How to Think Like a Rocket Scientist (And do the seemingly impossible) | Animated Book Summary

I recently read Think Like a Rocket Scientist by Ozan Varal. This book showed me the one word that makes you more creative. The method a two trillion dollar company uses to accomplish their goals. Why you must start with the monkey and why NASA tries to kill their astronauts. I'll explain all of a Val. Var is a rocket scientist who helped NASA put two rovers on Mars. Now, he's on a new mission to help people like you and me think like rocket scientists so we can accomplish goals that most people believe are impossible. Rocket scientists routinely do the seemingly impossible because they think about problems in ways most of us never consider. I've distilled those ways of thinking into an easy to remember acronym R Ct rethink what's possible. A simple word swap will instantly make you more creative. Instead of wondering, "What can I do? " Think, "What could I do? " If you're staring at five random ingredients in the fridge and think, "What can I make? " Your brain will scan old recipes. When it can't see how to make a familiar dish with those five ingredients, you skip cooking and order takeout. But if instead you wondered, "What could I make? " Your brain enters play mode and you might just improvise a stir fry. The word could welcomes divergent thinking, a way of thinking that allows you to explore and push beyond what's been done before. Before SpaceX, everyone accepted that building and launching a rocket needed to be incredibly expensive. But Elon Musk looked at the raw materials needed to build a rocket and noticed the cost of the metals, fuel, and components was a tiny fraction of the final price tag. There was a large idiot index at play. Meaning that outdated assumptions and inefficiencies were drastically inflating the price of a rocket. By thinking, what could we build if we ignored every assumption about how rockets are supposed to be made? A new rocket company was born, and the rest is history. Escape old ways of thinking that limit your vision of what's possible by routinely wondering, "What could I do with the resources I have? " Let your mind run wild for at least 20 minutes as you explore different things you could do with your skills, experience, and time remaining in your life while forgetting what you've been told won't work or what you've always done. Next, C. Create your checkpoints in reverse. When President Kennedy promised America a man on the moon by the end of the decade, NASA engineers didn't start building the best rocket they could imagine. That would largely be a waste of time. Instead, they started with the end in mind. Astronauts walking on the moon, and returning safely to Earth. Then they considered every checkpoint of a successful mission in reverse, exploring the moon's surface, sticking the moon landing, guiding the spacecraft from Earth to the moon, breaking through Earth's atmosphere, and finally the ignition on the launchpad. Each checkpoint informed the one before it. By starting at the end and keeping that vision in mind, they stop themselves from overbuilding the rocket or adding unnecessary systems that made the project harder than it needed to be. Amazon deploys a similar approach. Before building anything, teams write a press release from the future. It describes the customer problem, why current solutions fall short, and how this product changes things. It even includes imaginary customer quotes and frequently asked questions. that press release becomes their moon landing. Every feature proposal gets measured against it. If a feature doesn't serve the story in that press release, it gets cut. The press release gives teams a clear finish line to work back from so they build only what's essential to get there. Do something similar in your life. Pick your biggest goal right now and write the end result in one clear sentence. Then list five to seven major checkpoints in reverse order starting from the result. Each checkpoint should make the next one possible. Before you take on any new task, ask, "Does this move me to my next checkpoint or is it a detour? " Only do what your finish line requires. Next up, K. Kick off your projects with the monkey. Imagine your boss gives you the following project. Train a monkey to stand on a pedestal and recite Shakespeare. Where do you start? Most people build the pedestal. It's easy. It's visible. And when the boss walks by, you can point to it and say, "Look at how much work we've done. " But building the pedestal is a waste of time if you can't get the monkey to talk. Astroteller, the head of Google's XLAB, often gives this example to drive home an uncomfortable truth. We spend our project time on easy, comfortable tasks that feel productive. designing logos, setting up the perfect project management software, or ordering business cards. Meanwhile, the one thing that determines whether a project can succeed, like getting the

cost down on a critical component or running a test to determine if people are willing to pay for what we're making, sits in the corner untouched. Look at your current project and ask, "What one hard thing do I need to validate before investing more time into this project? " That's your monkey. For most projects, that means testing a critical assumption. Work on that first and set your kill criteria, a result you must get in the following days or weeks to know if you should continue with the project or not. You never want to invest so much in a doomed project that it makes it hard to walk away and focus on more promising projects. Lastly, t test one step from reality. At NASA, instructors try to kill astronauts in the simulator as they work through roughly 6,800 malfunction scenarios before a mission. They make them panic and sweat in the simulator so they survive in space. By launch day, the real thing feels routine. Neil Armstrong famously said that walking on the moon was perhaps easier than the simulations. When Tim Ferrris needed a title for his new book, he didn't ask friends what they thought. He ran Google ads with a dozen different titles and tracked which ones real people actually clicked. The winner was the 4-hour work week. When he needed a cover, he went to a local bookstore, slipped mockup covers onto books sitting on the popular titles table, and watched which ones strangers picked up to examine. By launch day, he already knew he had a great title and cover. NASA and Ferris tested in completely different arenas, but they followed the same rule. Make your test as close to reality as possible before the real thing arrives. If you're practicing a presentation, don't rehearse in your living room. Do it standing in an unfamiliar room with people who will make noise and check their phones. If you're testing a product idea, don't ask friends if they like it. Build a landing page and see if strangers will put in their email for a sneak peek. Always be asking, "How much more realistic can I make this test? " In the end, when considering a new goal or starting a project, remember R Ct and think like a rocket scientist. R. Rethink what's possible using the divergent power of could. C. Create a plan by starting with the desired outcome and working backward. K. Kick off by tackling the monkey and setting kill criteria. Test as close to reality as possible. Author Ozen Varole says, "When you learn how to think like a rocket scientist, you won't just change the way you view the world, you'll be empowered to change the world itself. " That was the core message I gathered from Think Like a Rocket Scientist by Ozen Varole. This book will free you up to think bigger and take on projects that light you up. I highly recommend it. If you would like a one-page PDF summary of the insights I gathered from this book, just click the link in the description below and I'll email it to you. If you're already signed up for the free productivity game newsletter, this PDF is in your inbox.