32 Quotes from Think Like a Rocket Scientist book by Ozan Varol

To think like a rocket scientist is to look at the world through a different lens. Rocket scientists imagine the unimaginable and solve the unsolvable. They transform failures into triumphs and constraints into advantages. They view mishaps as solvable puzzles rather than insurmountable roadblocks. They’re moved not by blind conviction but by self-doubt; their goal is not short-term results but long-term breakthroughs. They know that the rules aren’t set in stone, the default can be altered, and a new path can be forged.

from Think Like a Rocket Scientist book by Ozan Varol

In the modern era, rocket-science thinking is a necessity. The world is evolving at dizzying speed, and we must continuously evolve with it to keep pace. Although not everyone aspires to calculate burn-rate coefficients or orbital trajectories, we all encounter complex and unfamiliar problems in our daily lives. Those who can tackle these problems – without clear guidelines and with the clock ticking – enjoy an extraordinary advantage.

from Think Like a Rocket Scientist book by Ozan Varol

If you stick to the familiar, you won’t find the unexpected. Those who get ahead in this century will dance with the great unknown and find danger, rather than comfort, in the status quo.

from Think Like a Rocket Scientist book by Ozan Varol

Our ability to make the most out of uncertainty is what creates the most potential value. We should be fueled not by a desire for a quick catharsis but by intrigue. Where certainty ends, progress begins.

from Think Like a Rocket Scientist book by Ozan Varol

Uncertainty leads to joy, discovery, and the fulfillment of your full potential. Uncertainty means doing things no one has done before and discovering things that, for at least a brief moment, no other person has seen. Life offers more of itself when we treat uncertainty as a friend, not a foe.

from Think Like a Rocket Scientist book by Ozan Varol

If we explore only well-trodden paths, if we avoid games we don’t know how to play, we’ll remain stagnant. Only when you’re dancing in the dark, only when you don’t know where the light switch is – or even what a light switch is – can progress begin.

from Think Like a Rocket Scientist book by Ozan Varol

The status quo is a super magnet. People are biased against the way things could be and find comfort in the way things are. […] The default carries immense power, even in advanced industries like rocket science. This idea is called path dependence: What we’ve done before shapes what we do next.

from Think Like a Rocket Scientist book by Ozan Varol

The noise in any system – whether it’s a rocket, a business, or your résumé – reduces its value. There’s a temptation to always add more, but the taller the Jenga tower, the more fragile it gets.

from Think Like a Rocket Scientist book by Ozan Varol

Minds are far more malleable than we assume. If we pretend that life is one long kindergarten, our minds just might follow.

from Think Like a Rocket Scientist book by Ozan Varol

Creativity often comes as a subtle whisper – not a big bang. You must be patient enough to pursue the whisper and perceptive enough to receive it when it arrives.

from Think Like a Rocket Scientist book by Ozan Varol

Humans had been taking metaphorical moonshots long before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon. When our ancestors blazed a trail to some unknown corner of the earth, they took a moonshot. The discoverers of fire, the inventors of the wheel, the builders of the pyramids, the makers of automobiles – they all took moonshots. It was a moonshot for slaves to reach for freedom, for women to take the ballot, and for refugees to push toward distant shores in search of a better life. We’re a species of moonshots – though we’ve largely forgotten it.

from Think Like a Rocket Scientist book by Ozan Varol

The primary obstacles to moonshots are in your head, reinforced by decades of conditioning by society. We’ve been seduced into believing that flying lower is safer than flying higher, that coasting is better than soaring, and that small dreams are wiser than moonshots.

from Think Like a Rocket Scientist book by Ozan Varol

Our expectations morph reality and become self-fulfilling prophecies. What you strive for becomes your ceiling. Go for mediocrity, and mediocrity is what you’ll get – at best […]. But if you course-correct in the direction of the Moon – as opposed to the ground – you’ll soar higher than you would have before.

from Think Like a Rocket Scientist book by Ozan Varol

If you pursue the extraordinary, you’ll rise above the stale neural pathways that dominate ordinary thinking. And if you persist – and learn from the inevitable failures that will arise – you’ll eventually grow the wings you need to soar.

from Think Like a Rocket Scientist book by Ozan Varol

To be a universe-denter, you must be unreasonable enough to think you can dent the universe.

from Think Like a Rocket Scientist book by Ozan Varol

If we restrict ourselves to what’s possible given what we have, we’ll never reach escape velocity and create a future worth getting excited about.

from Think Like a Rocket Scientist book by Ozan Varol

The next time you’re tempted to engage in problem solving, try problem finding instead. Ask yourself, Am I asking the right question? If I changed my perspective, how would the problem change? […] Breakthroughs, contrary to popular wisdom, don’t begin with a smart answer. They begin with a smart question.

