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Average rating4.2
Named a "must read" by Susan Cain, "endlessly fascinating" by Daniel Pink, and "bursting with practical insights" by 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.
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DNF, got 30% of the way through the audio book.
Like much of the self help literature, heavily reliant on anecdotes (not even interesting ones - the common ones like Jobs, Musk, etc) without accounting for survivorship bias.
I did see some interesting ideas about redundancy and reliability that overlap with my own field (software), but I think I'd better off just reading about those topics directly, instead of a watered-down popular treatment.
The best idea I'll take away from this book is the concept of adversarial thought experiments. Ask how you can make your system fail, or imagine being your boss and try to build a case for why he should not promote you. This kind of perspective taking is reminiscent of Superforecasters by Tetlock.