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Breakthroughs we tend to think begin with a smart answer, but they often begin with a smart question that reframes a problem and sees it in a light that no one else is seeing it.
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Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world thanks to each and every single one of you who come back every single week to listen, learn, and grow.
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Now, I'm really excited about bringing you fascinating guests where we can dissect their minds, understand their concepts and theories, and figure out how to practically live their messages in our lives.
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And you know how much I love authors and how much I love books, and I remember seeing this on a list of books that Adam Grant and Susan Cain had published, and it immediately caught my eye because the title was Think Like a Rocket Scientist.
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And I thought to myself, this is cool, like who's written this?
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And it happened to be a former rocket scientist.
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And I was fascinated because obviously, as you know, my book's called Think Like a Monk, written by me, a former monk.
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And I was thinking, oh, here we go, we've got something in common.
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We're trying to challenge people to do think differently.
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And so this book immediately caught my eye.
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I've read through a ton of it already and can't wait to finish it, but I'm so excited that today I get to sit with the author.
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Ozan Varol is a rocket scientist turned award-winning professor, author, and podcast host.
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A native of Istanbul, he moved to America to major in astrophysics at Cornell University, then served on the operations team for the 2003 Mars Exploration Rovers project.
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Varol later became a law professor at Lewis & Clark College and wrote The Democratic Coup d'État, published by Oxford University Press.
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Varol's articles have appeared in outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, BBC, Time, CNN, The Washington Post, Slate, and Foreign Policy.
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Now, this is going to be really interesting to you guys because I know you like regular content.
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He blogs weekly on his website ozanvarol. com.
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We'll give you the link later.
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And Varol has delivered keynote speeches to both small and large groups at major corporations, nonprofits, and government institutions.
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Today, as I said, we're here to speak about his new book, which is Think Like a Rocket Scientist, the simple strategies you can use to make giant leaps in work and life.
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Ozan, wonderful to have you here today.
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Jay, delighted to be here.
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Thank you so much for having me on. Yeah, absolutely.
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It's not every day that you get to sit down with a former rocket scientist.
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So, this is this is I see this as a huge honor and Or a former monk for me, you know.
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This is like almost the beginning of a joke, like a rocket a former rocket scientist and a former monk walk into a bar. So true.
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We'll see what happens next.
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You know, they always say like a good conversation is between like people who just have really crazy unique experiences and I feel like this is kind of like that, you know, like rocket scientists, at least from my uneducated brain, you know, it's all about exploring and going outward and seeing what's possible and living as a monk is all about going inward and seeing what's possible.
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And so, it's it's it's fascinating to sit down with you and think about that.
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But but I want to start off with this question as we dive into your book and talk about many things.
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How do you actually become a rocket scientist?
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Like like what is the process of that?
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Because growing up, I didn't even know that existed and often we kind of refer to it in some ways like a monk, we refer to it as a term that it's kind of like make-believe or imaginary or you know, it's it's not necessarily a real thing. So, tell us that.
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There is no college major called rocket science.
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There is actually probably no one with like the official job title rocket scientist.
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We just use the term rocket science colloquially to refer to the science and engineering behind space travel.
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So, for example, I was an astrophysics major, but you can also become a rocket scientist by majoring in aeronautical engineering, for example.
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So, for me, the term is used broadly to refer to people working on space travel, people working on converting the seemingly impossible into the possible.
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It's great to hear that because I I was thinking, well, it's like, what if what if what if there were actually job titles called rocket scientist?
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It would It would be crazy. But, tell me about this.
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Uh when when you decided to write this book, why did you think it was important?
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Similarly, like I was trying to challenge people's mindsets with my title, why was it important for you to challenge people right now to start thinking like a rocket scientist?
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What is it about the thinking of a rocket scientist that is so vital and important for everyone today?
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So, I opened the book with telling the story of President John F.
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Kennedy stepping up to the podium at Rice University Stadium.
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This was in September 1962.
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And he pledged to land a man on the moon and return him safely to the Earth before the decade is out.
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Now, at the time, this was literally a moonshot.
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Uh and a lot of people in the audience thought he was crazy.
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People at NASA thought he was out of his mind because so many prerequisites for making the moon landing a reality hadn't been done yet.
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No American astronaut had worked outside of a spacecraft.
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Two spacecraft had never docked together in space.
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NASA didn't know if the the lunar surface was solid enough to support a lander or whether the communication system would work on the moon.
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I mean, JFK actually said some of the metals required to build the rockets hadn't even been invented.
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We just jumped into the cosmic void and hoped that we'd grow wings on the way up.
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And grow those wings we did.
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In less than 7 years after Kennedy's pledge, Neil and Buzz took their giant leap for mankind.
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And the the contrast I like to draw is a child who was just 6 years old when the Wright brothers took their first powered flight.
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So, this is back in 1903.
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It lasted for about 12 seconds, moved 100 ft.
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Would have been 72 when the flight became powerful enough to put a man on the moon.
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Let me think about that for a second. That's 66 years.
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That's within a single human lifespan.
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And that giant leap is often attributed to technology, right?
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This was a triumph of technology.
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But, I don't think that's right.
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I think the triumph really belongs to the humans behind the technology and a certain thought process they used to turn the seemingly impossible into the possible.
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So, I wanted to write a book about that thought process in part because rocket science it's it's such an intimidating term, right?
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Hence the saying like this is rocket science or it's not rocket science.
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So, we tend to put these people in a corner and say that's just reserved for geniuses, right?
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That I I don't want to know anything about that because it's too complicated.
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So, I didn't want to write a book about the science behind rocket science, but I wanted to take these nine simple strategies from from rocket science about approaching uncertainty, about innovating within constraints.
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Um talk to people about how rocket scientists approach failure, how they approach success, and walk them through really simply how they can take these principles and use them in their own lives to to make giant leaps. Yeah, and I love that.
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I love how practical that is because I think for anyone and obviously you've given a very grand example of like, you know, when John F.
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Kennedy's pledging to go to the moon.
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But, you think about even in our lives like so many times we have ideas or dreams or things that we would love to work towards, but we kind of see it as unreachable.
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And and we kind of put them and leave them there on the shelf and we go, "Oh, well, that's never really going to happen for me.
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It's probably not possible."
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But, what I feel like you're trying to do with this book and that's what I saw when I was reading reading it, is that these nine strategies that you share, they're actually like little steps to to be able to make that giant leap in your own life.
