“When President Kennedy gave the speech that opened this book—where he looked to the future and picked the Moon as our new frontier—it appeared that he was hoping for a miracle. Kennedy asked his nation “to do what most people thought was impossible,” as Apollo astronaut Gene Cernan recalled, “including me.” The promise to put a human being on the Moon in less than a decade was so incredible, remembers Robert Curl, a Rice University professor who was in the audience for Kennedy’s speech, “I came away in wonder that he was seriously proposing this.”
p. 102
Moonshot thinking is always on the table for any organization seemingly stuck for long periods of time. This chapter offers insights to bringing a moonshot to view.
Chapter 5 What if We Sent Two Rovers Instead of One
Ozan delivers more insights in Chapter 5. This is also an amazing approach to planning. Really night and day to the normal though process of testing a process, product, or idea. Revolutionary, Be open to the lessons in this chapter.
Chapter 7 Test as You Fly, Fly as You Test
Just what every reader is certainly hoping to learn about rocket science is embedded in this chapter. In addition, this is also one of my favorite chapters of the book. Great stories will easily resonate across many diverse organizations.
Chapter 8: Nothing Succeeds Like Failure
Learning how to transform from failure is extremely valuable. Often many fail and stop. This is a critical process NASA has learned to benefit from and deploy their future developments. Ozan address the often used “Fail Fast” idea yet reveals how that does not really work at NASA. You have to go deeper: Learn Fast — Not Fail Fast. Another amazing chapter.
Regardless of age, profession or organization, Ozan will improve your critical thinking skills. Granted, reading this during the pandemic helps me better understand the extraordinary value of scientific thinking.
In conclusion, this will empower you to think in new, scientific ways to innovate, understand patterns, and also provide a different approach to your creativity. You have nothing to lose reading this book.
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