Book SummaryThink Like a Rocket Scientist, by Ozan Varol

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of Think Like a Rocket Scientist

In Think Like a Rocket Scientist, Ozan Varol describes nine principles to help you achieve your seemingly impossible dreams, the same way that rocket scientists did when they successfully landed a man on the moon. Varol is a former rocket scientist who worked on the Mars Exploration Rovers...

Think Like a Rocket Scientist Summary Principle 1: Shoot for the Moon

Varol believes that one mistake many people make is setting overly timid goals. Instead, he argues that we should set audacious goals that seem impossible from our current perspective. Varol cites a parable popularized by political strategists James Carville and Paul Begala in which a lion has the choice between hunting plentiful (but unsatisfying) field mice or pouring all its energy into hunting a single antelope. The antelope is much harder to catch, but the lion can’t live on field mice alone—to succeed, it must go after the larger, more elusive prey. (Shortform note: Varol attributes this story to Carville and Begala because it comes from their book, Buck up, Suck Up...and Come Back When You Foul Up; however, in the book, Carville and Begala are actually quoting Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the House of Representatives.)

According to Varol, humans are the same way—we can’t truly succeed unless we focus on big, difficult goals. Chasing metaphorical antelopes is scary because it involves a lot of risk. However, that fear also keeps most of the competition away,...

Think Like a Rocket Scientist Summary Principle 2: Embrace Uncertainty

According to Varol, the path to achieving the impossible is rarely clear-cut—so to reach those goals, we have to get comfortable facing uncertainty. However, as Varol describes, this is difficult because humans are biologically programmed to resist uncertainty. For our earliest human ancestors, uncertainty could be a death sentence: If they heard a twig snap, the ones who were certain the sound came from a predator would have time to run, while the ones who languished in uncertainty would become that predator’s next meal. Thus, the people who disliked uncertainty lived long enough to pass their genes down to us. (Shortform note: In Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman argues that people actually fall on a range of how much uncertainty they can tolerate. Some people are naturally bold and can comfortably tolerate more uncertainty than people who are naturally timid.)

How Rocket Scientists Approach Uncertainty

However, Varol argues that while uncertainty might be uncomfortable, it’s also the path to the greatest discoveries. According to...

Think Like a Rocket Scientist Summary Principle 3: Use First-Principles Thinking

To achieve the impossible, we often have to abandon the status quo and find a brand new way of approaching a problem. However, according to Varol, doing this doesn’t come naturally—when we have knowledge of how things are done, we inevitably begin to assume that’s how things should be done. Our knowledge of the status quo dims our creativity and makes us less likely to question the norm. (Shortform note: This is a form of the anchoring bias, in which we unconsciously get stuck on whatever information is first presented to us. Psychologist Daniel Kahneman describes anchoring in detail in Thinking, Fast and Slow.)

Varol argues that the antidote to this tendency is first-principles thinking. In first-principles thinking, you throw out the status quo and question everything until you’re left with only the most fundamental components. For example, if we think about education, status quo thinking would keep us focused on schools, teachers, and grades. But if we abandon the status quo and use principles-first thinking, we’re left with the core of...

Think Like a Rocket Scientist Summary Principle 4: Reframe the Problem

According to Varol, turning an impossible dream into an achievable goal is often a matter of reframing the problem. In fact, Varol argues that defining the problem can be even more important than coming up with a solution because it’s so easy for the brain to go into autopilot mode when it comes to solving problems that we’ve faced in the past. We get stuck in our conception of a problem to the point that it prevents us from seeing new solutions. Scientists call this “the Einstellung effect” (“Einstellung” is German for “set,” as in “set in one’s ways”).

(Shortform note: Research shows that the Einstellung effect can set in quickly—even after just five trials of a novel problem. To counter the effect, take frequent breaks when you’re solving a series of similar problems. These breaks serve as “pattern interrupts,” which reset your brain and allow you to see each problem with fresh eyes.)

How Rocket Scientists Reframe Problems

According to Varol, to counter the inertia of familiar solutions, scientists reframe the problem. For example,...

Think Like a Rocket Scientist Summary Principle 5: Play With Thought Experiments

According to Varol, achieving seemingly impossible goals requires unrestrained creative thinking. To spark that creativity, Varol recommends using thought experiments. A thought experiment is an imaginary scenario you create in your mind in order to think through an idea, often in the form of a hypothetical question. For example, in Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman proposes the thought experiment: What if Hitler had been born female? (Shortform note: Varol classifies thought experiments as tools for creativity, but that’s not their only application: They can also be used purely for fun or as an educational tool to get students thinking in new ways.)