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And and I really appreciate that because I think whenever you hear about these especially these big, you know, these big statements, I think there's a famous statement from Henry Ford and it was like, you know, if I asked people what they would have wanted, they would have said faster horses. That's right.
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And it's like, you know, that people don't have the vision to really bring that into reality.
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And I feel like you're trying to ground that for all of us through all these nine strategies.
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And I love the studies that you do share and the stories that you do share in here.
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What was the one that surprised you the most, right?
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What was the What was the outcome or the or the kind of principle that you actually thought, you know, that's actually really counterintuitive?
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Like, you may have thought of it some way, but actually it was like, oh no, that that that totally blew my own mind.
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I think the last chapter in the book, which is called Nothing Fails Like Success, is probably one of the more counterintuitive takeaways from the book, right?
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Because we tend to think of success as a good thing.
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Um I devote that chapter to explaining how success can create complacency.
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Uh and I I discuss two of the the biggest disasters in in rocket science history, which are the Challenger and and Columbia space shuttle disasters, which claimed the lives of all seven astronauts on board.
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Um and those disasters happened after NASA had experienced a string of triumphant successes.
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And NASA began to develop tunnel vision.
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Even when engineers were raising their hands and saying, "Look, the O-rings, which were responsible for the explosion of the uh of the Challenger, they were being damaged flight after flight."
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And one engineer, actually 6 months before the Challenger disaster, he wrote a memo that turned out to be really prescient.
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He said, "If we don't do something about the problem with the O-rings, which by the way are these flexible rings that seal the um the the the the boosters to make sure that hot gases don't escape.
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So, they serve a critical function.
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He wrote a memo saying that if we don't fix this problem, it's going to be a catastrophe of the highest order.
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I'm talking the loss of human life.
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But, the managers ignored the engineers' requests and because they thought, "Look, in previous missions, we succeeded even when there was damage to the O-rings.
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So, as long as we repeat the process that we followed yesterday, then success is is inevitable."
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And basically, the same thing happened after the after the Columbia Space Shuttle disaster, as well.
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The technical flaw was different, but the underlying cultural flaw of success creating complacency, of success creating conformity was very much very much the same.
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And so, to me, that that was really counterintuitive because, you know, the our first instinct when we succeed is to start lighting cigars, right?
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Popping champagne corks, to start celebrating.
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But, when we do that, we fail to realize that we may have succeeded despite making a bad decision, despite making a a serious misstep.
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And if you don't sort of sit and conduct the same type of analysis that might follow failure, if you don't look back and say, "You know what?
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Why what role did luck and privilege and opportunity play in this success?"
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If you don't do that sort of reckoning, then those small little failures will eventually snowball into something that that you can't control.
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So, I think there's a lot of value to thinking of ourselves, even after we succeed, as a work in progress.
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So, I think the moment you think you've made it is the moment you stop growing.
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The moment you declare yourself to be an expert on something is the moment that you start, you know, making confident declarations without backing it up with the facts.
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The moment you think you're in the lead is the moment you just stop listening to other people.
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And so So I think there's a lot of value to even when success arrives to staying humble and realizing that, you know what?
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You succeeded not necessarily because of your genius, but you may have gotten lucky.
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And if you don't fix the errors that happened in the the path to that success, then then that those failures or small failures might catch up to you in the long run.
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Yeah, I think I think that's a super powerful and strong message.
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I think there's this I saw this really good viral video recently.
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I think I shared it to an Instagram.
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It was a It was a video that someone had compiled of And And the the tagline was don't celebrate too early.
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And it was a compilation of like swimming races, marathons, sprints where the person just started celebrating when they were about to hit the line.
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And then number two came and took their place.
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And it's happened multiple times.
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And obviously that's in a very That's in a very specific, you know, race scenario, but even in life it so much so I feel like yeah, you don't learn as much when you win unless you conduct that analysis.
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And I remember in a very small way I remember every time I if I did well in exams, I would always regret it the year later when I'd be like, wait a minute, how did I do well last year?
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Like I wish I wrote down why I did well, right?
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Because then I would have something to go off.
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And And you're so right that there's such a need for that post win analysis.
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And the appreciation of not just luck, but the appreciation of things that lined up.
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The appreciation of things that just happened not even by chance or luck, but by happened because the things that went right that you didn't expect, right?
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And And I think it's almost like when we win, we're like, oh, we expected that to happen.
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But But when we lose, it's like, oh, I didn't expect that.
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And then that's when we tear it apart. No, I love that. And And And I agree.
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I think there's such a need for that.
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I guess a lot of people feel and you address this too.
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A lot of people feel like they never win.
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Uh and and so they're more in that category of failing.
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And and I think this I've seen this quote before and seen it thrown around before called fail like a scientist.
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And it's almost like fail like a rocket scientist sounds even even more aligned with it.
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And it's and you you talk about failure in the book.
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Tell us about how to really fail effectively because you talk about not just failing fast but learning fast.
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And and I love that change.
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And and I want to know more about that because I think we hear a lot about oh just fail and it's okay to make mistakes and it's okay to fail.
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But I I'm more fascinated by how we can really fail effectively and and dive into that because I think for most people they don't win and get complacent.
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We fail but we don't learn fast enough.
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So let's let's dive into that principle.
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Yeah, that's absolutely right, Jay.
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And I And I think the the distinction that you just mentioned between failing fast and learning fast is a really important one.
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Cuz that mantra of fail fast, fail often, fail forward is all the rage these days in Silicon Valley.
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I was reading that and I talk about this in the book too that Silicon Valley companies are now holding um funerals for failed startups complete with like DJs um spinning records and bagpipes and and liquor flowing freely.
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And you know, and I don't buy it.
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I don't buy it because going back to our discussion with success too, when you celebrate something you're probably not learning from it.
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And so uh to me the goal should be to to learn fast, to not fail fast.
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And research really bears this out too.
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I And I said a research study of cardiac surgeons who actually get worse after they fail, after they botch a procedure. They don't get better.
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Um failed entrepreneurs are no more successful at taking a com- company public than first-time entrepreneurs.
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It happens we don't learn from from failure because often we attribute failure when we fail to external factors.
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You know, we say we failed not because I made a mistake, but we failed because it wasn't the right time, right?
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We failed because of the customers or the competitors or the regulators.
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And when we don't do that internal reckoning, then we don't learn from anything.
