Think Like a Rocket Scientist

The Book in 1 Sentence

The history of NASA's mistakes and successes that teach lessons for the everyday person.

Brief Review

Ozan Varol does a great job of presenting high complex issues at NASA or business dealings into bite size items that can be worked to understand. Like in the movie "The Martian" said at the end, and I am paraphrasing, "When you are in trouble, you work the problem, then the next problem. If you work enough of them, you get to come home." In life we all have problems that we have to work through. Sometimes having an external view of that problem can present items that we wouldn't see.

Why I Read this book

Who doesn't want to learn what make a rocket scientist so smart?

In-Depth Review (Favorite Quotes)

So I really enjoyed this book and the stories that are presented. In general the principals that he presents are reminiscent of items you probably have heard previously in others books, but the stories behind them make this book worth reading.

One of the primary thing that I enjoyed is the idea of "Returning to First Principles." Basically when we are working through a problem we typically just get stuck at a point of logic that is "Well that is what we were told" or something like that and we should challenge those ideas. In the book the specific explanation of first principals is "means abandoning all allegiances to your original vision, or the visions of others, and hacking through your original assumptions until you are left with the fundamental components or raw materials." I think this is something that we should all work to do.

I know Elon is even more divisive since this book was written, but the examples from him still show what looking at the established problems can be improved upon. One that typically comes to mind for me is education rules that we all balk at.

How my life / behavior / thoughts / ideas have changed as a result of reading the book.

I am working to build a MVP for an idea that I have and listening to this book really presented some ideas on how I can go about that.

Rating

This is an 8. A solid book that really helps provide a different view point to many of life's problems. What makes it an 8 and not a 10 is that a lot of the problems and some of the stories have been told over an over again. However, there are new insights into those stories which you probably know, like the Challenger explosion. It is a good book to read/listen to and with the additional PDF you get from getting the book, this is a great read.