How to Think as a Rocket Scientist?

When you encounter a problem in your life, you say to yourself as an incentive: "This is not rocket science."; That is, it is not impossible to solve. Everything in this life can be learned, and there is nothing that we cannot reach.

In this article, we present some of the important ideas contained in the book "How to Think Like a Rocket Scientist" by the writer "Ozan Farole," through which we are introduced to the thinking method of rocket scientists. This is by pinpointing their goals, how they adapt to current conditions, and how they can turn the unknown into passion energy instead of anxiety and fear.

How does goal setting help you succeed in reaching your goal?

Think about the outcome, feasibility, and effectiveness of any work you do. Life is full of things, ideas, and fields, and their number is huge and probably unlimited. This makes us, in many cases, get lost, and we have a headache because of the many options presented to us and because of the many new products and things that pass in front of us every day.

This is what makes the brain tired or, let's say, overburdened with ideas, methods, and mechanisms to the point that it can not choose the most useful. The bulk of its energy has been drained to identify many things or ideas and fields, and it could not review and revise them and choose what is necessary and what is useful, and then give up the rest.

For this, we must set a clear goal that we follow most of the time, which is the centerpiece of our lives or the job we dream of, which provides us with the requirements of living from food and drink to intellectual enjoyment, self-fulfillment, success, excellence, and benefit for ourselves and others around us. This is similar to the scientist of the rocket who designs the missile to target a specific target; No single missile can attack targets each of them in one place.

How can adapting to the current circumstances turn the table to our interest?

You must have heard of many people waiting for the right conditions to start their work or waiting for funding to start their business. However, this often does not happen because the most important laws of the rocket scientist are to adapt to the current conditions to achieve the goal and not to wait for circumstances to change or wait for a hidden force to turn the circumstances around for our benefit.

We have all heard of the famous billionaire Elon Musk, who wanted to build a space missile, but he did not actually have the price of one missile. Nonetheless, he did not listen to people's conversations, and axioms spread among them that only the big countries can manufacture missiles. Elon Musk put these axioms behind him and began looking for another way. So, he found that if he manufactured the missile himself, it would cost him only 2% of the purchase price. Today Elon Musk owns one of the largest space companies around the world known as "Space X".

Here we conclude an important lesson that is to think outside the frames, boundaries, or templates that are imposed on us, and to find new and innovative ways and methods, without letting anyone tell us what you think is impossible. Otherwise, how it was to Elon Musk, who fled his hometown of South Africa, escaped compulsory service in the military to Canada, began his career studying energy physics, and subsequently set up his first company, which was a directory of websites.

The unknown and people's constant fear of it

Most people have a fear of the unknown. Just as being in a dark room makes fear leak to you, so does the unknown. We all fear the unknown, except for one category of people, namely scientists, inventors, explorers, and all the greats throughout history.

They were not afraid of the unknown. On the contrary, the unknown motivated them to search for buttons to light their corridors. The unknown in all its cases and manifestations motivated them to search for light.

This is what we must do with ourselves because the problem is not the presence of this unknown. The real problem lies in how we see this unknown and the way we deal with it. If we are not able to remove this unknown from our path, why don't we accept it and change the way we judge it?

How can we overcome our fear of the unknown?

We can first get ourselves into some little experiment. Still, it carries unknown ends, and repeating such experiments whenever the opportunity arises helps us to accept the idea of the unknown first and second to break the psychological barrier that makes us afraid of the unknown, according to the psychological law that states that frequent exposure cancels out the response.

Then, we can try to change how we think about the unknown. Let us convince ourselves that the unknown is the tool and environment that contributes to giving us new skills that we did not have before and helps in an effective way to refine our previous skills. The unknown experiences are the most useful practical training for human psychological, emotional, and intellectual faculties.

If we have a simple dialogue with ourselves, and we assume that life is a fully exposed scheme that is free from any complications or unknowns, how boring this life will be. Nothing is surprising about it, and how we can develop if all conditions are appropriate and favorable for us in all the ways we go.

How do we deal with the unknown when we inevitably fall for it?

When we fall into a state of the unknown, we must control this anxiety or fear that we may have by addressing ourselves that we are not anxious. We are not afraid, as we are a state of consciousness that monitors feelings of fear and anxiety. This is something that needs training and reflection time and time again.

Then, let's take a deep breath and rest our shoulders from the convulsion we feel, and let’s feel the strength of this breath in our chest and muscles. Also, let’s think a little bit that this fear or anxiety that we feel will not solve the problem for us, but it will make matters worse; therefore, let's focus our senses on what is useful, which is collecting the available information to us and then move on it, not based on the anxiety from the unknown. We must distinguish the orders that knock on the door of our brain out of fear or anxiety from those that come to us based on a logical analysis of the information we have gathered through our senses and perception.

How can we view the concepts of success and failure as the rocket scientist thinks?

After the end of the stage or mission that is characterized by ambiguity and all of its details are controlled by the unknown, we have emerged from this stage, and we are pleased with our achievement of the goal, or we may come out in a state of frustration or sadness because we have not reached the desired goal.

And both the previous two tracks are very normal. Every experience is likely to fail or succeed, and this is something that two do not dispute. The experience may be fully known and revealed, but we are liable to fail in it for one reason or another. But what is not considered normal and unacceptable is that this failure to achieve the goal is a constant fear of the unknown that puts us in a state of permanent avoidance of it and escape to any new experience under the pretext of fear of the unknown.

If we want to dive further into the truth, the term failure is inappropriate and incorrect. Things are not measured in this way. It is not right to call any experience in our lives a failure because it has added a lot of skills, experiences, and information that benefit us terribly in improving our performance in the coming times. Therefore, man must face his fears, flaws, and mistakes and work to fix them one by one because his reluctance or denial of them, even between him and himself, will not solve the problem. Rather, it will make him repeat the same mistakes repeatedly, and this is what we can call failure.

How can free time awaken within us a sense of creativity?

Life is not just hard work, success does not mean we should turn into non-stop machines. Quite the contrary, we need to rest occasionally, and here, we don't mean rest in bed all day long. Most recent studies emphasize the importance of walking in nature in stimulating brain cells to innovate and create and get out ideas that can change history one day.

For example, the famous writer "J. Caroling" decided to take the train one day, but she waited a long time at the station. Then the employee told her that there had been a break on the next train, and there would be a delay in the journey for some time. So the writer sat on one of the seats and started reflecting on the nature surrounding her and breathing that air deeply and lovingly. It took her four hours at the train station, but she came up with the idea of the best film series in the history of international cinema, the famous story of "Harry Potter".

This is how the rocket scientist works. He tries to exploit the surrounding conditions to his advantage, no matter how frustrating or unhelpful. If he is unable to change them, he must change the way he looks at them or the way he deals with them.

In conclusion

The most important reason for our inability to solve the problems that stand in our way is the fear that dominates us when we are exposed to them, and this fear or anxiety disrupts all logical mental processes. So, the cornerstone in dealing with any problem or obstacle is to control our internal feelings first.