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So, moving from failure to failure without really learning is is a recipe for for disaster.
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As a scientist take a very different approach to to failure.
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To them, and this is true for successful businesses and successful people as well, failure it can be the best teacher if you know how to approach it properly.
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Um And almost all breakthroughs are evolutionary, not revolutionary.
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So, let me let me let me talk about what what I mean by that because you're right, a lot of people think like they're not succeeding but they're not succeeding because their time horizon is oriented toward the short term, right?
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They're looking at the next week, the next month, and they're not looking as Kennedy did 7 years down the road or even a a year down the road.
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Um So, if you look at scientific history, every single breakthrough has been evolutionary.
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Albert Einstein's first several proofs for E = MC squared completely failed.
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Thomas Edison famously said, you know, I haven't failed.
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I just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
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Um James Dyson, the famous British inventor, you know, he he spent I think 15 years, came up with over 5,000 prototypes of his bagless vacuum until he found the one that worked.
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So, we tend to be obsessed with with grand openings, but the opening doesn't have to be grand as long as the finale is.
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And I think one of the best things that we can do cuz and I see this with businesses, with politicians.
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Businesses are are chasing these short-term quarterly outcomes.
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Politicians are looking at the the immediate electoral cycle.
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But, the businesses and the people who can calibrate their thinking for the long term know that they might have to endure some pain in the short term, that they might have have to fail a few times, but if they're learning from each of these failures, if they're learning fast, that's going to be the the recipe for creating something extraordinary down the road.
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And when I look at my own life, you know, any success I had with the book came because of decisions I made 3 years ago, 4 years ago, not decisions I made 2 months ago.
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The the the really important decisions tend to have a long lifespan, uh but once you start planting the seeds, they'll grow slowly, but if you keep doing that, then they become something that's really far more than what what you could have expected, which is true for the moon landing as well, right?
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I mean, 7 years from Kennedy's push to to landing on the moon is really incredible, and it's because for once we decided to look not for the next year, not for the next 2 years, but for 7 years down the road. Yeah, definitely.
18:24
That reminds me of a statement I had from Bill Gates, where he said uh we overestimate what we can do in 1 year and underestimate what we can do in 10 years.
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And I guess it's hard though to feel like when you're making a decision, it never feels right because we decide whether decisions feel right based on the result.
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And that's actually a mistake I feel because uh sometimes you can get the res- a result that you didn't want from the right decision for you at the time.
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But, I feel like so much of our decision-making is is given validation based on the result. Does that make sense?
19:09
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
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We we paralyze ourselves cuz we're like, I don't know if this is the right decision cuz I don't know what's going to happen in 3 years.
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So, how do you make a decision regardless of trying to live 3 years ahead?
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Because in one sense, you no one knows, right? No one can see that.
19:23
Yeah, and I want to underscore what you just said, Jay, because it's so so important.
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It's possible to do lots of things right and still fail.
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And it's also possible to do lots of things wrong and still succeed. Yes.
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This happens all the time.
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Uh I mean, this happens in soccer, this happens in landing a rover on Mars, this happens in businesses, but we're so obsessed with with the outputs that we forgot we forget the quality of of the inputs.
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And so, you know, on a personal level, the the thing that I I do is and the thing that I advise other people and businesses to do is to to reorient their focus away from outcomes and and toward inputs.
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So, for me, for example, writing the book, if I'm thinking about bestseller lists and how many copies the book is going to sell, two things are going to happen.
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One, it's going to completely rob the joy out of what I do. I mean, I love writing.
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It's like the thing I love the most.
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When I get up in the morning, I spend 3 hours writing and that's a great day for me.
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Uh but once I start thinking about quantity of sales and bestseller lists, completely robs the joy away from what I do.
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And number two, and perhaps worse, when I when when people start focusing on outcomes, they start making bad decisions.
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Cuz they they try to sort of anticipate what the market is going to want and sort of cater to that.
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That's certainly an important part of the equation, but it can't be the only part of the equation.
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And so often, we're we're so narrowly focused on the outcome that we forget about the the inputs, the the the things that are actually going to make our work work great.
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So, I think that pivot from outcome to to process is a is a really important one.
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And another useful strategy that I've used in the past, too, that I've I've seen successful businesses use, is a pre-mortem.
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So, to take some of the focus out of the outcome, you basically say the pre-mortem says, "Let's assume that whatever we're working on failed."
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And work backward from that to figure out what may have gone wrong.
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Um and then you sit down and say, "Okay, well, it failed because of X, Y, and Z."
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So, for example, for me the failure would be I didn't submit the book on time to the publisher.
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And then I work backward from that to figure out well, why may have I have failed, right?
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It It could be because I didn't do the research in a timely fashion.
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It could be because I wasn't doing the writing on a consistent basis.
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And then you figure out basically ways to guard against those threats.
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And and that also has a way of, I think, identifying things that could lead to potentially bad outcomes.
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But really the the best thing we can do is to to be more input-oriented and and less outcome-oriented.
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And that requires, after, by the way, both failure and success, asking the same questions.
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What went wrong with the success?
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What went right with the success?
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What went wrong with the failure?
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And what went right with this failure?
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That takes the focus off of the outcome and and points you toward what matters, which are the inputs.
22:32
Yeah, I'm so glad we agree on that.
22:32
I've I've actually shared something very, very similar with the book when I get asked the same thing.
22:37
It's It's I couldn't agree with you more.
22:39
It's such a obsession with the process because it's that obsession with the process that gives the best opportunity for the result. Exactly.
22:50
As opposed to the focus on the result and the reward completely takes you away from this current ability to be creative.
22:57
And with what you were talking about creators, I've often described it as like selfish creators and sellout creators.
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So I think of like a sellout creator is a creator who's trying to pander so much to the audience that you miss out on your inner voice, which is actually what makes it unique.
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And then the selfish creator is kind of like the person who writes a book that only they want to read.
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And that we know that isn't good either because it's kind of like, you know, and so yeah, finding that balance, but but still always focused on the input, I think is so important before you start focusing on thinking about how to market something or or put something out there.
23:29
And those are some really powerful entrepreneurial tips.
23:33
I wanted to ask you if you could explain what first principles thinking is and how Elon Musk has used it because I think that will really interest my audience as well. Sure.
23:43
So when Elon Musk was first thinking about sending rockets to to Mars to to take people to Mars, he first began by shopping for used rockets on the American market.
