DRMacIver's Notebook
Book Review: “An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth” Chris Hadfield
Book Review: “An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth” Chris Hadfield
When I mentioned to a friend that I was reading this she said “Oh is that actually good? I assumed it was pop science trash”. It is actually good and it’s not pop science trash.
There are roughly two interesting bits to this book:
- Advocating for a particular attitude to life.
- A lot of anecdotes about space and what the life of an astronaut is like.
I found both sides of the book interesting, although I think the life advice would have fallen very flat without the space component, while the space component might have stood just fine on its own.
Some of the attitude stuff that is advocated for:
- work hard
- over plan for everything
- be a team player
- don’t be afraid to shoot for your ultimate goal but arrange your life so that if you don’t achieve it that’s OK
- have an awful lot of under-acknowledged privilege (Helene Hadfield is in many ways the true hero of the story)
I’ve been thinking about trying to get better at strategic planning, and this book was a useful nudge in that direction. In particular there’s a bunch of advice in there for constructively over-thinking things which might be useful. The main gist is that rather than worrying about everything that might go wrong and stressing about it as a result, worry about everything that that might go wrong and plan what you will do when it does.