In his book “Think Like a Rocket Scientist”, author Ozan Varol, a former rocket scientist, shares the strategies and ideas to help solve our life’s complexities using a scientific thought process.
This was one of those rare books that I just couldn’t put down once I started reading. I binged on it for two days and immediately added it to the personal list of books I’d recommend to my daughter. No wonder it was commended by people like Bill Gates, Malcolm Gladwell and Satya Nadella.
In this post, let me share some of the stories and quotes from this book that I’ve found quite interesting.
The Cat Fable
Whenever a saint and his disciples would start their evening meditation, a cat that resides in the monastery would disrupt them by walking around purring. So the saint came up with a simple fix and tied it to a pole before the sessions.
Soon, it became a practice to tie the cat before meditating. Eventually when the cat died, the disciples brought another cat and tied it up instead, not wanting to break their ritual.
Moral: Beware of the “Invisible Rules” we follow in our own lives. They constrain our thinking and leave us with self imposed limitations. The best way to expose invisible rules is to violate them and see what happens.
“Shocking” Study
In a 2014 study, researchers asked a bunch of college aged participants to spend 15 minutes with their own thoughts, by taking away all their belongings. They had one option though, they could self administer an electric shock by pressing a button.
67% of the men and 25% of women choose to shock themselves instead of sitting alone doing nothing. One person delivered 190 shocks to himself in 15 minutes.
Moral : Boredom is essential for creativity, and yet most of us choose torture over boredom. We prefer doing something over nothing, even when that something is negatively affecting us.
Chess Player’s Problem
In another study, researchers divided a few titled chess players into two groups and gave them a chess problem to solve, the goal was to achieve a checkmate in the fewest possible moves.
For the first group, the problem had two solutions, a familiar pattern that’d achieve mate in 5 moves and a less familiar but better solution that’d achieve mate in 3.
Many in the first group did not find the better solution, as they spent most of their attention on the familiar option. The second group however, did better, as they were not distracted by familiarity.
Moral : Preconceived notions prevent us from looking for alternatives, and leave us with suboptimal results.
The Five Dollar Challenge
Dr Teena Seelig, faculty director of the Stanford Technology Ventures program, uses “The 5 Dollar Challenge” to teach her students the difference between tactics and strategy. Students are divided into teams and each team would be given five dollars as initial funding. The goal is to make as much profit as possible in two hours and then give a 3 minute presentation to the class on how they achieved it.
Typical responses like setting up a lemonade stand, offering car washing services or buying a lottery ticket never made the cut. The winners often did not even use the initial five dollars, they viewed it as a distraction and instead asked themselves
“ How can we make money if we started with absolutely nothing”.
One team made reservations at a popular restaurant and then sold the slots to those wanting to skip the wait. The winning team however, identified that the 3 minute presentation to a Stanford class was their most valuable asset. So they sold their presentation slot to a company interested in recruiting Stanford students for $650.
Moral : To get better answers, you need to reframe the questions. Once you define the problem broadly in terms of what you’re trying to do, you’ll discover better options.
Confirmation Bias
In a study of over 200 Americans, two thirds of the participants refused the opportunity to win money by listening to the other side’s arguments on the issue of same sex marriage.
The reason wasn’t that they already knew the other side’s arguments. They explained to the researchers that listening to opposing views was just too discomforting and frustrating for them. The results were the same for participants on either side.
Moral : When we refrain from listening to opposing views, our own line of thought gets ingrained and we are shackled to the same set of established thinking patterns.
Quotes
Argue for your limitations, and you get to keep them
Famous saying
You can’t win the lottery without buying a ticket
Ozan Varol
I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing, than to have answers which might be wrong
Richard Feynman
Many a false step was made by standing still
Chinese Proverb
The path won’t appear until you start walking
Rumi
It’s difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it
Upton Sinclair
For less than twenty dollars, a book can show you what took someone else a lifetime to figure out
Ozan Varol
When you risk your significance, you won’t change who you are. You’ll discover it
Ozan Varol
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex, It takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.
E. F. Schumacher
If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter
Mark Twain
Children intuitively grasp one cosmic truth that eludes most adults: It’s all just a game—a big, marvelous game
Ozan Varol
Your neurons, just like your muscles, can rewire and grow through discomfort
Ozan Varol
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world, the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself
George Bernard Shaw
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function
F. Scott Fitzgerald
I don’t like that man, I must get to know him better
Abraham Lincoln
One mark of a great mind is the willingness to change it
Walter Isaacson
When we shoot the messengers, people stop delivering messages—particularly if they work for us
Ozan Varol
Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished
Daniel Gilbert
Summary
Consider the content of this post as just a trailer. Do read the book to experience the full movie.
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