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And Musk was a really rich guy.
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This was right after he sold PayPal to eBay.
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Uh but even as wealthy as he was, rockets were way too expensive on the American market.
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So he then went to Russia, uh I kid you not, to shop for decommissioned intercontinental ballistic missiles without the nuclear warheads on top, of course.
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But even those were too expensive.
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So on one of his plane wise back from Russia empty-handed, he had an epiphany.
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And he arrived at that epiphany using first principles thinking.
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So first principles thinking is a way of cutting through assumptions that are cluttering your thinking as if you're cutting through a jungle with a machete.
24:36
Um you're basically unlearning what you know.
24:39
You're leaving behind the baggage of history to pave the way for a better tomorrow.
24:45
The analogy I give in the book is the difference between a cover band and and an original singer.
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So a cover band plays somebody else's songs, but the original singer goes back to the raw materials, the musical notes, and goes through the painstaking process of of creating something new.
25:02
So, Elon Musk realized initially that he was playing the role of a cover band and trying to buy rockets that other people had built.
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And so, he went back to first principles and asked himself, "Well, wait a minute.
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What is a What is a rocket made out of?
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Like, what are the non-negotiable raw materials of a rocket?
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And how much would it cost if a if I just bought these on the open market and then built the rockets myself?"
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And it turned out that it was like 2% of the typical price of a rocket, which is a crazy ratio.
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So, he just said, "Screw it.
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I'm going to build my rockets, my next-generation rockets, from scratch."
25:38
Um and first-principles thinking led him, along with Jeff Bezos' space company, Blue Origin, to upend another deeply entrenched assumption in rocket science.
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So, for decades, rockets that carried their payload into orbit couldn't be reused.
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They would burn up in the atmosphere or plunge into the ocean, requiring an entirely new rocket to be rebuilt.
26:03
Now, imagine doing that for commercial flights, right?
26:05
You fly from I'm in Portland, you're in Los Angeles, Jay.
26:07
I fly from Portland to Los Angeles. The passengers deplane.
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Someone steps up to the plane and just torches it.
26:16
Sounds crazy, but that's basically what we did for rockets for for decades.
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And a modern rocket isn't that much more and more expensive than a Boeing 737.
26:25
But, space flight is so much more expensive because rockets couldn't be reused, um at least not efficiently.
26:29
And SpaceX and Blue Origin have both changed that.
26:34
Uh they're reusing numerous rocket stages, sending them back out to to space like um like certified pre-owned vehicles.
26:42
And so, when uh when SpaceX took two NASA astronauts to the International Space Station, it was a few weeks ago when we're recording this, but the the first stage of the rocket that carried them into space landing back landed back in the on this barge in the middle of the ocean.
27:00
There's now a landing pad next to the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center, and that's a new thing in rocket science because both Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos were able to look at the problem in a different light than than others had done before and questioned an assumption that that so many people um in the industry had taken for granted.
27:23
Yeah, that's fascinating. I had no idea.
27:25
I've never heard that before.
27:25
I definitely didn't know that.
27:27
It's what I like about it the most is just that I think so many of us in our life fall into the bad habit of allowing the assumptions that we hear of an industry or a group or a society or a community to become our assumptions and our reality.
27:43
And it's like you know, almost like uh assumptions uh just just putting on other people's assumptions as if they're our clothes and and then all of a sudden it feels like they're our assumptions and they just block us from being really creative, being really innovative, and finding these solutions.
27:58
And and we may not even be trying to solve space travel. Right.
28:04
But but the point is that the same principle is so powerful for us whether it's with our habits or even whether it's with what we think is possible.
28:10
And and you know, I think so often we hear things like oh, but you need money to make more money like as as an example. Yeah.
28:19
oh, well, if you adopt that assumption, it means you will be waiting a very very long time. Or Exactly.
28:25
Or we have an assumption of like oh, no, you have to have educated or trained in this way to be in that industry or whatever it may be.
28:30
You know, and and and I think you're so right that all of these things end up blocking us and and just yeah, just kind of wasting time.
28:37
They they make us waste time when we think that way. Yeah.
28:42
And what you strive for ends up becoming your ceiling, right?
28:44
So, if you're striving to be mediocre, then that's the best you can do.
28:51
Um You can't always get what you want, as the Rolling Stones remind us, but if you aim a little bit higher than you have in the past, it's amazing, and especially if you're reoriented toward toward the long-term, it's amazing what you're able to to accomplish.
29:08
I think many of us operate out of like jail cells of our own making.
29:14
Like we're like gripping the bars, we're cursing the guards, you know, let us out, but the door is open, actually.
29:20
You can just get out and leave.
29:21
But, we're operating under so many assumptions, and by the way, this is not our fault.
29:25
These assumptions usually come from social conditioning.
29:28
They come from educational conditioning as well.
29:30
Like we've been seduced into believing that flying lower is safer than flying higher.
29:35
That small dreams are are wiser than moonshots.
29:38
And when you hear that message over and over and over again, it becomes your jail cell.
29:45
I grew up in Istanbul in very humble circumstances, but my parents made me believe that basically, if I worked hard for it, that anything was was within my reach.
29:55
And so, when I was 17 years old, I learned English as a second language.
30:01
I came to the United States by myself.
30:03
My parents didn't speak a word of English, uh but they encouraged me to to pursue my dreams.
30:08
So, I remember I was 17 years old, I gotten into Cornell, and I was sitting in Istanbul, and I was obsessed with space, um even then.
30:14
I mean, I was obsessed with space dating back to like when I was five.
30:21
And I was look researching what the astronomy department at Cornell was was up to, and and I saw that a professor was in charge of this plan mission to Mars, what would later be called the Mars Exploration Rovers project.
30:34
And, you know, if I was operating out of the jail cell that my society had constructed for me, I probably would have said, "Oh, like it's amazing that he's working on this and how lucky are the people that are working with him."
30:47
But, there is no way that I'm going to apply, right?
30:50
Because what do I have to contribute?
30:51
And that voice definitely appeared in my head.
30:54
He said that the voice said to me, "You're a skinny kid with a funny name, well, you know, from a country halfway around the globe.
31:04
If you send this email to him asking for a job that doesn't exist, there was no job listing, he's just going to laugh, right?
31:11
Like, the this is a this is a complete moonshot for you.
31:15
Know your place and don't do it."
31:17
But then, I asked myself two questions and these two questions I still ask myself every day.
