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In Apollo 13, the crew navigated successfully through so many disasters that flight 1549’s recent landing in the Hudson River looks tame in comparison.

The movie version of Apollo 13 is gorgeous. Mission Control’s Gene Kranz demonstrates dazzling leadership when nothing goes as planned. At one point he effectively silences his crew’s many objections: I don’t care what anything was designed to do. I care about what it can do. So let’s get to work. Let’s lay it out, okay?”

Mission Control has to come up with a new plan, using only what the Apollo 13 crew has available. Some of the world’s best engineers must figure out, for instance, how the crew can improvise a much-needed carbon dioxide filter. They come up with something that will work using duct tape, the flight plan cover, and a sock.

The best college course I ever took was an art class with a former NASA designer. We spent an entire semester doing impossible things, like building catapults with fail-proof perfect aim, and suspending gallon milk jugs (full!) between two tables using nothing more than a pack of toothpicks and some glue.

The class changed my life.

What amazed me most was that each time I would come up with what I firmly believed was the ONLY solution to the problem he’d give us, I’d go to class the next day to find that several other solutions had been found, as well. Some of our solutions were more or less elegant than the others, but it didn’t matter so long as they WORKED.

Our professor taught us always to start with our goal in mind, never with how we were going to get there.

Sometimes it’s fun to play with stuff and ideas, to see what you’ll come up with.  But to solve a problem, you must approach it from the other direction. 

Don’t think of what’s possible.

Don’t even think too much about what you have to work with. NASA’s engineers never would have built a CO2 filter had they started by asking what can we possibly make out of duct tape, a flight plan cover, and a sock?

Start, instead, with where you want to end up. Then figure out what you need to get there.