Varol doesn’t recommend any specific thought experiments because the questions you ask should be unique to you and your areas of interest (for example, if you’re in healthcare, you might ask, “What would happen if we replaced human doctors with AI?”) Instead of following a specific formula, Varol recommends thinking of thought experiments as a form of unstructured play. Play is a valuable enterprise: It’s...

Think Like a Rocket Scientist Summary Principle 6: Get Past Your Biases

According to Varol, one thing that holds us back from pursuing moonshots is cognitive bias. One powerful form of bias is confirmation bias: We’re more likely to seek out information that confirms our existing beliefs and ignore information that contradicts those beliefs.

Another powerful bias is the narrative fallacy: We tell ourselves a story about the world around us and then cling (or “anchor”) to that story even when it’s being proven false in front of our eyes. Varol argues that this is especially dangerous when our opinions become part of our identities—in that case, changing our opinions on a subject threatens the very core of how we see ourselves.

The Origins of Bias and How to Avoid It

In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman offers insight into how these biases develop. According to Kahneman, human thinking happens in two distinct systems: System 1 involves immediate, unconscious thinking and System 2 involves higher-level, deliberate, conscious thinking. We often call on System 2 to double-check our intuitive System 1 thoughts. However, Kahneman argues that in the case of confirmation...

Think Like a Rocket Scientist Summary Principle 7: Test Your Ideas Rigorously

Before pursuing a new idea for achieving the seemingly impossible, successful people and companies conduct tests to ensure the idea will work as planned. According to Varol, successful tests must:

• Have real stakes. If the idea fails your test, you need to be prepared to kill the idea rather than coming up with excuses to carry on anyway.
• Take place under the same circumstances in which the full version of the idea will occur (not a laboratory) whenever possible.
• Test the whole system, not just individual parts. Remember that each individual part might work well, but that doesn’t guarantee they’ll work well together.
• (Shortform note: It might not always be possible to conduct tests that meet all of these criteria. For example, new medical products can’t be tested on humans until they’re proven to meet minimum safety criteria. Until that point, they must be tested in other ways, with lower stakes and less realistic context.)

How Rocket Scientists Test Ideas

Rocket scientists test equipment in space-like conditions before launching it into space. According to Varol, their goal is to expose the equipment to as much stress as possible in order to find the breaking...

Think Like a Rocket Scientist Summary Principle 8: Learn How to Learn From Failure

When you shoot for the moon, you’re likely to experience at least a few failures on your way to success. Varol argues that failing and learning from failure are two very different things, and the former does not guarantee the latter. Failure stings, so it’s more common for people to brush painful failures off and quickly move to salvage their ego than to sit down and closely examine exactly what went wrong. (Shortform note: Examining failures in order to learn from them is important, but it should be done in moderation. According to Awaken the Giant Within author Tony Robbins, dwelling too much on failure can create limiting beliefs about your potential and sabotage your future attempts at success.)

How Rocket Scientists Learn From Failure

According to Varol, rocket scientists have a complicated relationship with failure. Some missions (particularly those with human lives at stake) have very little room for failure. However, in every other scenario, failure is a normal part of life as a rocket scientist taking scientific risks. Therefore, scientists value “intelligent failure”: the kind of failure that can...

Think Like a Rocket Scientist Summary Principle 9: Don’t Let Success Make You Complacent

When you’ve finally achieved what once seemed impossible, avoid the trap of complacency. According to Varol, success can be as dangerous as failure because we underestimate the role that luck plays in success. That’s because when we succeed, we don’t analyze our strategy as much. We think, “It worked, so it must have been a good strategy,” even though that’s not necessarily true. (Shortform note: In Fooled by Randomness, Nassim Nicholas Taleb argues that ignoring the role of luck in success is a common human fallacy. However, according to Taleb, the bigger the success, the more likely it is that luck was the key determining factor.)

Varol believes that success isn’t final, and as humans, we’re never done growing. Therefore, even when you succeed, don’t think of yourself as having “won.” That mindset is dangerous—you think you’ve already succeeded, so you no longer need to work hard or monitor your progress. Some of the most successful people in history thought of themselves as works in progress, not established champions. This prevented them from becoming...

Shortform Exercise: Examine a Near Miss

Varol believes the best way to learn from success is to examine your “near misses.” Let’s try that now.

Describe your most recent “near miss”—a time when you got lucky, or an experience that went well but could easily have gone very poorly.