31:22
The first one is, "What's the worst that can happen?"
31:27
And the worst that can happen, I honestly, in most cases, is like everything that you care for are still going to be there.
31:31
For me, that the worst case scenario was that he just never write back to my email.
31:37
And even if you can come up with more answers to that, by the way, write them down.
31:40
It's really powerful that it writing down those possible worst-case scenario has a strange way of like disempowering them.
31:49
And then ask yourself also, and this is the question I asked myself, was, "What's the best that can happen?"
31:53
If you send this email, what's the best that can happen?
31:58
And the best that can happen did happen, which is I landed a job on the operations team for this Mars project and like 2 weeks later, I had front row seats to the action.
32:09
Um, and and you know, thanks in part to I taught myself how to program in high school.
32:14
Um, but but I think that that is that is really really important because we we just we get in our own way in so many different ways that it's not our fault.
32:25
It's it's so much social and educational conditioning and it it requires purpose and effort and being intentional to be able to strip away those layers of social conditioning to regain our childlike curiosity and the childlike dreaming that that we used to do which is I think so important and such a crucial ingredient in in any success story.
32:48
Thank you for sharing that by the way.
32:48
I was going to dive into that so I'm glad you shared that then your your journey to that because you know I'm sure many of your school friends would have you know not thought about doing something like that or maybe some of them tried or maybe some of them would even have envisioned it and so often we're thinking differently to the people around us. And it's scary.
33:05
It's it's scary to think differently to the people around you and I think a lot of people listening or watching this can can identify with that where you feel a bit of fear because you're like oh maybe I'm not allowed to think like this or maybe I shouldn't think like this or maybe actually if I think like this I'm going to get into more trouble.
33:21
But you spoke about two things that that are really important.
33:25
You talked about working hard and obviously we hear a lot about working smart.
33:28
And what I like in the book is you talk about the difference between strategy and a tactic.
33:32
And and you give this example of Tina Seelig's $5 challenge.
33:37
But I The reason why I wanted to bring that up is I think that's a really important distinction because I think in our journey sometimes to create these moonshots there's a big difference between strategy and tactic and everyone tries to use the word strategy a lot and we also try and use the word tactic and hacks a lot but there is a big difference.
33:56
So yeah if you just explain that to us the difference in how we think more strategically for our moonshots. Sure.
34:04
So so tactics and strategy as you said they tend to they tend to be used interchangeably but they actually refer to very different things.
34:11
So tactics are I will actually I should start with the definition of strategies.
34:14
Your strategy is like a a plan overall plan for achieving an objective and then tactics are the tools you're using the actions you're taking to actually get to that objective.
34:24
And often tactics are traps.
34:28
And what we what we see when when people look for life hacks for example or a formula, they're asking tactical questions.
34:33
They're trying to see well, let me see what this other person did and let me just copy and paste their tactics and expect the to to to to get the same outcome, which is usually a recipe for disaster.
34:47
Um but strategy is very different.
34:47
Once you define your own strategy, once you zoom out from the tactics to to thinking about what you actually want to achieve in your life, then tactics become a lot more malleable.
34:59
Then there is like so many so much more wiggle room in terms of coming up with different ways of achieving something.
35:06
So, you mentioned the the $5 challenge that Tina Seelig used that at Stanford.
35:10
Uh if I can just recap the Yeah, please. Please, I love it. Yeah.
35:14
So, Tina Tina Seelig is a professor at Stanford who runs an entrepreneurship class and she walks into a classroom and divides up the classroom into into teams and she says each team gets $5 in seed funding and your goal, you've got 2 hours to make as much money as possible and then you're going to give a 3-minute presentation to the class.
35:34
So, take a moment to think what you would do if you were in one of these teams.
35:37
And most teams did what you might expect them to do.
35:41
They took the $5 and they bought, you know, materials for a for a makeshift car wash or they went all school and started like a lemonade stand.
35:50
And those teams didn't do really well.
35:53
The teams that were a lot more successful asked a very different question.
35:57
They realized that the tactic, which is the $5 bill sitting in front of you, was a basically a worthless and distracting resource.
36:07
Instead, they went back to first principles, which we talked about before, and framed the problem more broadly as, "What do we do to make the most amount of money um as possible if we start with absolutely nothing?"
36:18
So, one particularly successful team ended up making reservations at uh popular Silicon Valley restaurants and then selling those reservation times to, you know, wealthy executives who wanted to skip the wait.
36:32
And they made an impressive, I think, $300 in 2 hours.
36:37
But the team that came in first realized that both the $5 tactic and the 2 hours were not the most valuable in their arsenal.
36:46
Instead, they realized that the that the most valuable tool in their arsenal was the 3-minute presentation time they had in front of this captivated Stanford class.
36:55
They ended up selling that 3-minute slot to a company that was interested in recruiting Stanford students and walked away with like $700.
37:04
And it's it's it's genius because they were asking the strategic question of like, "Well, what do we do?
37:13
What What do we have here?"
37:14
It's so easy to get distracted by the $5, right?
37:17
So, ask yourself, you know, what is the $5 in your life?
37:23
What is the three How do you abandon that and find the more more valuable 2 hours?
37:27
But even that, how do you abandon the 2 hours and find the most valuable 3 minutes that's in front of you, that's sitting in front of you, that's just looking right at you?
37:39
You know, breakthroughs, we tend to think begin with a smart answer, but they often begin with a smart question that reframes the problem and sees it in a light that no one else is seeing it.
37:52
Yeah, I love that example.
37:52
Thank you so much for illustrating it again so beautifully.
37:55
It's It's one of my favorite ones, and I I I I actually love it because I think, you know, the way you told it as well, which I thought was brilliant.
38:02
It's almost like, yeah, the resource that we almost have sometimes.
38:04
We're like, "Okay, so I've got $500 to invest, or I've got $50 to invest."
38:08
And you're so right that that can actually be a distraction and a limitation as opposed to a growth thing.
38:13
Second of all, the 2-hour time constraint.
38:15
We often tell ourselves, "I've I've got to do this in the next 3 months."
38:18
And it's just a false time constraint, right?
38:19
It's There is no real There's no real deadline to it and we're putting a false deadline on ourselves.
38:27
And then finally, we often miss the the smallest amount of time that actually could be the most valuable.
38:31
The You know, when you think about 3 minutes, you're like, "Oh, I've got 3 minutes to present.
