3 Lessons From Einstein

When you say the word ‘genius’, chances are that the first name that comes to your mind is Einstein.  He is potentially the most famous scientist ever to live and arguably the most influential intellectual of the modern era.  But what makes his story interesting is that I’m willing to bet that while you know his name, it’s very likely that you couldn’t actually explain to me what he discovered and why it matters.

His work is so deep in physics folklore that for anyone who didn’t study science at a university level, the gravitas of his achievements is completely indescribable.  I’m in that same boat.  I can name pieces of jargon that I know are Einstein-adjacent such as general relativity, special relativity, e=mc2, unified field theories, etc.  But that’s where my understanding and appreciation ends, unfortunately.

In an attempt to right that intellectual injustice, I picked up Walter Isaacson’s biography on Albert Einstein - which I hoped would give me a sense of what he discovered and why it mattered - as packaged in amongst his life story (which is fascinating).

I’m afraid I overestimated my scientific literacy.  Because as I sit here today, I am no closer to appreciating the unique scientific breakthroughs he made - even after having read all 550 pages of Isaacson’s attempt.

So, instead, I thought I would simply share 3 lessons I learned from Einstein as an intellectual more generally - that I hope will be useful for anyone trying to make progress in a knowledge-based field.

1. Intellectual Honesty

Einstein typified the scientific ideal of changing his mind when coming across new, compelling evidence.  He was never tied to belief with the same leash of dogma to which so many of us succumb.  But rather, he held his beliefs lightly - waiting for evidence to disprove them so he could move further towards the truth.  He had no ego about his scientific worldview and that’s why he was able to step away from the accepted canon of the time and present truly revolutionary breakthroughs at important moments.  His search for truth was an honest one, not impacted by politics, guilt, whimsy or preference.  It was pure and rigourous.  We can learn a lot from that.

2. Deep Work

Thanks mostly to Cal Newport’s book of the same name, we’ve seen a recent revival of appreciation for what some call ‘deep work’: long periods of undistracted time working on difficult problems.  This revival has been a response to the acknowledgment that our always-connected lifestyle dominated by smartphones and social media has diminished our ability to concentrate on one task for a lengthy period of time.  We’ve all felt our powers of sustained focus dwindling as we jump from distraction to distraction every hour of the day.

As a result, the power of deep focus has never been more valuable - because it remains the case that the only way to accomplish really breathtaking things is to harness this deep work for long periods of time.  Einstein was a master of this.  His ability to seclude himself, ignoring the fanatical crowds that would follow him around, and work diligently on cosmic-level problems made him who he was.  He understood the kind of focus that was necessary for him to make the impact he wanted to make - and he engineered his life in a way that afforded him the chance to engage in that work.

3. Perseverance

One of my favourite aspects of the book was how Isaacson illustrated the fact that Einstein’s mistakes were probably more interesting and impactful than most scientists’ greatest breakthroughs.  The way that Einstein tackled a problem meant that even if he realised that there were errors and the theory would not work - the reasoning that got him to that point was immensely valuable in strengthening either the counter-argument or other related problems in the field.  He was so engaged in his work and believed so much in his ability, that he would go down the rabbit hole for years on a theory that his intuitions demanded.  Even in the midst of months and months of no progress, he got up every single day and got back to those equations once again.  And so in his career, there were years where he produced nothing of substance, but he kept going and going because he knew that’s the kind of work that was needed.

Now, I’m not diminishing the skill of knowing when to quit something and change track, but I think that we seriously underestimate the value of persevering with something that isn’t delivering immediate results, especially when it is in a field that we are an expert in and are passionate about.  Great work takes time, lots of time - and many of us sell ourselves short simply because we run out of stamina.  Einstein typified the kind of work ethic and resilience that is required if you want to deliver the kind of work that no one else can.  There are no shortcuts.

So those are the three lessons that I took from his story.  One day I hope that I’ll understand the physics as well, but for the moment I’ll have to stick with these sorts of reverential explanations about the impact that Einstein had on the world:

“He was a loner with an intimate bond to humanity, a rebel who was suffused with reverence.  And thus it was that an imaginative, impertinent patent clerk became the mind reader of the creator of the cosmos, the locksmith of the mysteries of the atom and the universe.”