I have been interested in space and universe in general and have watched many space movies: The Martian, Interstellar, Gravity you name it. Reading and watching space movies is one of my hobbies and luckily I got a chance to stumble upon this book: The Right Kind of Crazy: A True Story of Teamwork, Leadership, and High-Stakes Innovation. This is not a book review since I'm not particularly good at judging someone's writing, this is only a list of key lessons that I learnt from the book.
To succeed you must pursuit the real truth
Far too many times I found this lesson recurring to me and I think most of the people in general. Humans has a tendency to distort the truth and deceive themselves, and this is caused by many reasons. Sometimes it is because the truth is so hard to accept, other time it is because we aren't even aware of missing the truth. For example, when not achieving your desirable score in a course it is highly likely that is because you did not truly understand the concepts or when the code is not compiled, it is because you are not aware of some bugs. So pursuing the real truth is key to achieving any target, this is particularly true in space as space has no mercy, only one untighten screw can cause deadly incident.
A passage from the book:
"JPL embodies a culture of questioners, and my unwavering certainty in the face of doubt probably didn’t communicate that I was ready to give up my pet answers in pursuit of real truth."
2. Life is full of surprises, keep your head clear and opened to opportunities
We all have heard of stories of a person who dreamt to be someone great when he/she was a kid and went on achieving that dream. This is not so true for Adam Steltzner - The Lead Engineer of a Mars mission at NASA, believe it or not he only realized he wanted to explore space and become a NASA Engineer only after he graduated from high school. Shocking right ?! You must have imagined the guy who is the Lead Engineer of a Mars mission has to know really clear what he wanted to be right ? Well not so true, Adam only took his first class Physics 10 by accident and fell in love with Physics and Space after that. So you can see life is extremely dynamic, it is full of surprises and opportunities sometimes you win sometimes you lose but never quit.
Passage from the book:
"I didn’t have a particular game plan. I was simply following my curiosity. I had let go of any expectation about where my efforts might take me. I certainly had no expectation of great success."
3. Hold on to the doubt
This point is somewhat related to the first point, but it is more specific and offers a way of to pursuit the truth. There is fascinating story from Adam, this is a passage:
"When I took physics back at College of Marin, we were allowed to bring one sheet of paper into each test. On that one sheet, we could have anything we wanted. Most students would take a 000 (ultrafine-point) Rapidograph pen and write down every equation in the book. My sheet of paper might list a few of the governing laws we’d been studying, but most of the page was devoted to the words “Hold on to the doubt!” usually written in bright colors with a highlighter pen."
I laughed a little bit after reading that story but not a big one, I know too many times I failed because I didn't have the courage to hold on to the doubt, to explore all the elements related to the problem. So I guessed from now on hold on to the doubt will become my motto.
Those are the three key points I want to highlight in this book, It was a fun and inspiring read I highly recommend it. To conclude I want to quote one of my favourite passages from the book:
"Truth is, it wasn’t curiosity alone. There was certainly a great deal of hard work and persistence, and there was a great deal of struggle within myself, wondering if I could do it. Under all the angst, though, whenever necessary, I could strip down what I was working on and find that glimmer of curiosity about the question. Curiosity is a spark, and exploration is the fire that burns from it. I was beginning a whole new chapter of my life, a whole new exploration into the unknown."