38:35
We got to prepare for that."
38:37
But you don't see that as an opportunity.
38:38
And when you hear that example, you're like, "That makes so much sense."
38:41
But but that's not the first thing that would come to any of our minds.
38:45
I guess my question begins to think, how do we start shifting to thinking that direction?
38:50
And what what are the habits?
38:51
What are the mental changes that that a rocket scientist or people who are able to think like that, what are the steps that they're taking uh to get that?
39:00
Cuz we're not going to get there overnight by by trying to imitate that example.
39:04
It's very easy to think, "Oh, yeah, next time when someone asks me that cool question, I'm going to try."
39:08
And then we won't, right?
39:08
It doesn't work like that.
39:10
So, how do you actually build that mental muscle that allows you to actually think like that? Absolutely.
39:15
So, there's there's a number of things you can do.
39:17
One is to first become better at asking questions.
39:19
I think that's such an important skill because we live in a society that's so obsessed with answers and finding the right answer.
39:28
But right answers are so cheap these days.
39:30
Honestly, if by the time that you can Google the and the find the answer to a question on Google, the world has moved on.
39:36
Uh but being able to ask smart questions is a really important important skill.
39:42
And one of the ways that you can do that is to be able to sort of emulate the the team that that won the the $5 challenge is to to ask strategic questions and move away from tactics.
39:54
So, move away from the what you're doing to why you're trying to do what you do.
39:59
So, talk think about strategy cuz once you zoom out to to see the strategy, then you might be able to spot tactics that that other people are are are missing.
40:10
The second thing that I found really valuable is to bring in people into the conversation uh who know nothing about what I'm working on. So, outsiders basically.
40:18
And outsiders have a way of of asking really good questions to spot what you're missing.
40:27
Because they are not wedded to conventional wisdom.
40:29
They don't know the status quo.
40:31
So, they're going to ask you what people call quote unquote dumb questions that are actually not dumb at all because they go to some like fundamental aspect of the problem that you're failing to see.
40:41
And this is why by the way so many of the the success stories that we just talked about are outsiders to their industries.
40:47
So, Elon Musk he came to rocket science from from Silicon Valley and he learned about rocket science by reading textbooks on a beach somewhere in Rio de Janeiro after he sold PayPal to eBay.
41:00
Jeff Bezos was in the finance world before he went into to start Amazon.
41:07
Reed Hastings was a software developer before he started Netflix.
41:11
And all of these people were able to see the holes in the thinking of the established players because they were outsiders.
41:18
And so this doesn't mean that you know, you um you hire an expensive consultant or bring in an expensive speaker.
41:26
It could be as simple as talking to your significant other or your friend who knows nothing about what you're working on but presenting to them what you're thinking about and letting them ask those really simple questions that are going to jolt you out of your your perspective.
41:43
The story I tell in the book is about J. K.
41:46
Rowling and the first Harry Potter book.
41:48
Um when she submitted the the Harry Potter, I think it was the Sorcerer's Stone which is the first book to publishers they were unanimous in their opinion.
41:57
They all thought that the book was not worth printing.
42:00
One publisher in the UK called Bloomsbury Publishing saw promise in the book when others missed it.
42:07
And the head of Bloomsbury Publishing Nigel Newton um he saw promise in the book because he had a secret weapon by the name of Alice, his 8-year-old bookworm daughter.
42:18
And so, what Nigel did was to bring the first chapter of Harry Potter home with him.
42:22
And he gave the first chapter to Alice.
42:24
Alice read the book and she came back downstairs and went to her dad and said, "Dad, this is so much better than anything else I've read."
42:37
And the input of Alice convinced her dad to write a meager 2,500-pound check to J. K.
42:43
Rowling to acquire the rights to to publish the first Harry Potter book, which by the way, is the best bet made in publishing history, right? Because J. K.
42:51
Rowling is now a billion-dollar author all because Nigel Newton was willing to get the opinion of someone who was a complete outsider to the publishing industry, Alice, but was a member of the target audience audience for the book.
43:06
Um So, that's something else you can do is to to bring in outsiders into the conversation.
43:09
And the third thing I would say is to be very intentional about questioning the assumptions in your life.
43:16
Um So, ask yourself, you know, why do I have this process?
43:20
Why do I have this routine?
43:20
Why do I have this habit?
43:23
Why am I doing what I'm doing on a daily basis?
43:26
Because we normally don't ask those questions.
43:30
When when we get into the habit of doing something, we're operating on on autopilot, right?
43:34
It's like a you know, a choose your adventure choose your own adventure book that always has the same ending.
43:40
So, it's it's really important to disrupt yourself from time to time and ask, "Why is this process in place?
43:47
Why am I taking the same route to work every day?
43:49
Why am I using this browser to do what I do?"
43:52
I mean, these are very simple questions, but if you extend them to the more important decisions in your life, it's really amazing what can happen as a result.
44:00
Before we started recording, we were talking about how my My tour got canceled because my book was published on April 14th when when the pandemic was wreaking havoc on the world.
44:11
And you know, that um I spent two days just being miserable uh cuz I was basically trying to control what can't be controlled, right?
44:20
I can't change pandem- the pandemic.
44:22
I can't change its disruption on on my book marketing plans.
44:29
But then that disruption, I started asking myself the more productive questions of okay, I can't change the the hand that the universe dealt me.
44:40
But what can I do with the hand that I was dealt?
44:44
What assumptions am I operating under?
44:46
And my assumption, by the way, which was not first principles thinking, was that authors do book tours.
44:52
And this is that's the only reason I was doing it, by the way, right?
44:53
Like other authors I admire, they publish a book, they go on a book tour.
44:56
So, I'm going to publish a book.
44:58
I'm also going to go on a book tour.
45:01
But not stopping and asking myself the more strategic question of well, what is the purpose of a book tour?
45:06
Because a book tour is a tactic, right?
45:07
In service of a broader strategy of of spreading the word about the ideas in the book.
45:14
That is my overall goal is to help empower people to to think like a rocket scientist to reimagine the status quo.
45:23
And if I zoom out and ask myself that strategic question, the tactics become malleable.
45:27
And by the way, I started to realize that the tactic of a book tour is like the $5 bill.
45:34
It's it's it's not worth the certainly not, but it's not the best use of my time.
45:38
I mean, I could get on a plane and fly to New York and walk into a Barnes & Noble and sign books for 50 people and come home and it's going to take me an entire day or two.
