Memorable quotes
Competence means keeping your head in a crisis, sticking with a task even when it seems hopeless, and improvising good solutions to tough problems when every second counts. It encompasses ingenuity, determination and being prepared for anything.
Ultimately, I don’t determine whether I arrive at the desired professional destination. Too many variables are out of my control. There’s really just one thing I can control: my attitude during the journey, which is what keeps me feeling steady and stable, and what keeps me headed in the right direction. So I consciously monitor and correct, if necessary, because losing attitude would be far worse than not achieving my goal.
That’s how I approach just about everything. I spend my life getting ready to play “Rocket Man.” I picture the most demanding challenge; I visualize what I would need to know how to do to meet it; then I practice until I reach a level of competence where I’m comfortable that I’ll be able to perform.
It’s never either-or, never enjoyment versus advancement, so long as you conceive of advancement in terms of learning rather than climbing to the next rung of the professional ladder.
In my experience, fear comes from not knowing what to expect and not feeling you have any control over what’s about to happen. When you feel helpless, you’re far more afraid than you would be if you knew the facts. If you’re not sure what to be alarmed about, everything is alarming.
Before my last space flight (as with each of the earlier ones) I reviewed my will, made sure my financial affairs and taxes were in order, and did all the other things you’d do if you knew you were going to die. But that didn’t make me feel like I had one foot in the grave. It actually put my mind at ease and reduced my anxiety about what my family’s future would look like if something happened to me. Which meant that when the engines lit up at launch, I was able to focus entirely on the task at hand: arriving alive.
A lot of people talk about expecting the best but preparing for the worst, but I think that’s a seductively misleading concept. There’s never just one “worst.” Almost always there’s a whole spectrum of bad possibilities. The only thing that would really qualify as the worst would be not having a plan for how to cope.
Anticipating problems and figuring out how to solve them is actually the opposite of worrying: it’s productive. Likewise, coming up with a plan of action isn’t a waste of time if it gives you peace of mind. While it’s true that you may wind up being ready for something that never happens, if the stakes are at all high, it’s worth it.
Like most astronauts, I’m pretty sure that I can deal with what life throws at me because I’ve thought about what to do if things go wrong, as well as right. That’s the power of negative thinking.
I couldn’t afford to be unprepared in any situation where I was going to be evaluated, formally or not. I had to be ready, always.
I’d decided I was already a pretty good pilot, good enough that I didn’t need to fret over every last detail. And it’s true, you don’t need to obsess over details if you’re willing to roll the dice and accept whatever happens. But if you’re striving for excellence—whether it’s in playing the guitar or flying a jet—there’s no such thing as over-preparation. It’s your best chance of improving your odds. In my next line of work, it wasn’t even optional. An astronaut who doesn’t sweat the small stuff is a dead astronaut
In the case of both Challenger and Columbia, seemingly tiny details—a cracked O-ring, a dislodged piece of foam—caused terrible disasters. This is why, individually and organizationally, we have the patience to sweat the small stuff even when—actually, especially when—pursuing major goals. We’ve learned the hardest way possible just how much little things matter.
Early success is a terrible teacher. You’re essentially being rewarded for a lack of preparation, so when you find yourself in a situation where you must prepare, you can’t do it. You don’t know how.
a quote similar to how I experienced university and some students trying to “wing it”
Even the most gifted person in the world will, at some point during astronaut training, cross a threshold where it’s no longer possible to wing it. The volume of complex information and skills to be mastered is simply too great to be able to figure it all out on the fly. Some get to this break point and realize they can’t continue to rely on raw talent—they need to buckle down and study. Others never quite seem to figure that out and, in true tortoise-and-hare fashion, find themselves in a place they never expected to be: the back of the pack.
If you’ve always felt like you’ve been successful, though, it’s hard not to fret when you’re being surpassed. The astronauts who seem to have the hardest time with it are, interestingly enough, often the ones who are most naturally talented.
It’s counterintuitive, but I think it’s true: promoting your colleagues’ interests helps you stay competitive, even in a field where everyone is top-notch. And it’s easy to do once you understand that you have a vested interest in your co-workers’ success. In a crisis, you want them to want to help you survive and succeed, too. They may be the only people in the world who can.
We all said a few words, which those of us who would be flying a Soyuz toasted with ginger ale, not champagne, then everyone in the room sat down for a minute of silence. It’s what Russians do before any voyage, whether they’re going to space or to a friend’s dacha, just a way of honoring the significance of the moment.
