Happy Friday,

Few things are more satisfying than coming to the end of a whole work week. Hopefully, your week has been one worth celebrating. Now that you are ready to transition to the weekend, take a moment to consume an illuminating segment from a book, a few quotes that will capture your attention, and a thought-provoking find from the internet - small bites of wisdom. Here is the Wise Bites memo for you to consider for the week.

Book Segment

This week, I want to share a segment from the book Think Like a Rocket Scientist by Ozan Varol. As a former NASA employee turned law professor, Varol successfully presents a business and personal development book in a nontraditional format. Think Like a Rocket Scientist is a fresh presentation of work-life problem-solving strategies, often in the context of mind-tantalizing “rocket science” examples. In keeping with his NASA roots, Varol structured his book in three parts: “Launch,” “Accelerate,” and “Achieve.”

The key idea I would like to spotlight for this week's Wise Bites comes from Chapter 2: Reasoning from First Principles. Varol posits that knowledge informs us and creates frameworks that help us make sense of the world. He unpacks how knowledge can sometimes be a vice rather than a virtue. The structures provided by knowledge give us productive, cognitive shortcuts that are sometimes beneficial and, at other times, distort our vision. To clarify how knowledge often leads us to do the same thing repeatedly and ineffectively, Varol details the concept of path dependence: what we’ve done before shapes what we do next, and the past often drowns out the future. One of his examples of path dependence is how QWERTY keyboards were designed during the era of mechanical typewriters to prevent them from jamming. Today, we know that there are more efficient keyboard formats that improve typing speed and ergonomics, but they have not been adopted because of our comfort with the QWERTY format.

Varol offers the counter approach to path dependence: first-principles thinking. He shares that “Aristotle defined [first-principles thinking] as the first basis from which a thing is known.” Descartes described it as “systematically doubting everything you can possibly doubt until you’re left with unquestionable truths.” This approach means you don’t accept the status quo as an absolute. Instead, it allows you to drop existing assumptions until only the fundamental components remain.

If you are working on revamping your thinking to make innovative breakthroughs at work or in your life, I highly recommend the book Think Like a Rocket Scientist by Ozan Varol. It is an easy read with insightful anecdotes guaranteed to simplify cerebral concepts while holding your attention and stimulating your curiosity.

Quotes

A dull mind gets bored easily. A curious mind expands forever.
-Maxime Lagacé
If you must look back, do so forgivingly. If you will look forward, do so prayerfully. But the wisest course would be to be present in the present gratefully.
-Maya Angelou

Internet Find

In this episode of the popular podcast Akimbo, Seth Godin presents the thought-provoking topic, Modern Choice Theory. He sheds light on the reality that, in the last 20 years, there has been an expansion in the options we all have before us every day. The abundance of possibilities brings us leverage, and that leverage requires us to take responsibility. However, we are often exhausted by the responsibility of all the choices we must make, and we instinctively retreat. Godin's most potent idea is that when decision fatigue sets in, we must make a meta-decision - that is, we must decide about deciding. We must realize that what we do for a living is make decisions. Godin expands our thinking by questioning whether we know when we make decisions and for whom. He observes that, although we live in an era of maximum choice, most of us are throwing it away by letting others dictate the rhythm and agenda of our decisions. After listening to this episode, I find it hard to think about choices similarly. The next time you make a decision, choose wisely.

Stay tuned for future Wise Bites memos, and tell a friend!