45:48
Or I could sit in the comfort of my office as I'm doing now um and and do virtual events and virtual book launches and podcast conversations and reach a far bigger audience than I would have reached with with a book tour.
46:00
Uh and often we we don't question assumptions until the universe forces out of the status quo, right?
46:06
Forces us out of the status quo, that's when we start questioning everything.
46:10
But the people who get ahead are the ones who do that questioning before they're forced out of the status quo, before a crisis strikes.
46:19
They're they're they're doing the questioning and asking the these strategic questions to themselves before crisis comes knocking on the door.
46:28
So you have to in many cases dig the well before you're thirsty and and and think through your outdated assumptions before the universe does it for you.
46:40
I couldn't agree with you more.
46:40
Thank you for that very thoughtful set of steps and thoughts that we can go to and it all comes back down to asking the right questions and Yeah.
46:50
And that's you know, that's what we forget. You're right.
46:51
Like when you when you ask yourself the wrong question, you get lost in a whole trajectory.
46:53
Like the wrong question of like okay, well, what what what are other authors doing that I have to do? Right?
47:00
Like that question is what leads you down this whole trajectory of planning and building and traveling and then you coming back from all of that and go wait a minute.
47:08
I that didn't make any sense.
47:09
And so it or not that it didn't make any sense.
47:12
It it it wasn't right and appropriate for the current time that we're in and and I couldn't agree with you more.
47:17
So I'm yeah, I'm hoping that everyone who's listening right now, there's a lot of subtext in what AZ is telling us around just you know, really looking at the decisions you're making in your life right now, really reflecting about the steps you're taking in in your life right now and just questioning why you're doing them, what you're doing them for, why they make sense.
47:35
And if you don't have a good enough answer for yourself, and that's really the most important answer is can you answer it for yourself?
47:43
Because someone else may have a perfect reason for why they think you should do something.
47:48
But if you don't have a good enough reason for why you think you should do it, then it's then it's probably not as strong as you to it is.
47:55
So AZ, I've got a few more questions for you before we wrap up.
47:57
I want to ask you this question from the book.
48:00
Why do you suggest we use Lisa Bodell's kill the company exercise? Because I love it, too.
48:04
It's another great example from the book.
48:07
Yeah, it's one of my favorite exercises.
48:09
And the story I I tell in the book is from from Merck and how Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier applied it.
48:13
But basically, he asked his executives to play the role of one of Merck's top competitors for a day.
48:19
And so, they switch perspectives and they figured out ways to kill the company, to to put Merck out of business, which is when CEOs talk about change and innovation, they're asking usually the the cliche questions like, "How do we think outside the box?
48:36
Or what's the next big thing?"
48:39
But those cliche questions tend to generate cliche answers.
48:41
But if you play this game of kill the company and you ask your executives to come up with with ways to put the company out of business, then they are, by definition, moving out of the current perspective, moving outside of the box, and looking at the box from the perspective of a competitor seeking to destroy it.
49:01
Now, that's the first part of the exercise.
49:04
Once you identify those threats, then you switch to the opposite perspective.
49:08
You go They went back to being Merck executives and figured out ways to to defend against those threats.
49:13
And so, and you can have You don't have to be a big corporation to apply that in your own life.
49:18
You can ask yourself, you know, you can play the kill the company game with your job, right?
49:22
You can say, "Well, why might my boss pass me up for a promotion?
49:27
Why may I not get this job that I'm interviewing for?
49:31
Or why are people buying our competitors' products?"
49:37
It's not because you're right and they're wrong.
49:42
It's not because they're stupid.
49:43
It's because they're seeing something that you're not seeing.
49:47
It's because they believe something that that you don't believe.
49:49
It's because they're telling themselves a different story.
49:53
And you're not going to be able to see that story if you're looking at the world from your own limited perspective.
49:59
And Kill the Company is a great way of of forcing yourself out of that perspective and and adopting the perspective of somebody else.
50:06
Yeah, I think it's a great activity to do with yourself, to do with your teams, to to do with anyone because it actually allows you to think so big and broad and crazy, which being told to think outside of the box definitely doesn't do. Sure.
50:18
Uh or to have a creative brainstorm definitely doesn't do.
50:20
So, no, I I love that and thank you so much for sharing that.
50:24
Okay, Ozan, so what I want to ask you now is these uh final two segments of the podcast, which are called fill in the blanks and the final five.
50:31
So, fill in the blanks is I read a sentence and you have to fill in the final word and the final five I'll introduce straight after that. So, are you ready? Yep, ready.
50:42
So, challenging conventional wisdom starts with getting out of your jail cell.
50:49
Absorbing complex issues begins with simplifying them. Nice.
50:54
Reframing a problem welcomes better answers.
51:00
What impresses me most about humans is their ability to adapt to the to the uncertain. Nice. Good.
51:08
Okay, these are your final five.
51:10
So, the final five, these are questions that are answered in one word to one sentence maximum.
51:15
You can You're very good.
51:18
You followed the rules, which is always wonderful.
51:19
Not everyone always does, so I really appreciate it, Ozan. So, here we go.
51:24
Uh this is Some of these are a bit more personal, so if you need feel the need to talk a bit more, you can.
51:28
The first two especially.
51:30
Uh how often do you walk Einstein and do you find yourself to be more creative during those times with him?
51:37
Yeah, we walk him My wife, Kathy, and I walk him uh once or twice a day at least.
51:42
least. And and absolutely, uh some of the best ideas I've had in in recent memory have come during those walks because when I'm stepping away from what I'm doing and actually letting my subconscious make connections but also I've got an amazing partner with
52:01
me, a sounding board who's asking me the the right questions that because you know, she doesn't know what I'm working on so she has that outsider perspective that we that we talked about and she'll often help me see things that I'm missing. I love that. That's beautiful. The I love that. That's beautiful.
52:14
The second question is actually about her because you start off the book dedicated to Kathy and you say my cosmic constant. Yes.
52:22
Uh what was the what was the thinking behind the use of that terminology?
52:25
What does that mean to you?
52:27
You know, it's it was a connection to the universe of course and thinking like a rocket scientist and uh and I've had so many changes in my life coming from Turkey to the United States as an immigrant and then from astrophysics to law, practicing lawyer to law professor and then from law professor to popular author and and speaker.