from Think Like a Rocket Scientist book by Ozan Varol

From a scientific perspective, opinions present several problems. Opinions are sticky. Once we form an opinion – our own very clever idea – we tend to fall in love with it, particularly when we declare it in public through an actual or a virtual megaphone. To avoid changing our mind, we’ll twist ourselves into positions that even seasoned yogis can’t hold. […] As a result, at the outset of their investigation, scientists refrain from stating opinions. Instead, they form what’s called a working hypothesis. […] Working means it’s a work in progress. Working means it’s less than final. Working means the hypothesis can be changed or abandoned, depending on the facts.

from Think Like a Rocket Scientist book by Ozan Varol

Our instinct in our personal and professional lives is to prove ourselves right. Every yes makes us feel good. Every yes makes us stick to what we think we know. Every yes gets us a gold star and a hit of dopamine. But every no brings us one step closer to the truth. Every no provides far more information than a yes does. Progress occurs only when we generate negative outcomes by trying to rebut rather than confirm our initial hunch. The point of proving yourself wrong isn’t to feel good. The point is to make sure your spacecraft doesn’t crash, your business doesn’t fall apart, or your health doesn’t break down. Each time we validate what we think we know, we narrow our vision and ignore alternative possibilities.

from Think Like a Rocket Scientist book by Ozan Varol

Our goal should be to find what’s right – not to be right.

from Think Like a Rocket Scientist book by Ozan Varol

The best way to determine an object’s breaking point is to break it. Rocket scientists try to break the spacecraft on Earth – to reveal all its flaws – before the faults reveal themselves in space.

from Think Like a Rocket Scientist book by Ozan Varol

In our daily lives, we are miscalibrated far more often than we assume. We need a calibration target, preferably multiple trusted advisers, who can warn us when our reading of the events is off – when we’re looking at a green block but seeing red. Pick your calibration targets carefully, and make sure you can trust their judgment. If their judgment is off, yours will be too.

from Think Like a Rocket Scientist book by Ozan Varol

There’s no denying it; failure sucks. In most aspects of life, there are no participation trophies. When we fail a class, go bankrupt, or lose our job, we’re in no mood to celebrate. We feel worthless and weak. Unlike the high of success, which quickly dissipates, the sting of failure lingers – sometimes for a lifetime.

from Think Like a Rocket Scientist book by Ozan Varol

If we don’t acknowledge we failed – if we avoid a true reckoning – we can’t learn anything. In fact, failure can make things worse if we get the wrong messages from it. When we attribute our failures to external factors – the regulators, the customers, the competitors – we have no reason to change course. We throw good money after bad, double down on the same strategy, and hope the wind blows in a better direction.

from Think Like a Rocket Scientist book by Ozan Varol

The goal isn’t to fail fast. It’s to learn fast. We should be celebrating the lessons from failure – not failure itself.

from Think Like a Rocket Scientist book by Ozan Varol

Failure is data – and it’s often data you can’t find in a self-help book. Intelligent failures, if you pay them proper attention, can be the best teachers.

from Think Like a Rocket Scientist book by Ozan Varol

Breakthroughs are often evolutionary, not revolutionary. Take a look at any scientific discovery, and you’ll find there is no magical it. No single aha moment. Science weaves from failure to failure, with each version better than the one that came before. From a scientific perspective, failure isn’t a roadblock. It’s a portal to progress.

from Think Like a Rocket Scientist book by Ozan Varol

Surviving your own success can be more difficult than surviving your own failure. We must treat success like a seemingly friendly group of Greeks bearing a big, beautiful gift called a Trojan horse. We must take measures to maintain humility before the Greeks arrive. We must treat our work – and ourselves – as permanent works in progress.

from Think Like a Rocket Scientist book by Ozan Varol

The modern world doesn’t call for finished products. It calls for works in progress, where perpetual improvement wins the game.

from Think Like a Rocket Scientist book by Ozan Varol

History instructs. History informs. History, if you look carefully, can provide invaluable lessons.

from Think Like a Rocket Scientist book by Ozan Varol

History is an exercise in self-deception if we get the wrong messages from it. Only through the hard work of looking beyond the first-order causes – particularly when we’re afraid of what we might see – do we begin to learn from history.

from Think Like a Rocket Scientist book by Ozan Varol

In the end, there’s no hidden playbook. No secret sauce. The power is there for the taking. Once you learn how to think like a rocket scientist – and nurture that thinking in the long term – you can turn the unimaginable into the imaginable, mold science fiction into fact, and stretch out your hands to touch the face of God.

from Think Like a Rocket Scientist book by Ozan Varol