* One of Inc.com's "6 Books You Need to Read in 2020 (According to Bill Gates, Satya Nadella, and Adam Grant)"
* Adam Grant's # 1 pick of his top 20 books of 2020
* One of 6 Groundbreaking Books of Spring 2020 (according to Malcolm Gladwell, Susan Cain, Dan Pink, and Adam Grant).
A former rocket scientist reveals the habits, ideas, and strategies that will empower you to turn the seemingly impossible into the possible.
Rocket science is often celebrated as the ultimate triumph of technology. But it's not. Rather, it's the apex of a certain thought process — a way to imagine the unimaginable and solve the unsolvable. It's the same thought process that enabled Neil Armstrong to take his giant leap for mankind, that allows spacecraft to travel millions of miles through outer space and land on a precise spot, and that brings us closer to colonizing other planets.
Fortunately, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to think like one.
In this accessible and practical book, Ozan Varol reveals nine simple strategies from rocket science that you can use to make your own giant leaps in work and life — whether it's landing your dream job, accelerating your business, learning a new skill, or creating the next breakthrough product. Today, thinking like a rocket scientist is a necessity. We all encounter complex and unfamiliar problems in our lives. Those who can tackle these problems — without clear guidelines and with the clock ticking — enjoy an extraordinary advantage.
Think Like a Rocket Scientist will inspire you to take your own moonshot and enable you to achieve liftoff.
ISBN-13: 9781541762602
Media Type: Paperback
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Publication Date: 09-14-2021
Pages: 368
Product Dimensions: 5.40(w) x 7.60(h) x 1.00(d)
Ozan Varol is a rocket scientist turned award-winning professor and bestselling author. A native of Istanbul, Turkey, Varol moved to the United States by himself at 17 to attend Cornell University and major in astrophysics. While there, he served on the operations team for the 2003 Mars Exploration Rovers project that sent two rovers to Mars.
Varol then pivoted and became a law professor to influence others to make giant leaps on Earth. His work has been featured in various domestic and foreign media, including the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, BBC, TIME, CNN, and the Washington Post. You can follow him at ozanvarol.com.
Table of Contents
Introduction 1
Stage 1 Launch
1 Flying in the Face of Uncertainty 17
2 Reasoning from First Principles 47
3 A Mind at Play 77
4 Moonshot Thinking 105
Stage 2 Accelerate
5 What If We Sent Two Rovers Instead of One? 137
6 The Power of Flip-Flopping 163
7 Test as You Fly, Fly as You Test 191
Stage 3 Achieve
8 Nothing Succeeds Like Failure 219
9 Nothing Fails Like Success 249
Epilogue: The New World 277
What's Next? 283
Acknowledgments 285
Notes 289
Index 337