52:49
So the ground underneath my feet has never been stable really and my whole life is just the change is the only or seems like change is the only constant but there's another constant in my life which is which is Kathy. I love that, man. That's awesome.
53:06
Weirdly enough I also dedicated my book to my wife. I love that.
53:10
Yeah, a few more similar.
53:10
Mine says um uh to my wife who's more among than I'll ever be. Uh I love that so much.
53:18
Last three questions of the interview.
53:20
Um what's something that you were once certain of that you recently changed your mind on?
53:26
I was certain once that science and spirituality could not be reconciled and I have changed my opinion about that in the past probably year or two actually.
53:37
I was always I had this very materialistic view of the world not in the monetary sense but in the sense that like anything that's not subject to proof or disproof by the scientific method was not worth thinking about.
53:46
And and I don't think that anymore.
53:49
I think science and spirituality uh you know, thinking like a monk and thinking like a rocket scientist can coexist in in in ways that are beneficial to to both fields. I love that.
54:02
Couldn't agree with you more.
54:04
Okay, last two questions.
54:04
Uh if you could create a law that everyone in the world would have to follow, what would it be?
54:12
You know, be kinder to one another.
54:12
I know it it sounds um cliche, but it it's it's so important to just be a little bit more kinder to one another and and to see each other in a way that we don't see each other.
54:27
You know, we we not looking at people like a commercial transaction, a business card, or the the person standing in between you and your Starbucks macchiato, but actually seeing them as a human being who's experienced joy and sorrow, who's experienced triumph and grief um in all of their imperfect, beautiful glory.
54:50
We don't do that, you know, we just walk past people, we just see through each other as opposed to really see each other.
54:55
And and I think that would be the the law I would create as uh as requires to actually to actually see each other. Yeah, I love that. Thank you.
55:05
And the fifth and final question is what was your biggest lesson that you learned from the last 12 months?
55:13
Success doesn't make you happy um if you're not happy before success.
55:18
And it's not that I wasn't happy.
55:18
Um it just I think I've had this and this isn't just 12 months, by the way, it's probably my whole life.
55:24
I've tied my self I tied my self-worth around my accomplishments.
55:30
And so I would sort of get a a big dopamine hit whenever I I succeeded at something, and I always thought that happiness was over the next mountain.
55:40
And as long as I conquer this next thing, you know, achieve this the next milestone, that's going to bring me bring me happiness.
55:48
But if you're not happy before success, you're not going to be happy after success.
55:52
And and to me, it's happiness comes from not those big moments that you anticipate, going back to what we talked about before, but actually reorienting your focus toward the process, toward the little joys of life, like the joy of our morning walk with Einstein, the joy of, you know, my my morning cup of coffee, the joy of an uninterrupted hour of of writing.
56:17
That's where the That's where happiness comes from.
56:22
Happiness to me, it doesn't come from the the big accomplishments, regardless of what it might look like from the outside.
56:28
And whenever we first admit that's hard to kind of stomach it sometimes, you know?
56:32
Like I I I also for a long time realized that in in at least in my opinion, happiness and success are two different things. Yeah.
56:40
And and success is based on what I achieve, and happiness is based on how I feel about myself and and how I feel about what I'm doing and contributing.
56:50
And and I don't think happiness, if you're happy, it makes you more successful, and I don't think if you're successful, it makes you happy.
56:54
I think they are just what they are. And And And it's okay.
56:59
Like I I think I I have dreams to be happy, and I also have dreams to be successful, and I have plans to be happy, and I have plans to be successful.
57:05
And I And I see them as separate.
57:07
They They They give me different a different sense of meaning and fulfillment in different ways.
57:11
And when you try and inter connect them, which is what I think you're saying, there's so many of us for so long believed that if we're successful, we'd be happy, or the opposite, too, which is Oh, if you're happy, then you'll be successful.
57:23
And that's not That's not true, either, you know?
57:25
It just It It doesn't really matter, and you can define what each of them are for you. So, no, thank you, Azan.
57:30
Thank you for sharing that.
57:31
Really appreciate everyone.
57:33
This is Ozan Varol and the book Think Like a Rocket Scientist, simple strategies you can use to make giant leaps in work and life.
57:40
You can go and grab a copy now.
57:42
I obviously highly recommend this book.
57:46
I think it's fascinating the way Ozan tells stories.
57:47
He's a phenomenal writer.
57:49
Of course, you can check out his blog as well.
57:51
But, the book definitely goes that point of just crystallizing a lot of these really, really important and fascinating tips.
57:57
And that's what I love about the book.
57:58
It's like it's stuff that will make sense, but it will be so much more practical and deeper for you as you dive into the stories and the studies that Ozan makes really, really clear for us like he's done today.
58:08
Ozan, thank you so much for joining the On Purpose family.
58:11
Really, really grateful to meet you.
58:13
And I hope we actually get to meet in person one day, too.
58:17
Yeah, I love that as well.
58:17
You just live right down the the coast here.
58:18
And if I can say one more thing, Jay, I'd love to offer a special bonus to your audience for getting a copy of the book.
58:25
If you head over to rocketsciencebook.
58:27
com/purpose, you'll find 12 short videos that I recorded recorded.
58:33
These are like 3-minute bite-size videos with practical, actionable insights from the book that you can implement right away.
58:41
I'm also going to share with you a 30-minute productivity video that I have that takes takes you behind the scenes on sort of how I structure my days and how I get more done in less time.
58:50
And you can find all of that at rocketsciencebook. com /purpose.
58:57
Thank you so much for offering that.
58:57
I really, really appreciate it.
58:59
And make sure you make the most of that. rocketsciencebook.
59:01
com/purpose to get all of that information. And it's all free.
59:06
So, so, so, yeah, please, please, please go and grab it.
59:08
Don't miss out on the opportunity.
59:10
Of course, go and grab a copy of the book at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and I'm sure all other good book shops. Thank you so much, Ozan. Thank you so much, man. My pleasure, Jay.
59:20
It was such a fun conversation. Thanks for having me on. Hey, everyone.
59:23
My name's Jay Shetty, and welcome to my YouTube channel.
59:25
Every week, I'm sharing three videos that are going to help you feel more fulfilled, feel more happy, and more successful.
59:34
Make sure you subscribe to this channel so that you can find out about the videos as soon as they launch.
59:37
Press the like button and leave a comment, and let's keep making wisdom go viral together. Make sure you subscribe.