Think Like a Rocket Scientist

Pursuing a thought experiment—even one that leads nowhere—can lead to breakthroughs.

I assumed that only boring people got bored, so I filled—no stuffed—every moment of my day with activity.

If we don’t take the time to think—if we don’t pause, understand, and deliberate—we can’t find wisdom or form new ideas.

Falling into boredom allows our brain to tune out the external world and tune into the internal. This state of mind lets loose the most complex instrument known to us, switching the brain from the focused to the diffused mode of thinking. As the mind begins to wander and daydream, the default mode network in our brain—which, according to some studies, plays a key role in creativity—lights up.

When we sit still, we turn into a magnetized rod that attracts ideas.

breakthrough begins with asking a good question, laboring over the answer intensely, and being stuck in idleness for days, weeks, and sometimes years. Research shows that incubation periods—the time you spend feeling stuck—boosts the ability to solve problems.

“Walking,” he explains, “has a very good effect in that you’re in this state of relaxation, but at the same time you’re allowing the sub-conscious to work on you.”

“Boredom can be a very good thing for someone in a creative jam.”

Stephen King agrees: “Boredom can be a very good thing for someone in a creative jam.”

The next time you feel boredom arising, resist the temptation to take a hit of data or do something “productive.” Boredom might just be the most productive thing you can do.

Put differently, it’s easier to “think outside the box” when you’re playing with multiple boxes.

Consider the result of one study, where researchers separated the participants into three groups and asked them to solve a complex problem.78 The first group worked in complete isolation, the second group was in constant interaction, and the third group alternated between interaction and isolation. The best-performing group was the third. “Intermittent breaks in interaction improve collective intelligence,” the researchers observed

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few.”

This isn’t to suggest that all original ideas come from beginners. To the contrary, expertise is valuable in idea generation, but experts shouldn’t work in complete isolation, the lone genius lore be damned. Experts also benefit from intermittent periods of collaboration, particularly when amateurs are brought into the mix.

“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things,” Kennedy said, “not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

Moonshots force you to reason from first principles. If your goal is 1 percent improvement, you can work within the status quo. But if your goal is to improve tenfold, the status quo has to go.

Moonshots force you to reason from first principles. If your goal is 1 percent improvement, you can work within the status quo. But if your goal is to improve tenfold, the status quo has to go. Pursuing a moonshot puts you in a different league—and often an entirely different game—from that of your competitors, making the established plays and routines largely irrelevant.

the choice a lion faces in deciding to hunt for a mouse or an antelope. “A lion is fully capable of capturing, killing, and eating a field mouse,” they explain. “But it turns out that the energy required to do so exceeds the caloric content of the mouse itself.” Antelopes, in contrast, are much bigger animals, so “they take more speed and strength to capture.” But once captured, an antelope can provide days of food for the lion.

Most of us go after the mice instead of the antelopes. We think the mouse is a sure thing, but the antelope is a moonshot. Mice are everywhere; antelopes are few and far between. What’s more, everyone around us is busy hunting mice. We assume that if we decide to go for antelopes, we might fail and go hungry

So we don’t launch a new business, because we think we don’t have what it takes. We hesitate to apply for a promotion, assuming that someone far more competent will get it. We don’t ask people on a date if they seem out of our league. We play not to lose instead of playing to win.