On the Soyuz, one of the worst times for this to happen would be just after the first two minutes in flight, when the vehicle is way up high but not yet going all that fast. You’d fall straight back down. If the Soyuz comes back to Earth horizontally, it bumps along the atmosphere, like a stone skipping across the surface of a pond, slowing down before coming to a stop. But if it’s plummeting vertically, it’s like a stone being dropped into a pond from a great height. The rocket ship would hit the thick air of the atmosphere all at once, creating deceleration forces up to 24 g—survivable, but extremely punishing for both humans and spacecraft
Everyone wants to be a plus one, of course. But proclaiming your plus-oneness at the outset almost guarantees you’ll be perceived as a minus one, regardless of the skills you bring to the table or how you actually perform. This might seem self-evident, but it can’t be, because so many people do it.
Tom is the ultimate outdoorsman: a vastly experienced mountaineer, he’s summited on several continents and also walked the Pacific Trail—alone—from Canada to Mexico, covering more than a marathon’s distance each day. And yet during our course in Utah, he never imposed his expertise on anyone or told us what to do. Instead, he was just quietly competent and helpful. If I needed him, he was there in an instant, but he never elbowed me out of the way to demonstrate his superior skills or made me feel small for not knowing how to do something. Everyone on our team knew that Tom was a plus one. He didn’t have to tell us.
Not only did he bring a wealth of experience and knowledge, but he conducted himself as though no task was beneath him. He acted as though he considered himself a zero: reasonably competent but no better than anyone else.
The ideal entry is not to sail in and make your presence known immediately. It’s to ingress without causing a ripple. The best way to contribute to a brand-new environment is not by trying to prove what a wonderful addition you are. It’s by trying to have a neutral impact, to observe and learn from those who are already there, and to pitch in with the grunt work wherever possible.
But if you are confident in your abilities and sense of self, it’s not nearly as important to you whether you’re steering the ship or pulling on an oar. Your ego isn’t threatened because you’ve been asked to clean out a closet or unpack someone else’s socks.
Two decades into my career as an astronaut, I felt as close to being a plus one as I ever had. And I knew that my best bet of getting the crew to see me that way was to keep on doing what has always worked for me: aiming to be a zero.
Loneliness, I think, has very little to do with location. It’s a state of mind. In the center of every big, bustling city are some of the loneliest people in the world. I’ve never felt that way in space.
But fundamentally, life off Earth is in two important respects not at all unworldly: You can choose to focus on the surprises and pleasures, or the frustrations. And you can choose to appreciate the smallest scraps of experience, the everyday moments, or to value only the grandest, most stirring ones. Ultimately, the real question is whether you want to be happy. I didn’t need to leave the planet to find the right answer. But knowing what it was definitely helped me love life off Earth. My main source of frustration, in fact, was that I ever had to sleep. It just seemed like a waste of space, where there was so much more left to do and see and feel.
Ultimately, leadership is not about glorious crowning acts. It’s about keeping your team focused on a goal and motivated to do their best to achieve it, especially when the stakes are high and the consequences really matter. It is about laying the groundwork for others’ success, and then standing back and letting them shine.
It was very difficult to fly, this hypersonic glider, so NASA chose top-notch test pilots and then trained them for many years to be able to do it right. Simply getting the Shuttle ready to survive re-entry required multiple systems checks and reconfigurations; one trick—we had to point the belly at the sun for hours to warm up the rubber tires for landing. Landing, in other words, required the same degree of focus and preparation as launching.
It’s dangerous to think of descent as an anticlimax. Instead of looking back longingly over your shoulder at what you’re leaving behind, you need to be asking, “What’s the next thing that could kill me?”
If you start thinking that only your biggest and shiniest moments count, you’re setting yourself up to feel like a failure most of the time. Personally, I’d rather feel good most of the time, so to me everything counts: the small moments, the medium ones, the successes that make the papers and also the ones that no one knows about but me. The challenge is avoiding being derailed by the big, shiny moments that turn other people’s heads. You have to figure out for yourself how to enjoy and celebrate them, and then move on.
If I’d defined success very narrowly, limiting it to peak, high-visibility experiences, I would have felt very unsuccessful and unhappy during those years. Life is just a lot better if you feel you’re having 10 wins a day rather than a win every 10 years or so.
The truth is that I find every day fulfilling, whether I’m on the planet or off it. I work hard at whatever I’m doing, whether it’s fixing a bilge pump in my boat or learning to play a new song on the guitar. And I find satisfaction in small things.
I decided not to attempt a redo, recognizing that perhaps this was not meant to be. Anyway, a faceless dummy is actually the perfect symbolic representation of one of the most important lessons I’ve learned as an astronaut: to value the wisdom of humility, as well as the sense of perspective it gives you. That’s what will help me climb down the ladder. And it won’t hurt if I decide to climb up a new one, either.